by Paul Lussier
In Hancock’s absence at the party, of course, Warren seized the moment for himself early in the evening, working the floor, aiming to convince these wary men of the need to raise an army which would enhance and exceed the capacity and skill of the local militias. And to drink more. To blood. To Destiny.
I had been instructed to wait out back with the servants until Deborah arrived. To pass the time, I took to teaching them how to pronounce “hors d’oeuvres.”
An hour of “whoredoovers” later, she finally showed up, as she promised she would, on Benjamin Church’s arm, with dried marigolds in her hair, a lavender silk dress, a chiffon fichu, and delicate pearls emphasizing a poitrine plus belle: much more than I could have imagined. My Lord, could all that cleavage possibly be real? (It wasn’t.) She really didn’t have the “gracious lady” act down quite as well as some other identities of hers I had seen: Her feet protruded awkwardly out to the side from under the dress; her fan, which she brandished like a loaded gun, should have been left home; and the marigolds flaked.
But those tits . . . in a roomful of men. What a way to start a war.
Things happened so fast that it wasn’t until later that night at the Green Dragon, while watching a noticeably energized Deborah still bedecked in her ball gown rattle off assignments new in focus and intent, that I realized we must have succeeded in what she had set out to do.
There was even a post-party addition to the group tonight. My old protector back in ’65 who’d stopped Samuel Adams from strangling me: the fair-skinned, plump silversmith-turned-courier—the saucy but dignified “mechanic,” Paul Revere.
Deborah introduced him as “one of us,” someone they “should grow to trust,” who would serve as liaison between “us and them,” “them” being Congress by way of Warren, she explained.
So yes, I was right—something definitive had occurred on the party floor.
“Now it’s just a matter of keeping their feet to the fire,” she explained, “and we’ll have all the guns we need.”
Thanking me for the party—“planned to perfection,” she claimed—she assigned me to a committee of fourteen whose job it was to get Warren whatever he needed to begin building an army, specifically information regarding British intentions that would keep Congress good and scared enough to comply with Warren’s wishes.
By the end of the party, she had managed to win over Warren utterly to her Cause. How? She claimed it was simple: because Warren knew . . . that Church knew . . . that Deborah knew . . . that even Gage knew . . . that raising an American army was for each in different ways a good thing and that it would be best for them to work together rather than apart.
But since this explanation clearly was wanting, I concentrated good and hard and reviewed in my head the party as it had unfolded, detail for detail . . . one more time.
First, Church shows up, toting Deborah on his arm, who looks stunning, albeit disproportionately buxom. Warren, who has taken over as host for the party in Hancock’s opportune absence, is only too happy to see Church, as he regards him as a strategic ally in the effort to encourage congressional support for a war. Never mind that Church is a spy—Warren doesn’t know that, although he’s about to find out.
Church congratulates Warren for organizing this event and asks where Hancock is. Both men simultaneously intone, “Ill!” then chuckle. They then speculate as to what might happen should Hancock ever truly develop as much as a cold: “He’d be convinced he had passed on, and that the image left standing belonged to a ghost!”
Church and Warren, chatting like fast friends, move across the floor. Although it is chilly outside, Deborah heads toward the door to the courtyard, en route “accidentally” brushing Warren with her spectacular bosom, and continues on without looking back. Warren, after a too-short-to-be-discreet pause, sneaks out in hot pursuit.
Deborah passes through the garden. Old fallen leaves, still loose about the icy earth, scatter as she walks deep into the woods, her tread forming a footpath easy for Warren, who is by now practically hyperventilating, to follow.
Once in the forest, Deborah weaves through boulder and pine, ostensibly in search of a place to hide. Finding cover in a generous, preselected bower of Norwegian evergreen, she pulls from her bosom a pen and pad and begins scribbling, dictating as she writes, talking much more loudly than a spy ever should or would, with an air of desperation, as if she were loath to forget a single word.
Warren slows his chase and listens, without yet revealing his presence. He hears her utter a full account of everything he and Church have said thus far at the party, as well as bits of conversations Deborah has picked up from miscellaneous delegates who, deep in their cups, were talking of war. She leaves no detail out or unremarked—even the trifle (“too sweet”) is given mention and so too her fears “that the ruse Church and I are contriving might be too hard-pushed,” to wit: too clear. That she might, in order to remain useful to the king, from this point on lay low.
Her idea of “fancy lady” talk is, like the choice of the marigolds, also a bit crude, but Warren is much too stimulated—first below the waist, then above his reddening ears—to notice or care, once he has caught the intended import of her speech.
Even as he jumps out from behind the tree where he has been hiding, I can see from where I’m watching behind a holly bush that he is much more in lust than enraged.
Still, even with his tight breeches nearly bursting, he does an admirable job of seizing the offending paper and giving it a quick read. “Explain yourself, woman!” he demands, with an iron grip on her arm. Whereupon Deborah promptly bursts into tears and begs Warren please to let her go.
Upon her life, she belongs to the Patriots’ side and is doing what she must to survive, adding that she could be of greater use to The Cause not dead but alive—for Church could take her life long before the legislature could have laws sufficient to prosecute and punish her as a spy.
The bet she’s making, of course, is twofold. She wagers that revealing herself as a spy to Warren will amount to nothing because there is absolutely no provision in the law yet for spies that are ostensibly working for the Mother Country, of which we are still very much a part. The idea of a spy for Britain who isn’t also a spy for the colonies isn’t even a tangible concept in most people’s minds. In a court of law Deborah would be a friend of the state, not a foe—it is Warren who would be the traitor if he made a stir, thereby revealing his own sympathies to the authorities. Oh, boy.
So please, she entreats Warren (tugging at her fichu, and not unintentionally uncovering a bit more of that bosom), for the good of the new country, reveal her not, seek not to punish her but, instead, designate an arrangement by which she will be only too happy to oblige him.
Something like that. You get the gist. She’s offering herself to him as a double agent and . . . ?
Deborah has Warren right where she wants him. So he is just plain stuck with information about which he can do nothing—except, perhaps, seek out a Son of Liberty to do her in. She also confidently wagers that the mesmerizing sight of her bosom, emerging in the moonlight from the splayed fichu, is insurance enough to prevent such ungentlemanly action by Warren.
It works. If the Provincial Congress can’t yet be counted on for an army, it certainly can’t be counted on for new laws, much less a law that defines a spy for England as an enemy of the Massachusetts colony or the not-quite-extant American republic.
Oh, Deborah lays it on thick. “Please, sir, let me do for you better than I do for Church, better even than for Gage! Let me help you raise an army—by giving you access to all of Gage’s planned retributions and military strategies intended to subdue The Cause! Let us, together then, scare Congress into raising an army and into rousing this dear fledgling nation to fight.”
Warren is no fool. All that and a shot at what lies between her legs—she is unquestionably an expert at “raising” and “rousing” of all sorts. “Woman, say no more.”
Warren marches himse
lf right back into the pavilion and takes Church to one side. . . .
If he, Warren, were to “accidentally” come across “secret” information about Gage’s stores, revealing British military preparations, threatening and vast, Congress would have no choice but to mount a defense . . . and wouldn’t Church agree that Warren had this right?
Church, who should have been the enemy, was now the friend. Oh, this business of Revolution, would the twisting and turning of opposites never end? Not until the categories were viewed differently or were to change, no, they would not.
Although initially he was startled by Warren’s blunt question, the plan was also perfect for Church. Which, incidentally, is what made it perfect for Deborah . . . and then, in its turn, also suited the Revolution.
Church himself needed a steady flow of information from the Rebel side in order to keep his job—and to keep construction going on the palatial estate outside Boston that he (a poet, an execrable poet) was building with fees extorted from the king.
So the information would flow, via Deborah, from Church to Warren to Congress and to The Cause of Revolution . . . which is what Warren and Church and all the rest would never, ever know.
The plan was indeed remarkable in its breadth and scope. Even easy, or at least fun for all involved. All Warren had to do was fuck Deborah, keep that a secret from Church, keep Church’s duplicity a secret from our side, help Church maintain credibility on their side by feeding him whatever it took to get what Warren needed from Church in turn for our side: secrets juicy enough to get Congress to scare up at least an army, if not a war.
And in the middle of it all: Deborah, a woman, secure in the shadow job of running, storing, and distributing all those guns for which Congress would almost instantaneously begin allocating funds.
From top to bottom, wholly her idea. Sure, the Founding Fathers were making it all happen, cluelessly—and with Deborah and her kind as their puppeteers.
CHAPTER 20
To War
Within a week of Hancock’s party Deborah had ordered Max, the Mashpee Indian, to raid British military stores in Boston via rarely trod footpaths and convey the plunder out of town.
Two nights later, she commanded Dawes and me to haul field pieces away, urging us to take the route through the Neck, insisting we’d not be stopped by Gage’s guard.
We weren’t; the next day six hundred pounds of cannon were allowed to roll lazily out of town directly past the checkpoint, totally unmolested (“Let them pass!”).
According to History, Gage was flabbergasted . . . outdone once again by the too-clever Yanks. Bah! Gage was daft but not dead; his men bumbling, not blind. Gage was letting us steal that cannon (directly off the Common in broad daylight, to boot) and that’s all there is to say about that.
So how did History come to think Gage had been played for a fool? By basing its analysis, as it always does, on so-called “facts.” Hard, verifiable data, not stories, where the stuff of life resides.
Yes, I too read the raging letter Gage wrote to Parliament expressing his shock and dismay over the theft of the cannon (thanks to the Church-Deborah-Warren underground, the letter was intercepted), and thanks to my experience with Deborah, I had learned by now not to take documents like this at face value. Instead, as Deborah would advise, I probed to “find the story going on.”
Gage wanted us to steal the cannon so he could hold out its theft as yet another “debacle” that might have been avoided if England only paid the colonial situation more mind. Send more of everything—arms, men, money—or face ruin, is the message he wished to send.
But even here, in his increasingly desperate demands for help, Gage was easily as disingenuous as his Founding Father counterparts. Since he knew that British attention would not be forthcoming anytime soon (and in any event could be counted on to be insufficient to his needs), he wanted his complaint on record in case he needed an excuse for not doing more than he had (“I was without capacity to fight”). And if and when he did act, he must be able to blame the British ministry for what he knew would most likely be defeat (“I was without capacity for victory”).
All of which was simple cover for the fact that Gage had no desire whatsoever to engage “this pretty country” in a godforsaken war (“Can’t King George just let bygones be bygones and send the troops home? Without their commander, of course, as I quite like it here!”).
History views the cannon theft event as but one incidental, barely noteworthy step in the escalating war with England, or usually does not mention it at all. This is one of the best examples there are of History’s flawed judgment at work, due entirely to the misguided belief that its characters behave not as people but as historical figures, allegiances to respective countries and causes always primary and intact. In fact, the cannon episode was a major turning point toward war, not for its practical, obvious results (it did indeed inflame England further), but for the human stories it set inexorably into motion. And for what it did for The Cause. Well, to perceive that, one must ignore History entirely and look directly to the men and women at hand.
I know Church had to have been delighted, because any gutsy moves on the part of the Rebels translated into more anxiety on the English side, which translated into higher fees for his services and greater job security—good for us, as we needed to keep him around.
As for Warren, anything that vexed Gage (or had Gage feigning vexation) was fine by him, for Gage’s ire always translated into another military exercise or parade that History would regard as threatening to Americans, which would in turn have Warren jumping up and down in delight, since any aggressive action by Gage served his personal campaign to keep Congress “thinking army.”
“Gage means to do something soon! Evident it is in his military moves! Order up more guns! Organize the militia into a fighting force! Replace the local militia leaders with those sympathetic to the emerging Cause! Be brave! Be prepared! England means to have a war!” etc.
From that point on, I have to admit, things became rather fun. Church would sit in Congress and take notes for Gage. To keep Church’s identity a secret in the event of interception, I would translate these notes into French poorer than my own. And, of course, even I, being human, couldn’t resist a little embellishment, a little poetic gratification now and again. It’s just that everything sounded so harmless in French, I found myself pushing a bit more than perhaps I should in order to ensure the desired effect.
In a letter on March 30, 1775, I wrote (in French), “The Congress have been all this Week employed in adapting the Articles of War and the regulations of the Army to their Militia. Many of the articles they have adopted entire! Several grand debates have arisen in this Committee such as fixing a Criterion for assembling the militia together. . . .”
I left out that whatever resolve there was, was piddling, and that by the end of this session any hope Warren had of getting a full-scale army ready for action had been virtually destroyed. In truth, the “grand debates” that had occurred that day were precisely about the issue of what would constitute a threat from England, with the general opinion being “nothing short of an active and self-evident military exercise,” defined by Congress as one “including baggage and artillery” and to which any countermoves on our part would still only remain “at all costs, purely defensive in nature.” After which, Congress adjourned.
Church wrote it all down, but we both figured there’d be no purpose served in the British knowing all that.
Warren was miffed at the Provincial Congress that day, depressed about his progress. Unjustifiably, I thought, because in fact, in just a few months, the path to war had been well laid. An elaborate alarm system, consisting of express riders triggered by word of mouth, lanterns, and church bells had been designed by Warren, Revere, and Deborah to warn the entire colony/state and beyond, in the event of a military maneuver by Gage. Although it was stressed over and over again (even by Warren) that any action, once taken, must be carefully planned and migh
t never be “the spontaneous efforts of unorganized farmers,” Deborah was essentially doing what she wanted, salting away weapons. She knew full well that once the weapons were stored (and their whereabouts made known to the British via the communication underground, so as to direct Gage to Concord, where she knew he could be beat), Gage would have no choice, as much as she knew he hated to do it, but to launch an assault.
Guns, powder, brimstone, beans, molasses, tents, and the like, plus cannonballs and artillery, all had been raised and stowed by the time the Provincial Congress disbanded—enough for supplying an army of fifteen thousand men, “just in case a defensive war were to ignite.”
It was not as though the Provincial Congress was altogether in the dark, you see, regarding Revolutionary intentions like those of Deborah’s gang. This was one of the reasons congressional support always came with the caveat that Warren’s committee was to keep tight control of all weapons at all times. Supposedly this was to keep them from the British, but those living history, not writing History, understood the situation to be a tad more complex.
It was further advised that the location of these stores should be known only to a few. Militia Captain William Heath, Joseph Warren, and, if you can believe it, even Benjamin Church were specifically named (which, of course, meant Deborah, John Lawrence, and the entire Massachusetts countryside too).
Oh, weren’t we just going to town!
A Concord, il y a pour le moins Sept Tonnes de poudre a feu. Il y a aussi dans la même Village . . . une quantite de poudre, des Balles, des Fusils et des bayonets, I wrote from Church to Gage on April 3.
I admit to having no idea whatsoever how much “seven tons of powder” was, that I was laying it on a little thick—by a factor of seven, I later learned. But still, my gross exaggeration seemed to yield results, for Gage, who certainly must have known better but didn’t dare do nothing, shortly thereafter stepped up military exercises all the more. Encouraged, in the next installment I pushed the estimations even higher, reporting a full fifteen tons from Worcester, just for kicks.