by Ron Carter
Saturday July 29th, A.D. 1775
The Monarch, the King of England
Your Royal Highness King George:
Begging your forgiveness for this unwarranted intrusion upon your Honorable Self, I humbly beseech you to consider my serious and most likely fatal plight.
My husband of twenty-four years, Doctor Henry Thorpe, lately of Boston in the colony of Massachusetts, in the face of much danger which I shall explain shortly, and with no thought for personal gain, repeatedly affirmed his absolute loyalty to King and Flag by risking his all in the cause of maintaining the right and the authority of the Crown over the colonies of New England. Finding himself in the Massachusetts legislature, and a leader on the Committee of Safety, he repeatedly delivered sensitive and vital information to General Thomas Gage, Governor of Massachusetts appointed by authority of Your Self, thus affording the good General opportunity to avoid many catastrophes.
Because of my husband’s unswerving loyalty to the Crown, he was lately banished by Massachusetts courts, for life. As a consequence, I and my three children are now destitute, in want of the most fundamental of human needs. We are without funds for the necessities of sustaining life. The children weep daily for food. I am unable to write of the unbearable pain and daily conditions we now face.
I most humbly beseech Your Most Gracious Majesty to consider my condition, which can be confirmed by the slightest investigation of your loyal forces in Boston, and to find in your generous heart to allow myself and my children a small stipend sufficient to our basic needs, to relieve us of the unbearable conditions now existing in our lives. All through consideration by your Kind and Merciful Self for the unselfish service rendered to your cause by my husband, Doctor Henry Thorpe.
Signed,
Phoebe Thorpe
She blew on the letter until the ink had dried, folded it, sealed it inside an envelope, addressed it, then slipped it into the center desk drawer, locked it, and returned to her bedroom with the key.
In the parlor, Billy rose from his chair, leaning on his cane, eyes alive with anger. “What will you do Tuesday morning when that sergeant comes for you?”
Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe demand someone come with me as a witness.”
“Who? A British soldier?”
Kathleen shrugged her hopelessness. “That may be better than no one at all. All I know is, I must keep the work.”
Billy’s voice shook with rage. “If that officer touches you . . .”
Kathleen’s shoulders trembled for a moment with silent sobbing before she regained control. The sounds of the children in the hallway stopped, and they appeared in the archway to stand wide-eyed, silently inquiring.
Kathleen quickly wiped red eyes and forced a smile. “I’ll be there in a minute. Go on back.” They disappeared.
Billy started for the door. “I should go, but I’ll be back. I have to think on this.”
“Why did you come?”
Billy looked at her for a moment, puzzled, before he understood the question. “Oh. Nothing. Brigitte had a question.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Is there a way she could get food in to that officer, Buchanan?”
Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t know. Is it important?”
“Forget it.”
Billy reached for the door handle. “I’ll be back. Kathleen, please, please let us help. Money. Food. Take you to church. Anything.”
She shook her head firmly. “You’re not going to ruin everything for yourselves by helping the Thorpes. We are unclean. Traitors. Lepers. Banished.”
He saw the bitter pain and the humiliation in her, and he could not stand it. “We don’t care!” he exclaimed.
“I do!” she said.
He dropped his eyes for a moment and regained control. “I’ll be back. Try not to worry.”
At three o’clock p.m. Tom Sievers rapped on the back door of the Dunson home and Margaret opened it, holding it against the thrust of the howling wind. Tom entered, Caleb right behind, a rasp and screwdriver and hammer in his hand.
“Storm’s coming,” Tom said, “before nightfall.”
“Rain with it?”
“A howler. Rain, lightning, likely. The axle on the well’s fixed.”
Caleb dipped water from the water bucket and drank. “’Bout blew us away.” He walked back to his room.
“Laundry’s on the table,” Margaret said to Tom. “Thank you for letting Caleb help. He needs more of that.”
They both heard the faint rapping and stopped to listen in the sound of the wind at the doors and windows and the whistling in the chimney, and Margaret walked briskly to the door.
“Come in, Billy, before you get blown away. What brings you?”
“Is Brigitte here?”
“Asleep. Got home from the bakery half an hour ago. Why?”
“She had a question.” Billy stopped and his eyes dropped from Margaret’s, and she saw the turmoil in him.
“What’s wrong, Billy?”
Tom picked up the stack of folded laundry. “I ought to take my leave, ma’am.” He started for the door as Billy spoke.
“It’s Kathleen. Something happened at the British base this morning.” His eyes dropped and he would not look directly at Margaret. “I hardly know how to talk about it.”
Tom stopped with his hand on the door handle.
Margaret slowly sat down at the table. “You better tell.”
Billy began, hesitantly at first and then rapidly as his anger rose. Margaret sat still, listening intently. She clapped her hand over her mouth in shock as Billy finished, unable to form a sentence.
Suddenly Tom was beside Billy. “What was the man’s name?”
Billy looked up. “McMullen, I think.”
“What rank?”
“She called him Major.”
“What building was his office in?”
“She said the records building, whatever that is.”
“Did she say what he looked like?”
“Only that he was a little shorter than she. His uniform was immaculate.”
Tom dropped his laundry back on the table and spun and started for the door.
Margaret bolted from her chair. “Tom, what are you thinking? Tom, you come back here!”
Tom did not stop. He slammed the door as he darted out into the howling wind.
At four-thirty the torrential rain came rolling in from the Atlantic like a wall. Great bolts of lightning raced through the clouds, and thunder shook the ground. By five o’clock the streets of Boston were vacant and locked into an eerie darkness. Leaves and small branches were ripped from trees and whipped through the town, to be plastered against homes, buildings. By five-fifteen, half a dozen great branches had been shattered and were down in the streets, rolling crazily, knocking down fences until they smashed into a home or a building and stopped.
At the British base, the great copper laundry tubs had long since been blown from the wooden stands to roll clanging, tumbling across the compound, against the officers’ quarters and west wall. The sentries had moved inside the gates and locked them, and stood with their backs against the wall, hunched over, heads down, holding their hats and muskets. The flag had been retired when the rain broke; the parade ground was utterly deserted. Lights showed in the windows of all barracks, and some of the officers’ quarters; some officers were still in their duty offices, waiting for a break in the storm so they could go to their quarters.
At five forty-five, in the gathering gloom of the howling storm, no one saw the thin form of a man slip over the center of the east wall, nor did anyone see him sprint to the front of the office buildings and check them one at a time until he came to one with the sign “RECORDS” printed above the door. Inside the building one light remained burning. The man disappeared into the low bushes along the front wall of the building. At six-twenty the light extinguished, a moment later the door opened, and a rather short man stepped out into the maelstrom. Hi
s immaculate uniform was instantly drenched. He hunched his shoulders against the wind and slowly, carefully made his way to the building marked “OFFICERS’ QUARTERS.” Three minutes later a light flickered on in the corner window of the second floor.
At ten-thirty the last light in the officers’ quarters extinguished. At eleven o’clock Tom Sievers forced the front door, unheard in the shrieking wind, and closed it quickly. Two minutes later he struck flint to steel and nursed the spark to a flame and read the name on the door of the corner room on the second floor: “MAJOR AVERY ROY MCMULLEN.”
He waited until he saw lightning flash in the window at the end of the hall, and the instant the thunder boomed he kicked the door open. A moment later he was inside the room, the door closed behind him, and he stood still, waiting for the next lightning flash to take his bearings in the dark.
A high-pitched, terrified voice came from his right. “Who’s there? Is someone there?”
Tom neither moved nor spoke. He heard the squeak of the lever lifting the chimney on a lamp and he drew his knife and crouched, ready, and at that moment lightning raced through the heavens over Boston and for three seconds the entire peninsula was lighter than midday.
In those three seconds, Tom saw McMullen, sitting bolt upright in his bed, hand working with a lamp on his bed stand.
McMullen saw a figure standing in the center of his room, dripping wet, clothes plastered to his thin frame, hair wild, beard scraggly, eyes dark hollows in his head. The knees were flexed, right arm extended, and in the right hand McMullen saw the unmistakable glint of light on the steel of a drawn knife blade.
An instant before the thunder clap shook the building, Tom heard the gasp, and the strangled attempt to cry for help was lost in the cracking thunder, and then Tom was at the man’s bedside with his left hand locked onto the man’s throat. He jammed the head back onto the pillow and dropped to one knee and brought his face down close.
“Do you remember Kathleen Thorpe?” Tom’s voice was thick with rage.
There was no answer, and Tom smacked the cold flat of his knife blade against the man’s cheek.
“Do you?”
“Yes, yes,” came the choked, terrified answer.
“Never talk to her again. Never look at her again. Never say her name to anyone again. She is coming back to her work Monday and you will do nothing. Do you understand?”
Tom relaxed his stranglehold on the man’s throat enough for the answer.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man that’ll cut your heart out if you don’t leave her alone.”
Lightning flashed and the room lighted and McMullen saw Tom’s face crouched over his own, and for an instant he saw Tom’s eyes.
“Yes!” he blurted. “Yes, I understand.”
Thunder rolled as Tom backed away, and when the next lightning flashed, McMullen stared at an empty room. For a time he sat in his bed without moving, struggling to decide whether the awful minutes had been real or dreamed, and then with trembling fingers he lighted the lamp on his bed table. The center of the carpet was soaked wet in the middle of the room and at his bedside, and the doorjamb was splintered around the lock. McMullen loaded his pistol and wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in a chair in the corner throughout the night.
The storm moved inland and the lightning and thunder dwindled and died, and the Sabbath sunrise became a spectacular light and shadow display of golden shafts through purple clouds.
Phoebe insisted the family attend church at the North Chapel where they were less known, and Kathleen was busy with the children when Phoebe stopped at the door to offer her congratulations to the reverend for his sermon. She passed him an envelope and some currency, which he took, and nodded.
When Billy and Dorothy Weems returned from church, Tom was waiting at their gate.
“Tell Kathleen to not worry. McMullen won’t bother her again.”
______
Notes
The battle commonly known as the Battle of Bunker Hill actually included Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. The battle was fought on June 17, 1775. British gunboats in the mouths of both the Charles River and the Mystic River bombarded the American entrenchments on the hills, and when American snipers were observed in Charlestown, the British cannonade continued until Charlestown was in flames and virtually destroyed. General Sir William Howe, under orders of General Gage, directed the British troops. General Israel Putnam and Colonels William Prescott and John Stark were prominent in the leadership of the colonial forces. Colonel Stark later played a critically important and heroic role in the battle of Trenton and subsequent battles, as will be shown in volumes yet to come in this series. General Joseph Warren, heroic patriot and renowned leader in Boston and Massachusetts, was killed while defending the breastworks with other colonials at the top of Bunker Hill. (See Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 144–63.)
Reference is made in this chapter to the petition drawn by Phoebe Thorpe (actually the wife of Doctor Benjamin Church in history) and sent to King George of England, wherein she requested support for herself and her children as compensation for the services of her husband to the British Crown. The petition was granted, in the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds, a generous sum at that time. There is some evidence the pension was later reduced to one hundred pounds, presumably per year. While the substance of these events is true, the novel’s necessarily limited scope prohibits a full accounting of the entire episode. For purposes of our story, the incidents are depicted within a much-reduced time frame. (See French, General Gage’s Informers, p. 158.)
January 1776
Chapter XXI
* * *
The four seamen on the four o’clock a.m. watch hunched their backs against the howling east wind that whistled through the ice-laden rigging of the Esther and plastered the backs of their heavy oilskins with stinging sleet and clogged their beards and brows with ice. The small schooner pitched and wallowed in the white-capped forty-foot waves, and her timbers groaned with the relentless wrenching of the wild January Atlantic storm, twelve miles off the northern coast of Massachusetts.
They had long since strung safety ropes inside the ship’s railing, and the helmsman had tied himself to the ship’s wheel, while the watchmen lashed one-inch ropes around their midsections and looped the other end around the nearest mast, with enough slack to allow them to reach the rail and no more. Standing at the rail, the watch hunched forward, eyes straining to pierce the black envelope of night that hid the peaks and valleys of the mountainous whitecaps.
On eleven prior missions the Esther had brought back British prizes taken on the high seas. On this, their twelfth search, they had sailed into the teeth of a killer Atlantic storm, with winds freezing salt spray and turning sails into frozen slabs. Captain Weyland cursed and ordered her about to run with the wind back to a safe harbor until the storm passed. He and first mate Riggins and Matthew clustered about the helmsman, as they had through the night, nerves tight as they held the ship on the east-northeast course Matthew had calculated when the storm broke and the heavens sealed. They were running for Newburyport, sailing cautiously and blindly, on Matthew’s reckoning and instincts, with but one sail unfurled on the mainmast.
The entrance into the harbor was bordered on the south by the tip of Plum Island and on the north by two shoals, the first one two miles from the rocky coastline, the other less than one mile. The tip of Plum Island was above the water surface, but the shallow shoals were not. Belled buoys were anchored on both of them to warn away the unwary. No one knew how many tall ships had gone to watery graves with their hulls ripped open by the hidden granite rocks of the Newburyport shoals.
Twenty minutes before the gray of dawn the seaman on starboard bow watch tensed and his eyes narrowed in the gray-black gloom. He leaned forward, mittened hands clutching the ice- covered rail. Visibility was less than twenty yards, but he thought farther out he had caught a glimpse of a great, ghostly shape in the slanting sleet, closing wit
h the Esther. A moment later he jerked straight and turned and worked his way back to the group of officers and thrust his head close to Weyland’s ear to shout in the shrieking wind, while Riggins and Matthew crowded close.
“Sir, a ship close, starboard, likely a man-of-war.” The man pointed.
Weyland recoiled. “Sure?” he bellowed.
“Sure.”
“Her heading?”
“Same as us, sir—east-nor’east.”
Weyland’s eyes narrowed in hurried thought. “Back to your post and keep me informed.” He turned to Riggins. “Get every hand on deck and unfurl the mainsail on the mizzenmast. Get the starboard cannon loaded.”
Riggins gaped. “Sir, load and shoot in this weather?”
“Load! I can’t come back to give the order to fire, so when we pass her, fire as our guns come to bear amidships and try to hull her below the waterline!”
Riggins started for the gangway as Weyland turned to Matthew. “Know where we are?”
“Close. About eleven miles east of Newburyport, if my guess on wind and currents is good.”
“Locate those shoals and keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir!”
Weyland worked his way to the starboard bow while the crew set the mizzenmast mainsail, and the Esther responded. The cannon crews threw sail canvas over the cannon and huddled under it to ram the powder measure home, then the cannonball, and prime the touchhole. They shoved loose cotton in the muzzles to stop the sleet, and rolled the guns forward and blocked them in firing position, with one man still under the canvas with the match.
Clinging to the rail with one hand and a safety rope with the other, Weyland and the seaman on watch rode the pitching bow as it rose high, then plunged until the bowsprit was awash and the freezing seas slammed into their knees, and the bow was again thrust upward, forty feet above the whipping waves. Minutes passed while the black of night softened to purple, then to deep gray, and visibility in the wind and sleet extended to fifty yards, then eighty, and suddenly Weyland’s arm shot up, pointing.