Clode continued, “I only wish I knew of some place to take the children if the need arises. The closer they are to Tichfield Street, the greater their danger, yet I do not think their grandfather’s house to be a place of safety for them now, if,” he looked at them. “If I understand the situation correctly.”
Crowther walked over to Harriet’s writing table with quick steps.
“You do, sir. And the place of safety I believe I can supply.” He pulled out paper and examined Harriet’s quills till with a grunt he selected one he believed would suit him. “I am writing a note for you to take to a Mr. John Hunter. He has been a teacher of mine in London, a great man for many reasons and with better sense than most. He has a house out at Earl’s Court. He’ll take you in if you think it necessary. He’s a rough man, and has a queer household.” Crowther shook sand onto the sheet. “He also knows some individuals who may be of use if you come under threat.” He folded the note and handed it to Clode. The latter’s face wore a slight frown. “Grave robbers and their like, Mr. Clode,” Crowther explained further. “He is an anatomist, like myself, and a great one, but his needs for material have led him into some strange alliances. You may trust him with your life, however, and those of the children. He’d not betray you if the king and the archbishop of Canterbury knocked at his door asking for them.”
Harriet shook herself free from her imaginings and also stepped swiftly behind the desk, making Crowther move quickly out of her way in her impatience to open a little drawer in its honey-colored side. She withdrew a money box and, opening it with a key from her own pocket, pulled out a handful of notes. Mr. Clode looked a little offended and tried to wave her away. She all but stamped her foot.
“Oh, take it, Mr. Clode! You may have need of it and have expenses you did not envisage when you left your home this morning.”
He hesitated again, but seeing the sense of what she said, took it from her with a bow.
“I am grateful that you trust me, Mrs. Westerman.”
The thought seemed to surprise her, and he watched her exchange a glance and shrug with Crowther.
“It seems we do, Mr. Clode. Are we wrong to do so?”
He shook his head. “No. You are not wrong. I can leave from here now. May I write a note to be sent on to Pulborough in the morning? I would rather not leave my parents worrying for me. I shall say business detains me here a few days.”
“Of course,” Harriet said. “Good. Rachel, go and fetch one of David’s riding cloaks for Mr. Clode. We shall tell him what we know.”
Without even troubling to take their seats again, Harriet and Crowther told the young man everything they had seen, thought or suspected since the dawn of Friday. The young man said very little and what questions he had were intelligent and to the point. He had the best of it by the time Rachel returned with the cloak, and a little bag of provisions culled from the kitchen, including half a bottle of Harriet’s most expensive brandy. Then he was gone.
The door swung to behind him, and Rachel, Harriet and Crowther looked at each other a little dumbfounded. When Mrs. Heathcote came in to clear the almost untouched refreshments as brisk as a lieutenant clearing the decks for action, Harriet drew herself up behind her desk.
“Very well,” she said. “What next?”
17 JUNE 1775, BREED’S HILL NEAR CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS BAY
Try to imagine a fog. It is as dense as that which crawls from a still river in darkness so you can see only a few feet in either direction, but it is still tinged yellow by a sun you can no longer see, and it is acrid and smoking in your nose and mouth. Gunsmoke. A world of burned powder. The noises around you are like thunder, but muffled; you can no longer tell the difference between the sound of your own and your companions’ feet hitting the ground under your boots and the thump of your own blood. Your eyes are streaming, one is swollen shut and tears at you like a rat trapped in your skull. You would pluck it out and throw it from you, but your hands will not part from the musket they hold. The air is alive with hisses and explosions. There are groans and cries, some in the distance, then suddenly almost under your feet. You can feel wet heat and sear on your cheek. Evil little balls of shot rattling past you. You cannot see where they come from, or from how close. Now, you catch a flash of gunpowder in the gloom in front of you. You are almost upon them. The man to your right stumbles, you curse the broken ground and reach down to pull him up again; only when you are bent by the effort, bring his lolling head up to the level of your stooped shoulder, do you see the man is dead, the side of his face broken away. You let him fall. You call out to the men around you and plow forward again, bayonet raised, knowing that it is impossible you will survive, only sure you will take one of these murderous bastards, cowering behind their defensive arrows, with you, determined to bring a little of your hell over their redoubt and into their midst.
You are there. The fence between you and the other man gives under your weight, he has fumbled his reload. He looks up into your face, you tower above him as he crouches over his cartridge case in his homespun shirt, his ill-shaped cap. There is a scrap of old newspaper at his feet, scattered with crumbs. He must have eaten between the last attack and this. He brought something from home. You see it all without looking away from his face. You lift the barrel and drive the foot of steel at the end of your gun into his chest, thrusting as you breathe out, even while he stares at you. Blood bubbles in his mouth, his eyes go slack. The bayonet is buried so far into his chest you have to stand on his breastbone to pull it clear. You turn to find another. This is dancing. The world has slowed, your movements are fluid and there is time and time to take another partner, obey the impulse of movement, pull free and turn to take another, and another-his flashpan fizzing-lets fly almost into your face. You wait for the world to blacken; it does not, the shot failed him. There is a moment when he realizes this as you lift your weapon and fall foward. He crumples, you stumble into him, then back onto your feet. Your eye is caught by another man scrambling away; he is too slow. A shot flashes to your right and he is lifted and thrown forward onto the ground, among the grass, his body shivering with shock and despair.
The dreaming ends, the world speeds up again and you are aware of the desperate gasping for breath, your hands on the stock of your gun slippery with other men’s blood. Someone is standing beside you. Their eyes are as black and burning as your own.
“We’re done here, Thornleigh. They have taken the redoubt. Christ, man! Your face!”
You spit on the ground. There are bodies all around you. Some in the local linen, some in the blood red of your own coat. You turn back toward the beach without replying. There is a groan on your right-hand side. You crouch down, recognize one of your own. Get his arm around your neck, yours around his waist, pull him back toward the beach. By the time you reach the boats, you are carrying a corpse.
The streets were full of men, bloody and broken, dragged in carts toward the hospitals, or staggering behind them. Some nodded as he passed. Thornleigh paused only long enough at the docks to deliver his report before he started to make his way to the hospital he had visited with Hawkshaw only a few weeks before. He wanted to see if any of his company were there, and if so, what could be done for them. Of the thirty men in his command, only four were capable of walking unaided from the fight. He had seen the bodies of ten. Now he came in search of the rest. The windows of the respectable houses in Boston were mostly shuttered. Here and there civilians, old men mostly in wigs and tight-fitting jackets, dithered at the tops of their steps, jaws hanging slack, all amazement and confusion as they watched the slow, bloody parade. When Hugh turned into the wide gates of the old warehouse, he found a butcher’s yard.
The forecourt was full of injured men, groaning and bleeding, waiting their turn with the surgeon. Some of the women of the town moved among them, offering water, the fringes of their long skirts reddening. One girl had turned away into a patch of shadow, her handkerchief at her mouth; even in the dark he could see the
whiteness around her lips, one hand pressed against the stone wall. When she moved away it left a rust stain of some man’s blood behind her. He wondered whose last minutes she had watched over.
He fetched water from the drinking butt and distributed it; the calls for water came from every side. Some asked after his company, others put a black and red hand on his sleeve and tried to stop him long enough to tell their own stories of the slaughter they had seen around them on the hill. Howe’s entire staff dead or wounded, half the companies of grenadiers down to single figures like his own. A victory, but a disastrous one.
If they had grown less sanguine about their powers on the retreat from Lexington, they were as sober as hell now. A marine was curled up next to the wall, sobbing, and trying to stop his tears with a fist in his mouth. Another young woman tried to approach Hugh, make some move toward his wound; she carried a cloth and basin already pink and dirty. Hugh pushed her away, saying nothing, then heard his own name called, and looked up. A young man from Hawkshaw’s company lay propped up against the white wall. Thornleigh walked toward him. The lad’s face was gray and waxy. Thornleigh let his eye scan down his body. It was a stomach wound. There was nothing the surgeons could do for this one. Without speaking, Thornleigh crouched beside him and drew out a hip flask from under his jacket, still half-full of his father’s celebratory brandy. He put it to the man’s lips. The latter drank and grimaced as the heat of it reached down his throat.
“Thanks, Captain. Tastes good.”
Thornleigh did not smile. “Only the best.”
The man laughed; it pulled at his wound and became a cough which spat a thick red from his mouth. Thornleigh gave him the flask again. He drank, and tried apologetically to wipe the opening clean with his sleeve before Thornleigh gently took it back.
“Don’t know if you’ve heard, sir. I’m afraid Captain Hawkshaw is dead.”
Thornleigh felt it in his own gut like a soft blow of the fist. He bowed his head.
“You saw?” he managed to say.
The man nodded. “Second wave, he was up front and charging. The skinny bastard he was bearing down on waited till he was almost there and got him right in the forehead. He just dropped.” The man paused again. “Got nerve, these little shits, some of them at any rate. I did for him a minute later, then. .” he put his hand on the red mess at his middle… “then his mate did for me.”
Thornleigh nodded his throbbing head. The man looked at him. “Musket blow up on you, sir?” Thornleigh put his hand to the right side of his face. He felt flesh rather than skin. The touch seemed to wake the wound; it burned across his cheek in a wave, exploding in a spasm of pain under his eye, scrabbling at his vision until it seemed he could see the pattern of it. He steadied himself. Willed it down.
“Yes. Mine was shot from my hand in the first wave. Made do with a dead rebel’s till I could get it back. I suppose it did not like me for a master.”
The man smiled. “A rebel gun, you see?” He laughed at his own joke, repeating it with a shake of his head. “A rebel gun.”
“Sorry about Hawkshaw, Captain. He was a good sort of bloke.” The grin became a little lopsided. “So was I.”
Thornleigh put the hip flask back into his hands and stood. The man looked at it.
“You’ll never get it back, Captain.”
Thornleigh waved his hand. “Drink to Hawkshaw.”
“Will do, sir. Good luck to you.”
Thornleigh stood. The light was softening into the evening of another beautiful summer’s day. He turned into the building itself. The groans became screams in the shadows, the smell rank and rusty. The surgeon was hard at work with the saw, the ground below him a swill of blood and vomit. Just visible behind them was a wide barrel; over its edge hung a bloody hand, bent at the wrist, oddly perfect. Thornleigh wondered if the rest of the man had survived.
Moving past them into the wide open space of the hospital itself, he followed the route he had taken with Hawkshaw and Wicksteed into the main area. It was as lofty as a church. The howls from where the surgeon did his work were a little deadened by the stone. The men here were mostly quiet, content now, it seemed, to wait quietly until death took them, or their bodies showed themselves willing to recover. He found three of his men, and heard news of two others who had died under the knife. Two he found with their wounds dressed, but telling him, in dubious tones, that the balls that had wounded them had been left intact rather than dug out. Thornleigh was not fit to talk surgical fashions. The straw scattered between the bed-rolls was slippery with blood. He fetched water again. Sat and let the others talk, told the story of his own wound, and heard it being repeated between beds. It began to darken, and the pain was making him sick. He needed to think about Hawkshaw and use all the drink he had to wash some of the day away. He could feel the energy that had carried him through the action retreating, leaving him hollow and sounding to the horrors. He was already on his way out of the doors when he felt a presence at his shoulder and turned to see Wicksteed beside him, washed to his elbows in blood.
“Captain Thornleigh!” Wicksteed came a little closer and peered up at his wound. “You should let the surgeon look at that, Captain Thornleigh, before you go.”
“He has more pressing business.”
He turned to go again, but Wicksteed’s fast right hand caught him on the sleeve and detained him.
“Captain Hawkshaw?”
“Dead.”
Wicksteed plucked his hand back.
“Shame. He was a friend to me. Thought he might think of me, when this is all done.”
Thornleigh stared at him with his one eye. Wicksteed looked at the ground a moment, then drew himself closer to the larger man’s side, like a girl who needs a partner at a country ball. His hand rested on Thornleigh’s sleeve again. His fingers were black with gore.
“Let me wash the dirt out of that wound, Captain Thornleigh.”
Thornleigh didn’t reply, simply shook the hand from his sleeve and walked on. The need to escape was becoming a pressure behind his eyes. He was five minutes clear of the yard when a young ensign called him from across the street.
“Captain Thornleigh! Request from the governor. Soon as you’re cleared up, could you go to Stone Jail and see what you can get from the prisoners.”
Hugh frowned. “What nonsense is this? Pulling information isn’t my style. Why do they ask for me?”
The boy looked confused, he’d got his message the wrong way about.
“There’s a prisoner says he knows you. Name of Shapin. Asks for you. Governor hopes he might get chatty with you.”
Hugh remembered Hawkshaw’s story, nodded wearily and turned again. The ensign looked nervous, but lifted his voice.
“Sorry, sir, but soon as you can, they said. Don’t know how long he’ll last.”
Hugh kept walking, the pressure behind his eyes continuing to build.
PART V
1
TUESDAY, 6 JUNE 1780
“On whose orders? On whose orders, I say?”
The shouts came from the side of the house, and with only a look between them Harriet and Crowther turned off the path to the front of Thornleigh Hall and made their way in that direction. Their feet made very little noise on the gravel. They turned the corner to see Wicksteed with his back to them, one arm raised, a crop in his hand, his other hand fastened around the wrist of a maid about Rachel’s age. One of the doors to the kitchens in the basement was open; a number of the Thornleigh domestics crowded round it, watching. She must have fallen as Wicksteed dragged her out and up the steps. Some of her hair had escaped from under her cap and she was crying. The hand that was free she held up, ready to ward off the crop. She spoke in a high shriek as he lifted his arm still higher.
“I thought it best! He was drunk! You’d gone to bed, Mr. Wicksteed!”
Wicksteed pulled her up to her knees.
“Thought it best! A thinker, are you? You think you can lock your master in his rooms, for the best
?”
He twisted her wrist and she squealed again.
“He was drunk, sir! I don’t have the key to the gun room, but the key to the salon was in the lock! He had a fire in there! I thought I could open it in the morning, and no one would know! I’m glad I did it!”
Harriet and Crowther could see the spittle from Wicksteed’s mouth hitting her in the face. His voice was almost a scream.
“Glad, are you?” He brought the crop down. The girl squirmed but he had her firmly enough. It struck across her cheek with a slapping crack that rebounded off the walls. Harriet recoiled. As Wicksteed raised his hand again, Crowther closed the last few paces between them and lifted his cane so it held Wicksteed’s right arm in the air.
“Little trouble with the domestics, Wicksteed?” he drawled.
Wicksteed whipped round, his breathing hard, his face scarlet.
“My own business,” he hissed.
Crowther smiled thinly at him, kept his cane where it was.
“Come now. I think you have made the girl sorry enough, don’t you?”
He kept his eyes on Wicksteed’s face, but the latter glanced down at the girl at his feet. The blow showed as a dead white line on the unnatural red of her face. The skin had broken by her eye. Wicksteed spat on the ground.
“Release her, please.” Crowther spoke very softly, very slowly. Wicksteed let her wrist go. She began to massage it. “Run along now, my dear,” Crowther added, without moving.
She seemed to waken, and scuttled off her knees and back toward the kitchen, where she was hauled in through the door by her fellow servants like a shipwreck victim gathered into a lifeboat. Crowther waited a long moment before moving his cane. Then he set it back on the ground and leaned on it. Wicksteed stared at the space in front of him where the girl had been, his chest rising and falling, then without looking again at Crowther or Harriet, he turned on his heel and marched away.
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