Chapter 1:- Escape From New York
    It was 1868. Most of New York City slept on this dark, moonless night. The fog hung thick over everything, trapping the city’s foul smells in it. I was running for my life. A loose cobble had tripped me, tearing my pants and leaving a bloody gash on my knee. They were hunting me through the city streets like little boys chasing a cur, except they were not doing this for fun. They were chasing me because of my love for Madelyn Stuyvesant.

    Tonight, as I met her in her father’s stable, they had come at me. We had been meeting there for two months now until a stable boy finally told someone. Madelyn was my one true love. Their orders were to kill me with their cudgels, as guns would make too much noise and might get the police involved. Old Heinrich Stuyvesant couldn’t afford to attract attention to his daughter’s disgrace, either. The last thing I saw of her was her father leaving livid, red welts across her pale, naked back and cursing her as a whore.

    Who were they that were chasing me? I had no idea and could not identify anyone in the gloom. All I knew was that they were four hulking street thugs hired to pursue and kill me. They were paid for by the father of my love. Heinrich Stuyvesant was of “Old” New York aristocracy. His ancestors had helped build New Amsterdam which is now known as New York. Heinrich was one of the wealthiest men in the entire state with all the political control that his money could buy. He could easily arrange for men to be found floating face down in the river and it was rumored he often did. I did not want to become one of them. Madelyn had told me about his ways of having things done, but at the time I had not believed her. I had been too much in love to care.   As I ran, I recalled what she had said, and I was scared. When Heinrich had found out about the affair I was having at night in the stable with his daughter, he was furious. He  took a buggy whip and headed out to the stable. He had always considered his daughter, “His pearl of great value”. She had been despoiled by a common, vulgar, ditch digger. Someone must pay. So I ran. Although I couldn’t see my pursuers, but I could hear them as their brogans made slapping sounds on the wet cobble stones and their harsh whispers went back and forth among them.

    My shoulder hurt with a sharp, stabbing pain from a cudgel blow I had received when they had almost caught up with me. The blow had been meant for my head. As I ran, I thought I could still hear Madelyn scream as her father hit her again and again with the buggy whip. Even then I knew I couldn’t go back for her. I must run hard and fast if I was to get away. I had no weapons but my fists and my right shoulder hurt like blazes. My pocket held an old two bladed pocketknife with a walnut handle, two greenback dollars and some change.

    In this part of the city, many of the gas lamps were out, probably from neglect. City workers did not want to spend much time in the slums. Another fall in the dark could mean my end. They would catch me and enjoy beating me to death. Fear ran a close race beside me. I remembered Madelyn’s pale skin as we had lain together on the hay behind the hay stack in the stable. I was seventeen and she was almost of a marriageable age at fifteen, but not for one such as me, a common laborer, named Peter van Rijn.