New York - The Novel

himself was flexible and cautious. He had no wish to be turfed out like his father. After years of exile, he wanted to have fun, and was glad if his subjects did too. He loved chasing women, racing horses and visiting the theater. He also took a genuine interest in science.
    The London Tom encountered was on the cusp between two worlds: the medieval and the modern. With Britain’s overseas domains expanding, London’s busy merchants had many opportunities to make their fortunes. Rich aristocrats and gentlemen set the tone of fashion. There were all kinds of entertainment. For a year Tom had been very happy.
    And yet, after a while, he’d begun to yearn for America. Not for Boston or his Puritan family, but for other things that were harder to define. A sense of space, of new frontiers, of making the world anew. A longing for freedom. The freedom of the wilderness, perhaps. He couldn’t have put it into words.
    And now, with his father dead, he supposed there was nothing to stop him returning.
    There was another development, also, to be considered. Here in London, there were rumors that King Charles II and his brother James were taking a new interest in the American colonies. If so, that would be all the more reason for an ambitious young fellow like himself to look toward America again.
    So what should he do? Should he stay and enjoy the amusements of London, or venture across the ocean? It would be easy enough to tell the merchant he worked for that with his father dead, Eliot had summoned him home. It certainly wouldn’t take him long to pack his few possessions. The ship in front of him was leaving tomorrow for Boston. The captain had a berth for him. Should he take it?
    He paused, laughed to himself, took out a coin and tossed it. Heads: Boston. Tails: London.

    Up in the north, the thunder spoke. But ahead, as the big river reached the open waters of the harbor, was a lake of liquid gold.
    Van Dyck had tried to show Pale Feather the significance of the place the night before, using a map he had made himself. Pointing with the stem of his pipe he had explained.
    “This line, which runs straight from top to bottom, is the North River. Many days upriver there are big lakes and waterways that extend all the way up to the regions of ice. To the left of the river”—he swept his pipe across the paper—“lies the whole continent of America. To the right,” and here he indicated a huge, triangular wedge of land, with its point down and its wide base sweeping out into the Atlantic, “are the territoriesof Connecticut, Massachusetts and many other places. And here beside them is the great ocean that my people crossed.” Tracing his pipe down to the southern tip of the wedge, he indicated another striking feature. For here a long island, about twenty miles across and a hundred miles from end to end, lay moored as it were, alongside the wedge in the Atlantic. Between this island and the mainland coast there was a long, sheltered sound. “All round this area”—he indicated the bottom of the wedge and the neighboring end of the island—“your people dwelt for many generations. And this”—he tapped the southernmost point of the wedge—“is Manhattan.”
    Manna hata:
it was an Indian name. So far as he knew, it just meant “the Island.” The place was a narrow peninsula, really; except that at its northern tip, a small, steep gorge allowed a channel of water from the North River to snake round into the long island’s sound, converting the peninsula of Manhattan, technically, into an island.
    Had it not been for the great breakwater of the long island protecting its ocean side, Manhattan would have been exposed to the full force of the Atlantic. But thanks to this happy circumstance, as the North River came down to the tip of Manhattan, it entered a splendid, sheltered harbor about four miles wide and seven long—a spacious anchorage known to mariners as the Upper Bay. Better yet, as one passed through the narrows at the harbor’s southern end to encounter the Atlantic, two huge sandbars, one on each side, served as outer breakwaters against the ocean swell, creating the calm waters of the Lower Bay, so vast that all the ships in the world could well have lain at anchor there.
    “It’s the gateway to the north,” he had explained. But Pale Feather had not understood. And though he had spoken to her further of trade and transport, he could see that she did not grasp the significance of the white