Prelude to Glory, Vol. 1

by Ron Carter

  “What’s moving on the Back Bay?” John asked softly.

  “Six British officers finished supper at the Crow’s Nest about eight o’clock but didn’t go back to their barracks. They went on down towards the old commissary on the Back Bay shore, near the Common.”

  John nodded and Tom continued.

  “You remember the longboats they beached and repaired two weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where they are. Question is, why did they go to those boats tonight?”

  “Anybody else there?”

  “Maybe sixty, seventy regulars. Came sneaking in the dark.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Dawes. Revere. Maybe Warren.” Tom stopped to wipe at his nose with his sleeve. “But that’s not all. Earlier Gage ordered the marines and light infantry off regular duties until Gage says different.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw a copy of his orders.”

  “How?”

  “We got friends close to Gage.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “They’re standing down? Why?”

  “Not standing down. Doing something hidden. Don’t know what it is. And one thing more.” Tom’s eyes became intense. “A citizen sneaked down to the officers when they was working on them boats and delivered something small, from his coat pocket.”

  “A message?”

  “That’s how I’m thinkin’.”

  “Any idea who it was?”

  Tom shook his head. “I was south and he came and went from the north. I couldn’t get around the soldiers in time to catch him in the fog.”

  “Are the streets still crowded?”

  “Hah!” Tom grunted. “You know how it is. That Port Act the British laid on us has half the men in town out of work, and they’re still in the streets, surly and looking for trouble. If they don’t open the harbor soon, there’ll be blood spilt on the cobblestones.”

  John let his eyes drop for a moment. “How many boats?”

  “Over twenty.”

  John made calculations. “Enough for maybe five hundred men and their arms?”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  John pursed his mouth as he pondered. “Are they sending a major force inland? We better take a look.” He paused to glance at Tom. “Are you hungry? When did you eat last?”

  Tom shook his head impatiently. “Don’t matter. We need to be about our business.”

  John strode back into the house. “I’ll be gone for a while,” he said to Margaret. “Lock the doors and turn out the lights and go to bed as soon as I leave, except for Matthew. I’ll tap on the window when I get back.”

  Matthew asked, “Am I going?”

  “Not this time. You sit in the dark and listen. Once an hour walk outside and take a look. Don’t go to bed until after two.”

  Margaret marched across the room to confront him. “Off at night like a common spy, with a hundred soldiers hoping for a reason to take you. Aren’t the Provincial Congress and that accursed Safety Committee enough for you?”

  “There’s no danger. I’ll be back before morning.”

  “You are not taking your musket!” It was an order, not a question.

  “No.”

  “Does Tom have his?”

  “No. Get Brigitte and go to bed.” He picked his hat from its peg on the rack by the door, paused to look back at Margaret, then was through the door and gone. Behind him, she stood framed in the light with her arms folded across her midsection until she could no longer see him, and then she closed the door.

  He raised his coat collar against the damp chill as he and Tom closed the gate and turned south. They walked silently, quickly through the night, watching, listening, pausing at the intersections of the crooked, narrow cobblestone streets to peer ahead. Twice they crouched behind hedges while men walked past, and then they hurried on, working steadily south and west towards the Commons and the waterfront on the Back Bay.

  “Feel it?” Tom whispered.

  “Feel what?”

  “The wind’s rising. It’ll move the fog out.”

  Through the mist they heard the lapping of the rising tide against the pilings of the wharves and rocks before they saw the choppy black waters of the Back Bay. Tom stopped suddenly and pointed upward. The moon was a disc behind the wind-driven fog streaming past its white face.

  Tom pointed with his chin. “Revere’s over at the foot of Beacon Street. The boats are between Beacon and Hollis, at about Fox Hill. We go up Pleasant to the shore and work north to Fox Hill.”

  John nodded and they crouched low and moved slowly up Pleasant Street. The dark buildings became increasingly shabby, then turned to abandoned derelicts.

  Tom stopped twenty feet short of the rocks that lined the shore and raised his arm to point north. “Up there. Hear?”

  The muffled sounds of restrained cursing and grunting reached them. Ahead, something hard struck the hollow hull of a longboat and the sound echoed, unreal in the fog.

  “They’re doing something with the boats,” Tom whispered. “Shall we go closer?”

  “Where’re the sentries? Did you locate the sentries earlier?”

  “No.”

  “We don’t move until we know where they are.”

  With the wind rising, they settled down to wait. The moon became less obscure, then cleared and shined. The fog thinned in the wind and then it was gone, and the great panorama of the Boston Back Bay lay before them bathed in the brilliant silver light of a full moon that cast a sparkling white bridge across the wind-driven, choppy waters and silhouetted the ships.

  To the north, the lights of Boston gleamed. To the northwest, the muted night lanterns of half a dozen anchored British transport ships that had carried British troops from England showed dull, moving rhythmically with the rolling of the rising tide. Farther north the high lanterns of the British man-of-war Somerset undulated slightly as the great ship rode the incoming swells. The Preston and the Boyne flanked the Somerset in squadron formation to seal up the single narrow passage that gave deep-water ships access from the Atlantic to the Back Bay, the soft, vulnerable backside of the Boston Peninsula. Loaded for war, they rode deep in the water. Beyond the warships, farther to the north, the lights of Charles-town twinkled on the mainland.

  Tom led John north, creeping among the rocks while the lapping high tide covered any sound as they crouched behind a smooth, massive boulder. Tom crept to the edge and slowly looked beyond. For several seconds he studied and counted, then drew back to allow John to look.

  Twenty yards to the north, along the shore, John counted eighteen longboats already launched, held by uniformed soldiers standing to their knees in the backwater. Farther on a dozen soldiers grasped either side of the remaining four boats and on signal marched them into the water, then turned and splashed ashore. The broad white bands that crossed on their chests showed dull against the red coats, black in the moonlight, and their tall, pointed hats lent an unreal cast to their heads.

  The officers in charge gave signals and the regulars slung their muskets, then clambered into their assigned boats, four men to the boat, including officers. The fifth man remained in the water, braced against the boat to launch it on command. Inside the boats, men set the oarlocks, then raised the huge oars, wrapped in sailcloth to silence them, and dropped them chunking into the locks. The men in the water bowed their backs and heaved, and slowly the beached boats inched forward as the mud released them, and then they were all free and floating while the men scrambled dripping from the water to take their places.

  Tom watched intently as they maneuvered into formation. “North! They’re strung out headed north!”

  The boats hit a rhythm and moved steadily towards the black shapes of the men-of-war. Hushed calls were exchanged and lanterns appeared on the high-riding decks, and hawsers dropped over the railings and uncoiled in the night. Half an hour later all twenty-two boats were secured under the sterns of the ships, and the officers and troop
s had disappeared into the holds.

  A minute later John whispered, “Did you hear any sentries leave?”

  Tom shook his head. “Too much wind. I think they all got into the boats.” He wiped his dirty sleeve across his mouth. “One way to find out.”

  He stood upright and strode boldly thirty yards up the shore, visible for two hundred yards in the bright moonlight. “Anybody there?” he called. It echoed slightly and died, and there was no sound above the wind and the driven water. No one challenged. No musket cracked. John trotted after Tom as three figures rose from the rocks near Fox Hill and came running.

  “Who’s with you, Tom?” came a tense voice.

  “Revere, is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got John Dunson.” They waited for Paul Revere, who stopped before them, breathing hard. He was flanked by two men.

  “How many boats did you count?” Revere asked.

  Tom recognized William Dawes, but studied the third man. “Who’s this?”

  Revere glanced back. “Peter Sheffield. Messenger from Menotomy.”

  “Been with you all night?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Someone delivered something to the British officers a while ago. Maybe an informer.”

  “We saw him come and go,” Revere said, “but we couldn’t follow him because of the sentries. It wasn’t Sheffield.”

  Tom nodded. “Beggin’ your pardon, Sheffield. No offense intended.”

  “None taken.”

  Paul Revere looked at John. “How many did you count?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “How many men?”

  “Four or five per boat. Maybe a hundred in all.”

  “I calculated a hundred and ten. Any idea what they’re up to?”

  “Getting ready to move troops across the Back Bay. Probably Lexington.”

  Revere nodded emphatically. “I agree. We better get the committee. You get Thorpe and meet us at Warren’s house in one hour. I’ll get Palmer and Watson.”

  John nodded and drew his watch from his vest and turned it to the moonlight. “It’s about twelve-fifteen. Warren’s house in one hour. Be careful.”

  Ten seconds later the shoreline was vacant and silent as Revere moved east and Tom led John back south to Hollis, then east towards the Common. They crossed Clough Street, and Tom quickened his pace beneath the great boughs of lined oak trees that blotted out the sky. Suddenly he stopped and crouched, and his right hand slipped beneath his coat and drew his knife from his weapons belt. Two steps behind, John stopped, searching, probing. Ten seconds passed, and then John heard it. The whisper of someone moving through high grass. Tom tensed and pointed, and John peered into the deep shadows. There was a faint flicker of movement, and then it was gone and silence closed in.

  “What was it?” John whispered.

  “Someone watching us.”

  “British?”

  “Not in uniform. Maybe the same man who brought the message to the officers. Want me to try for him?”

  John considered for a moment. “Can’t. We’ve got to get to Warren’s.”

  Without a word Tom slipped his knife back into its worn leather sheath with the Huron quill and beadwork, and moved on eastward, then angled south. Fifteen minutes later he stopped at the door of Doctor Henry Thorpe, John beside him. There were no lights within. John rapped lightly at the door, waited twenty seconds, then rapped again. Tom faded back into the shadows and disappeared. The window beside the door suddenly glowed dimly and a strained voice came from within. “Who’s there?”

  “John Dunson and Tom Sievers.”

  Instantly the door opened and Thorpe—wrapped in a night robe, slender, barefooted, hair askew—faced John. Thorpe held a lamp shoulder high and peered at John wide-eyed. “John! What’s wrong?” he inquired.

  “The British are moving at the Back Bay.”

  Tom appeared behind him from nowhere and John turned.

  “No one out there,” Tom said. “We’re all right.”

  John turned back to Thorpe and in terse sentences explained what they had seen on the Back Bay.

  Thorpe asked, “What do you propose we do?”

  “The committee—those we can get—is meeting at Warren’s home at one-fifteen. Can you come?”

  Thorpe glanced back into the darkness of the room behind him. “Do you want to go ahead or wait?”

  “We’ll wait out here.”

  Five minutes later Thorpe walked out, and Tom led them rapidly through the dark streets until they stood at the back door of a darkened home. Three minutes later they were seated at the large table in the study of Doctor Joseph Warren, where a single lamp cast dim light and long shadows on the wall. The windows were covered with thick black drapes.

  The name of Joseph Warren was third on the British list of men to be instantly seized and thrown into prison should war break out. Only two were considered greater threats: Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

  Thoughtful, educated, charismatic, respected, wise beyond his years, Warren openly strode the streets of Boston, hot and loud in his passion to throw the galling yoke of British tyranny from his beloved Massachusetts. He had publicly thrown down the gauntlet to General Gage himself. “Arrest me if you dare, but count well the price before you do, for the day I am in British irons is the day ten thousand of my countrymen rise and drive you into the sea.”

  Warren studied the strained faces of the eight men around his table, glowing yellow in the lamplight. “Revere says they took twenty-two longboats out to the men-of-war,” he began, “and we don’t know why. So let’s back up a little. Gage got fresh troops from England ten days ago, grenadiers and marines—the best the British have. Now he’s suspended them from all regular duties and got longboats into position. What does that tell us?”

  “They’re going after Adams and Hancock,” Thorpe exclaimed.

  “Or the cannon and munitions at Concord, or both,” Watson said.

  “He knows the arms are at Concord,” Warren answered, “but he doesn’t know where at Concord. I doubt he’d go after them, because he’d have to tear down the entire town to find them and dig up half the county for the ones that are buried.” He paused. “Would he do it?” He studied his hands for a moment. “Maybe. I doubt it, but maybe. If he’s decided to move, it’s more likely he’s after Adams and Hancock.”

  Tom’s eyes moved from one man to the next, studying, while Warren continued.

  “If that’s his game, and he’s decided on boats, they won’t go south across the Neck to Roxbury, they’ll move across the Back Bay, but then which direction? West through the farms and backroads past Cambridge, or north on the main road past Charles-town, on to Mystic and Menotomy?”

  For a moment no one spoke.

  Tom broke the silence. “Across the Back Bay to Lechmere Point, then up the backroads past Harvard College and Cambridge and on north. He won’t move troops on main roads where everybody’ll see. He’s scared of the militia and the minute companies.”

  Warren shook his head. “People at the college and Cambridge will see.”

  “Not if he moves silent, at night, on secret orders.”

  For a time no one spoke while they pondered whether Tom had guessed Gage’s plan. Their thoughts leaped ahead, and suddenly each tensed as their minds reached the single question that had become a great, dark cloud hovering over the colonies.

  Warren cleared his throat and put it to words. “Is this the act that triggers war?”

  There it was! After five years of hot, face-to-face confrontation between the colonies and the British, the question lay naked on the table before them like a thing long awaited but too quickly arrived. They recoiled, recovered, then tentatively, hesitantly approached it.

  Thorpe spoke, alarmed. “It’s too soon. We’re not ready. The militia isn’t trained, or organized, nor armed well enough. We are not yet ready to take on the strength of the British army. Not yet.”

  All eyes turned to him and he co
ntinued.

  “We must have time!” His balled fist thumped the table. “Gage intends forcing it now, on his terms. Take Adams and Hancock, and get our cannon and munitions at Concord if he can, and he has us. We won’t have leadership or weapons.” He stopped to shake his head. “It will be months before we can even hope to stand up to the cannon and muskets of the British regulars.”

  “What are you proposing?” Palmer asked in the silence that followed. “Let him take Adams and Hancock, and our stores?”

  “No! Deal with him. Go to him and offer to give up some cannon and gunpowder, but not all.”

  John’s mouth became a straight line, and Warren leaned forward on his elbows. “And what about Adams and Hancock?” Warren asked.

  Thorpe shrugged. “Tell him we don’t know where they are.”

  Warren shook his head. “He knows we do.”

  “Keep moving them. Tell Gage we can’t control them.”

  “Gage won’t ask where they are. He’ll demand we produce them.”

  “Tell him we can’t.”

  “He knows better.”

  Thorpe dropped his eyes and fell silent.

  Palmer looked at Revere. “You’ve been carrying messages, you and Dawes. You know the temper out in the countryside. What do you say?”

  Paul Revere looked at William Dawes for a moment before he answered. “If the British go after Adams or Hancock, or the munitions, our people in the country will fight whether they’re ready or not.”

  “What if we gave part of the cannon and powder to Gage to save Adams and Hancock, without a fight?”

  Revere’s forehead wrinkled in thought, and the silence held until Tom interrupted.

  “I’ll tell you. Our militia would have the bunch of you in irons as traitors by nightfall, and go looking for Gage. The war would start right here in the streets of Boston, whether or not our people are well enough trained and armed. They’d storm the men-of-war in the harbor and burn ’em. Blood would flow like water.”