Chapter ThreeTWO TO BEGIN
“I toldyou they’d fight,” said the young man grimly, biting the end of a cartridge and letting a thin stream of black powder dribble into the pan of his flintlock. He knelt at the tail gate of the farm wagon that rattled and swayed from side to side as Sergeant Higgs of the Twenty-third drove it pell-mell down the Charlestown Road.
His hat was gone and his red coat in tatters. His white breeches were stained with gunpowder and the blood of the wounded men who lay on the floor of the wagon; stained, too, with the gray earth of this unfamiliar country, so unlike the ruddy loam of his native Devonshire.
“I told you they’d fight,” he repeated. “I been amongst ’em, and I know.”
Nobody answered him, but he heard the roar of musket fire back in the hills, the roar of flames from a burning house in a grove of crooked trees a few yards away. He thought impatiently that it had never taken him so long to load before.
“Shut your pan. Charge with your cartridge. Draw your hammer,” he muttered, as his fingers moved swiftly alongthe reeking barrel. No old hand at this business of soldiering, he felt reassured to find the phrases of the British Arms Manual fall so readily from his tongue.
The cart rocked and rumbled down a narrow track at the edge of the salt marshes. Moors, clay pits, and scrubby oak trees stretched to the foot of the hillside on his left. To his right, in the middle of the river, he could see the lights on board the man-o’-warSomerset, and beyond them, the low roofs and steeples of Boston. Would he ever present arms on Boston Common again, or offer his own arms in another sort of way to the pretty girls who went walking there? He began to doubt it now.
“Run down your cartridge. Withdraw your rammer.” He was ready at last. He lifted the gun and pointed it horizontally, pointed it, pulled the ten-pound trigger, and at the same instant stiffened his body against the powerful recoil.
Then he heard a triumphant roar as the gun went off, sending its charge of powder and ball in the direction of the pursuing Yankees. Hooray! Sometimes it merely sparked and fizzled in the pan. God send he had hit somebody!
“The Yankees don’t fire like that, lad,” he heard a voice mutter.
Turning his head in surprise, he looked down at a battered veteran who crouched a few feet away, dabbing at a shoulder wound.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. There wasn’t enough of the man’s uniform left to tell whether he was an officer or not. Best be safe and address him so. His voice had a ring of authority, for all it came so weakly from his throat.
“I know.” The older man smiled through bluish lips. “You fire as you were taught, and so do I. Did you ever engage with the Rebels before?”
“Not exactly, sir,” said Gerry Malory of the Twenty-third.“I’ve gone amongst them somewhat—‘incognito,’ one might say.”
“Ah! Detailed for spy duty, perhaps?”
Gerry felt his face flush. I talk too much, he thought.
The dusk was drawing in thickly now, with a little fog winding up from the river. Flashes of light burst out on the road behind him, like fireflies in a hawthorn thicket, all the way back towards Cambridge where the relief regiments under Lord Percy were trying to cover the rout of the troops that had charged so proudly that morning on Lexington Green.
He heard a whoosh in the dull air behind them. “Duck, lads,” he cried, and flung himself down on the floor of the cart. The whoosh turned to a shrill whistle and then to a scream as it passed overhead. Then came a thud and a splash as the heavy ball fell harmlessly on the sludgy ground.
Gerry lifted his head. “Drive like the devil, Sergeant,” he shouted. “Once we get over Charlestown Neck, we’re as safe as the Tower of London. They’ll never follow us under the guns of our own ships.”
“Causeway’s just ahead!” shouted back Sergeant Higgs, whipping the horses.
Gerry stood up and looked around him. They were well down on the narrow neck of wasteland now, between the wide, sea-flowing mouths of the Charles and the Mystic. He could smell the salt air and feel the cool wind on his hot face. Groups of weary red-coated men straggled into the marsh grass to let them drive through. How many had preceded him into safety, how many were left in the running fight behind, he couldn’t tell. But he saw campfires on the smooth green hills above Charlestown village, and he thought longingly of the farms and orchards there, a little more longingly of the Bay and Beagle Tavern and a girl called Sally Rose.
“Not detailed for spy duty?” asked the veteran persistently.
Gerry looked down at him, and he was enough of a soldier to realize that the wounded man wanted to engage in conversation in order to forget his pain. He seated himself on the floor of the wagon and answered evasively.
“No, but I go about sometimes. I like to know what kind of men the Rebels are, and what their country is like. Maybe walk out with a girl and play a prank or two. I be West Country-bred, and not too fond o’ towns and barracks life.” Then he thought of a way to shift the attention to another matter. “But what were you saying about the way I shoot?”
The man grinned. A bit of color had come back into his face now, and the dark stain was no longer spreading on the shoulder of his coat.
“Why, you load and prime your piece and blast away, hoping the shot will tell. The Yankees sight and aim. I saw the man who hit me. Stood up behind a stone wall, looked me over, head to toe, and marked me down. We fire line to line, and they fire man to man. We shoot in the direction of the enemy. They pick a target. That’s why they’ve got us running away.”
You mean they shoot like poachers, thought Gerry. Like poachers after pheasants in the squire’s bit o’ woodland. But he did not say it out loud. Every man’s past was his own, but to keep it so, he had to be wary.
They had crossed the Neck by this time, and the road veered away to the right, circling the foot of Bunker Hill and heading for Charlestown village.
“Don’t hear them firing after us any more,” said Gerry, peering back the way they had come. Some of the sunset red was still left in the sky, and enough daylight for him to see that the road behind them was choked with carts andstragglers, but the whole pace of the retreat seemed to have slowed.
“No, and you won’t hear them again tonight. They won’t dare follow us into Charlestown. Could you hold me up, lad? I do not breathe as easily as I am wont to do.”
Gerry knelt down, got his hands under the limp elbows of the fallen officer, and hoisted him into a sitting position against the side of the cart. The man drew a few painful breaths and then spoke again.
“Thank you for your trouble. I am Captain Blakeslee of the King’s Own.”
“’Twas no trouble, sir,” muttered Gerry uneasily. “I be Private Malory of the Twenty-third.”
The captain’s face relaxed in a smile. “A fine regiment—the Welsh Fusileers. I was a guest when they made merry on last St. David’s day. Ah—it comes to me now. I knew I had seen your face before. Were you not the lad who led forth the goat with the gilded horns? He ran wild, I remember, leaped on the table, and up-ended our wine glasses just as we were going to drink to the Prince of Wales! A ludicrous scene!”
Gerry’s cheeks grew hot in the darkness, and he clenched his fists to keep his shame and resentment down. Yes, he had led the damn goat that according to army tradition preceded the Welsh Fusileers whenever they passed in review. Led, and cleaned it, and curried it, and bedded it down every night in a stable near Long Wharf, and twisted garlands about its horns on parade days. He still remembered the hideous embarrassment of the moment when the beast had escaped him.
Signed up for a soldier, he had, reluctantly, but expecting his share of excitement and glory. Until today he had done nothing save tend that black-tempered goat. No wonder he had fallen into the habit of “borrowing” a captain’s uniformor an American’s homespun breeches and tow shirt, and gone swaggering out amongst the girls in the Yankee villages now and then! A man had to have his pride and sweetness and a bit of sport in life. He had learned to imitate the officers’ pompous speech and attitudes, or to talk with a New England twang. Maybe he’d go for a strolling player when he got home again. Maybe he’d be good at it, he thought. But of course, it was in his blood, and no wonder if he should turn out that way.
The farm cart ground to a stop just as Gerry was about to mutter that it was indeed he who led the goat. Sergeant Higgs leaned over to confer with an officer in fresh white trousers and trim jacket, a man who had obviously taken no part in the fighting that day. Then the officer stood aside, the sergeant pulled sharply on the reins, and Gerry felt the wagon leave the road and go lurching across a field at the foot of Bunker Hill. One of the wounded men sat up. The others began to moan and swear.
“You’re off course, Higgs!” shouted Gerry, forgetting that his barracks-mate outranked him and was entitled to a more respectful salute.
Higgs turned around, his broad face a white blur in the darkness. “I be following orders, Private Malory. We’re to wait by yon hill till the troops clears a way through the town so the boats can take us off. By midnight we’ll all be back in Boston.”
“Thank God,” murmured Captain Blakeslee, and then as Higgs drew up the cart in a little grove of locust trees, he turned to the younger man. “Will you help me down on the grass for a bit, lad? I’ve taken a notion to feel the earth under me. Better under than over.” He gave a weak smile.
“Give us a hand, Higgs,” called Gerry, trying to lift the captain, almost a dead weight this time.
Jack Higgs was six years older than Gerry. This was not his first battle, nor the first wounded man he had seen. The moment he joined them in the bed of the wagon, he thrust his hand inside the tattered coat. Then he pulled it out again and muttered under his breath. For a long moment he stared at Gerry.
“Is—is it bad?” faltered the young private, feeling suddenly afraid, as he had not felt all that afternoon when the Yankees were shooting at him as he retreated down the Charlestown Road.
Captain Blakeslee gave a hoarse cough.
“Bad enough,” said Higgs. “Tell you what, Gerry. Go down into Charlestown and see if you can find a surgeon. Tell him we got need of him here.”
“Put—me—on the ground,” whispered Captain Blakeslee. He lay slumped against the side of the wagon and tried to lift his head, but he was not strong enough.
Together Gerry and Sergeant Higgs got him out of the cart and stretched the limp body on the young grass under a locust tree.
“I’ll go quickly,” Gerry promised. “I’ll come back with the surgeon. I hope ’twill be in time.”
“Good luck to you, lad,” said the sergeant. He was still bending over the wounded man when Gerry hastened off.
The journey proved not to be a long one, but over all too soon. Ten minutes hard running across the fields, a brief encounter, and he came pounding back. Jack Higgs stood leaning against the wagon. He had lighted a little fire of dead boughs, and in its light his usually pleasant face looked somber, his eyes a little sick. He was in his shirt sleeves now.
“They told me I was a fool,” panted Gerry. “Told me no surgeon would come out this far to save one man, or three, or four, when so many lies bleeding there in the town. How is the Captain? Jack—where is your coat?”
Sergeant Higgs motioned toward a dark heap under the locust tree. For a moment he stood silent, then he spoke.
“Surgeons couldn’t ha’ saved him, Gerry—not a whole regiment of ’em marched out here two and two. When I put my hand to him, his flesh was already cold. He was about gone. I knew they wouldn’t come. I only sent you to get you away. You never been in battle, never seen men die before.”
“Your coat—?” faltered Gerry. Not that the coat mattered, but he felt he could not talk of anything that did.
“I laid it across his face,” said Higgs, clearing his throat. “Afterwards. It seemed more decent-like, somehow.”
Gerry sat down on the grass beside the little fire, there being nothing else to do. The moon had risen and was shining wanly down on the hills and pastures, on the roofs of Charlestown village. It made a path of silver across the black bay, a path to the lighted shores of Boston. Lanterns flashed in the midst of it, lanterns on the prows of the boats that were carrying the badly defeated British back to the town they had left so proudly the night before.
Gerry thought how he himself and the rest of the Twenty-third had marched out that morning, fifers playing “Yankee Doodle,” and colors lifting on the spring wind. They had marched inland by way of the Neck, through Roxbury to Cambridge, and so far, it was all a game. But the sport ceased near Lexington where they met their fleeing comrades who had gone to Concord to raid the Yankees’ powder magazine. Powerful grenadiers dropped exhausted and lay like dogs after a hunt, panting, their tongues hanging out. The Marines and Light Infantry scattered helter-skelter across the countryside, while the farmers fired at them from behind every wall and tree.
“Cover the retreat,” his regiment had been ordered, and they had done so, in a running battle all the way back toCambridge. It was there that an officer had detailed him and his sergeant to help get the wounded away.
And now one of those wounded was dead, Captain Blakeslee. Why should it matter to him, when he had known the captain such a little time? But it did matter. A lump swelled and stiffened inside his throat. Then he looked down towards Charlestown and thought of Sally Rose. But she wouldn’t be there, of course. She had gone to visit her kin in a town called Newburyport, a town in the country somewhere. Her father had sent her away because he thought she was too good for a captain of the Welsh Fusileers. And if he felt that way about a captain, how would he feel about the private who tended a goat in stable and led it out on muster day? How would Sally Rose feel if she knew the truth about him? And then somehow Sally Rose began to dwindle in his mind, and for the moment she did not matter any more. He remembered that he had fought his first battle and come out alive, but Captain Blakeslee was dead, and maybe tomorrow there would be another battle, and he would be the one to lie under the locust tree, under some comrade’s tattered coat.
“Open your haversack, lad,” said Sergeant Higgs, his voice cheery again. “I found a spring on the hillside a bit of a ways off, and I’ve been fetching water to the men in the wagon there. They be all somewhat easier now, and the boats will have us in Boston before long.” He threw another armful of dry branches on the fire. “You’ve salt pork and bread, like the rest of us, so eat up your supper. ’Twill taste little worse for the fact that good men be dead, and we lost the day.”
“I know we were driven back,” murmured Gerry, obeying the sergeant and taking out his small parcel of food. “But didn’t the troops get the Rebel stores they went for? Didn’t they get to Concord before...?”
Higgs nodded. He had run the point of his bayonet through a lump of thick, greasy-looking meat and held it over the fire.“Oh, they got there, all right,” he said. “But they’d been better off if they’d stayed in barracks, according to the way I heard. They broke up a couple of cannon, rolled some powder kegs into a millpond, and burnt a house or two. Then they was routed. But ’twould be a different story if the Yankees would come out in the open and fight like men.”
“They seemed to be in an almighty rage about something,” said Gerry, beginning to toast his own meat, keeping his eyes away from the shadow under the locust tree. “And they had no sort of uniformed army. Men in shirts and leather breeches, just as they’d come from the plow or workshop. Well, all spring we’ve been sure there was fighting ahead of us. Now it’s begun.”
“Yes,” said Jack Higgs, looking out at the dark shapes of the rescue boats that crossed and recrossed the moonlit water. “It’s begun, and it took two to begin it—we and they. But at the end—there’ll be left only one.”
“And it better be we!” Gerry felt his own features soften in a smile.
He put up his head in the sharp night air and heard the bugles sounding on the peaceful green crest of Bunker Hill. They were British bugles, and they reassured him. For the last hour or so, he had been sure he would never have the heart to go forth disguised and playing pranks about the countryside again. But now it seemed to him that perhaps he might.