Angels & Patriots

by Salina B Baker

  Jeremiah got up and crawled across both beds until he was able to sit on the edge of the bed beside Abe. “Why do you want Michael to stay near you?” he asked.

  “That’s enough!” Colm ordered. “Ya have freewill, Jeremiah, but it’s not ya place to question me.”

  Jeremiah met Colm’s stare. “It ain’t my place ta stand by you because you’re like a brother ta me? It ain’t my place ta be scared ta death for what’s gonna happen ta all of us? It ain’t my place ta mourn for Liam just like you do?” He ran a hand over his dark-blond beard. “I’m willin’ ta die for you. My unborn son won’t never know me because I’ll die for you. Michael was right. You chose Joseph over us.”

  The moment he said those last words, Jeremiah regretted them, but an apology would be lost on Colm. Of deeper concern was the agonized look in Colm’s eyes.

  Colm’s grip on Michael’s head intensified. His palimpsest tried to surface in order to entice him to break down and cry. He mentally spit at it, like Michael’s habit of spitting at his opponent when confronted. The muscles in Colm’s arm flexed harder and pressed Michael’s face tight against his chest.

  Michael struggled against Colm’s grip. “I can’t breathe, Colm!” His wings rustled, and he pulled at Colm’s arm. “Let go!”

  “Let go of him, Colm!” Abe shouted. “You are smothering him!” He hesitated to become physical with the archangel. It was something he had never done.

  Blue light burst forth as Michael released his aura in distress.

  Patrick scrambled to his knees and without thinking, he screamed, “LET GO OF MICHAEL!” and slapped Colm’s face.

  Colm looked at Patrick through bleary eyes. His arm relaxed. Michael squirmed away and drank in gulps of air.

  Colm and Patrick considered one another in a haze of intense emotion.

  Then, Colm cupped Patrick’s cheeks and said, “Stay away from Henry. If I say run, ya run. Do ya understand me?”

  Patrick’s gray eyes misted, but he didn’t cry. “I understand.”

  Colm patted Patrick’s cheeks and smiled.

  “Brandon said he feels stronger,” Patrick said. “I do, too.”

  Michael’s palimpsest barged in, and like Colm, he shoved it away before it could overwhelm him with emotion. He said to his brother, “I feel stronger, too.”

  Colm let his hands slide from Patrick’s cheeks. He looked at the three boys—Michael, Patrick, and Brandon. “I hope ya are stronger. I hope we’re all stronger. But what I said stands. That includes ya, Brandon. If I say run, ya run.”

  At 9:00 p.m. on Friday, June 16, 1775, nearly one thousand provincial soldiers under the command of Colonel William Prescott assembled on the common in Cambridge opposite Hastings House. Another two hundred men from Connecticut, under the command of Captain Thomas Knowlton, waited near Willis Creek to join them.

  Dressed in homespun clothing with sweat-stained hats on their disheveled heads, the men were less an army than a ragtag group of patriots. They looked just like the militiamen who had fought at Lexington and Concord. They shouldered their own muskets. Some of the weapons dated from before the French and Indian War. Almost no one had bayonets. Many had picks, shovels, and other entrenching tools. Most had blankets and little more than a day’s provisions.

  Abe Rowlinson, Gordon Walker, Jeremiah Killam, Michael Bohannon, Seamus Cullen, Patrick Cullen, Brandon O’Flynn, Ian Keogh, and Colm Bohannon were among the lot. Joseph Warren, Elbridge Gerry, Artemas Ward, and James Otis looked on from the lawn of Hastings House as Reverend Samuel Langdon said prayers in the deepening darkness. The prayers were meant to encourage and soothe the men who, unknown to them, were about to face one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution.

  Under the cover of darkness, Prescott and two sergeants carrying lanterns led the column east out of town. After crossing several wooden bridges, they met up with Captain Knowlton and his company. The word spread like wildfire that angels of God were marching among them, and those angels were known to Colonel William Prescott and Dr. Joseph Warren.

  Colonel Israel Putnam and Lieutenant Colonel Richard Gridley, a noted engineer and commander of the artillery regiment, joined Prescott just before they reached Charlestown Neck. The combined column moved onward until they came to the crossroads at Charlestown Neck and followed the right-hand fork. Their destination suddenly became clear; they were marching toward Bunker Hill.

  The Charlestown peninsula was almost a small-scale mirror of Boston, but with a narrower neck, low rolling hills, and a widening land mass southeast from the neck to the point where the Charles River separated the peninsula from Boston. The ground rose in a series of hills that peaked and then stepped downhill toward Boston. The first of these was a hill 110 feet in height that sloped steeply toward the waters of the Mystic River to the northeast and the Charles River to the southwest. This was Bunker Hill, and there was no question about its name.

  From Bunker Hill, a ridge descended down to a lower, broader hill. There was no common name affixed to it. The fields on this hill were partitioned by stone walls and rail fences. The easterly portions of the hill were used mainly for hay fields and pasturing; the westerly portions contained orchards and gardens.

  Copp’s Hill, in northern Boston, was about twelve hundred feet away across the Charles River. British cannons placed among the gravestones of Copp’s Burial Grounds stared at what would later be known as Breed’s Hill. A quarter mile to the south laid the wharves of Boston.

  As General Henry Clinton had noted, whoever controlled the heights of the Charlestown peninsula controlled much of Boston.

  The waning gibbous moon, rose in the east and began to shed light on the hills above Charlestown.

  It was 10:00 p.m. with dawn set to arrive at 4:00 a.m. In six hours, they were to build a fort before the morning light revealed their efforts to the British in Boston. There was much debate between Prescott, Putnam, and Gridley over where to build the fort.

  “If we place the redoubt here, and equip it with cannons, we can rake British shipping and the British waterfront,” Putnam insisted.

  “I’m in command of this mission,” Prescott retorted. “The breastworks and redoubt are to be built on Bunker Hill. To place a fort in the face of the British is an entirely different undertaking than my orders from the Committee of Safety.”

  “I say we invite General Gage to come out and fight!” Putnam crowed.

  As the colonels argued over the redoubt’s position, Colm and his men stood anonymously within the dark abyss of 1,200 provincial soldiers. The soldiers could not hear what Putnam said to Prescott, but they saw Lieutenant Colonel Richard Gridley begin to lay out gridlines for a redoubt.

  Prescott ordered his men to dig the small fort that was to be 10 rods long on all four sides. The V-shaped front faced Copp’s Hill and did not take into account the defense of the open slopes on the left, which dropped gently toward the Mystic River.

  As his troops dug, Colonel Prescott was afraid they would be heard so he sent a group of sixty men down into the empty village of Charlestown. He also feared that sentries on board the Royal Navy ships in the Charles River would raise a cry of alarm. Near dawn, he heard a routine call from the watch aboard the twenty-gun sloop the HMS Lively report “all is well.”

  Colm and his brotherhood also heard the call from where they were building the breastwork above the redoubt that Prescott’s men were still digging.

  But the rebels’ activity had been heard.

  General Henry Clinton awoke in the bedroom, where John Hancock once slept, with the feeling that something ungodly was about to happen. He rose, dressed, and went for a walk along the streets of Beacon Hill. The absence of wind in that early morning hour amplified the sounds of shovels and pickaxes banging against rocks. The sharp noises bounced across the smooth waters of the Charles River. He returned to Hancock’s house to retrieve his spyglass, and then hurried to the wharfs. He held his spyglass to his eye and, thanks to the bright gibbous moon, saw the
rebels at work.

  “Despicable wretched rebels!” he grumbled. He returned to Hancock’s house to rouse William Howe and John Burgoyne from their beds.

  “What is this about?” Howe demanded as Henry jerked open the curtains that enclosed the canopy bed where he slept.

  “Get your ass out of bed, William! The rebels are up to something on the heights over Charlestown!”

  The three major generals hurried to Province House and roused the entire household by banging on the door and calling Thomas Gage’s name. After some time, a sleepy-eyed black servant, holding one small flickering candle, opened the door. The generals pushed past the servant before he could inquire about the nature of their 4:00 a.m. visit.

  Heavy footsteps thundered down the steps from above stairs. Thomas, Henry, Robert, and Anthony joined the three major generals in the living room.

  Clinton described what he had seen, and then said, “I recommend a landing in two divisions at daybreak to squelch the rebel offensive.”

  Thomas remained calm. “Let us see what the light of day reveals before we throw ourselves headlong into a panic.”

  William Howe looked at Henry Hereford. Henry’s eerie yellow-green eyes glowed with an enticing anticipation of what was to come. He grinned at William.

  William would think later that he should have run from Gage’s house like a scared boy before the events that played out broke his sanity.

  Margaret and her personal maid, Constance, stood undetected on the stairs and listened carefully to the men in the living room discussing the rebels’ activities and their counterattack. As the five generals and two captains in her living room conferred over how to beat the wretched rebels into the ground, Margaret felt a shiver run down her spine.

  Constance turned and ran up the stairs to her bedroom. She dashed across the room and snatched the porcelain wash bowl from the top of the dresser. Vomit spewed from her mouth before she was able to position the bowl to catch it. Locks of blond hair clung to her cheeks and neck in ropy vomit-coated strands. The bowl slid from her hands and shattered on the floor. She sat on the edge of her bed and cried.

  A Plan of the Action at Bunkers Hill

  Thirty-eight

  Breed’s Hill, Massachusetts

  It came gradually—the brightening of the sky in the east toward the islands of Boston Harbor, and the fading of the stars overhead into a gray, increasingly blue sky. A lookout on the HMS Lively heard sounds coming from the heights about half a mile away, and he saw the rebels throwing up a redoubt on a hill at the back of Charlestown.

  As the morning brightened, the provincial soldiers realized that instead of being set back in the height of Bunker Hill, they were on a little knoll overlooking Charlestown. There was nothing to prevent an army of British regulars from landing at the tip of the peninsula and attacking the rebels from their unprotected left. They were alone, already exhausted and sleep-deprived.

  They heard the soul-shattering roar of the HMS Lively’s first nine-pound cannon and knew for certain they had been discovered. The black dot of the cannonball mesmerized the soldiers as it arced through the cloudless sky and then smacked in the nearby ground. Dirt clods flew several yards into the air followed by clouds of brown dust.

  In addition to the Lively’s guns, cannon fire began to pour down upon the rebels from Copp’s Hill. The Breed’s Hill position was every bit as exposed as William Prescott had feared. He saw not only exhaustion in his men’s eyes, but also terror. Israel Putnam had retreated to Bunker Hill with his men, leaving William and his men alone to defend their little redoubt.

  “Colonel, I think it is time we request reinforcements,” Captain Jothan Bond said as the cannonading from Copp’s Hill increased. “After building a fort, we cannot be expected to defend it. We are tired and hungry and have had little else to drink but rum.”

  Prescott’s pride formed his answer. “We are the ones who built these walls, and we are the ones who should have the honor of defending them.”

  Despite Prescott’s optimistic bravado, many men began to desert the appalling ensnarement they found themselves in. His eyes swept over the dirty, tired, and thirsty expanse of his men and thought, if we were where we were supposed to be on Bunker Hill, there would be no need for reinforcements. Damn Putnam for his intervention in my decision making! And now, he languishes on Bunker Hill as if he has nothing to do with our predicament!

  He remembered the conversation he had just two months before with his loyalist brother-in-law, Abijah Willard.

  “Your life and estate will be forfeited for treason if you take up arms against Britain,” Abijah had warned.

  Prescott recollected his response, “I have made up my mind on the subject. I think it is probable I may be found in arms, but I will never be taken alive.”

  From his reverie, Prescott saw Colm emerge from the soldiers building and reinforcing breastworks. The angels, Gordon, Jeremiah, and Abe followed Colm like the apostles of Jesus Christ. Seven hundred men suddenly stopped their work to watch the archangel approach Colonel Prescott.

  The simple country folk, who had come to stand up to the British on this little hill, were inspired, not only by the archangel, but also, by Dr. Joseph Warren’s belief in the archangel. Yet, it wasn’t Colm presence alone that inspired them. It was also Prescott’s determined bravery.

  Colm and William stood face to face while cannon balls whizzed through the hot June morning air.

  “Admit ya need reinforcements, Colonel Prescott,” Colm said.

  Prescott was unafraid of the battle to come, but at that moment, with the archangel’s eyes upon him, he realized the soldiers watching them might feel differently. He swallowed his pride and nodded in agreement.

  “Major Brooks!” Prescott called.

  John Brooks, a twenty-three-year-old doctor from Medford, separated from the dark abyss of clustered soldiers. He slowed his pace the closer he got to Colm. Colm simultaneously frightened and awed him. John trembled as Colonel Prescott disseminated his orders to walk to Cambridge and relay their situation to the Committee of Safety and ask for reinforcements.

  General Henry Clinton wrote in his journal that his advice was not heeded. General William Howe’s far less risky plan, in General Gage’s opinion, was to be carried out. Envelope the rebel redoubt and attack it from several sides simultaneously.

  “As soon as the troops and boats are readied and gathered at Long Wharf, we can transport them across the harbor to Morton’s Point where the water is shallow. We need to be ready to land with the next high tide,” Howe said with an authority that angered Clinton.

  Clinton, however, kept his anger to himself.

  “The next high tide is not until two or three o’clock this afternoon,” Robert pointed out. He had remained subdued since the arrival of the three generals. It was a sham that he would maintain until Henry gave him permission to do otherwise. Robert was certain that permission was about to be granted. He caught Anthony’s attention and exchanged a conspiratorial orange eye-flare with him.

  Howe did not look at Robert. Perhaps the weasel will shut his mouth if I ignore him.

  “I will send word to Major Pitcairn to ready his marines,” Thomas said.

  There was a brief knock at the closed living room door. Without waiting for an invitation to come in, two kitchen maids entered with tea, coffee, beer, and meat pies. Despite the siege Boston was under, the generals were enjoying pies while some of the poorer citizens were literally starving to death. After setting up breakfast, the kitchen maids discreetly exited the room.

  Thomas also left the room then returned after a short time. “Word has been sent to Major Pitcairn, Brigadier General Pigot, and Admiral Graves. The cannons on Copp’s Hill belong to Graves and the Royal Navy. I will meet with him in regard to what kind of protection we can expect.”

  Henry, Robert, and Anthony helped themselves to generous portions of pie and beer. John Burgoyne also indulged in breakfast. William Howe drank beer, while Henry Clinton
poured a cup of tea.

  Thomas neither ate nor drank. He sat in a chair and thought about Margaret’s pregnancy, and what he was sure was Joseph Warren’s involvement in the foray playing out on the Charlestown peninsula. What do I have to lose by letting Howe have his way and do what he pleases with the insurgents? Nothing at all.

  Henry not only saw the look of resignation on Thomas’ face, he sensed Thomas’ fear that Margaret was pregnant with Joseph Warren’s child. It was a delightful discovery on Henry’s part, but it also stirred the realization that the moment to force the archangel to choose between his brother and his pet was at hand.

  “William, my captains and I will accompany you on your mission to defeat the rebels,” Henry proclaimed.

  William Howe glanced at Henry and drank of his beer. Henry seemed much changed since the last time they had met in London. Howe did not care for the change.

  “Of course, we will attend in the capacity of soldiers under your command,” Henry acquiesced.

  Fergus heard the rider thundering toward his headquarters at Dillaway House in Roxbury. He shivered. The news the rider was bringing could not be good.

  Word that the British were planning a preemptive strike on Roxbury and Dorchester had arrived a week prior via Paul Revere from the Committee of Safety. Each day since, Fergus and his officers huddled in long strategic meetings. They had two major obstacles to face: supplies and ammunition. Those obstacles shifted from General Fergus Driscoll to Colonel William Prescott as British General William Howe turned his attention to Charlestown and Bunker Hill instead.

  Fergus and his officers stood on the lawn of Dillaway House and watched Revere rein his horse and jump from the saddle.

  “Fergus…” Paul glanced at the officers. “I mean…General Driscoll, General Ward dispatched me to tell you that Prescott and Putnam were sent to build a redoubt on Bunker Hill.” Paul paused to catch his breath. “Prescott disobeyed orders, and the redoubt was built on the rise east of Charlestown. They are being fired upon from British sloops and cannon from Copp’s Hill Burial Ground, according to Major John Brooks.”