carriages, the thud of horses’ hoofs as the dragoons galloped here and
there. General Gage had called for his officers to meet at the Province
House, and some of the men went off to hover about that grim, narrow
structure and get the word as soon as it was handed down.
Gerry did not go to the Province House. He went to the edge of the
wharf and sat there, dangling his legs over the side. The sun was
getting higher and hotter, and he looked up at the sun, and then down
at the thick grayish water lapping silently round the piers below. He
thought about his dream, and he thought about the girl called Kitty,
who was not so distractingly fair as Sally Rose, and wondered if she
had got safe away. He thought about Captain Blakeslee lying dead under
the locust tree. True, he had never wanted to be a soldier, but once he
became one, he’d expected to bear his part well. Once he’d have been
eager to march out when he heard firing, but he was none so eager now.
Maybe he was afraid. Maybe that was a bad omen. He’d heard around the
campfire that men who were going into their last battle often felt that
way. If only he could forget the dream....
The sounds of confusion in the town behind him seemed to increase and
grow. Now that he thought of it, none of the usual daily noises could
be heard: not the tapping of the carpenters’ hammers, nor the thumping
of handlooms, nor the creak of wooden machinery. The little Negro
boys were nowhere about with their cries of “Sweep oh! Sweep oh!” He
suspected that the town of Boston would do no work this day. Everywhere
men were shouting and bells were ringing: Christ’s Church with its
royal peal, the North Church with its sour note, and half a dozen more.
Just as usual, the breeze that blew over Long Wharf smelled of fish and
whale oil and the nearby stables, of tar, and spice, and wood smoke,
but now, or did he imagine it, it had an acrid brimstone tang.
At eleven the men came trooping back, and the word was out. Every man
knew what was to be the order of his day.
At half past eleven the men of Gerry’s company paraded on the Common,
splendid in scarlet and white and brass, equipped with full kit,
blankets, and three days’ rations, and drawn up beside them were
fifteen hundred more. The ships’ guns still roared away, and every now
and then a terrible blast let go from the battery on Copp’s Hill.
“They say it’s only a handful of farmers,” muttered Jack Higgs. “I’d
not think they could stand such punishment for long.”
Gerry looked at Boston Common, the rambling field that had become so
familiar to him in the past year: the crooked cowpaths, and the little
pond, and the thick clumps of juniper and steeplebush, so handy to come
upon when you were walking in the moonlight with a girl; the gravel
strip where the officers still raced their horses, in spite of all the
town fathers could do. He looked at the gabled mansions and quaint,
crooked houses round, as if he never expected to see them any more.
“The Yankees’ll take more punishment than you’d think for,” he said.
Once on the water, the barges from Long Wharf joined with the barges
from the North Battery, twenty-eight of them moving in two long
parallel lines, filled with scarlet-coated men. In the leading boats
were two polished brass field pieces, and the noonday sun struck
everywhere on colorful banners and gleaming arms. For the Tories in
Boston, it must have been a splendid sight, but Gerry turned his eyes
toward the Charlestown peninsula as the troops were rowed across the
blue bay.
Smoke and flame and awful sound kept pouring forth from the great guns
of the fleet--the _Somerset_, the _Falcon_, the _Lively_. Dimly through
the barrage he could see the little village where he had gone drinking
at the Bay and Beagle and courting in the graveyard under the spring
moon. On the hill above it, grown up overnight like a mushroom, stood
a small square earthworks, silent, except for one erratic cannon that
spoke now and then. Black dots of men moved about the earthworks, but
no columns issued forth drawn up in battle array, no reinforcements
poured in from any side.
Gerry’s spirits rose and he cleared his throat. “Is that,” he asked the
sergeant, “the great fortification we’re all ordered out to tear down?”
The sergeant laughed grimly. “Don’t look very fearsome, does it?” he
agreed. “But after the way they run us back through Lexington, I don’t
trust them devils.”
“And I thought it was Bunker Hill instead of Breed’s they’d be likely
to fortify,” went on Gerry. “That’s how we would have chosen. But
that’s Bunker Hill, standing up behind there, bare as a plate. The
little dugout is on Breed’s Hill, below.”
“Breed’s or Bunker makes no difference now,” said Sergeant Higgs. “Keep
your cartridges dry in the landing. We’re headed in towards shore.”
A few minutes later they were all drawn up in a low-lying field where
Charlestown peninsula extended, pear-shaped, into the sea. Gerry found
himself in the front line, far to the right, with the light infantry of
the Twenty-third and the King’s Own. To the left stood the grenadiers,
and behind him the Fifty-second and the Fifth. He was feeling cheerful
and brave now, and as safe as London Tower. It reassured him even more
when the order came to break ranks and dine on the rations in their
knapsacks before going farther along.
Sprawled in the hot sun, chewing his beef and biscuit, he eyed the
landscape round him: the green, sloping fields, some cocked hay, and
some standing grass; the swamp and brick kilns to the left; Breed’s
Hill above, where the black dots still crawled around the tiny redoubt.
He talked with the other men.
All the young lads, he found, were in their glory that the attack was
to be made straight on, that this detachment of the British Army would
pound forward full force and set the Americans running, or beat them
down into their native clay. But the old wise sergeants shook their
heads and said it was a pity Gage hadn’t ordered them to land at the
Neck. They could have bottled up the Yankees in Charlestown then, and
starved them out, and not had to fire a shot.
No, somebody else said, for to do that would have meant sending a force
between two wings of its enemy, and that was a tactic frowned upon long
before Caesar marched through Gaul. In the end they all agreed that
they were well enough satisfied with the way things had fallen out.
They’d march up that hill in double-quick time, drive the cowardly
Yankees out of their burrow, and be back drinking beer in Boston before
the sun went down.
They were beginning to take out packs of dog-eared playing cards when
the word passed among them that reinforcements were disembarking on the
fields to the left; that Howe had sent for the reinforcements because
the Americans were bringing in more troops, the earthworks had been
extended far to the left, and he didn’t like the looks of things at all.
Gerry began to put his uneaten food away in his knapsack. There wasn’t
as much room in it as there should have been, because at the last
moment he had decided to stuff in the rough shirt and breeches he wore
when he went about the Yankee countryside. He smiled now, as he saw
them there. Didn’t think he’d have a need for them, but you never know.
Just then the bugles sounded and the officers called them to attention.
Like one man the assembled army was on its feet. Gerry could see the
newly landed troops drawn up away to the left, facing the redoubt.
General Howe, dark, florid and heavily built, stood forth and spoke to
his men.
“Gentlemen, I am very happy to have the honor of commanding so fine
a body.... I do not doubt that you will behave like Englishmen and
as becometh good soldiers. If the enemy will not come from their
entrenchments, we must drive them out, otherwise the town of Boston
will be set on fire by them.... I shall not desire one of you to go a
step further than where I go at your head. Remember, gentlemen, we have
no recourse, if we lose Boston, but to go on board our ships ... which
will be very disagreeable to us all.”
General Howe stepped a little aside and stood smiling proudly round
him, his hand on his sword. The troops stood tensely, bayonets in hand,
waiting the order to move ahead. The cannonading from the ships was
so steady that they did not hear it any more, but the guns of Boston
now set up an iron clamor that seemed fit to shake the earth. Now the
artillery rolled toward the redoubt.
Gerry looked up at the serene blue sky, at a cluster of apple trees a
little way ahead. There were trees like that on his father’s farm in
Devon, and he wondered if he’d ever again see them growing there. He
looked at the hill where spouts of dust shot upward as heavy balls hit
the turf of the redoubt. Suppose they did have to board their ships
and sail away? Maybe he wouldn’t sail away, maybe he’d go and find
blue-eyed Kitty. Maybe he would....
The artillery seemed to have slowed and faltered, bogged down in the
miry earth at the swamp edge, crushing the blue flag lilies as it moved
forward again. At last came the order the scarlet host had been waiting
for.
Gerry gripped his bayonet and stepped out as he had been trained to do.
A rippling field of buttercups and daisies lay ahead, and beyond it a
rail fence, but he saw no likely danger there. He glanced toward the
redoubt where General Pigot was to lead the attack. Howe would march on
the rail fence that joined a stone wall running to the waterside. Then
Howe’s regiments and the light infantry would shatter the Yankees’ left
and sweep across it, swinging inland to overwhelm the earthworks from
behind. It seemed like an unbeatable plan.
The light infantry, men from the Welsh Fusileers and the King’s Own
forged steadily ahead--but not easily. The day was growing hotter. What
with ammunition, food, blankets, and firelocks, they were weighted
down a hundred pounds to a man. Gerry felt the sweat burst out on his
face. He wished he had a drink. He wished he could run his finger under
the stiff leather stock that gripped his throat. He wished he could
rip off his beaver hat. Clouds of black smoke with white under-edges
were billowing up to the west of Breed’s Hill. Looked like Charlestown
Village was afire. Well, Admiral Graves had wanted to burn it long ago.
He waded through the thick grass, almost to his knees, then out on a
muddy strip of beach littered with driftwood and small dead creatures
of the sea. Here they halted briefly to re-form.
Grouped now in columns of fours, the Welsh Fusileers in the lead, the
light infantry advanced along the narrow strip of shore. They drew
close to the rough fieldstone wall. That it had been hastily thrown up,
Gerry could see now. Undoubtably there would be Yankees behind it. He
half lifted his bayonet. They drew nearer and nearer. They were ready
to deploy and charge, when the blast came.
The low stone wall seemed to leap forth at them in a searing torrent of
fire. Like corn before the scythe, the men on both sides of him went
down. More from shock than anything else. Gerry fell on his knees, but
he lifted his gun and fired once from there. Where the bullet went, he
never knew. Crouched in the foul-smelling mud, he tried to load again.
Wounded men lay all around him. His own company seemed to be cut to
pieces, but the King’s Own tried to form a charge and went streaming
through. Again the tide of flame leaped forward. The scarlet line,
broken in many places, reeled back. Again the officers rallied what was
left of them, and again the charge came on. The whole world seemed to
be dissolved in blood and fire, the cries of the wounded, the shouts of
the officers, and the steady roar of the guns upon the hill.
He tried to pull himself upright, but just then he felt a terrible
blow against his head. His ears rang. Stars and circles swam before
his eyes, orange, green, and rainbow-hued. He seemed to be no longer a
living thing, only one huge dull pain sinking into darkness.
He did not know how long it was before the darkness streamed past him
and away, and he saw the stone wall abristle with smoking gun barrels.
He lifted his head from the mud and gazed in the other direction.
To his horror he saw the scarlet backs of his comrades fleeing
helter-skelter toward the barges by the shore. He lay all alone, in the
midst of the dying and the dead. One man was calling for a drink of
water, and another man gasped out a prayer. Shattered muskets, ripped
knapsacks, and the discarded wigs of the officers littered the beach
about him.
His head throbbed and seemed to be swelling larger every minute, big as
the sun itself, the sun that still glared down from the pitiless blue
sky. He couldn’t think clear, and he knew he’d have to think clear, if
he ever got out of this alive.
Finally he lifted up his head and saw a steepening of the river bank
just ahead of him that made a sort of bluff he could try to crawl
under. Inch by inch, painfully, he dragged himself among the fallen
men. Most of them lay quiet now and were not troubled by his passage
through. They would never be troubled by anything any more. They had
not beaten the Americans, but they would never board the ships and sail
away.
Once under the safety of the bluff, he lay there and sipped a little of
the brackish water which he scooped up in his hands. There was blood on
his uniform, and blood was trickling down from somewhere over his left
ear, but he did not put his hand up. He did not want to know how badly
he was hurt--not right now.
And yet, his own wound wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the
sight of the British Army running away. Running to the barges, fleeing
back to Boston, beaten almost to destruction by a mob of American
farmers at a stone wall and an earthworks on a hill! What was that old
tune the band played sometimes on parade? _The World Turned Upside
Down!_
What would happen to him, he wondered, when the Yankees found him lying
here? They didn’t have bayonets, most of them, so they couldn’t run him
through, but there were other ways to kill a man.
But maybe they wouldn’t, all of them, kill a wounded man, any more than
he would. He’d gone among them, traveled through their towns, and found
there men no worse than he. And at that he remembered the knapsack and
the clothing in it. He reached down; yes, it still hung at his side.
Painfully, haltingly, he pulled off the ruined uniform, the muddy
scarlet and blood-stained white. Then he lay there naked in the mud a
little while, under the bluff of sun-baked clay, till he had gathered
strength enough to pull on the country clothes, the garb of most of the
men behind the American line.
“Maybe--if they find me--they’ll think I’m one of theirs,” he muttered,
“take me in with their own wounded and bind my head up--and never
know.” He managed a weak smile. The last prank he’d ever play on the
Yankees, he guessed, but it was worth a try.
Somehow he managed to crawl up the bank and out on the bloody grass. He
lifted his eyes toward the redoubt. Could he believe what he saw? It
had redcoats swarming all over it, their bayonets drawn, struggling on
the parapet with the Americans, leaping down on those below.
“So the lads have come back,” he whispered faintly. “We aren’t beaten
after all. I should have known it couldn’t be--not Howe and Pigot! Not
the Fusileers and the King’s Own.”
He tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t because his head was too
big and heavy. His head was as big as the whole world. His head was
drifting away on a tide of darkness that swept by.
_Chapter Fourteen_
THE YOUNG MAY DIE
Kitty did not know what time it was or how long she had been asleep.
She only knew that she was wide awake now, somewhere in the empty black
middle of the night, and she could hear Gran’s voice from the taproom
below.
“You may be an officer, young man,” Gran was saying, “furthermore,
you may have come all the way up here from Connecticut, but I’m not
impressed with that. I’m not one of your soldiery, nor obliged to take
your orders. This is my son-in-law’s house, and the taxes upon it paid.
I mean to stay here till he orders me from it.”
Kitty leaped out of bed and ran to the head of the stairs where she
could hear better.
“It’s only for your own safety, Ma’am,” a harassed young voice was
explaining. “There’s going to be all hell to pay here tomorrow morning.”
“So you’ve been telling me,” went on Gran calmly, “and in that case,
I’d better get some sleep to be ready for it. Good night, young man.”
Kitty heard the slamming of the front door. She crept downstairs.
Gran was methodically taking all the best silverware out of the chest
and wrapping each piece separately in flannel.
“What’s the matter, Gran?” asked Kitty. She drew her flimsy nightrail
around her and stood there shivering.
Gran went on sorting out porringers and teaspoons. “There’s going to be
trouble, child,” she said. “The town’s full of soldiers, and there’s
more soldiers digging some sort of burrow above us on the hill. They
say by daylight we can expect shooting.”
“Are they British soldiers?” asked Kitty. After all, Gerry Malory had
warned her, and she had passed the message on, telling Gran it was
something she had heard in the street. Gran had scoffed at the idea,
refused to be driven away.
“British! No! They be still drinking and gambling in Boston, and like
to stay there till the blast of Gabriel’s horn, if you ask me. These
soldiers are our own lads, and they sent the word about that since
they’ve entrenched themselves on a hill the British wanted, they look
for a battle.”
“If--if there is a battle, what will we do?” asked Kitty.
“We’ll do what is needed,” said Gran shortly. “Right now I want you to
wake Sally Rose. Put on your oldest dresses and good stout shoes. No
flounces and toothpick heels, mind. Pick up whatever valuables you have
and bring them to me.”
Sally Rose, still sleepy-eyed, was enchanted at the prospect of
adventure. She brought a whole little chest full of trinkets when they
returned to the kitchen. Kitty had only her mother’s cameo brooch, and
she pinned that inside her bodice. Gran held out a willow basket full
of the carefully wrapped silver.
“You girls take this down to the graveyard and bury it,” she ordered.
“If the British come pouring in here tomorrow morning, looking for
what they can find, new-turned earth in a graveyard will occasion no
comment.” Across the lid of the basket she laid a wooden shovel.
Carrying the basket between them, the girls picked their way through
the town in the warm, dim starlight. Here and there they passed by
little groups of men who seemed to be patrolling the streets, who
looked at them curiously but uttered no challenge. Lights were burning
across the river in Boston and on the masts of the _Somerset_ lying
at anchor in mid-channel. Cries of “All’s Well!” sounded faintly at
intervals from its decks and from the sentries in the town beyond it.
There were no lights or sentries apparent on Bunker Hill, nor yet on
Breed’s, when they looked that way, but both hillsides seemed to be
alive with moving masses of shadow; a low hum rose above them like the
swarming of many hives of bees. Now and then there was a tiny flash of
light, or a clang as a shovel hit against stone.
Kitty dug a shallow pit under the flowering quince tree where she had
talked with Gerry Malory, and Sally Rose helped to cover it over, once
the silver and her own treasures lay safe inside. Then they hurried
back to the Bay and Beagle. Gran was trotting about the kitchen,
setting many pans of bread to rise, pulling down hams from the rafters,
heating the bake ovens red hot.
“Get to work, girls,” she said as they came in, handing Kitty a carving
knife and Sally Rose a wooden spoon. “Can’t tell how many men we may
have to feed tomorrow.”
When they finished the preparations she considered necessary, they sank
down exhausted on benches drawn to the oak table. Kitty noticed that
the hands of the tall old clock pointed to a quarter past three.
“My soul and body,” said Gran, “I thought I’d learned to do without it,
but a cup of tea would certainly taste good to me right now.”
Sally Rose smiled and her eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “I can
get you tea, Gran,” she said. “Father has some hidden away. He says
he keeps it for times of need among womenfolk. ’Twas bought long ago
before tea-tax time. Put the kettle on, Kitty.”
She went flying into the taproom to the secret cache behind the bar. A
little later they sat down again with steaming cups before them.
But Gran’s face was sober, and she spoke more gently than was her wont
to do. “I hope that whatever happens tomorrow,” she said, holding her
teacup in her hand, not tasting the fragrant liquid, “you girls will
behave in a fitting manner, though it may not be easy. There is bound
to be much danger about in a battle, and many horrible sights to be
seen. When the soldiers came here first and warned us to go away, I
thought I would do as they advised me. And then I remembered an old
great-grandmother of mine. She lived in a lonely garrison and when the
Indians attacked her home, she did not run away.”
“What did she do?” asked Sally Rose, her eyes wide.
“She poured boiling water out of an upstairs window and scalded the
varmints,” snapped Gran, with all her usual severity. “And if she could
do that, it came to me that I could stay here and do whatever it was
needful I should do.”
“Do you think to pour hot water on the British, Gran?” asked Kitty,
trying to suppress a giggle.
“Times change,” said Gran, her eyes fixed on the dwindling darkness
outside, on the tall hollyhock stems becoming visible in the garden,
“and that’s not what will be expected of us, most likely. Only--it
comes to me--that sometime, a good many years from now, all of us, yes,
even you, Sally Rose, will be great-grandmothers, too.”
“With gray hair?” asked Sally Rose plaintively.
“With gray hair--or no hair at all,” continued Gran. “And then, at that
time, we wouldn’t want the young folk of our blood to say we were
afraid and ran away when the time of danger came.”
She looked challengingly at the girls.
“No,” said Kitty soberly. “We wouldn’t want that. But what will we do,
Gran?”
“Can’t tell for certain. But the way I see it, we keep a victualling
house, and when there’s a lull in the fight, if a fight there be, the
men will want food and drink. We’ll be here to provide it for them. All
we have to do is the thing we do every day--”
A low boom like thunder, and yet sharper and more explosive than
thunder, rolled and echoed in the direction of Morton’s Point. A moment
later the windows rattled and the tavern shook.
Gran covered her ears and closed her eyes. “Merciful heavens, it’s
begun! I’ll have to eat my fine words now! Under the table, Kitty,
Sally Rose!”
In a moment they were huddled together on the floor, with the spreading
trestles round them and the stout oak planks above. The blast was
followed by a silence, and in the silence they heard a derisive
shouting from the crest of Breed’s Hill.
“Sounds like the lads up there had suffered no harm from it,” murmured
Gran, her voice a little steadier now. “That was a cannon shot, I
think; most likely from one of their ships. I really doubt they’ll come
ashore. Perhaps it would be safe--”
The cannon boomed again. Now another cannon spoke out, a little to the
left. Then another. There were no silences any more, only the steady
booming, and with every fourth or fifth boom, the tavern shook. One
after another the windowpanes began to shatter. Once they heard a great
crash in the street.
They did not speak to each other, for no human voice could penetrate
the din. Kitty watched a streak of sunlight slowly widen and move
across the floor. It told her that time was passing, and that this was
a clear, bright day.
After awhile a lull did come, and the cannonading died out into
silence. The silence was broken by a heavy knocking on the street door.
Gran’s eyes snapped and her face hardened. “’Pon my soul, no stranger
is going to catch me hiding under a table, cannon or no cannon--nor my
granddaughters, either. Kitty, go and see what’s wanted.”
She got to her feet and smoothed her apron. Sally Rose followed her and
stood still, her eyes wide with fright, her lips trembling. Kitty went
to open the door.
A gnarled old man stood there, holding a wooden bucket in each hand.
He pointed to the tavern sign and then opened his mouth in a toothless
grin.
“Lass,” he inquired, “are ye doing business today?”
“Yes,” said Kitty steadily. “I guess we are.”