Authors: Howard Fast
“Today is
tomorrow,” someone interrupted.
“I don’t
mean that. Today is the seventeenth. Ward said on the eighteenth. I know today
is tomorrow. It’s three o’clock in the morning. Suppose they attack today.
Suppose they attack at dawn, two hours from now.”
“God help
us.”
Artemus
Ward rose. “We only know what we know,” he said, his face tight with pain. “We
have one man with the British, but the Almighty Jehovah has given us his voice
and his truth.”
“If you believe him.”
“He risked
his life to come to us,” Ward said. “You must trust me. I have spoken with him,
and I believe him.”
“Why can’t
we know his name?” Knowlton demanded.
“Because I
gave him my sacred trust that no one but
myself
would
know his name. He is an officer in the king’s army, and he came to me because
he believes in our cause. He says that they will attack on the eighteenth of
June. Gage wants to hold off, but Clinton and Burgoyne have convinced Howe that
an attack will succeed. Mostly, it’s Burgoyne. To Burgoyne, we are a joke, a
witless crowd of peasants. They have only three thousand men, but Burgoyne said
they will sweep us away like so much dirt. At the first sight of their
bayonets, we will break and run.”
“I heard
Gage wanted out of the whole thing,” Prescott said.
“Our
friend says that Gage is more or less in disgrace. It’s Burgoyne and Clinton,
and both of them in a rage to destroy us, and they use Sir William Howe as they
will.”
“General
Ward,” Putnam said stiffly, “I put my trust in no man who serves the king. When
the sun rises today—today, mind you—they will see that damned redoubt. It
stands up on Breed’s Hill like some stinking castle. They will see men digging,
and unless they are brainless, they will attack.”
“General Putnam,” Warren
said, “
if
they attack today, we will fight them today.
If they attack tomorrow, we will fight them tomorrow. And now there is still
work to be done, and we have argued enough. We will have a prayer, and then we
will go to our commands.” He put his hands together and bent his head. “Great
Lord of Hosts, we place our lives and our cause in thy trust. Grant us to be of
stout heart and good will.”
Yet they
talked on and argued and argued, and while they talked, the first light of dawn
touched Breed’s Hill. His Majesty’s warship
Lively
,
a brig of twenty guns, rested at anchor in Boston Harbor off the meadowland
that sloped up to Breed’s Hill.
On board the bell sounded the
third watch.
Midshipman Earnest Copeley crawled out of his hammock and,
rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, climbed up to the main deck and urinated
into Boston Harbor. It had been beastly hot below, and it was none too cool on
deck. Knowing that he would be officer of the deck until the next watch,
Copeley took the liberty of appearing in shirt and trousers, barefoot. Midshipman
Copeley was fourteen years old, and this was his first assignment aboard ship.
He was totally intrigued with Boston and the rebellion, and with the
possibility that he might witness a great battle. Until now, his life in Boston
Harbor had been dull indeed, with only two short shore leaves and both of them
under the supervision of Lieutenant Kent. Now, as he came on deck, he was
called over by Henderson, the midshipman he was to relieve.
“Barefoot
again,” Henderson said, being two years Copeley’s senior and entitled to
rebuke.
“Too bloody hot for shoes.”
“Tell that
to Lieutenant Kent. All right, have a look up there on the hill,” he said,
pointing to the top of Breed’s Hill.
“Oh?”
Midshipman Copeley stared and squinted. “It’s a damned fortress.”
“Precisely.
And was it there yesterday?”
“No, it
was not.”
“Exactly.
Now get below
and put your bloody shoes on and wake the Lieutenant Kent.”
Midshipman
Copeley scampered below and a few minutes later appeared again, followed by
Lieutenant Kent and Captain Dexter, the latter with a spyglass, which he
trained on Breed’s Hill. “Well, I will be everlastingly damned, it’s a bloody
redoubt! Here,
have a look
,” he said, handing the
spyglass to Lieutenant Kent.
“So it
is,” Kent agreed, “and rebels all over the place, digging away like maggots in
an offal pit.”
“What will
you do, sir?” Copeley asked, fairly hopping with excitement.
“We’ll
soon put an end to that,” Dexter decided. “Rouse the drummer and beat to
quarters, Copeley. Clear for action, Mr. Kent, and you, Henderson, get up
topside and report.”
Copeley dashed off, fairly
tumbling down below, while Henderson scrambled up the rigging to the lookout
station. Minutes later, the drummer’s beat to quarters sounded across the bay,
while Lieutenant Kent supervised the launching of the ship’s longboat so that
the
Lively
could be swung around so that
its guns might bear on Breed’s Hill. Captain Dexter and his chief of gunnery
checked the elevation of the guns, and within fifteen minutes of Midshipman
Copeley’s arrival on deck, the ship was swinging into proper target position.
Just before 5:00 a.m., on the morning of the seventeenth of June,
Lively
launched its first broadside at the redoubt of Breed’s Hill.
Sir William Howe slept in
his singlet but without covers, for his room was hot. Next to him, Mrs. Loring
lay naked, in defiance of the attitude that attributed the custom to whores. As
she had explained to Sir William, since all the ladies, both here and in
London, would call her a whore, she might just as well sleep in comfort. Her
forthrightness endeared her to Sir William, and when he was awakened on the
morning of the seventeenth, thinking that he had dreamed of gunfire, he looked
with warm pleasure at the sight of Elizabeth Loring’s abundant pink buttocks.
For a bit less than a minute, he allowed this pleasant contemplation to
continue, feeling his own groin come alive, and then a second salvo of guns
made him realize that this was no dream. He tumbled out of bed, threw open the
door of his bedroom, and roared, “Hasgood! Hasgood, get the hell up here!”
Awake, her
knees drawn up, her arms across her breasts, Mrs. Loring cried out in alarm.
“What is it, sir? What is happening?”
“Cover
yourself
,” he said as his orderly, Hasgood, knocked at the
door. She drew the sheet over herself, and Howe threw open the door for
Hasgood.
“What the
devil is that, Hasgood?”
“Cannon fire, Sir William.”
“I know that, you idiot! What cannon?”
“If I may open the shutters, sir?”
“Open
them.”
Sir
William followed Hasgood to the window that looked out over the bay.
“The
Lively
, sir,” Hasgood said. “I believe she’s firing
broadsides.”
“At what?
Move aside.”
“At Breed’s Hill, sir, as near as I can make out.”
“Yes—yes—there
it goes again,” he said as a third broadside thundered out. “What’s that up on
the hill?”
“Some sort
of fortress, sir, as near as I can make it.”
“It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“No, your lordship.
No, it was not, as nearly as I can remember.”
“Well,
it’s there now. Where’s my glass?” He turned to Mrs. Loring. “Betsy, where did
I put my glass?”
The night
before, he had been showing her the wonders of the moon through his spyglass.
“There on the chest.
What is happening, Sir William?”
He took
the spyglass and strode to the window. “Be damned,” he exclaimed. “They’re as
thick as fleas up there on the hill. Bad aim, bad aim. Who commands
Lively
,
Hasgood?”
“Captain
Dexter, sir.”
“Yes, of
course.
Dark chap with a stupid look.
The idiot quoted
Dryden to me. I can’t tolerate people who quote poetry. Can you, my dear?”
turning to Mrs. Loring.
“Of course not.
Bores, Sir William.
Bores.”
“Hasgood,
turn out Lieutenant Jefferies and tell him I want him to round up Clinton,
Burgoyne, and Gage. I want them all here not later than”—he paused to look at a
tall cabinet clock in one corner of the bedroom—“no later than six o’clock.
And Admiral Graves.
He’s aboard ship, so tell Jefferies to
send a lolly boat for him. And then you get back here. They’ll want breakfast,
tea and sausage and hot bread—”
“Oh, leave
the breakfast to me, sir,” Mrs. Loring put in. “I’ll wake the kitchen and take
care of it.”
Another
volley of gunfire thundered out across the bay.
“Get to
it, Hasgood,” Sir William said. Hasgood left the room, and Howe peered through
his spyglass. “He’ll piss off all his gunpowder for nothing.”
“What a
gift for words, dear sir. Piss off his gunpowder.”
He turned
to face her. She had cast off the sheet. “What does it mean?
All
this shooting?”
“They’re
becoming insufferable. We have to dress.”
“Now?
This
moment?
You wake me at this ungodly hour and tell me to dress?”
“There’s work afoot, my dear one.”
“And a
little play,” she said, smiling. “What do they say—all work and no play
makes
Jack a dull clod. Come kiss me.”
He
threw up his hands in despair and fell into the bed.
Betsy
Palmer stopped Feversham as the officers were leaving. “About Dr. Warren, he’s
not well, is he?”
“I’m
afraid not.”
“I have a room upstairs where he could rest.”
“I don’t think he means to rest,” Feversham said.
“Would you
talk to him, please?
As a favor to me?”
Warren was
in the dooryard, speaking to Colonel Prescott. Without meaning to eavesdrop,
Feversham realized that they were talking about the redoubt. In the pale light
of dawn, there was not even a touch of breeze to disturb the early heat, and
Warren mopped his face constantly. “It was my own notion from the beginning,
and God help me if I have forced a death trap upon us.”
The other
officers were untying their horses at the hitching rail. A few had mounted and
were riding off. Others were clustered in the road, still talking.
“Who’s to
say it’s a death trap?” Prescott shook his head in annoyance.
“Knowlton?
Does he have a crystal ball? Stop whipping
yourself, Doctor. It may turn out that the redoubt is our salvation.”
I won’t
urge him to bed, Feversham thought, convinced that Warren would die before he
took to his bed. He saw Artemus Ward approaching and moved to step away.
“No, stay
here, Feversham. You’re a doctor, and that may give you the best chance of
surviving what’s coming. I’ve been thinking about our informant. If I should be
killed, someone must know his name.”
“Feversham’s
British,” Prescott said shortly.
“Colonel,
he’s my friend and colleague. If we lose on the hills, he’ll hang as high as
any of us.”
“I’ll
leave you,” Feversham said.
“No!”
“I’m
sorry,” Prescott muttered. “We’re all too tense and tired.” He nodded at
Artemus Ward. “Go ahead, General.”
“Johnny
Lovell,” Ward said.
“No!”
Warren exclaimed.
“Lovell’s son?”
“His
father’s the worst swine in the whole lousy Tory crew,” Prescott exclaimed.
“Lovell’s son!
Well, I’ll be damned!”
“He’s
given me every move, every step, they planned. It comes from his father, who’s
trying to organize a Tory brigade. He put his life in my hands, and now I put
it in yours. I have business now, gentlemen. God willing, I’ll see you later.”
With that, he turned and shambled away to where his horse was tethered.
“Johnny
Lovell,” Warren murmured. “I tried to speak to his father once. I tried reason,
but the man is filled with bile.”
“I would
guess,” Feversham said slowly, “that there are more men in London who pray for
our cause than over there in Boston, where they lick the ass of the redcoats
and open their homes to them and wait to see us all hanged.”
The three men mounted their
horses. The other officers had left. They rode slowly toward the causeway that
led to the Charlestown peninsula. In the east, the sky turned from gray to
pearl, and as they rode toward Charlestown, they heard the first salvo of guns
from the warship
Lively
.
“A proper breakfast,” Sir
William Howe said, “after a proper roll in the hay, equips a man for whatever
the day might bring.”