Chapter NineNO CLOUDS ON BUNKER HILL
“Neverexpected to see you keeping a public house, Ma’am Greenleaf—leastwise, not one with a strong drink license.”
Old Timothy Coffin’s voice had disapproval in it, Kitty thought, as she turned from the small oak bar where she was polishing glasses. The warm June sunshine struck through the diamond-shaped panes and lay in pools of light with rainbow edges on the sanded floor, on the worn tables and benches. A gentle breeze stirred the tall hollyhock stems outside the window. Sally Rose was weeding the hollyhocks—or supposed to be. Now that Gran had come to take charge, there was a task for everyone.
“You’re a-going to see a deal of things you never expected to see,” said Gran tartly. She was seated by the hearth shelling peas, while Timothy swept the tiles with a birch broom.
“Happen you’re right, Ma’am,” agreed the old man. “Never expected to see the King’s men shooting at us—and we going to meeting, praying for the King, all the while.”
“Yes, it’s a strange state of affairs, Timothy,” answered Gran. Her voice had turned suddenly thoughtful, and herfingers played idly with the empty pods as she stared through the open door at the empty house across the way.
Kitty looked at the empty house, too. Most of the houses in Charlestown were empty now, and scarcely any women left in the town at all. The men came back sometimes to cut hay and weed their gardens, but they had sent their families away to the inland towns, and swore they would leave them there till this fuss with the British soldiers was ended, one way or another.
This was bad for business, of course. Here it was, nearly ten o’clock of a fine hot Tuesday morning, sixth of June by the almanac, and she hadn’t served a single customer.
Everything seemed to be set up in terms of this “fuss,” nowadays. For instance, she and Gran and Sally Rose living here in Charlestown and running the Bay and Beagle, while Uncle Job was away with the Massachusetts troops somewhere. Not knowing they were here, thinking Sally Rose was safe in Newburyport, he hadn’t come home. Then when Gran came to join them, hopping mad at the trick Sally Rose had played, she brought Dick Moody and Timothy along to do the men’s work about the place. They hadn’t stayed in camp long, for Dick was young and couldn’t shoot well enough, and Timothy was old, and his bones creaked. But all they wanted to talk about was the camp and the goings-on there. But they didn’t call it a “fuss” like Gran did. They called it a war. And that had a much more important and terrible sound.
War was terrible, Kitty knew, so terrible that it couldn’t be going to happen right here in front of her eyes, to people she knew, maybe to herself—not really.
Dick came in from the backyard with an armful of wood and stacked it carefully beside the hearth. Then he stood silent and respectful, looking at Granny.
Dick had grown taller, Kitty thought, and next time he went to camp, as he threatened to do every day or so, it wasn’t likely they’d send him home for being too young. Sometimes he and Timothy went to the cow pasture at the foot of Bunker Hill and practiced a little with Timothy’s gun—not much, though, because they didn’t want to waste powder and ball. Suddenly she realized Dick was speaking. He looked at her, but he addressed himself to Granny.
“I thank you for bringing me down here, near where I wanted to be. But I’m quitting your service now, Ma’am Greenleaf.”
“Oh, go get yourself a slice of bread and molasses, and you’ll think better of it,” said Granny. “You can put maple sugar on it, too,” she added.
Dick’s face grew red, and his young voice had an unfamiliar harshness in it. “You’ve fed me well enough, Ma’am. It’s not on account of the food and wages I’m leaving.”
“What is it then, and what do you think to do?” asked Gran, with an air of rapidly exhausting patience.
“Up the Mystic a ways—in one o’ the swamps there—some men from Gloucester are building fire boats. I been in the ship-building trade. They said I could help them.”
“Fire boats!” Granny tried to laugh, but there was no merriment in the noise she made. It sounded like a cackle. “And what do you think to do with fire boats, pray?”
“Why, what do most folk do with fire? Burn something. Maybe one o’ the British schooners, or men-o’-war, even. Maybe burn Boston, for all I know. Whatever our orders say.”
“You can’t burn Boston,” retorted Granny severely. “Boston don’t belong to the British soldiery. Houses and shops and all belongs to Americans, as good as you be. True, they’ve most of them fled from it now, but they’ll be back some day—when this fuss is over, and God send that happen right soon.Now whatever is that drum a-beating for?” She held up her head and listened. “I’ve heard fife and drum music enough to last me a long time.”
“You’ll hear more of it before you hear less, Ma’am,” muttered Timothy.
Dick hurried to the door and stared up the road that led to the Neck, from which the sound came. Kitty went to stand beside him.
“Are you really going back to be with the Army, Dick?” she asked, in one of the brief pauses between the slow beats of the drum.
Dick cleared his throat. “Seems like I have to,” he murmured. “Would it matter to you, Kit, if I—” His voice broke off, and his hand just brushed her shoulder.
“Oh Kitty! Kitty!” cried Sally Rose as she came flying down the street, her bright hair loose on her shoulders and her cheeks flushed with excitement. “They’re bringing the prisoners! There’s going to be an exchange! Perhaps Gerry will be in it!”
She dropped down on the broad doorstone and sat there, trying to get back her breath.
“How do you know?” asked Dick quickly. He was not looking at Sally Rose, but up the winding street that led to Charlestown Neck and the towns beyond it on the mainland.
Kitty looked, too. Down the narrow way between the gabled houses came a slowly moving procession. First the drummer stepped out, a scrawny lad not much taller than Dick. He walked all alone, beating a brass-bound drum, and behind him followed a black horse drawing a phaeton with two men in it. After the phaeton rode two British officers on horseback. She could see nothing more at the moment because of a crook in the street. A little crowd was beginning to gather in the direction of Market Square. Sally Rose finally got back her breath and answered Dick’s question.
“When I heard the drum I ran down to Mr. Bassett’s wine shop. He’s back in town, you know, to cut his hay on the Point Road, and I asked him what was happening. He said he heard—”
The drummer had come even with the Bay and Beagle now, and his steady beating drowned out the girl’s excited voice. Sally Rose stopped talking and got to her feet. She and Dick and Kitty stood together in the tavern doorway and watched the slow procession advance and pass close by them.
The two men who rode in the phaeton behind the drummer were in odd contrast to each other, and yet there was the same air of dignity and purpose enveloping both of them. One was old—not so old as Timothy, but not young any more. He was broad-shouldered and sturdy and had a round, good-natured face and a shock of tousled gray hair. He wore a blue uniform. His companion was younger, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a ruddy face and a fresh, scrubbed look about him. He was not a soldier, apparently, for his coat was fawn-colored with a white-fringed waistcoat underneath.
“That’s Old Put,” said Timothy proudly, for he and Gran had come to stand just behind them. “See! In the blue coat there! General Putnam. His wife must ha’ sent him his uniform.”
“Why would she have to do that?” asked Gran tartly. “Wouldn’t go off to war without it, would he?”
Timothy chuckled. “That’s just what he done! When he heard about Concord Fight, he was building a stone wall on his farm away down in Connecticut. But he come just as he was, in leather breeches and apron. Got here at next day’s sunrise, they say.”
“I guess there was others got here just as quick as he did,” answered Gran. “Yourself for one.” She peered over Kitty’s shoulder. “Who be that by his side?”
“That’s Dr. Warren. Best damn man, I say, that ever comeout o’ Boston. Don’t know how General Ward would run Cambridge Camp without him. Figures out how to get supplies, and men, and money, and all. He’s got book learning and can talk to anybody. More’n that, he’s a good doctor.”
“Where are the prisoners, I wonder?” asked Sally Rose.
Kitty nudged her, and she subsided.
After the phaeton came two British officers, splendid in white and scarlet, and riding sleek horses; then another officer in a chaise; then a handful of officers on foot. They were escorted by a blue-uniformed guard that Timothy said looked to him like Connecticut men. By now the drummer had turned into Ferry Street, heading for the wharves at the waterside. Here and there stood a little cluster of men, here and there a woman’s head appeared at a gable window, but the spectators were few. At the very end of the procession a farm cart rattled along, drawn by two plow horses. A group of men sprawled on the floor of it, men in tattered British uniforms, pale and unshaven, unable to walk, apparently, because of wounds or illness. They looked so forlorn and miserable that Kitty felt tears start to her eyes.
“Oh,” she whispered to Sally Rose, “I’m sorry for the poor lads. I don’t care if they are British.”
“If they hadn’t come out shooting at us, they wouldn’t be in this pickle now,” growled Timothy. “Wonder where is our boys we’re supposed to get back in the exchange.”
“Mr. Bassett says they’re aboard theLively,” said Sally Rose. “Oh—oh—Kitty—” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
For a moment Kitty did not see anything to exclaim about. The cart full of prisoners trundled slowly by. Close beside it walked a young man in a rough woolen shirt and homespun breeches. He carried a knapsack, and a large wooden bottle was slung from his shoulder by a leather strap. Just then the procession halted a moment. Up ahead, the drummer turneddown Ferry Street on his way to the docks to meet the boats from theLively. The phaeton bent its wheels sharply to round the corner. In the pause the young man unstoppered the wooden bottle and held it over the side of the cart so one of the prisoners could drink. The rear guard, another group of blue-coated Connecticut men, halted too. They were apparently the last of the procession.
Kitty glanced again at her cousin. Sally Rose stood up proud and smiling. The long lashes about her hazel eyes flickered provocatively. Sally Rose was watching the young man with the bottle. For that reason, and that reason alone, Kitty looked closer at him herself.
He turned just then and smiled at them. He had dark hair, she saw, and deep-set blue eyes. My, he was certainly handsome! Living all her life in Newburyport, she hadn’t realized how many handsome men there were in the world—drifting down the Merrimack on a log raft, walking the road that ran past Bunker Hill. They were everywhere, now that she had suddenly grown up enough to look at them. Sally Rose had always known. Sally Rose was born grown up.
She cast a sudden look at Dick, and knew instinctively that she would never kiss him good night again, or if she did, it would be with a difference. Their kissing days were over. Dick was an old friend now, and only that. Never again would he stir in her that strange tremulous feeling that went with a new moon and apple blossoms and the first warm nights of spring. She knew, but she did not know how it was that she knew.
The young man in the leather breeches was still smiling. He lifted his hand, oh so slightly, and motioned toward the docks. Then the cart wheels began to turn again, and the procession plodded on. The little group around the door of the Bay and Beagle watched until the last straggler was out of sight.
“Well, that’s over,” said Gran briskly, “It’s well past noon, and I expect we’ll have custom. If you’re leaving us, Master Dick, you might as well be off, and good luck to you—the same as I’d wish to the son of any neighbor. Timothy, you better bring up another keg of brandy from the cellar. You can tend the taps for awhile, Kitty, and Sally Rose—why, where is Sally Rose?”
They called and called and searched the bedrooms and the attic and the back garden, but the girl was nowhere to be found. Dick left, after a bit, taking his spare shirt with him, a small ham, and a hunting knife proffered by Timothy. The old man went on his errand to the cellar, and Kitty returned to polishing glasses. A few men drifted in to drink beer and cider and talk about the exchange of prisoners. Gran muttered a few dark words about the flightiness of the younger generation and went into the kitchen to put the bread to rise and make pease porridge for supper. Bread and beer and pease porridge folk had to have, thought Kitty, no matter if wars came about, and handsome young men went out to be killed in them, and girls grew up all too late.
Trade got brisker during the long hot afternoon, and Kitty was kept busy filling mugs and glasses. She learned from the talk of the men who happened in that the British prisoners had been sent out by boat to the great, threatening man-o’-war that swung at anchor in the channel, halfway to Boston. The officers in charge of the business had all come into town to take some refreshment and expected shortly to return to the dock to receive the American lads whose delivery would complete the exchange. Everything had been conducted in an orderly and courteous fashion.
Gradually the excitement died down. Gran put on her second best straw bonnet and went out to look for Sally Rose. Timothy had trouble getting the brandy keg up the cellarstairs. Bees droned loudly in the hollyhocks, and gulls cried from the harbor. Slowly the sun moved over to the westward side of the roofs and gables. It was a summer afternoon like any other summer afternoon.
And then, all of a sudden, Sally Rose was back. She slipped in quietly, like a shadow. On her face was that cat-stealing-cream look that fitted her so well. She went straight to the kitchen.
Kitty hastily served a waiting customer, that same Mr. Bassett who had come back to Charlestown to cut his hay, and then she followed her cousin. Sally Rose stood by the water bucket, the dipper lifted to her mouth. She drank thirstily.
“My, that tastes good,” she said, licking her wet red lips. “It was hot down by the dockside. Not a sea breeze anywhere.”
“You’ve been to the docks?” asked Kitty curiously.
“Of course. Didn’t you see Gerry wave to me to follow him?”
“Gerry?”
“Oh, of course, Kit!” Sally Rose’s voice had a ring of impatience in it. “I tried to make signs to you. I thought by the look of your face you understood me. You were surely staring at him.”
“Staring at whom?”
“Oh Kitty! You saw him! Gerry was the lad in the homespun breeches who marched beside the prisoners’ cart. He was the only one able to walk, and so he had to wait on them.”
“But—but that lad—he looked like an American. His clothes—I thought—”
“Of course! Gerry was pretending to be an American when we captured him. That’s why he was looking so shabby. You should see him in his captain’s uniform! He’s been kept in a tent in Cambridge—a tent made of old sailcloth that the rain came through, and guards all around him. But he was exchangedthis afternoon. I went down to the dock and talked to him while the boats were putting off. He’s gone safe to his own regiment in Boston now. But he says he’ll come back to see me—another day.”
“That’s nice,” said Kitty. “That’s very nice indeed.”
She felt cross suddenly. It must be the heat, or because she had been working so hard, or because she had forgotten to eat any dinner. It might be the outrageous behavior of Sally Rose. There are many ways to explain such a thing.
“And you know he said ...” Sally Rose rattled on.
Suddenly there was a hoarse cry from the cellar stairs—a burst of strong language, then a deep groan of pain. The girls looked at each other.
“Oh, it’s Timothy!” gasped Kit. “He was trying to bring up a brandy keg. He must have fallen.”
The groans continued. She ran to the head of the cellar stairs and looked down. Sure enough, the old man lay on the dank earth that served for a flooring, the heavy keg on top of his right foot, his left leg bent beneath him.
“We’re coming, Timothy,” she called. “We’ll help you.”
She gazed desperately around the taproom, but it was empty. The last customer had gone. Again she and Sally Rose stood looking at each other.
“He’ll need a doctor,” murmured Kitty. “He’s sure to need a doctor. Whether there’s one left in town or not, I don’t know.”
Suddenly her cousin’s face lighted. “Of course there’s one in town,” she cried. “Timothy himself pointed one out. That kind-looking man who rode in the phaeton with Old Put. Dr. Warren of Boston.”
“Oh—of course I remember. But he’ll be dining with the British officers. He’s an important official, I think, like a minister or a judge. He was wearing a fine coat, Sally Rose.He won’t want to leave his wine and go down in a dirty cellar to tend a poor old man.”
“You can’t tell,” said Sally Rose. “You can’t tell at all. He looked kind. I’m going to try to find him.” She ran through the doorway.
Kitty stepped gingerly down the cellar stairs to see if she could help the old man. He could only moan and grunt and utter inarticulate sounds when she tried to talk to him, but she managed to roll the heavy cask off his foot and drag him into a sitting position against the roots of the massive chimney. It seemed hours before she heard footsteps on the floor overhead, but later she realized it could not have been very long.
A moment later the fair-haired doctor in his neat coat and breeches stepped nimbly down the stairway. Four of the blue-coated Connecticut lads swarmed after.
Dr. Warren looked around him in the dim light, at the cobwebbed depths of the cellar: at the empty vegetable bins waiting for this year’s harvest, the shelves of preserves and jellies in stone crocks, the casks that held the stock in trade of the tavern above. He smiled briefly at Kitty, then he went down on his knees on the earth floor.
“A bad mishap, Timothy,” he said, bending over the old man. There was a note of cheery courage in his voice. Kitty felt it, and she knew that Timothy felt it too. The old man spoke weakly.
“Aye, sir. All the brandy in the house be not in that blasted keg there. Have the lass to fetch me a swig, if you will, sir.”
Kitty did not need to be told again. She ran upstairs to fetch a glass of brandy. When she came back, the doctor had cut Timothy’s boot away and bared the flesh beneath it. He shook his head, and there was a sober look on his face.
“’Tis somewhat crushed I fear. Drink up your brandy, sir, and I will patch it as best I can. Then the lads will carryyou upstairs—where there should be a bed waiting.” He looked questioningly at Kitty.
“There will be,” she assured him tremulously. “I spoke to my cousin, Sally Rose. She’s getting it ready.”
She held the brandy glass to Timothy’s mouth, and the old man sipped feebly. Sometimes he flinched, as the doctor worked at the broken foot, reshaping it, applying splints and bandages. He did not utter a word, but his breath came in painful gasps, and he was shivering. The young soldiers stood looking on.
Dr. Warren talked as he worked, hoping, perhaps, to distract the old man’s attention.
“Well, sir,” he said, “to tell you the truth, sir, I was glad enough when the young lady came to fetch me here. I was in the act of quarreling with Old Put as we partook of a roast goose and glasses of claret. Somehow, in spite of the present triumph of more cautious gentlemen, I fear the General may yet have his way.”
Timothy grinned faintly. “I be sorry for ye,” he whispered, “if ye quarreled with Old Put.”
“Yes, and I felt I was getting the worst of it, though it seems that at the moment all the greatest powers in our Great American Army be on my side. Steady, Timothy! This will take but a minute. There! As I was saying, the whole camp has been in an uproar the past month, as to whether or not we should fortify Bunker Hill and make a stand against the British there. Some say we must fight them, and it better be soon rather than late. Old Put and Prescott go with that way of thinking.”
“Fortify Bunker Hill?” whispered Timothy manfully through his pain. “Why, that be close by!”
“Very close,” said the doctor. “General Ward and I have talked much about it. I have been housed at his Cambridge headquarters of late, where I can easily visit the ProvincialCongress in Watertown. He and I think our men are not yet ready to make a stand. We are against such an incautious display of valor. Later, perhaps, but not until we have a better equipped and conditioned army.”
“I wisht,” muttered Timothy, “I had displayed less incautious valor with that brandy keg. In God’s mercy, I do, sir.”
Dr. Warren tightened the last bandage and got to his feet.
“Take him up carefully, lads,” he said, “and carry him above stairs. The little golden-head will show you where.”
Kitty thought fleetingly that even the great doctor had been enough like common men so that he had an eye for the beauty of Sally Rose. She had hardly noticed what he said about a battle on Bunker Hill.
But she thought about it later when she was standing at the tavern door in the hot dusk, looking past the roofs of Charlestown at the green countryside rising behind it. Gran was at home now, alternately tending Timothy and scolding Sally Rose. The doctor and the soldiers had long since gone, and the exchange of prisoners was probably complete.
Bunker Hill rose smooth and round and green. Breed’s Hill, not so tall, was nearer the point, and the third hill, away to the southeast, she could not see. The hills were criss-crossed with rail fences and stone walls, divided into orchards, gardens, and pasture land. Daisies and buttercups bloomed all white and gold in the hayfields. The locust trees rose tall, and the elm trees taller. Hard green fruit clung to the apple boughs, and tassels were coming on the stalks of Indian corn. Gulls cried from the harbor, and a bat swooped down from the eaves above her head, and darted off, winging its way from side to side of the crooked street.
Away to the eastward a low-lying cloud bank merged with the dim sea. There were clouds in the west, too, and thickening round the hills and steeples of Boston. But over BunkerHill the sky was clear, lighted with one pale star. She took it to be a good omen—that there would be no battle there.
It seemed to Kitty the most peaceful landscape she had ever seen in her life. And yet, the talk was, “Fortify Bunker Hill! Make a stand against the British there!” She was glad Dr. Warren did not favor it, and she hoped he would have his way. She thought maybe she would have liked the young man by the prisoners’ cart, if she had ever come to know him. But then, she had never dreamed that he was not an American. And he had turned out to be her cousin’s British Gerry. He probably wouldn’t have looked so handsome to her if he had been wearing his red coat.