Angels & Patriots

by Salina B Baker

  “How am I going to sit through a political meeting? I’m worried about my men.”

  “Perhaps the men at the meeting will have news. It may not ease our minds, but it may alert us to what we have in store on our journey to Concord.”

  Joseph was gifted with a rare laugh from Colm. “I’ve got a lot to learn about working with human men during times of war. Ya should be in command—not me.”

  Despite Colm’s laugh, Joseph heard the shame in his friend’s voice.

  The haunting quiet along the road to Menotomy was a stark contrast to the loud discussion of the news of war on the streets of Menotomy. As Joseph and Colm made their way to the Black Horse Tavern, wagons filled with families fleeing town to safer havens and militiamen marching toward Concord, passed them on the streets.

  In John Hancock’s absence, the members of the Committee of Safety looked to Joseph as their chairman. Benjamin Church and Paul Revere were in attendance. Paul had managed to make it safely to Menotomy after John Howell and he delivered John Hancock’s trunk to the safe house. Benjamin had escaped Boston an hour before the messenger arrived at the Warren home to alert Joseph of the latest news.

  Colm was pleased to see Fergus among the attendees. Fergus, however, didn’t stay long. He rode off to Watertown to meet up with the militia there.

  While the committee discussed their business, messengers came and went with the latest news. The committee members hoped that the British had fired the first shot in Lexington as that would justify the actions the Americans were about to take.

  Colm’s need to be with his men and his anxiety over their well-being grew as the morning dwindled. Still, he sat quietly by while Joseph did what he needed to do as a man and a patriot. Colm left the meeting when Lord Hugh Percy’s troops marched through Menotomy. He mounted his horse and, from a distance, followed Percy’s column.

  Fifteen minutes passed before Joseph noticed Colm was gone. He asked Benjamin to stand in for him as chairman for the remainder of the meeting, and then left the tavern.

  Paul followed Joseph outside and stopped him before he mounted his horse. “Are you sure it is wise for you to be with Colm?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Paul sighed. He and Joseph were longtime friends. Joseph was the grand master of the St. Andrews Masonic Lodge of which Paul was a member. They were fellow patriots, and Sons of Liberty. Paul knew Joseph’s brother, Dr. John Warren, and remembered the now deceased Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Warren. Paul’s first wife, Sarah, had died within weeks of Joseph’s wife. His children played with Joseph’s children.

  “You are not thinking with a clear head,” Paul cautioned. “Not in regard to the archangel. Colm’s first allegiance is to his men. Our cause is secondary. Who do you think he would choose if he had to make a decision between his men and us? Between his brother, Michael, and you?”

  Joseph and Paul regarded one another in silence for a moment.

  Paul said, “You are already deaf to my words. Why?”

  “I know you have been tolerant of the angels because there is no other choice. However, I would venture to say that some of us have found a kinship with them. I cannot predict Colm’s decisions any more than I can predict your decisions, my old friend.”

  Joseph mounted his horse.

  “I pray that God keeps you safe,” Paul said. He saw doubt in Joseph’s eyes. “I shall also pray that your archangel keeps you safe.”

  Joseph spurred his horse and galloped out of Menotomy. He took a little-known crossroad leading from Watertown to Lexington where he encountered Fergus and his Cambridge-Watertown militia marching toward Lexington.

  “Colm has left me,” Joseph confessed. “He must be on this road.”

  “He’s here. He’s lagging on the left flank.”

  Joseph turned his horse to find Colm.

  “Wait,” Fergus said.

  Joseph halted his horse.

  “It’s his way to take on the shame and the blame so that we, and now you, do not have to bear that burden. We were, and still are, incapable of helping him because we aren’t his equals. But you—” Pain clouded Fergus’ eyes, and lines marred his handsome face. “—you can help him, Joseph.”

  “Fergus, I am but a man. How can I possibly help God’s creation?”

  “You too are God’s creation.” His blue eyes held Joseph in an angelic embrace. “Go to him.” Then Fergus spurred his horse and galloped to his place at the head of the militia formation.

  Joseph urged his horse into a gallop. He saw Colm lagging behind the formation and drew his horse up beside him. “Please, Colm, speak to me,” Joseph implored.

  The anguish that radiated from Colm’s eyes hurt Joseph so bad that he winced. “They’re in pain. They’re afraid. They’re separated. They’ve seen Henry,” Colm said. “I can’t linger here. Come with me.”

  No matter if you choose Michael over me, if that is what it comes down to, I will still stand with you, Joseph thought. Curse you, Paul! Why did you insinuate that Colm would be forced to choose between Michael and me? Why did you try to place doubt in my heart?

  Colm’s guilt-ridden spirit perceived it as a sign that Joseph harbored doubts about their friendship. The pain of that doubt tormented him and he lost control. The reins tangled in his hands as he tightened them into fists. Green light shot out from his body in all directions. Golden light flashed like distant lightning. His horse reared to rid itself of its rider’s terrifying authority.

  The hair on the back of Joseph’s neck bristled in response to a faint current of static electricity. His mare whinnied and cast one fearful eye at Colm’s horse, but Joseph did not hesitate. He reached up and snatched the reins on Colm’s horse. He jerked them downward and toward him so the rearing horse would have less leeway.

  Ahead, like the faraway sounds of a dream, Joseph heard men shouting and horses whinnying.

  Colm’s horse reared again. The leather reins slipped through Joseph’s hands and burned the palms. The horse tried to bolt off to the right and into the woods. In the madness, Joseph could not confirm if Colm was still on his horse.

  Joseph was yanked from his saddle. He tried to release the reins of his own horse, but the leather reins refused to slide from his sweating and bleeding palms. There was no pain when his body slammed into the road face down. For a moment, the lack of pain made him believe he was dead. He blinked to clear his eyes of dust, and spit until he felt like he was no longer going to choke on the dirt in his mouth.

  The bedlam calmed. Joseph rose slowly. Horses trotted in hypnotic circles. Fergus’ purple aura tinted the men, the horses, the woods, and the road. Fergus had ripped the reins from Joseph’s hands and broken his fall.

  Colm was on his knees; his magnificent wings were unfurled. Silver crystals showered the road and drifted into the woods. Fergus sat beside him like a father waiting to take a sick child into his arms.

  The members of the Cambridge-Watertown militia were kneeling in the silver crystals. Many were acquainted with Colm Bohannon and the men who lived on the farm with him in Roxbury. The manifestation of Colm’s heavenly embodiment was stupefying.

  Joseph kneeled beside Colm. In a pleading whisper, he said, “You must tell me what has happened so I may help you.”

  Colm’s eyes were bright with mania. He didn’t understand how to react to Joseph’s plea. In the thousands of millennia of his existence, Colm had never had anyone say those words. Confessions and protection were his provinces.

  “Let him help you!” Fergus insisted.

  Although Fergus had no authority to issue an order to an archangel, Colm heard Fergus’ words and took them to heart. He doused his aura and said, “I heard Brandon pray to me for the second time this morning. Henry has Ian. I’m unable to tell if Ian’s been hurt because I can’t sense him.” His confession calmed him somewhat. His wings fluttered and with ethereal delicacy, they became volute, and furled into obscurity.

  Fergus’ eyes drifted to Joseph so he could calm his p
anic before speaking to his archangel. “We will find Ian.” Fergus looked at Colm. “Despite what Seamus thinks, I will not turn my back on any of you.”

  Colm took strength from Fergus. He let the last of his angst evaporate and then got to his feet.

  Sensing his calm, the two did the same.

  Fergus ordered the awestruck militiamen to rise.

  As they rose, not one man shifted his eyes away from Colm. With all the confusion that had surrounded Colm’s display, the men were unaware that Fergus had been emanating a purple aura. With Joseph and Fergus by his side, Colm let the children of man do what they needed to do to ease their awe.

  Gideon Eldon, a shaken twenty-five-year-old sergeant, asked, “What have we just witnessed?”

  Seth Walters saw unbridled innocence in Colm’s eyes. Like Captain Levi Chitwood, Seth had had a vision of the archangel Michael, but his hadn’t been frightening. As a child, he’d seen a painting of Michael hanging in the home of the rector of the Anglican Church in New York.

  Seth smiled. “Do you not see, Gideon? One of God’s most transcendent creations is among us.”

  Afraid, Gideon fueled his boldness from Dr. Warren’s presence and took a step toward Colm.

  Fergus stepped toward Gideon.

  Gideon paid him no mind. “Why would you frighten us with such a display of power?” he asked Colm.

  Colm’s eyes flashed.

  Gideon stepped back until he was well behind the group of awestruck militiamen.

  A forty-five-year-old veteran of the French and Indian war, Sergeant Abe Rowlinson, was acquainted with Colm and his men. Abe was not easily shaken by chaos and unexplained phenomenon. It was not only the display of Colm’s power that had frightened the other men, it was also the words Major Driscoll and Dr. Warren had exchanged with Colm as they kneeled on the ground.

  “Colm, you accidentally revealed who you are, did you not?”

  Colm’s jaw tightened.

  Abe was undaunted. “You were under duress from news you received regarding Ian Keogh. I heard you speak his name. What has happened to him?”

  Colm realized that Abe’s concern was genuine. “Ian’s been captured by the British. They may have mortally wounded him.”

  Abe understood Colm’s evasiveness. He was convinced Colm was an archangel because the pain he saw the archangel suffer hurt his soul. He wanted to reach out and ease Colm’s turmoil. The urge to do so seemed strange.

  Colm said, “Brandon O’Flynn was with Ian. I don’t know where he is now.”

  “Then we must find them,” Abe said.

  “Major Driscoll, I wish to ask something before we move on,” Seth Walters said.

  Joseph intervened. “Listen to me,” he whispered to Colm. “We are facing unknown peril. Not just this day—but all the days to come. Man or angel, we are facing the same enemy.”

  Colm looked away.

  “Look at me.” Joseph insisted.

  Colm looked at Joseph.

  The men of the Cambridge-Watertown militia stood silent as they watched the inaudible exchange between Colm and Joseph.

  “I saw the expression on Abe’s face,” Joseph said. “He knows what you are, and he sees your affliction just as I do. Seth knows what you are. He just needs to hear it from your lips. These are deeply religious men. You and your angels can give them the hope that God is on their side—”

  “—our presence has nothing to do with hope.”

  “That makes no difference. Let them have their beliefs.”

  “It’s a lie.”

  Joseph sighed. “Perhaps, but it is not a lie you told. It is a lie man has passed on for thousands of years. It is all we have to cling to in a world where life and death hold no answers to our existence.”

  Colm’s jaw muscles quivered.

  “You are an angel. Give them comfort,” Joseph pleaded.

  Fergus saw the faraway look in Colm’s eyes, and thought, he has given in to Joseph. He nodded at Seth as an indication to ask his question.

  Seth gathered his fortitude and faced Colm. Colm’s eyes flashed. Seth did not back away. “Are you one of God’s archangels?”

  Why is this so difficult? Why was I able to admit it to Joseph without feeling like a martyr? His wings rustled. “Aye, I am.”

  There was murmuring and sighs of relief among the militia.

  “Fergus was once under my command,” Colm said to Seth.

  “The purple light was his,” Seth said. He felt a rush of happiness.

  Gordon Walker, the free black man who had come to Colm at the Greystoke Inn, stepped forward. “Colm, tell them why you and your angels are here.”

  The question took Colm off guard. He regarded Gordon for a moment. Then, he turned and went to soothe his horse.

  Abe Rowlinson challenged Gordon. “Why do you not tell us why the angels are here, Mister...?”

  “Gordon Walker.” He decided to keep Colm’s secret until the day brought its conclusion. “I venture to say they are here to fight beside us as rebels and Americans.”

  Abe eyed Gordon with doubt, but he remained silent.

  Fergus ordered the militia to fall into formation. Lexington awaited them no matter whether they were human, angel, or demon.

  Joseph mounted his horse and urged the mare to fall in beside Colm’s horse. The archangel’s jaw muscles formed small mounds, but he was calm. His tone was set when he said, “I’m riding ahead, Joseph. I think now ya wou’d be best served by staying with the militia.”

  Joseph laughed. “Say it plain. You think my safety is better served with the militia.”

  “Aye.”

  “I do not need your protection, Colm. I’d be part of this fight whether you were here or not.”

  “No, Joseph. The war ya wou’d wage if I wasn’t here wou’d not include demons.” He spurred his horse into a gallop.

  “You are wrong, Colm,” Joseph whispered to the retreating figure. “You are wrong.”

  Twenty-two

  Concord, Massachusetts

  Concord and Lincoln had been on the alert since Dr. Samuel Prescott galloped to spread the warning that the regulars were out, after eluding Major Edward Mitchell’s patrol.

  While the Concord militia assembled, a saddlemaker, Reuben Brown, was dispatched eastward to Lexington to gather intelligence. He witnessed the initial firing from the far western edge of the green and hurried back to give the alarm without waiting for the outcome.

  But there was no doubt doom was on its way to Concord.

  Unlike in Lexington, there were men designated as being able to assemble and march in the shortest time possible. These men converged upon the town and reported immediately to their captain, David Brown. Twenty-three-year-old Corporal Amos Barrett was one of those minutemen. He took his captain’s orders to march to Lexington.

  From the Concord town square, an abrupt ridge flanked Lexington Road for about a mile. Where the ridge leveled off into the surrounding plain, they heard fifes and drums and saw the British regulars coming. The minutemen were ordered to about face. They marched back to Concord to the intimidating pulse of their own fifes and drums.

  As the minutemen fell back, there was debate about whether the militia should form and defend the town or withdraw to surrounding high ground to both learn the regulars’ intentions and to await the arrival of more militia.

  The commander of the combined Middlesex County regiment of the militia, sixty-four-year-old Colonel James Barrett, advised the latter and his counsel prevailed. Colonel Barrett led them across the North Bridge over the Concord River, and up to the high ground of Punkatasset Hill, a mile north of Concord Common.

  At 8:00 a.m., Colonel Francis Smith’s men marched into Concord unopposed and came to a halt opposite the long rectangular common. From the common, the main road curved north through town toward North Bridge. The British commanding officers assessed the nearly 500-armed militiamen and minutemen assembled on the hills on the other side of the river.

  General Henry H
ereford and Captain Robert Percy, joined Colonel Smith as he assessed the situation. The colonel was unsure why a general he didn’t know was riding in his rear guard, and it irritated him. He took note of the horse Robert was leading and the man draped across the horse’s neck.

  “Who is that?” Colonel Smith asked Robert.

  “He attacked General Hereford as we left Lexington,” Robert said. “I was forced to stop his aggression. I thought it was best that he was not left to die on the road.”

  Colonel Smith huffed. The pungent odor of depraved death that clung to General Hereford stung his eyes and caused them to water. The colonel sat up straighter in his saddle and tried to pull in his rotund belly before he issued a clear sign of disgust by purposely pinching his nostrils together.

  Hereford favored Smith with a broad smile, and thought, the human man Henry Hereford will die tonight, and I will be rid of this stink.

  Smith did not return the smile. He shivered under the gaze of Henry’s yellow-green eyes, and then shook the feeling off. You disgust me, Francis thought, then he moved on to pressing matters.

  “Captain Parsons!” Colonel Smith shouted.

  “Sir!” Leslie Parsons answered.

  “Take six companies to the bridge to the north. Then take three companies on to the Barrett farm beyond the bridge. We have intelligence that powder and other munitions are hidden there.”

  Smith, you bastard! You are overtly bypassing my command after what happened in Lexington, John Pitcairn thought as Parsons attended the colonel.

  Leslie Parsons was an adolescent-faced young man of twenty-six years. He smirked as he hailed his companies into formation. Pitcairn confronted Parsons. The two men conducted a short-lived standoff of wills.

  Captain Parsons marched off for the North Bridge with six companies of light infantry. The hundreds of militiamen and minutemen assembled on the hills near the bridge watched as Parsons marched three of the companies across the bridge to Colonel Barrett’s farm.

  This was the move Henry anticipated, and he, Robert, and William Sutherland accompanied Parsons. A month ago, General Gage, at the urging of Henry, sent Ensign Henry de Berniere and Captain John Brown on a clandestine mission to search for munitions in Concord. There was a stockpile at the Barrett farm. But at the bidding of the Committee of Safety, Paul rode to Concord on April 8 to warn of the British movement detected by the Sons of Liberty at Boston Harbor. The only muskets still at the farm had been planted, by Barrett’s sons, in a recently plowed field.