Angels & Patriots

by Salina B Baker

  Captain John Chester, the man who had just finished his mid-day dinner in Cambridge when Israel Putnam’s son Israel, Jr, rode up to tell him of the news on Bunker Hill, led his company across Charlestown Neck. All around them, provincial soldiers were hiding behind boulders and haystacks and trees. Twenty men gathered around a wounded man who did not need twenty men to assist him, and then retreated through the Neck. Others were retreating without any explanation or excuse.

  Israel Putnam was still on Bunker Hill when Captain Chester and his company arrived. Chester’s eyebrows knitted together in doubt and disgust when he asked Colonel Putnam why he and his men were not amongst the fighting.

  “The artillery is gone, and they stand no chance for their lives in those circumstances,” Putnam whined. He thought of Dr. Warren stopping to ask him where the fighting was the hottest. Even to a battle-worn, rough and tumble soldier like Israel Putnam, Joseph’s handsome face seemed to glow with angelic light in anticipation of the answer.

  “Are you taking command?” Israel had asked Joseph. “They have no officers to lead them.”

  “My major general commission has not been finalized. I have come to fight as a volunteer.”

  Captain John Chester watched Colonel Israel Putnam reflect on something that he hoped would haunt Putnam forever. He called for his company to move on.

  As they marched toward Breed’s Hill, they came under heavy cannon fire from the HMS Glasgow and HMS Symmetry anchored off the peninsula in the Charles River. Dead rebels lay in the surrounding fields. A middle-aged farmer died in sight of Captain Chester and his men when a cannonball separated his head from his body.

  Still, the company from Connecticut kept marching toward Breed’s Hill.

  The new line of British grenadiers approaching the redoubt decided to switch from a bayonet assault to a firearms assault. They halted to load their muskets. This sudden stop caused the second line of grenadiers to stumble into the first. Then, some of the men disobeyed General Howe’s orders and fired at the redoubt. This confused jumble of soldiers became an excellent target for the rebel soldiers.

  They also provided a clear view of their simmering orange eyes.

  “Oh Lord!” Jeremiah muttered as Howe’s demon-possessed men reorganized their lines. He leaned in toward Gordon and asked, “Are you seein’ what I’m seein’?”

  “Yes, and we’ve got to tell Colonel Prescott to change his firing orders.”

  They waded through the lines of rebels until they found William Prescott.

  “Colonel, we need ta talk ta you,” Jeremiah said, calmly.

  Prescott was aware of possible demonic possession among the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He had warned Colonel John Stark and Captain Thomas Knowlton of the danger before he sent them on their separate missions near the beach. Prescott couldn’t remember if he had warned the artillery officer, Captain Samuel Trevett, who was near the beach with his cannons.

  “If you have come to tell me about the swarms of demons possessing the regulars, you are too late. I see them.”

  Prescott’s attitude frustrated Gordon. “You have to tell the men to fire at their eyes!” he demanded. “Shooting them anywhere else isn’t going to stop them. We will be overrun by hundreds of demon-possessed regulars!”

  The renewed sound of cannon booming and musket fire was heard from the beach on the Mystic River, and the HMS Falcon anchored in the waters south of Morton’s Point.

  “What are you waiting for?” Gordon demanded. “These men have accepted the angels! They’ll accept the existence of demons, too. If they don’t, they will die!”

  “The archangel needs to tell them,” Prescott said more to himself than to Gordon.

  “You have to issue the order!” Gordon insisted.

  Prescott considered Gordon’s genuine concern then said, “I will speak to Colm.”

  The angels’ bright auras blinked on and off in the hazy redoubt. As Prescott walked toward them, he imagined being enveloped in a colorful shifting mist. When he reached the angels’ position, he saw Colm standing on the redoubt wall surveying the peninsula. With a clear view of Howe’s possessed grenadiers and infantrymen, Colm was unable to locate Henry or Robert among the British army.

  Prescott shouted for Colm to come down.

  Colm jumped to the redoubt floor beside Joseph. Joseph cast a sideways glance at him.

  “I have been advised to change my firing orders,” Prescott said to Colm.

  Gordon and Jeremiah rejoined the group. Gordon said to Colm, “I’ve been trying to tell him, but he won’t listen to me.”

  Colm’s eyes flashed. “Colonel Prescott, if my men or Gordon Walker or William Dawes or Joseph Warren give ya advice about demons, ya will want to listen. If ya don’t, they’ll disobey ya in favor of what they know to be true. Do ya understand me?”

  For the first time since they met, William Prescott was afraid of Colm. He nodded.

  “Then, give the order,” Colm said.

  Prescott shouted, “ATTENTION! THE FIRING ORDERS HAVE CHANGED!” The rebels quieted down enough to hear their commander. “Demons are among us, and they have possessed quite a number of men fighting here today.” He glanced at Colm, and then continued. “They are recognizable by their orange eyes. If you see them, shoot both eyes out.”

  The men silently looked at the angels.

  “The angels made that clear before the first shot was fired,” Private Peter Brown ventured.

  “You have the order,” Prescott shouted. “Now, you will follow it!”

  Satisfied, Colm turned to jump onto the redoubt wall, but the angels became unhappy and insecure with his movement. Their wings rustled loudly and a breeze swept through the redoubt. The haze of lingering smoke swirled and blew away.

  “Where’re you goin’?” Patrick asked Colm. “You ain’t leavin’ us, are you?”

  Colm touched Patrick’s cheek. “Didn’t ya tell me at Hastings House that ya felt stronger?”

  Patrick frowned and nodded. That strength seemed to have drained away.

  Colm looked at the angels and the men gathered around them. “I have to find Henry and Robert and keep them away from ya—from all of ya.”

  Michael’s blue aura blinked and then went out. He tried to release it to comfort himself, but he couldn’t control it.

  The voices of British officers shouting orders at Howe’s grenadiers and infantrymen filtered through the stifling afternoon. Cannons boomed incessantly from the beach. Howe’s field pieces resumed their assault as his regulars began their march toward the redoubt. A cannon ball arched over the wall and smacked the redoubt floor less than a rod from Degory Bennett and Salem Poor.

  Colm suddenly experienced a contraction of physical pain. He tried to let go of it, but the pain insisted. A woman cried out. Colm recognized her tone and emotions. Mkwa was giving birth to Jeremiah’s son while men were dying on Breed’s Hill at the hands of one another.

  “Jeremiah, your son is being born,” Colm said breathlessly. He winced, and tried again to release the pain of Mkwa’s labor.

  The mountain man ran a hand over his forehead and swept his blond hair away from his rugged face as if the action would clear his thoughts. His green eyes stayed focused on Colm’s obvious struggle to rid himself of the foreign sensation of physical pain.

  Abe thought of his dead wife and infant daughters. Life went on no matter how hideous man, God, or Lucifer were to one another.

  Colm finally succeeded in releasing Mkwa’s labor from his spirit and body. He said, “Jeremiah, it’s time for ya to go home to Burkes Garden.”

  “I cain’t just walk away!”

  “Ya have sacrificed enough for us. Go home to ya family.”

  “You’re my family.” Jeremiah’s eyes traveled to the angels’ faces, then William Dawes, Abe, Gordon, and Joseph. He remembered Joseph’s words the night Colm confessed his failures as an archangel. “My wife died two years ago. I shall never stop feeling the pain of her loss. Do not let M
kwa feel the pain of your loss.”

  “Brandon, can ya still cloak ya aura?” Colm asked.

  “Yes, but I’m not sure how long I can keep it cloaked.”

  “Take Jeremiah to Cambridge to get one of our horses. Then, ride to the farm. Let him have all the ammunition we got left, if any. When he leaves, go into Roxbury, find Fergus, and stay with him until I come to get ya.”

  “I ain’t leavin’,” Jeremiah insisted.

  Joseph said, “Your son deserves to know his father.”

  “What about your children?” Jeremiah asked. “Did we rescue ’em from Boston so they cou’d become orphans while you die in this filthy little fort at the hands of the British?”

  Joseph thought of the baby Margaret was carrying, and his children in Worcester with Mercy. He had no intention of dying today.

  “Put a period to it, Jeremiah,” Colm said. “Ya are making it harder on all of us by refusing to go.”

  “Time’s runnin’ out!” Seamus warned Jeremiah. “The regulars are comin’ as we speak. Get out while you cain!”

  A cannon ball smashed into the redoubt’s left outer wall. Dirt sprayed and avalanched from the point of impact.

  The fear of never seeing his family again paralyzed Jeremiah. His eyes betrayed that fear. It compelled Ian to say, “If Henry’s here, this battle will decide our fate. You can’t change what’s going to happen, Jeremiah. That’s in our hands.”

  Jeremiah knew Ian was right.

  William Prescott growled, “If that fucker Putnam or anyone else tries to stop you at the Neck, tell them they will have to answer to me.”

  He climbed the redoubt wall and walked eastward along the top. Howe’s line of regulars had stopped to dismantle a rail fence that blocked their way. Once they passed the fence, it would be only a matter of minutes before they would be within firing range.

  “Go on,” Colm urged Jeremiah.

  Tears blurred Jeremiah’s vision. He offered his hand to Colm. The archangel grasped it. Jeremiah pulled Colm into an embrace and said, “Come home soon. I want my son ta grow up with his family.” He and Colm tightened their arms around each other for a moment then released one another.

  Brandon wrapped his arms around Colm’s shoulders and buried his face in Colm’s neck where the Sigil of Lucifer was tattooed. He bravely fought off the need to cry.

  Colm sighed, kissed the top of Brandon’s head, and whispered, “Stay safe, and do what I told ya.”

  Brandon nodded into Colm’s neck.

  Jeremiah pulled his skinning knife from the pocket Mkwa had sewn on the thigh of his deer skin breeches. He handed it to Joseph. “Kill as many of them fuckers as you cain.”

  Joseph stared at the skinning knife. The sigil etched in the blade winked in the bright June sunshine. He thought of the night Jeremiah had handed him Ian’s dagger. That night seemed like an eternity ago. Joseph took the knife. He met Jeremiah’s expectant gaze and nodded.

  “Take care of them,” Jeremiah said to Abe and Gordon. They glanced at the angels.

  In their distressed state, Michael’s and Patrick’s wings flapped like baby birds desperately trying to fly away from the beak of a hawk that was about to rip the flesh from their bones.

  Jeremiah turned and walked toward the open back of the redoubt. Brandon cloaked his aura and fell in beside him. “Don’t look back no matter how much you want to,” Brandon whispered.

  The men in the redoubt stood at the ready and waited for Colonel Prescott’s command to fire. The line of regulars was almost upon them. The regulars’ flaming orange eyes made it impossible for the rebels to follow the colonel’s previous order to hold their fire until they saw the whites of their eyes.

  Colm leaped onto the redoubt wall. Gun smoke from the breastworks and the beach on the Mystic River hung in shrouds of thick gray clouds over the peninsula. Cannon thundered and cannon balls whistled through the air as Captain Trevett’s artillery company fired on the column of advancing British infantrymen and Welsh Fusiliers. British cannons answered in kind from the field pieces that moved with the British column, and from the HMS Falcon in waters off the southern tip of the peninsula.

  It seemed strange to Colm that he heard very few men screaming with mortal wounds. The lack of verbal human suffering told Colm that men were dying quickly, or few men were actually dying at all because they were possessed. Perhaps, it was both.

  But his immediate concern was: Where are Henry and Robert? It was difficult to see clearly through the disparate mix of hazy sunshine to the west and the gray smoke shrouding most of the lower peninsula. The confusion of the battle was interfering with his senses.

  Colm saw British regulars advancing from the west near Charlestown where the shroud of smoke was translucent. Colonel Prescott also saw this movement because Colm heard him shouting orders to reposition the rebels so some of them were firing westward. Captain Nutting of the Massachusetts Ninth Regiment and his 100 men were scrambling to position six field pieces north of Charlestown. Behind General Pigot’s grenadiers and infantrymen, and Major Pitcairn’s marines, the archangel found Henry, Robert, and another demon Colm didn’t recognize; they were bringing up the rear guard. The demons had moved their position to confuse the archangel.

  In the back of his mind, Colm heard Colonel Prescott shout, “FIRE!” as Howe’s line of regulars reached the redoubt.

  Colm gave it no thought. The Sigil of Lucifer tattooed on Colm’s neck throbbed in time with his human beating heart. He let the same evil he and his archangel brothers had fought strip him down to the raw warrior he had been when they had battled Lucifer.

  He unfurled his wings and leapt from the redoubt wall. General Pigot, Major Pitcairn, and their troops—more than 700 men—became deranged at the sight of the archangel bathed in green and gold light, bounding toward them, with his imperial silver wings spread wide like a powerful mythical creature. Some of the regulars shot at Colm. Others fell to their knees and bowed their heads. Nearly 300 demon-possessed regulars and marines turned and ran west toward the shelter of their leader and his second.

  Major John Pitcairn felt as if he was reliving the disaster on Lexington Green, but this time, he could not make sense of what was happening. General Pigot was no longer in his sight. What he could see through the gathering powder smoke overwhelmed him. Am I seeing an angel? Pitcairn wondered stupidly as Colm neared the front line of the British soldiers.

  Musket fire abruptly ceased among Pigot’s and Pitcairn’s ranks.

  “Oh God,” Pitcairn breathed. The angel was running directly at him. “I am going to die.” He feared for his son, William, who was among the marines. As the resplendent angel slowed to a stop in front of him, Pitcairn knew his death would not be at the hands of the angel. He fell to his knees with his eyes downcast.

  Colm’s eyes darted over the rank and file of 400 kneeling soldiers. He looked down on the frightened major. The urge to soothe the children of man overcame him. His wings fluttered and stirred a breeze in the hot June air. The kneeling soldiers exhaled cries of fear and reverence in response to the movement of the archangel’s wings.

  Colm bent to touch John’s wet cheek. Before his fingers brushed the skin, John looked up at him with watering blue eyes.

  The trembling major sputtered, “Your angels…were in Lexington.” He inhaled and then exhaled slowly. “Am I…going to die…today?”

  Gold light flashed in Colm’s eyes when he said, “Aye.”

  Major John Pitcairn uttered a cry and vomited. He wiped his mouth with the back of one gloved hand and looked up. The archangel was gone. He got to his feet.

  The sunny June afternoon suddenly exploded with golden light that was so bright he had to close his eyes to keep from being blinded. Electrical currents of gold lightning incited the surrounding air. Hundreds of men screamed in agony and terror. Some pleaded for their lives. Static electricity raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He staggered and turned to search for his son, even if that meant he had to grope each
face like a blind man until he found William.

  The 400 men on their knees were now on their feet. Some had the sense not to run impetuously. Others stampeded the field only to stumble and fall over rail fences, boulders and into ditches.

  Men running past Pitcairn caused him to sprawl face first into the grass. His arms and legs were trampled under heavy booted feet. I cannot die like this! He felt the bones in his left wrist break.

  Cannons boomed. The gold light faded. Hands slid beneath him and lifted him from the ground. The screaming tapered off.

  “Father!”

  John Pitcairn blinked and opened his eyes. Lieutenant William Pitcairn, General Robert Pigot, Captain Andrew Hay, and Captain James Murray surrounded him with concern.

  “Father, are you alright?” William asked.

  John glanced down at himself to make sure he was alright. “I am fine,” he said. He raised his hands to brush the dirt and grass from the front of his brilliant scarlet coat. His broken wrist protested, but he continued through the pain.

  “What happened?” John asked. The stampeding regulars had come to a stop. The dazed expressions on their faces told him that he had not had a terrible hallucination.

  General Robert Pigot shook his head. Blood dripped from a cut over his right eye and streaked his dirty, fifty-five-year-old freckled cheeks. He did not want to be the first man to say it, but he was the senior officer and someone had to say it. “Orange flames ignited in the eyes of at least 300 of our men when they saw the…archangel.” He swallowed hard. “They turned and ran as if Lucifer himself had appeared.”

  Robert Pigot faltered. When it was evident he was not able to continue, Lieutenant William Pitcairn said in a steadier voice, “The archangel ran past our lines, then gold and green light shot out from his body in all directions. The men with the orange eyes, men we all know and have served with, disintegrated.”

  Captain James Murray wondered why William Pitcairn sounded calm as he spoke. They had just witnessed the mass murder of friends and comrades by one of Heaven’s most powerful beings. James had a wife and three children quartered in Boston. His family and he were devoted Christians. What he witnessed today redefined the meaning of God-fearing.