“And what is archaeology,” Mary asked.
They were walking down the beach along the river, the same spot where they had met earlier that day. She was trying to make sense of things and he was trying to avoid telling her that he was from the future.
“Where I come from that’s what we call the study of history,” he covered.
“Right, the mysterious far away land,” she said.
“Yes, that one.”
“The name of which you can’t tell me?”
“Right.”
“Do you realize how mad you sound?”
“Yup,” he took another swig from the bottle of wine he had stolen from the ball.
She stared across the water for a few minutes as they walked along. Campbell was trying to figure out what to do with this situation. He didn’t want to lie to this girl, mostly because he couldn’t come up with a believable lie at the moment, but he couldn’t tell her the truth.
He had been concentrating for a few minutes and didn’t realize when Mary stopped. He turned and looked at her. She was staring across the river. Following her line of sight had him staring at a column of English Redcoats marching towards the city.
“Crap,” he said. “Things are already changing.”
“Well this-” Mary began. “Wait, what do you mean things are changing? What is changing?”
“They’re not supposed to be here,” he said, pointing across the river to the British soldiers.
“There should have been notice, Hans has patrols all around the city,” she said.
“Don’t get me started on Hans right now,” he replied. “I mean they shouldn’t be here as in the British don’t attack Boston yet.”
She only heard half of that. Artillery fire had begun across the river and four twelve-pound cannons could be seen being loaded at the river bank on the other side. They didn’t hit much but it certainly got the attention of the citizens of Boston, who started pouring out of houses with muskets in hand. It was time for the minutemen to get to work.
“We need to get out of here,” Campbell said, taking Mary by the arm. She tried to resist.
“Are you mad? Run away when my home is being overrun by the British army?” She was astonished that he could think of such a thing.
“What do you want to do, grab a musket and charge headfirst into thousands of soldiers just to get yourself killed?”
“Yes, minus the get killed part,” she replied.
Campbell stared at her for a moment with a blank face, not comprehending. Just then a cannonball smacked into a building about fifty feet behind them. A minuteman had been running through the door and he was thrown to the side by the blast. He landed in a pile of shrapnel, unconscious and covered in blood.
“Crap,” Campbell said. He let go of Mary and ran towards the injured man. There were a few puffs of dirt popping up around him as musket balls missed their mark and debris flew to the ground from buildings being demolished by artillery fire.
“This shouldn’t be fucking happening,” he kept muttering to himself as he ran.
When he reached the injured militiaman he could see there wasn’t going to be much he could do. The man had dozens of shrapnel wounds in his chest and left arm and leg, but at least they were shallow. His left arm had a compound fracture below the elbow, part of the bone protruded through his sleeve. He would probably live, but he was losing a lot of blood.
After a quick examination Campbell decided he could be moved so he grabbed the man by the armpits and dragged him inside the building through the freshly widened doorway.
Debris from the artillery fire was scattered about the inside of the house. There was a large dining table in the back of the room and he dragged the man over to it. He had to kick a broken chair out of the way and try to avoid a pile of broken wood that used to be part of a stairway. When he reached the table he tried to lift the man up but he was heavy and Campbell lost his grip. The man crashed to the floor.
“Get his arms, I’ll take the legs,” Mary said as she rushed over to the body on the floor. Campbell was so focused on the injured man he hadn’t realized she had been following him.
Between the two of them they managed to get the guy onto the table and laid him on his back. Campbell spent a moment examining him, trying to figure out what all was injured. The man had a bayonet hooked to his belt and he used that to cut away the man’s shirt, exposing a few dozen bleeding holes where little pieces of metal burst through the man’s skin.
“I need water and clean cloth,” He told Mary. He was trying to remember the first aid class the college made him take at the beginning of the last school year. Not much came to mind, but he knew the wounds needed to be clean. History told him that most men who died from musket shots died of the infection that set in afterwards.
Mary ran around the house searching for the supplies Campbell asked for. She found cloth easily enough in the form of dish towels. The kitchen seemed fairly well-stocked and there was a cask of water in the pantry. She found a bowl in one of the cabinets and filled it with water from the cask. She ran back to the table with a handful of towels and the water.
Campbell had gotten the man’s clothes off by the time she got back and was using torn bits of the shirt to wipe up some of the blood around the wounds. When Mary arrived he took the clean towels to use instead. There was a lot of blood.
“Boil the water,” He told Mary.
“Seriously?” she said, confused.
Right, he thought to himself, no electric stoves. And the man would probably bleed out in the time it would take to build a fire and wait for a cauldron to boil.
“Alright,” he said, “find some liquor.”
“Do you really think you ought to repair a man’s wounds drunk?” she said.
“Just find some!” he shouted and she ran back towards the kitchen.
Campbell looked back at the wounded man. Most of the shrapnel on his arm was easy to get to, and he tied the towels around the arm to stop the bleeding. But the chest was a lot worse. When Mary got back with a bottle of rum he poured half of it into the bowl with the water and set a couple of towels in the bowl to soak. Then he started pulling out bits of wood and twisted metal from the man’s arm and pouring small amounts of the rum on the open wounds before tying dry towels tight around the arm to staunch the bleeding.
Mary stood there and watched for a moment, but she quickly got frustrated with not doing anything. She started searching the house, opening every cabinet and drawer she came across, looking for anything else that might be useful. There was a musket lying in the doorway and she picked it up. It didn’t appear to be damaged so she kept it with her and went off in search of powder.
She squeezed around the broken part of the staircase and headed upstairs. The second story had three bedrooms and all the doors were closed. She opened the first door she came across and found a woman and three small girls crouched in the corner behind a bed. The woman looked scared and the children were hiding their heads in her bosom and lap crying.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Mary said, lowering the musket.
The woman just stared at her for a moment. There was a battle going on outside and now there was an armed woman in her doorway. She clutched the children a little tighter.
“Do you have any powder, ma’am?” Mary asked the woman.
“What?” replied the woman, startled out of her stupor by Mary’s odd question.
“For the firearm,” Mary said, lifting the musket slightly.
“Um, I suppose there would be some in the closet,” she said. “Downstairs.”
“Oh, right. Why would it not be with the gun?” Mary said to herself as she started to turn around.
“Who are you?” the woman asked, standing up. As she stood the little girls clutched at her dress as if to pull her back down.
“I’m Mary,” she replied, “I’m here with someone who is currently patching up a man, I presume to be your husband, down in your dining room.” She then
turned and headed back down the stairs. The other woman followed, with children in tow.
Campbell finished patching up the arm and moved on to the chest, clearing away blood before removing broken bits of wood and using the alcohol soaked dish cloths to clean out the deep gashes.
“I need to find something to splint this arm with,” he said but there was no reply. He turned around to see if Mary was still there, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Damnit.”
He ripped the man’s shirt into long strips a few inches wide. He was using the strips to wrap around the man’s chest, after he cleaned out all the wounds with the rum, when the man woke up. It started with just a little stir and a sound here and there but then the guy opened his eyes and looked at Campbell. Then he looked at his body and all the blood soaked cloth lying around him and he screamed.
Campbell had to hold the man down by pinning his shoulders to the table, which was causing some of the cuts on his chest to start bleeding again, and some of it started to come through the bandages. Mary came running in when she heard the scream and she helped Campbell hold the man down.
The militiaman stopped screaming when he saw his wife running up to the table and he took a second to let his mind clear. The wife hugged her husband and cried and Campbell and Mary took a step back to give them some room.
“I understand your concern, ma’am, but he has lost a lot of blood and I need to finish fixing him up,” Campbell said as calmly as he could, placing his hands on the crying woman’s shoulders and gently trying to move her out of the way.
“What happened?” the woman said, allowing herself to be moved away.
“A cannon ball took out your door as he was leaving the house,” Mary chimed in.
“Oh dear,” the woman said, covering her mouth with her hands. Then she looked around the house and saw the devastation. She tried to stop herself from screaming.
Campbell handed the bottle of rum to the man on the table and advised him to take a few big swigs to try and dull the pain. The man took the bottle and drank until it was empty, and then lay back down to let Campbell finish.
Ten minutes later the man, whose name turned out to be Josiah, was patched up as best as they could manage and was resting. Campbell had told the two women what to do and the three of them worked fast to clean and patch all of his wounds. Campbell had broken the leg off of a chair and they used that to splint Josiah’s broken arm. Over the time they had spent fixing this man up the intensity of the gunfire in the distance had increased dramatically and gotten a lot closer.
Mary was talking to Josiah’s wife, Abigail, trying to keep her calm. Campbell ran upstairs and climbed out onto the balcony to try to get a look at what was happening in the streets.
The Colonials seemed to be keeping the Redcoats at bay at the edge of town, but they were taking heavy losses and the bodies were piling up. He tried to find Richter in the crowd but he didn’t have a good vantage point and the fighting was fairly far off from the house. He went back downstairs.
“We need to get back to my hotel,” he told Mary.
“What?” she said.
“The town’s defenses aren’t going to hold for much longer, we need to get out of here and I need to get my things,” he replied.
“Please don’t leave us, sir,” Abigail pleaded.
He looked over at the man passed out on the table and his wife and the children and all the debris in their ruined house and he listened to the sounds of heavy gunfire outside.
“Fuck,” he said.
He looked at Mary, standing there with a musket in one hand and Josiah’s bayonet tucked into a belt she had wrapped around her now bloodstained gown and had to shake some inappropriate images out of his head. He looked at Abigail.
“Are there any more weapons?” he asked.
“A pistol, and my grandfather’s sword,” she said and pointed to a door in the entryway, “in the closet.”
Campbell looked in the closet and found the pistol on a small table with a bag next to it. Hanging on a hook was the sword, an old cavalry saber with a long curved blade, in a leather scabbard on a belt. He strapped on the sword belt and tucked the pistol in it. Then he walked over to Josiah, lying half conscious on the table.
“You’re going to have to walk,” he said softly, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder.
Josiah looked at his wife and children and resolved to fight through the pain. With Campbell’s help he managed to swing his legs over the side and sit up straight. His face displayed his agonizing pain, but he clenched his teeth and pushed off and stood.
Campbell wrapped an arm around Josiah, Abigail held the children’s hands, and Mary marched point with her musket as the seven of them headed for the door.
Mary poked her head out and made a quick sweep with her eyes. The fighting was still pretty far away so she waved a hand for the rest to follow and stepped out and walked north up the street.
The streets through Boston were mostly empty. Everyone was either hiding or fighting and the few people they did come across were men running to join the rest of the militia mounting the defense. So they made it to the Green Dragon easily enough.
As the group walked on, Campbell looked around at the devastation along the river front. Houses were missing walls and lampposts were knocked down. There were bodies of men, women and children in the streets.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Campbell said aloud to himself. “Even if his presence is changing things, this is too drastic and too sudden. The English don’t launch attack like this on Boston in 1776, and they certainly didn’t fight like this.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Mary said.
“What?” he hadn’t realized he was talking out loud, “uh, it’s a long story.”
They arrived at the inn to find the front door locked. Campbell broke the window and reached in to open the door and they headed up the stairs. Abigail stayed back to help Josiah climb the steps.
Richter had just gathered the last of the militia and was marching them towards the south end of town, where the fighting was taking place. There were fifteen of the town’s militia and a few of the Continental Army soldiers, in blue and white and armed to the teeth. They were walking in two columns down the street with Richter in the lead.
They were walking along the wharf on the ocean side of the town. There were a few ships at anchor in the harbor and three smaller whaling ships were tied up to the docks. The ships bustled with sailors preparing to leave the harbor.
Just as the soldiers walked past one of the whalers was on its way out. There were two longboats packed with rowers and trailing tow lines that were pulling the ship away from the dock. The men on board were climbing rigging, getting the sails ready to set as soon as the ship was in a position where it could catch the wind. Some of the sailors were loading one of the two small swivel guns that were mounted to the rail on the ships bow for protection from pirates.
Long posts sticking up from the water marked the deepwater channel. Larger, less maneuverable ships would tie ropes to the marker poles and use their capstan to winch the ship from post to post until they hit open water, but this ship was small enough to maneuver with longboats though it was slow going.
In the distance Richter could see that one of the larger ships at anchor was preparing to leaves as well. It was a merchant ship of some form and they were not eager to stick around for the fight. They had just raised their anchor when a distant shot was heard and a few seconds later a cannonball ripped across the deck.
There were defenses on the harbor, but everyone was busy trying to keep the British land forces at bay. No one thought they would attack from both sides at once.
“Find General Adams,” Richter said to one of the militiamen with him, “and get some reinforcements over here.”
The man ran off down the street. Richter turned to the rest of the men with him and began ordering them to start trying to block off the planks that lead from the street down to the docks.
&
nbsp; “Arm your men captain,” he shouted through cupped hands at the ship below him. Then they heard the sound of more gunfire in the distance. Cannons were going off like crazy and Richter judged there were at least three British ships making their way into the harbor. He could see they were frigates when their silhouettes came into view in the distance and that would mean a few hundred soldiers backed up by eighty or more big guns. He needed a lot more men to even think about being able to defend against that.
Mary was looking out the window from Campbell’s room as he gathered his things. She could see the sky lighting up with gunfire but the inn was way too far away to be able to see any of the fighting.
Campbell stubbed his toe on a leg of the bed and Mary turned around to see the large bag slip out of his fingers and fall to the ground, clothes and money spilling onto the floor.
“Damnit,” he said, “give me a hand with this.”
Mary reached down to help repack the bag. She picked up a few pieces of paper and read one. It was a five Lira note dated 1936. She stared at it for a moment, not comprehending.
“We’re in a hurry,” Campbell said, snatching the note from her fingers and stuffing it into the bag with the rest of his stuff.
“What the hell was that?” she said, almost shouting it.
“Money,” he said.
“It said 1936,” she said. It was half statement, half question.
“It’s a long story,” he said as he tied the bag closed. Then he took the powder horn off of Mary’s belt and loaded his pistol. He had a feeling he was going to need it soon.
“You’re full of long stories,” she said, raising her voice again. “It would be nice to get an actual answer out of you.”
“Check on Abigail and Josiah,” he told her urgently.
Mary gave him a stern look and then walked out toward the stairs. Campbell finished loading his pistol, shoving a ball down the barrel with the ramrod and placing a small amount of powder on the hole at the base of the strike plate. Then he uncocked the hammer so the powder wouldn’t spill. His reenactment days had given him plenty of experience firing period guns but he wasn’t excited about the prospect of doing it for real.
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