Prelude to Glory, Vol. 1

by Ron Carter

  He paused in silence so thick it was nearly palpable, then spoke again. “You haven’t talked about the worst problem you got.”

  Warren’s voice croaked as he spoke. “Which is what?”

  “The temper of our own troops. Not Gage’s. Ours.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “They’re past waiting. They’re looking for an excuse. I think Gage just gave it to them. They won’t tolerate a deal with Gage. So you’ve got a choice. Either you lead them into this, no matter how badly trained or badly armed they are, or they do it without you. That’s the only decision you got to make.”

  In shocked silence the eight men stared at Tom. No one moved for a full half minute.

  “It’s true,” John said quietly. “This committee is sworn to provide safety for our towns. We must slow this thing down for a time if we can, until we’re better prepared, or we must lead our people into it if we can’t; but whichever it is, we do it now or we step down.”

  Warren leaned forward on his forearms and all eyes fixed on him. He spoke firmly, decisively. “The time has come. Gentlemen, may God bless us in the plans we must now make. Revere, you have a hard ride ahead of you tomorrow. Adams and Hancock are at the home of the Reverend Jonas Clarke in Lexington. Do you know the place?”

  “I do, but it’s the Sabbath.”

  “God and Jonas Clarke will both understand. Adams and Hancock must know everything and you’re the one to go tell them. Now, let’s get on with a plan.”

  The moon had set before Warren doused the lamp and opened the back door of his home, and the eight men quickly disappeared in separate directions into the sleeping town of Boston. Tom led John back through the darkened, quiet streets, crouching but once, knife in hand, at a movement in the shadows.

  The black sky had become deep purple in the east when Margaret heard the soft rap on the bedroom window, and she felt the tension drain as she realized John was home. She silently passed through the kitchen to the back door and swung it open. John entered and quickly closed it, and put out the lamp.

  “Did anyone come while I was gone?”

  “No.”

  “Did Matthew see anyone outside watching the house?”

  “He thought he did once. Nothing came of it.”

  John walked silently through the dark room, and moments later sat on the bed working with his shoelaces, Margaret seated beside him.

  “What happened?” she asked pensively, clutching her robe closed at her throat in the dim light.

  For five minutes John spoke in low tones. When he finished, Margaret sat with downcast eyes, staring unseeing in the darkness.

  Finally she spoke. “Why do you have to do these things?” she asked. Her tone was not accusing. It was filled with a sense of baffled wonder, and behind it lay her worst fear—that one day he would not be there.

  John hesitated, then chose his words carefully. “I believe that, somehow, all this is happening for a reason. Sometimes I think I see part of the reason, but not all. What little I do understand reaches something inside of me that I cannot deny.”

  Margaret slowly shook her head. “It’s happening because the British want to keep the colonies.”

  “I think that’s part of the plan.”

  “Yes. Their plan.”

  “No. Not theirs, and not ours. A higher plan.”

  Slowly Margaret raised her eyes to his. In them she saw an earnestness she had never seen before and a depth of conviction that chilled her. She knew that the foundations of John’s life were his family—her and the children. All he thought, all he did, was for them. If that was true, then why was he risking it all in this impossible business of provoking the British? Thirteen fledgling, untested, disorganized colonies, defying the power of the greatest nation and strongest military force on the face of the earth! Ridiculous! And why? They had every good thing life offered. Why put it all at risk? Why? Confused in her heart, she said nothing as she hung her robe over the chair beside the bed and slipped beneath the thick goose-down comforter.

  John turned out the lamp and stretched out beside her. He drew the comforter up and let out all his breath. He did not look at her, but he knew she would be staring at him in the darkness, unable to control the panic that had risen in her heart while he was out in the fog, moving among the British, then meeting in secret to help form a plan to push the British into the sea. He did not know how to talk to her about it, so he lay on his back in silence, waiting.

  A time passed, and he felt the tension drain and his muscles began to relax before Margaret’s voice came whispering in the dark. “Is the committee expecting war? Did they make a plan for war?”

  John searched for a gentle way to say it, and could fine none. “We made a plan to defend our citizens. It’s possible that could lead to war.” He finished and lay waiting for her response.

  A long time passed while he listened in the black silence to her measured breathing, and then her voice came low and subdued. “John, I’m frightened. Hold me.”

  ______

  Notes

  The John Phelps Dunson family is essentially fictitious, although loosely based on one or more families living at the times depicted. Tom Sievers is also fictional, although his life is based on that of a real person.

  Among the most reliable and respected historical accounts of the affairs portrayed in Part 1 are those of the renowned historian Allen French in his two works General Gage’s Informers and The Day of Concord and Lexington (see the bibliography).

  The critically important “Committee of Safety” was created by act of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in October 1774, and was charged with the responsibility of acquiring arms and ammunition to be used on a moment’s notice to resist British aggressions and of providing safety for all citizens. From this beginning, the term minutemen evolved, being first used on November 24, 1774, in the “Journals of the Congress.” (See French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, p. 21.)

  The chronology and substance of the events described between the evening of Saturday, April 15, 1775, when Bostonians noticed British regulars working their way to the Back Bay and launching the longboats, and the night of April 19, 1775, when the battles of Concord and Lexington concluded, are historically accurate (see French, The Day of Concord and Lexington and General Gage’s Informers).

  The names of those on the Committee of Safety as given in the novel are accurate (see Birnbaum, Red Dawn at Lexington, p. 82).

  Among the British men-of-war stationed at Boston were the Somerset, the Boyne, and the Preston (see French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, p. 80; Miller, Sea of Glory, p. 25).

  Sunday, April 16, 1775

  Chapter II

  * * *

  The wind died in the gray of dawn, and the Back Bay calmed. For a few moments the sun’s first rays set high clouds afire. Jays and robins scolded from trees. A dog barked. A rooster cocked its head and saluted the morning, and hens came clucking, button eyes searching for grain in a chicken yard. A Jersey cow with one crooked horn stood by a milking shed, patiently waiting for relief for her dripping udder, while her calf bawled its displeasure at being held in another pen to be weaned. Bells clanged on ships in the harbor, changing the watch.

  The snows and winds of the Atlantic winter were past for another season, and green things were awakening from their sleep. The first plowing and planting had been done in the countryside, bringing the scent of fresh-turned earth that mingled with the salt smell of the ocean, each with its promise of bounty for those willing to labor. People swept life’s troubles into a guarded corner of their minds, to wait until their souls had tasted the renewal of life sufficient to once again pick up their load and trudge on.

  Margaret padded silently through the kitchen in her heavy felt slippers and house robe, and quietly opened the back door. For a moment she stood in the door frame and gloried in the beauty of the fresh, clean, pristine morning, dew sparkling in the sun’s first light. She stepped onto the brick pathway and glanced at
the cherry and apple trees that bordered the white picket fence to her left. The buds were bursting their hulls, and the green leaves and white blossoms were peeking out, stretching, impatient to get on with their wondrous transition to full, rich fruit. In the flower beds beneath, the tulip bulbs so carefully planted by Brigitte in unconventional patterns and color schemes had pushed upwards to the warmth of the spring sun, and the green pods were splitting to reveal full blossoms in a breathtaking mosaic of red and yellow.

  Margaret looked at the great oak tree at the rear of the spacious yard, a full sixty feet from base to top. The tree had grown with the family, and it seemed to her that the great, spreading arms now embraced the entire yard with a sense of comfort and security. Thirteen years ago, John and Matthew had built a circular bench around the massive trunk, and it soon became the special place for the entire family. The bench that girdled the old tree had witnessed the hushed whispering of secrets, the remorse of confessions, the mending of hurts, the laughter of excited children at play, the silent, somber reflections of troubled minds, and the first kiss of true love four years ago, when Matthew had secretly led Kathleen from a family supper to the bench and awkwardly kissed her, a quick, wide-eyed peck—the first for both of them. Neither of them could look at the other for the next two days at school without diverting their eyes while they blushed, and neither of them could sleep for two nights, remembering the sweet, stunning shock of it.

  Margaret smiled with the remembrance of John and Matthew working with the saw and hammer and measuring tape to build the bench. At age eight, Matthew was so excited with self- importance at doing a man’s work that he was everywhere, into everything, wide-eyed, peering constantly into his father’s face, seeking any hint, any sign of approval. John grinned ruefully the second day as they put away the tools and came to the kitchen for supper. “Much more help from Matthew and that bench will take all year,” he muttered. “You think you’re building a bench?” Margaret retorted. “You’re building a man.” John smiled and never again spoke of the nuisance of working with the children.

  She glanced at the greening shrubs along the fence to the right and at the thick grass in the yard with its first showing of yellow dandelions. Even the sunken root cellar six feet from the back door, with its pitched roof, was grass covered. The shingle-roofed well, with its circle wall and oak windlass, stood in the near right corner of the backyard; in the far right corner stood the outhouse, with the brick path leading to its door. The house and the well and the outhouse, all brick, were whitewashed every second year by John and the boys.

  For a moment her eyes took in the wood yard, as John called it, to the right of the door. One cord of soft yellow pine and one cord of cured maple were cut to kindling size and stacked against the rear wall of the house. Pine burned quick and hot, maple slow, and each served a purpose in the chores of the day. The scarred, battered chopping block stood close by, and the single-bitted axe, handle shiny from use, and the one-man crosscut saw with the turnbuckle to adjust blade tension hung from their pegs on the wall. A household of seven required an unending supply of firewood; John had cut it all until Matthew was of age, and Matthew cut it until last year when Caleb had come strong enough to set cured logs on the sawhorses and cut them into eighteen-inch rungs with the saw, and then swing the axe with enough authority to split the rungs into kindling. The chips were raked and gathered into a pan and carried with the clean white kindling sticks to the wood box by the gaping entrance into the great fireplace. At day’s end Margaret banked the live coals to hold their heat in order to start the cooking fires the next morning, and so the fires never died, and the wood box had to be refilled each evening. Brigitte was assigned to sweep the daily ashes into a brass bucket to be dumped into a large box outside, where they were picked up monthly by the ash man in his large, horse-drawn, two-wheeled cart. He delivered them to the smelly soap factory near the east docks, where they were leached and cured, mixed with lye and tallow, and fashioned into large yellow-brown bars of strong laundry soap.

  Margaret drew deeply at the sweet air and casually, thoughtfully, walked the brick path to sit on the bench beneath the oak. How she treasured the quiet solitude of earliest morning, before any of the children were awake, when she could let her mind run free and unfettered to sort out and make sense of the troubles and problems that had piled up during the daily rush. Occasionally, in good weather, she would simply sit motionless on the bench and reflect in the peace and quiet while gray and red squirrels chattered and scurried; other times she chose to sit in her own clean, familiar, orderly kitchen—her kingdom, her dominion—where she knew the deep joy of preparing the food that fed the bodies of her family, a task she performed with the love that fed their souls. In those private moments the night faded in the light of a new day, and reality drove away the demons, and problems dwindled, and life become manageable once again.

  A somberness crept over her now as the remembrances of the night came flooding. John and Tom gone—the British on the Back Bay—a midnight meeting with Warren and the Committee of Safety—plans—muskets under the pantry floor—all of it shaping into a head-on, armed confrontation—war. John among the leaders—Matthew at risk. War, war, war—it echoed relentlessly in her brain.

  And there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it, change it, protect her own. Always, always, she had found a way to stand between her nest and trouble. But now, facing the most unthinkable threat of all—the possibility of losing John or Matthew—she was utterly helpless. There was no remedy for the dark foreboding that had wakened her an hour ago, trembling and sweating from dreams of them dead on some distant battlefield.

  She sat for a time, searching for an answer that would not come. Then she squared her shoulders and released a great breath and stood and drew her robe tighter and looked towards the house with firm, practical New England resolution.

  There’s nothing I can do about it, and breakfast will not prepare itself and beds will not make themselves and children won’t be ready for church by themselves. She pursed her mouth. There’s no rest for the wicked, and the righ-teous don’t need it. I wonder which I am.

  As she retraced her steps towards the kitchen door, an unexpected thought suddenly emerged and a wry smile flashed. I wonder if Homer Ellers will be at church this morning, after Brigitte wounded him last Sunday.

  Small, dour, supremely confident in his pseudo-intellectualism, Homer had made the mistake of challenging a casual remark made by Brigitte about geography and politics. “The Azores are too far from American shores to be of significance to the colonies,” she had said.

  “Not so,” Homer had chortled. “Their strategic location is important to all Atlantic navigation.”

  Brigitte rounded her eyes in humble surprise and retorted, “Oh, I forgot! They certainly are important to navigating Cape Horn.”

  Homer glowed. He had corrected Brigitte Dunson, brightest of the bright. “Precisely what I had in mind,” he said grandly, his chest expanded and his nose too high.

  “Of course,” Brigitte continued, loudly enough for anyone within thirty feet to hear, “it would be helpful if someone would move the Azores from the North Atlantic to the tip of South America, where Cape Horn is located, don’t you think, Homer?” Giggles tittered as Homer reddened and his face fell.

  What’s to be done with that girl? She’s affronted half the respectable boys in Boston with her brain and sharp tongue. She’ll be a spinster if she doesn’t stop humiliating them. And this business of girls wanting to go into nursing and accounting and all—what’s this new generation coming to?

  She remembered well the hours she and John had spent, talking far into the night in their efforts to dissuade Brigitte from plunging into nursing before she even understood what life was about. They had finally struck a compromise. She would remain at home for one year to help Margaret. If she still felt compelled to go into a profession, they would discuss it again.

  Margaret entered through the back door int
o the parlor and plucked the leather bellows from its peg on the wall near the fireplace. Patiently she worked the oak handles to pump air against the banked coals, gently at first, then stronger as sparks flew and flames licked. She placed shavings, then larger pieces of split, dried pine, then maple, then the big rungs on each of the four fires in the great opening. She hung three fire-blackened kettles on the arms, dipped water from a bucket into two of them, and set the lids.

  She carried a broad, shallow copper pan out the back kitchen door and lifted the heavy door to the root cellar, descended the five steps, and selected a cabbage, carrots, and turnips. Climbing the steps back to the light and sounds of the beautiful morning, she found a smile tugging despite the dark shadows that had ridden heavy. She set the vegetable pan on the worktable and returned to the root cellar for the gallon jar of cool milk to be poured into the one empty kettle to scald. With the Thorpes coming for dinner, there would be a clamor for her famous custard.

  She chuckled and shook her head at the remembrance of how the invitation had been extended to the Thorpes for today’s dinner.

  It had happened the previous Sunday. The Reverend Silas Olmsted—aging, slight, round-shouldered—had droned through his colorless sermon, and services had ended. The austere, high-ceilinged South Church chapel was buzzing with the usual exchange of greetings and news and gossip while the congregation patiently filed out the high double doors into the churchyard. Matthew and Kathleen were lost in each other as they worked their way towards an oak tree near the corner of the churchyard. Henry Thorpe’s eyes narrowed in satisfaction as he watched them go, and his wife Phoebe smiled modestly. The four younger Thorpe children were chattering as they tugged and romped with Adam and Priscilla and Caleb. Henry and Phoebe were chatting with John and Margaret while they waited until Matthew and Kathleen returned, and the families started on their way home, the Thorpes leading the way, since they lived two blocks past the Dunson home. Before they had cleared the churchyard, Matthew suddenly trotted ahead and called to Henry Thorpe, who stopped and turned, puzzled.