by John Smolens
As they climbed up through the lower pastures, Abigail continued to look downhill for any signs that they were being followed, but Corporal Lumley was nowhere in sight.
Finally, she said to Mariah, “You care for him, don’t you?”
“Benjamin has a good heart.” Mariah swept strands of hair from her face. “I know your mother and father won’t fancy me, being the daughter of a waterman.”
“They don’t know you.”
“Are you afraid?”
Such a bold question—it took Abigail by surprise. “Why?”
“The way you look about, behind you, in front of you—”
“I’m looking for my brother and—and, yes, I’m afraid.”
Abigail felt better for having said it.
“I am, too,” Mariah said. “So many soldiers marched out into the country last night. I’m afeared people are dying out there.”
“I know. For too long, we’ve all known it would come to this.”
“When it comes, I just hope we fight back, whether we die or not.”
Abigail stopped walking and waited for Mariah to pause and turn toward her. They were both a little out of breath from the climb. “My parents should meet you, one day.” She smiled as she continued on up the path. “Not now, but one day, perhaps.”
Grazing cows paused to look at the two women as they strode by. They crossed Beacon Hill to Mount Vernon, where they passed a few caves, mere holes in the ground, or occasional gaps in the rocks. They saw no one. Abigail frequently looked behind them, but did not see Lumley. Finally, they reached the steep bluff which afforded a view, all of Boston spread beneath them, surrounded by water and islands. They could see how the currents and tides shaped the harbor and the Charles. Shoals were pale green, while the deeper channels ran ink-blue; vast green planes of salt marsh knotted with inlets and pools.
“My God,” Mariah whispered. “Will you look at this? It’s worth fighting for, no?”
“Yes,” Abigail said. “Yes, it is.”
VI
Out of the Country
THEY CHASED THE REDCOATS ALL THE WAY BACK TO LEXINGTON. The provincials swarmed ahead, racing through the woods, taking up positions behind trees, stone walls, and barns. The British were in complete confusion, leaving dead and wounded behind, firing at random into the woods. Their fat commander, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, was wounded while on horseback, so he dismounted and walked with the soldiers, hiding among them. Major Pitcairn took command, but his horse was shot out from beneath him. Outside of Lexington, his officers drew their sabers and stood at the front of the panicked soldiers, swearing to cut down any man who did not form up in a column. As they fell in and marched, bedraggled and exhausted, the provincials continued to pick them off.
In Lexington there was an explosion. Word came up through the woods that a cannonball had struck the meetinghouse, and a mass of reinforcements had ventured out from Boston. Still more provincials arrived, and when the large formation of redcoats marched east toward Cambridge, the shooting continued. There was more of a threat to the provincials now, as packs of light infantrymen were seen running up into the woods.
When Ezra and Benjamin came to a farm in Menotomy, they sought food and water. The back door was open, and when they stepped into the kitchen they found a woman lying on the floor in a pool of blood. The saber slash had nearly severed her head. At the table an elderly man sat upright in his chair, a gaping bullet wound in his chest. Ezra picked up the pistol that lay on the table and handed it to Benjamin.
“Loaded, not even fired.”
Benjamin had never held a pistol before and he liked its weight.
“No food,” Ezra said, opening a tin on the sideboard, which was smeared with grease and breadcrumbs. “They’re looking for the same thing.”
He paused in the door, scanning the yard. “Careful, now.”
They left the farm, crossed a plowed field, and entered the woods. By a stone wall, they found two men and a boy not ten years old, all shot in the back.
“We should have done more,” Ezra said. “We should have left nothing—not one saber, not one firearm—for the reinforcements to bring back to Boston. They came out to destroy us, and we’re losing our chance to destroy them. We might have ended it today. But this is only the beginning.”
They kept to the stone wall in the woods. Up ahead they could hear shooting.
In Cambridge, the British were approaching another fork in the road, Ezra explained, but this time they knew enough not to take the bridge south across the Charles River that would lead them down to the Neck. Their only choice was to take the road east, which led to Charlestown; from there they could be ferried to Boston.
The provincials pursued the British column through Cambridge, though at a greater distance because here the land was more open. Ezra and Benjamin encountered the work of the light infantry: provincials lying dead and wounded among trees and in barnyards. By late afternoon, Ezra had only one cartridge left. Many provincials had gone home once they were out of ammunition, but Ezra said he wanted to stay, wanted to fire his last shot just as the redcoats crossed the spit of land that connected to the Charlestown peninsula. As they moved through the countryside, they could seldom see the column, though they could hear their boots and see the dust rising in the sky above them.
“We’re chasing them all the way back to Boston,” Ezra said.
“And then what?” Benjamin asked.
Ezra didn’t answer at first, but then said, “I don’t know, but Boston is not a place I’d want to be.”
Not far outside Charlestown there was a wooden cage hanging from a tree next to the road. It had been there for years and contained the remains of a slave who had tried to escape his owner. There was nothing now but bones tangled in a heap of rags. Benjamin and Ezra lay in a stand of trees about a hundred yards away, watching the British soldiers pass beneath the tree. Many paused to look up at the cage, though some appeared too spent to even notice.
“Everywhere, signs of reprimand and punishment,” Ezra said. “Someday they’ll cut that cage down, I suppose, even though owning a slave is your right. Seems odd, though, all this business about liberty, yet we still keep slaves.”
“I know a black man, from Haiti,” Benjamin said. “Works at the granary. Often see him out in the harbor, fishing or digging clams. I lost an oar once and a storm was coming up, and he towed me in against the outgoing tide. Name’s Obadiah.”
“Someone own Obadiah?”
“Reginald Fiske, a merchant. But Obadiah, he acts like a freeman.”
Ezra nodded toward the cage. “But he stays put because of such warnings.”
“Wasn’t for him, that tide would have taken me out to sea.”
Ezra turned and looked back into the woods. “We’re out of water. There’s a spring down there a ways.”
They got up and walked down to an outcropping of granite, where they could hear the gurgle of running water. The spring ran below the rocks and wound farther down through a glen. The stream ran clear, and moved fast enough that there was white water curling over stones. Something about the movement of water fascinated Benjamin. A stream, a pond, the harbor stretching toward the sea, he could stare at the movement of water endlessly. They knelt on the mossy bank and drank from their cupped hands, and then Ezra began to fill his canteen.
The shot came from above them, to their right. Ezra groaned as he seemed to be pushed into the stream. Blood-stained water ran downstream.
Benjamin looked back up at the granite outcropping and saw two redcoats. One was reloading his Brown Bess, while the other held his rifle across the top of the rock, taking aim. He fired, and Benjamin was sprayed by moss and clumps of dirt. Turning, he looked at Ezra, who was still lying on his side in the stream, holding his shoulder. His musket lay on the embankment and Benjamin picked it up, got to his feet, and ran toward the rocks. He could only see one of the soldiers, perhaps thirty yards away, ramming ball and powder down the barrel of his gun. Benjami
n kept running toward him, dodging in and out behind tree trunks. When he had closed half the distance, the soldier raised his gun to his shoulder. Benjamin fell to the ground as the soldier fired. The ball hit the nearest tree, raining bark and splinters down on Benjamin, who remained on the ground. He took aim at the soldier, who was beginning to move to his right along the angled granite faces—his boots slipped on the stone, so that he fell, losing his rifle. He had acne on his face and neck, and he stared at Benjamin helplessly.
Benjamin got to his feet and moved until he was behind a wide tree trunk. It was quiet for a moment; there was only the sound of the stream behind him. When he peered around the trunk, he saw the other soldier running downhill. Benjamin shouldered Ezra’s rifle and drew a bead and, just before the soldier reached a stand of bushes, he fired. The soldier’s hands went up into the air, his gun clattered against the ground, and then he tumbled down the hill until he lay motionless, gazing at the sky.
There was a terrible ringing in Benjamin’s right ear and it made him feel dazed. He leaned the musket against the tree and looked back toward the other soldier. He was on his feet and reloading his gun. Benjamin pressed his back against the trunk. He could see Ezra, who was now sitting up in the stream, his jacket slick with blood.
Turning, Benjamin stepped out from behind the tree and began walking quickly toward the soldier. He drew the old man’s pistol from his belt. The soldier was pouring powder down his barrel, when he paused and looked up. Benjamin stopped a few feet away and extended his pistol toward the soldier. “Put it down.”
The soldier seemed about the same age as Benjamin, perhaps even younger. He looked down toward the other soldier, and then back at Benjamin.
“Put it down or I’ll fire.”
“Shoot!” Ezra yelled from the stream. “Shoot him!”
Benjamin didn’t take his eyes off the soldier. “You heard me.”
“What will you do?”
“Put it down and I will let you walk out of here.”
“Shoot!”
The soldier stared at the pistol, and then at Benjamin. The front of his red coat was covered with grass stains and sweat ran down his dirty face. He let go of the muzzle of his rifle and it fell to the ground. Slowly, he turned and began walking away through the woods. His hat was on crooked and when it fell off he didn’t stop to pick it up. His hair was black, short, and cut unevenly. He was already developing a bald spot on the crown of his head. Once, he glanced over his shoulder, and then began to trot, with difficulty because he was encumbered with so much equipment. He disappeared into the trees in the direction of the Charlestown road.
They were walking down the hill when Mariah hesitated and said, “What’s that?”
Abigail looked back out across the Charles. The land, in its new spring green, stretched toward the horizon beneath an afternoon sky crowded with towering clouds. She looked down the path, thinking that Mariah had caught sight of Lumley.
She heard it then, a faint clap, coming from miles away. The only other sound was the lowing of a cow, grazing well below them on the hill.
There came a succession of claps, more like the crackling of logs in a fire.
“Guns,” she said.
They moved quickly, back along the ridge. The gunfire was constant now, coming from different quarters to the west.
“That’s closer than Cambridge,” Mariah said.
“Yes.”
“It must be a slaughter, my God, it must be.”
Minutes passed. The shooting became constant, moving closer to the vast salt marsh on the far side of the river. There was movement, a line of red, crossing to the Charlestown peninsula, advancing slowly, resembling a snake the way it moved sideways through and around the trees. It was redcoats, but something was wrong with the column, the way it was disorderly and bedraggled. Finally they stopped in the pastures above the Charlestown village, spreading out like a stain along the hillside.
“I don’t understand,” Mariah said. “Who’s shooting?”
“We are.”
“Can it be?”
“Must be. They must be in the woods.” Abigail suddenly needed to sit down. She settled in the grass, and Mariah did the same, leaning toward her as if for protection. Abigail placed her arm around the girl, and could feel the faintest quiver in her shoulders. “They’ve run them out of the countryside.” She stretched out her other arm and pointed. “See that cluster of soldiers at the head of the spit. They’re holding us back. There must be thousands of men. They’re safe on Charlestown peninsula, but trapped. They’ll have to be ferried across the river. By nightfall, they’ll be back here.”
“And then what?” Mariah asked.
“Once in Boston, they’ve no place to go. I don’t know what happens then.”
VII
Bostoneers
THE FOLLOWING DAY BOSTONIANS’ SHOCK AND AWE WERE as great as the redcoats’ exhaustion. Throughout the city there seemed to be no order. Drunken soldiers were everywhere; but there was also a peculiar stillness. It was eerie, this quiet, more threatening than the rattle of drums and the stamp of soldiers’ feet during a parade drill. Commerce was sporadic and there was a reluctance to gather in the streets, yet rumors abounded: dozens of British soldiers were said to have been killed and several hundred wounded. There were stories of their anguished cries during the night as they were ferried over from Charlestown. The provincials suffered losses as well, though it was generally believed that they had fared better than the redcoats. And there were outlandish stories about provincials being slaughtered in their beds; houses and entire villages put to the torch. Repeatedly, there were descriptions of women being seen running naked from the redcoats. But there was also word of how, though greatly outnumbered, the militia stood at Lexington and then at Concord, how they fought like Indians, shooting from behind trees and fences and barns, never confronting the British in the open as they pursued the redcoats all the way back to Charlestown. Perhaps, most horrifying, were the tales of soldiers being scalped.
The Latin School was closed, and would remain so for an undetermined period of time. Father shut himself up in his study, and a succession of his Tory friends came calling. Mother served them, but she was often on the verge of tears, worried about what had become of Benjamin.
“He may still be somewhere in hiding,” Abigail said as she helped prepare another tray of tea and biscuits for Father’s guests. “I’ve looked in all his usual places, but—”
“I went to James’s house first thing this morning, thinking he knew something, but he assures me he doesn’t know where Benjamin is either,” her mother said. “The boy has gone and joined them—I know it. He’s got himself out into the countryside and can’t come back.”
Abigail couldn’t deny the possibility. But then she said, “If anybody can slip back into Boston, it’s Benjamin.”
Her mother took the tray down the hall to Father’s study. Abigail went into the parlor, where she stopped at one of the windows. Corporal Lumley was walking down School Street and when he reached the house, he paused at the front stoop.
Abigail quickly went into the hall, opened the door, and said, “What is it you want?”
“I’m billeted just there.” He said, pointed down the street. “And—”
Abigail came out on the threshold. “You were following me yesterday.”
He appeared uncertain, embarrassed. “I meant you no harm, Miss.”
“You’ve done enough already. Now go, go away from my house.”
She stepped back and began to close the door, but hesitated when he reached inside his red tunic and produced an envelope.
“This is for you, Miss.” Now he nodded in the direction of the house where he was staying. “He sent a messenger this morning, saying I was to deliver this to you personally.”
“Why you?”
“I cannot say. It’s all a muddle now.”
“Who’s it from?”
He only held the envelope out to her. “I m
eant no harm, I assure you. The other night, it was most inappropriate.”
“Corporal Lumley, you search my brother’s hat, you have the temerity to assist in the search of my person in the most improper fashion, and then you follow me up the Trimount.”
He only lowered his head as though to acknowledge that this was abject behavior. “I wished only to speak to you, Miss. And now this messenger comes from the colonel, requesting that I—”
“The colonel?”
“Colonel Cleaveland. Seems he made inquiries and learned that I—” Once again, he nodded toward the house he was staying in farther down School Street. “The messenger he says, ‘The colonel has learned that you knows the schoolmaster’s daughter and he expects that you’ll make delivery of this.’” Lumley gazed down at the envelope, which he still extended toward her. With a shrug, he added, “So says I, ‘Yes, I know where Master Lovell lives,’ and here I am, as instructed.”
“Didn’t Colonel Cleaveland go with the expedition to Lexington and Concord?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“It’s about my brother.”
“That I cannot say. I have no knowledge of the contents of this letter.”
“Are you sober, Corporal?”
“Indeed I am.”
He seemed in earnest; different in some way that she couldn’t fathom. Also, his extended arm appeared to be growing tired, which gave her a little satisfaction.
“You are pathetic, sir.”
“I offer no rebuttal, mistress.”
Abigail snatched the envelope from his hand, stepped back, and shut the door hard.
The demands of her parents’ guests were immediate. She tucked the envelope inside Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, which was on the shelf in the parlor, and then went about the business of assisting her mother. The afternoon wore on, and it wasn’t until early evening that her duties were concluded. Her father was still locked away in his study, and her mother, exhausted in her rocking chair, had dozed off with her needles and yarn in her lap.