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“Rest, Mevrouw,” she said to Elizabeth, and led her into a small salon, elaborately furnished. Will followed uncomfortably.

Elizabeth sat down on a carved stool by the fire, while Mrs. Stuyvesant put her hand on the baby’s head. “How old?” she asked.

“Eight months,” said Elizabeth, in a dragging voice.

“The same as my Nicolaes!” cried Mrs. Stuyvesant. “I thought so when I saw you stand so sad, in the rain.” She bent down over the baby, “Zuigeling, zuigeling -” she crooned to him. “Thou shah be dry and warm now, and Mama feed thee . . .” The baby quietened. Elizabeth looked up into the lady’s compassionate eyes, and her own were lightened by a faint wonder.

Mrs. Stuyvesant rushed out, and came back with an armful of infant clothes and diapers. She tidied and warmed the baby, dressing him in the elaborate robes of the Governor’s own son. Then Mrs, Stuyvesant motioned briskly, and Elizabeth obeyed the gesture, unfastening her bodice and giving suck. “Now -” said Judith in gentle command. “Speak slow, and tell me why you are so sad - and your man so - so wild.”

Haltingly, a few words at a time, and in a voice which seemed not to be her own, Elizabeth complied.

Will stood by the window, staring out at the blinding rain, with thoughts as miserable as Elizabeth’s had been. He was glad of respite for her, and that his son was warmed and fed, but he thought of these feminine rites as only that - respite or delay, and of no consequence to their black situation. In that he was mistaken.

Judith Stuyvesant had been born a Bayard of French extraction, and of a gallantry like the famous Chevalier. She had charm, learning, and quick sympathy. She loved her own two baby boys better than anything in the world, but she had managed to find something lovable in the irascible, autocratic, one-legged old General whom she had wed. Of all the people who surrounded him, she was the only one who never feared him, though she could not always sway him.

Elizabeth had not spoken much before Judith arose with decision. “You stay here,” she said. “I find my husband. If he’s in Council with his Nine Men, I don’t disturb him, for then he’s always bad-humour. I find out.”

As she left the room Will walked over and stood by Elizabeth. “ ‘Tis the Governor’s lady ...” he said.

“It would seem so,” Elizabeth answered in the dragging faraway voice. “Strange that she did not shrink from me, when I told her, yet perhaps she didn’t understand.”

Will said nothing. They waited, while the baby went to sleep, and the rain slashed like knives at the glistening diamond panes.

The Governor was not in Council, he was in his office dictating to his Dutch secretary. He looked up in surprise, but not annoyance, as his wife entered. She explained her errand, and Stuyvesant began to laugh - dry, grating chuckles, so unusual that the secretary looked alarmed, and Judith astonished.

“Och, Juutje!” the Governor said, suddenly sobering. “So the Winthrop woman has now turned up here in your own salon, and has got
you
for advocate!”

“She is terribly unhappy, Petrus,” said his wife softly. “They seem good people to me. And the baby - the same age as our little Claes.”

“The baby!” said the Governor sharply. “One born in sin, of adultery. Do you forget that?”

“No, dear husband, I don’t,” said Judith, laying her hand on his arm. “Yet as she is divorced, it would be so easy for you to make this little one legitimate. Mr. Baxter already once told me something of their story, these two.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” growled the Governor. “Baxter talks too much. Cackle, cackle, cackle like an old hen.” But there was a veiled twinkle beneath the heavy hooded lids. “This woman - Winthrop, Feake, Hallet, whatever she’s called. I’m sick of her. So many letters from her family, and now they begin from Greenwich too. The inhabitants, my own subjects, write in her favour, and the property, her lands, they say are going to ruin. I think -” said the Governor, rubbing his beaked nose and slyly watching Judith, “I’ll give the Feake-Hallet land to Pieter Cock, who pesters me for it. This Greenwich is the most troublesome town in New Netherland - No, no, wife -” he added as he saw that she was about to speak, “Enough of this wicked pair! They have broken the law, they were warned what would happen if they came back here. They must be imprisoned ... eh?”

“Petrus!” she cried, shaking his arm. “You will not be so cruel, not when
I
beg you!” She stopped, uncertainly, for the little grating chuckles had begun again.

“Bring me the Winthrop file,” said the Governor to his secretary. The man walked to a huge Dutch
kas,
filled with shelves and stacks of paper. He brought out a small packet tied together with a red thread. The Governor picked the top sheet off the pile and held it out to his wife. “You see, my dear, all your pretty begging is quite wasted breath.”

Judith looked down at the document in her hand, and saw her husband’s official seal at the bottom, and she read the opening: “ ‘Whereas, Elizabeth Feake, erstwhile of Greenwich in our jurisdiction, has been legally separated from her husband, Robert Feake - ’” Judith skipped several lines, then, with a gasp of pleasure, she read out loud, “ ‘therefore, for particular reasons known to us, they are both reinstated in full possession of their lands, and Elizabeth Feake is given permission to remarry, provided that she wed the above-named William Hallet’ - Oh, Petrus, you had already written it I”

“A week ago,” said the Governor dryly. “And not for the sweetly sentimental reasons you give, but, because England .now has a Puritan Commonwealth, I am directed to placate the Puritan colonies as much as I can with honour, and I think it expedient to confer a favour on a woman connected with so influential a family as the Winthrops. This John Winthrop, Jr., I’ve heard much about him, and think his friendship of greater value than his enmity. Now take this paper to your protégé’s, and I trust I’ll not be bothered with them anymore.”

The Governor’s hope was not quite fulfilled, since Elizabeth and Will lay that night at his house in two separate guest bedrooms. This was Judith’s doing.

When she returned to her salon with the marriage licence, she had been deeply moved by their reception of her news. The numbness of shock, the sudden blaze of joy in William Hallet’s eyes, the way he kissed his woman, and looked down at his baby. While she - Mrs Feake - had continued for some time dazed and incredulous, fearing a malicious jest, asking tremulous questions, and, upon having the document translated for her the third time, suddenly bursting into sobs and laughter so heartrending that Judith had wept with her, and presently dared intrude again upon her husband.

“Petrus -” she said, still wiping her eyes on a lace kerchief. “You have bestowed such happiness today.” She kissed his thin furrowed cheek, while the Dutch secretary discreetly went and stood by the window. “Now there’s one thing more. They must have a church wedding. Please order Dominie Backerus to perform it tomorrow.”

Stuyvesant frowned, though he did not draw away from her, as he did when he was angered. “This is not the sort of marriage for church record,” he said, “She is neither maid nor widow. Hemell Is she not satisfied with marriage by magistrate? She would have to be in one of her own Puritan colonies.”

“No doubt she would be,” said Judith quietly. “She was so wed by magistrate to Robert Feake, which never seems like real marriage to me. But I feel there is that in her which wants God’s ceremony and His blessing on her union with Hallet - she should have it.”

“You and your whimsies . . .” said Stuyvesant, tapping his peg-leg on the floor, “The woman has bewitched you. There, there - Juutje, I’ll speak to the Dominie. Be off with you!”

So it was that William and Elizabeth Hallet were quietly married in the Church-in-the-Fort next day at noon, by the pastor, Johannes Backerus, who was about to sail for home, being displeased with affairs in Manhattan and critical of the Governor, though the Hallets did not know this, nor would have cared.

The Governor was not present in the church, but his lady was, and George Baxter, and Toby Feake. Toby, stuffed into his best bottle-green doublet, and full of celebration rum, was as astonished and pleased at this development as he was capable of being. It even occurred to him, as he watched his aunt and Hallet kneeling by the rail, that they were a handsome couple. Will still wore, perforce, his brown homespun suit, but it had been pressed by the Stuyvesant servants, and he had bought himself a new linen collar and cuffs. Elizabeth, however, had been dressed by Judith, in one of that lady’s best gowns of yellow satin with an upstanding frill of finest Mechlin lace. Judith had also lent a short veil of golden gauze, and supervised her maid at the hair-curling, the powdering, the judicious application of fragrant Hungary Water.

Will was thunderstruck when Judith led Elizabeth towards him in the church. She had never been more beautiful, and he had forgotten that she could look like this after seeing her for months pale, tired, and clothed in drab, increasingly shabby garments.

They did not understand the Dutch service, but as the Dominie gave to Will and Elizabeth the rings they had taken off, and while they then replaced them on each other’s fingers, they both thought of the cabin on Totomack Creek, and Will whispered to her, “The pretence came true, hinnie.”

“It was no pretence,” she whispered back, looking up into his eyes.

Suddenly Elizabeth began to tremble. She was thrilled with awe as she stood beside Will at the church rail. How strange it was that at that moment of her utter despair on the threshold of the Governor’s mansion, after she had abandoned strivings or any hope - the release, had come. The wings, and the shelter, were they perhaps not lies after all? Could it be that joy was permitted as well as the suffering which roost certainly was not only permitted, but ordained? Joy. Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Did one dare surrender to these? She felt that her cheeks were wet, and quickly wiped them on a corner of Judith’s little golden veil.

The Dominie went on, unheeding. They stood and knelt and stood again in answer to his gestures, and knew that it was finished when he turned away, and George Baxter cried out fervently but with an edge
of laughter, “Thank the Lord! I feared never to
see
this day!”

Nor would they see it now, if. Stuyvesant had known the whole tale, Baxter thought with wry amusement, as he walked up to congratulate the bride and groom. Will and Baxter had had a long conversation that morning, during which Baxter had been appalled to hear of the persecutions in Stamford, New Haven, and finally Hartford - none of which had filtered through to New Amsterdam. And so the Hallets had been at long last favoured with a stroke of luck. Stuyvesant assumed that because Massachusetts Colony, in the person of the late Governor Winthrop, and Connecticut, represented by John Jr., were Hallet partisans, that all the Puritan colonies must be. He would have thought twice before reinstating a couple in disgrace with Governor Eaton arid Governor Haynes.

But it was done now, and the Hallets were safe.

“Respectability,” said Will, grinning, as Baxter pumped his. hand. “A novel and delightful sensation, isn’t it, Bess?” He put his arm around her and kissed her. She laughed, a laugh with a quaver in it.
“Happiness
is a novel and delightful sensation, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Come back with me,” said Judith, radiant with sympathy. “We have a little wedding feast His High Mightiness said he would be there too.”

The Hallets lingered a while in New Amsterdam at the City Tavern, enjoying with sharpest pleasure the change in their fortunes. They were no longer poor, nor dependent on anyone’s charity. Pieter Cock had dutifully brought to Stuyvesant the money and valuables the Hallets had been forced to leave behind in Greenwich fifteen months ago. Their property had been locked in the Munitions room at the Fort. The Governor now issued an order for its restitution, and the Hallets were enabled to make necessary purchases before their return to Greenwich.

They talked much and gratefully of jack, whose extensive help in solving her troubles Elizabeth now understood. They all, Stuyvesant, Baxter, and the Hallets, hoped that Jack might come and settle in Dutch territory. Stuyvesant particularly wished this, because he had not enough Dutch emigrants to populate the lands he claimed, and therefore must rely on English settlers. And to capture one as prominent as Mr. Winthrop would certainly improve intercolonial relations.

On July 15, George Baxter wrote Jack a letter warmly inviting him to visit New Netherland, and incorporating in the letter the cryptic and discreet statement which he knew would be understood. “Mr. Hallet hath graunted him what he required.” Under separate cover there were official instructions for the return of the Feake children to Greenwich, and these Jack immediately carried out

Jack also received a letter from Elizabeth, who was back in Greenwich and hers he held in his hand and read with a medley of strong emotions. He read and reread the first sentence,

Deare Brother, All the love and service and thankfulness I am able to express is next unto god due unto yourself as the instrument of my present well being. .,

It had pained him to receive her incoherent little note from Toby’s ship, knowing that she had misunderstood him when he sent her away, and he had been extremely anxious over the outcome in New Amsterdam. His relief now was poignant.

At last he put Elizabeth’s letter down and went in search of his wife, whom he found in the dairy. “Will you step outside a moment?” he said to Betty. “I want to talk to you.”

They went into the barnyard amongst the pigs and clucking chickens; Jack drew his wife down beside him on the bench near the stable, and said, “I’ve just received a letter from Bess, a most happy one. It confirms that all her troubles are over, she sends you her respects and gratitude.”

Betty compressed her mouth. “I should think so,” she said. “The embarrassment she has caused us - and the deceit! John, that
you
should have been party to that monstrous deception they foisted on us here, harbouring those two shameless -”

“Hush, my dear,” he Interrupted. “It’s over, and I want you to forget. Bess, by temperament or fate, has incurred discredits which could never afflict you, I know that, and admire you for it But I also must remind you that there are many societies and periods of history when the Hallets’ conduct would not be shameful, when indeed their fretted love and loyalty to each other might rather be thought brave and praiseworthy.