New York - The Novel

consult Mercy? What if she demanded James come home, when the boy so obviously didn’t want to? No, that would do no good. James might return unwillingly, and then be resentful of his mother. Better, it seemed to John Master, to take the decision himself. If Mercy blamed him, well, so be it.
    But he could not help wondering, as he looked sadly at his wife and daughter: Would he ever see his son again?

The Loyalist
1770
    Y OUNG GREY ALBION stood at the door of the room. James Master smiled at him. Besides the fact that Grey was like a younger brother, it always amused him that young Albion’s hair was always a mess.
    “You aren’t coming out, James?”
    “I must write a letter.”
    As Grey departed, James sighed. The letter wasn’t going to be easy. Though he always added a brief note to the regular reports Albion sent his father, he realized with shame that he hadn’t written a proper letter to his parents in over a year. The letter he must now compose had better be long, and he hoped it would give them pleasure. The real reason for writing, however, he would save until the end.
    He wasn’t sure they were going to like it.
    “My dear parents,” he wrote, then paused. How should he begin?

    John Master had never had a quarrel with his wife. Yet on this bright spring day, he was very close to it. How could she think of such a thing? His look signaled reproach, but in fact he was furious.
    “I beg you not to go!” he protested.
    “Thee cannot mean such a thing, John,” she answered.
    “Can’t you see it makes me look a damn fool?”
    How could she not understand? Last year, when they’d invited him tobe a vestryman at Trinity, he’d been flattered. The appointment carried prestige, but also obligations—one of which, quite certainly, was not to have your wife openly attending a meeting with a mob of Dissenters. Five years ago, it mightn’t have been so bad, but times had changed. Dissenters were trouble.
    “Please do not blaspheme, John.”
    “You are my wife,” he burst out. “I demand that you obey me.”
    She paused, looking down, weighing her words carefully.
    “I am sorry, John,” she said quietly, “but there is a higher authority than thee. Do not forbid me to hear the word of God.”
    “And you want to take Abigail?”
    “I do.”
    He shook his head. He knew better than to argue with his wife’s conscience. He had enough on his mind without dealing with that.
    “Go then,” he cried in exasperation. “But not with my blessing.” Or my thanks, he added under his breath. And he turned his back on her until she left.
    As John Master surveyed his world in the spring of 1770, he was sure of one thing. There had never been a time when the colony had greater need of good men, with good will, and cool heads. Five years ago, when Livingston and De Lancey from the Assembly had spoken of the need for the gentlemen to control the Liberty Boys, they’d been right. But they hadn’t managed to do it.
    The main factions in the Provincial Assembly had divided on more or less English political lines for a long time now. De Lancey and his rich Anglican crowd were generally called Tories, and they reckoned that Master, as a vestryman of Trinity with a son at Oxford, was one of them. The Whigs, led by Livingston and a group of Presbyterian lawyers, might stand up for the common man and oppose anything they considered an abuse of royal authority, but they were still level-headed gentlemen. As a moderate, non-partisan fellow, John Master had plenty of friends among them too.
    So surely, he’d felt, if decent men like himself used common sense, the affairs of the colonies could be set in good order. But it hadn’t happened. The last five years had been a disaster.
    For a short time, when the Stamp Act had been repealed, he had hoped that good sense might prevail. He’d been one of those who’d urged the Assembly to supply provisions to the British troops again.
    “God knows,” he’d pointed out to one of the Assembly Whigs, “we need the troops, and they have to be fed and paid.”
    “Can’t do it, John,” was the reply. “Point of principle. It’s a tax we haven’t agreed to.”
    “So why don’t we just agree to it?” he’d asked.
    But if he could see why the ministers in London felt the colonies were being obstructive, why did the London men, in turn, have to be so arrogant?
    For their next move had been an insult. It had come from a new minister, named Townshend: a series of