Michael watched the unspoken exchange between his brother and Joseph unfold.
“I’ll saddle up a horse for you, Joseph,” Seamus offered.
Joseph kept his eyes on Colm and said, “Thank you, Seamus.”
“Why do ya both have to act like ya don’t care?” Michael asked Joseph and Colm. He turned and ran down the stairs.
The tension in the room led Jeremiah to say, “I’ll git ready ta go ta Boston.”
Liam sat on the bed beside Ian and said to Colm, “I will stay with him while you help Joseph prepare to leave.”
Colm let Liam take Ian from his arms. He got up and said, “I’ll help ya with the horse, Seamus.” Then, he pushed past Joseph.
Joseph said nothing as Colm and Seamus left the bedroom.
“Colm does not mean to make you feel guilty,” Liam said to Joseph.
“Liam, are you sick?” Ian asked.
Liam continued without answering Ian. “Guilt is a human emotion. He is afraid for you. Do you not understand that?”
“I do.”
“We see the spiritual bond you and Colm have, and it is bright and strong and ardent. We have never seen devotion like that between an archangel and a human. You are fortunate spirits.”
Joseph pressed his lips together in an attempt to keep his emotions from spilling out on a wave of words. He sighed and said, “I see that with a clarity that I thought could not exist.”
“Then tell him where you are going and what you are going to do. Tell him you will be back tonight. Do not let him bear the burden of Ian’s death and my death alone. Do not let him bear the millstone of helplessness without your hands to uplift him.”
“I will be back,” Joseph promised. “I will do everything I can for Colm and Ian; although, I’m only a man.”
“You are so much more than a man. Be careful. The British want you dead,” Liam said.
Joseph’s smiled and said, “When liberty is the prize, who would stoop to waste a coward thought on life?”
After Joseph had gone, Colm went in the house. He started to go above stairs, and then realized that Gordon was still sitting at the table in the living room. Colm remembered that Gordon had been sketching earlier. Now, Gordon was staring at the paper before him. Colm sat down next to Gordon and said, “I’m not sure ya are going to want to stay. Ian’s dying and things might get bad.”
Gordon stayed focused on the sheet of paper. “What things?”
Colm had no answer. This was the first time angels under his care were dying. There was a time when the other archangels had shared stories with him about their own dying angels, and the suffering they had to endure. He had forgotten those ancient stories. He would have to face what was about to happen all over again when Liam died.
“What are ya doing?” he asked Gordon.
Gordon didn’t look up. “I told Dr. Warren that I needed his faith in you angels to figure out how to kill those demons other than putting their eyes out. When I woke up this morning in the barn, and you and Dr. Warren were sleeping near me, I had a vision of this.” Gordon pointed at the sheet of paper.
Colm looked at what was drawn on the paper.
Gordon saw Colm’s jaw flex. “You know what it is, don’t you?”
“Aye. It’s the Sigil of Lucifer.”
“I think you can use the sigil against the demons. Maybe to kill them. Maybe to ward off their evil. Perhaps not Henry.” Gordon raised an eyebrow. “Unless…there’s something you know that I don’t.”
“There are a great many things I know that ya don’t.”
“What I mean is…is there something about Henry that makes you think a sigil will kill him or repel him?”
Colm thought about the confrontation with Henry in 1318 at the Battle of Faughart. Henry’s wrath had sheeted the sky with yellow-green heat lightning. Colm had lacerated the sky with sizzling bolts of golden rage. Two of God’s most powerful creations had collided to form a tempest that had hailed death down on the children of man. Colm doubted that Henry could be destroyed by something as simple as a sigil.
He said, “No.”
“Have you used sigils in the past?” Gordon asked.
“Aye, but not the Sigil of Lucifer. It belongs to my fallen brother. It has no place in the hands of angels.”
“Nor banished angels?”
Colm said nothing.
“Are you going to stare at me or are you going to answer me?” Gordon asked.
“I have no answer.”
“Well, I’m thinking about how to use it. Can you conjure spells?”
“Aye, but I haven’t done that in a long time.”
“What did you use them for?”
“Ian is dying, and unless this sigil is truly a way to combat the demons, ya are wasting the minutes of the last days I have with his existence.”
“Are you going to sacrifice six angels for a few more minutes with an angel you can’t save? Are you going to sacrifice Joseph Warren for the same reason? I know how demons think. Henry will kill Dr. Warren, and make you watch. He will rape your brother, Michael, and make you watch.”
Rage bubbled to the surface of Colm’s spirit. He fought to back it down.
Gordon saw the archangel’s struggle with the things he had just described. Good. This is the one way I can convince Colm that they have to try and use the sigil as a weapon.
“What did you use spells for?” Gordon asked again.
Twenty-eight
Boston, Massachusetts
Boston, Charlestown, and Cambridge were in chaos. Fear and anxiety ran rampant.
Loyalists were aghast at the rebels’ determined show of force. Rebels were as stunned by the violence. The British wondered how they, as soldiers of one of Europe’s greatest armies, had suffered under the tenacity of backwoods colonialists.
There were many who found the rebel tactics of shooting from behind cover despicable. Lord Hugh Percy voiced this disdain in his official report to General Gage. Others in command of various British infantry companies deemed the rebels cowards because they would not fight in open fields by rank and file in the traditional European style of combat.
These reports among others, which included statistical numbers of dead, wounded, and missing, were gathered and assembled by General Thomas Gage, who softened the miserable results of April 19 in his report to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State of the Colonies. Masking the horrors of what had really happened, Gage flourished his report with acknowledgments of promotions, and recommendations for further promotions. He then assured Dartmouth that he was making preparations to raise artillery to oppose the rebellious Americans.
Loyalists living in the surrounding townships flocked to Boston to live under the protection of General Gage and his troops. But Boston quickly became an unpleasant place. Rebel troops, amassed outside of Boston Neck in Roxbury and Cambridge, had stopped deliveries of fresh produce from the countryside.
With the access to and from the mainland blocked at the Neck, Boston was left dependent on supplies brought in by ship. However, Boston was almost an island surrounded by dozens of smaller islands dotting a huge harbor that was in many places dangerously shallow and lurking with mudflats and rocks. The British warships were huge and cumbersome to navigate in the harbor waters, adding to the difficulty of getting food and supplies into Boston from the resource-rich surrounding islands.
There were many who wished to leave Boston, but could not. As well as the threat of war and martial law, was the horror of smallpox. People felt they were being forced to take sides, but it was hard to garner which side some residents were on—could you trust your neighbor? Both loyalists and rebels were nervous.
Mercy Scollay was desperate to leave Boston with Joseph’s children. However, if she could get out, she had no idea where to go, because communication from outside Boston was stifled.
The Committee of Safety had been meeting almost nonstop. Joseph was elected president of the Provincial Congress in place of the absent John Hancock.
The congress resolved to raise a provincial army of eight thousand soldiers to serve until the end of the year, although they were unsure how the soldiers were going to be paid.
Joseph issued a circular letter that was distributed throughout the colonies under the influences of the Committee of Safety, urging men to enlist in the provincial army headquartered in Cambridge. The letter was a forceful, almost threatening, plea. Joseph wrote that death and devastation were the instant consequences of delaying to enlist.
The committee summoned forty-seven-year-old General Artemas Ward from Shrewsbury to preside over organizing the new provincial army. Fergus was promoted to general and put in charge of the provincials stationed in Roxbury.
On April 20, after hearing about the events of Lexington and Concord, Colonel Israel Putnam left his farm in Connecticut and arrived in Cambridge the following day. Putnam was a French and Indian War veteran and the founder of the Connecticut branch of the Sons of Liberty.
In the days and weeks to come, militiamen from throughout New England arrived in Cambridge and Roxbury. These companies were made up of a diverse force of white and freed black men who were farmers, doctors, lawyers, artisans, merchants, and sailors.
Then, Joseph turned his attention to his ever-adored town of Boston—the patriots who could not leave, and the loyalists who could not get in. And in his heart and mind, specifically his entrapped children. He sent a respectful letter to General Gage declaring the need to settle on a policy regarding the inhabitants of Boston.
The irony of his plea to General Gage did not escape Joseph. He was forced to humble himself to a man whose wife had literally bared her most intimate parts to him.
A committee was appointed to take sworn depositions from participants and eyewitnesses to the actions of April 19. Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Cushing, and Dr. Benjamin Church made up this committee. The depositions were to draw up a narrative of the massacres at Lexington and Concord, and to be compiled and sent to England immediately. By use of the word massacre, there was not much doubt as to how the rebel media would portray these events.
John Hancock and Samuel Adams made their way westward to Worcester. The duo made up two of the five Massachusetts delegates to the Continental Congress, which was scheduled to convene in Philadelphia on May 1.
John Adams was also one of the five delegates to the Continental Congress. Before he left his home in Braintree to meet John Hancock and Samuel Adams, he rode to Cambridge to meet with militia officers, one of which was Fergus. John wanted to understand what had happened and the situation they were in now. He found circumstances distressful because the militia was lacking in provisions: clothing, weapons, and money.
As the news of what had occurred in Lexington and Concord was carried throughout the colonies via messengers on horseback, the Provincial Congress compiled a packet of the depositions they had taken with a cover letter written by Joseph. The cover letter was the furthest thing from a plea for reconciliation with the British. This packet was to be delivered to Benjamin Franklin, who was living in London, England. Once Franklin received the packet, it was to be distributed throughout England.
Joseph managed to relay the rebels’ account of what had happened in the colonies to Lord Dartmouth and the rest of England before Thomas Gage did. And the American rebel cause was not without its sympathizers in England.
A laundered General Henry Hereford, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, returned to Province House late on the morning of April 22. He prepared to dismount, and was pleased to see a young white boy dash from around the side of the house to his aide.
“Say your name, boy,” Henry said with delight as the boy grasped the horse’s reins.
“John Gage, sir!”
Henry smiled broadly. “Why are you in attendance of my horse instead of a stable boy?”
“Father said I should learn as much as I can about horses, sir!”
Henry and Robert dismounted with a chuckle.
The front door swung open. Margaret stood in the doorway. With brisk movements, Henry pulled his riding gloves off and strode toward Margaret.
“Mrs. Gage!” Henry exclaimed. “After the disturbing and exhausting events of the past few days, I must say the sight of you is good for sore eyes!”
Margaret was suspicious of Henry’s absence after what had occurred in Lexington and Concord. She had not asked Thomas where the general and his aide-de-camp were during that time, hoping that they had fallen off the face of the Earth.
“General,” Margaret said curtly.
Henry stopped beside her. “Your son, John, is a good lad. He must be aged eight or nine, yet he demonstrates superior manners.”
Stay away from my children, she thought.
Henry’s eyes dropped low to study the place where Margaret’s womb resided. I can smell the sweet amniotic fluid of her pregnancy.
She willed herself not to shield her flat pregnant belly with her hands. Thomas had been told of her pregnancy only this morning.
“Robert and I are famished,” Henry announced as he strode past Margaret and into the house. “Have breakfast prepared right away.” He paused and turned to look at Margaret. “Tell Thomas I want to see him.”
Margaret walked away without acknowledging Henry. Robert grasped her upper left arm and said, “You will do as the general has asked—now.”
She regarded Robert’s hand on her arm, then her brown eyes flitted upward to look into his scowling face. “Thomas is in private conversation and cannot be disturbed.”
Robert’s urge to reveal his orange eyes almost overcame him, but he contained it. He, too, smelled the amniotic fluid of her pregnancy.
Margaret’s lovely face contorted with disgust when she said, “Remove your hand from my arm immediately.”
Robert grinned and thought, I will remove my hand this time. Next time, I will break your neck—or kill your unborn child. His hand dropped from her arm.
Several of the Gage children peaked around corners and witnessed Robert’s abusive actions. Margaret’s oldest children were attending college in England. The children who remained at home were not old enough or brave enough to confront their mother’s abuser.
Thomas emerged from his office with Dr. Benjamin Church. The two men were conversing as though they were long time acquaintances. It was evident to Henry, Robert, and Margaret that Thomas was pleased with his rebel informant’s visit.
When it came to rebel secrets and plotting, only Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Joseph Warren were more involved than Benjamin Church. But Benjamin had an expensive mistress, and spying brought the ready cash he needed to please her. He had no qualms about betraying his fellow patriots in exchange for the means to pay for the treasure between the legs of Phoebe Yates.
Benjamin recalled his announcement the night before to the Provincial Congress that he intended to go into Boston the next day. The other members were aghast.
“You cannot be serious, Benjamin! Hanging will be the fate of any of the committee members caught in Boston,” Joseph had warned.
He urged his thoughts to the present moment. “Mrs. Gage,” Benjamin said, somewhat surprised to see her dour expression.
Margaret went to her husband’s side to impress her loyalty to Thomas. She knew Benjamin Church was betraying Joseph and the Sons of Liberty. The American-born part of her found him despicable. The part of her that was wife to Thomas Gage admired her husband for managing to hire an intimate member of Boston’s rebel circle as an informant. The pregnant hormonal part of her wanted to run to Joseph and whisper the betrayal in his ear while he made love to her.
“Thomas,” Margaret said. “Please take tea with me when your guest has gone.”
Thomas fell into her pleading eyes. Her wish was his command each time she was pregnant.
Henry took note of the Gage’s blissful exchange. He would allow them their private time before he questioned Thomas about the news his informant brought. It was important to stay abreast of Warren’s activities and whereabo
uts, because the archangel would never be far away.
After Henry and Robert ate breakfast, and while the Gages took tea behind closed doors, a messenger arrived with news for Henry. The demon that once possessed William Sutherland was now in possession of a British ensign. He entered the living room where Henry and Robert were relaxing. The general had promised the demon a permanent captain’s vessel if he brought something valuable in exchange.
The ensign touched his hat in salute and then removed it. “General Hereford, sir! Am I free to speak?”
“Robert, make sure there are no eavesdroppers,” Henry said. “Oh, and find Margaret’s personal maid, Constance, and tell her I want to see her.”
Robert nodded and went to do as he was ordered.
“Sir, I bring news of the angels. Paul Revere has joined Joseph Warren and the Committee of Safety that is adjourned in Cambridge. Warren was overheard telling Revere two of the angels are dying.”
“So, the angel they call Ian suffered fatal wounds after all. Who is the other angel?”
“The one they call Liam. Our men shot him outside of Lexington.”
“Very good! We shall kill them off one by one. The archangel may self-destruct under the weight of his own suffering and guilt. Delightful!” Henry paused for a moment in thought. Then he said, “I want you to spread the word among us that none of the other angels should be hurt until I allow it. I want the archangel to wallow in his grief for as long as possible. We have waited for this for so long, and now that the time is here, I intended to savor it.”
“Right away, sir.” The ensign lowered his head in deference to Henry and left Province House.
When Robert returned, Henry relayed the news to him.
“Once my order has been delivered, prepare a British captain for death and possession,” Henry said to Robert. “A certain Captain Anthony Jameson comes to mind. Afterward, have some of us spread the word among the people of Boston that the poor living conditions here are due to the rebels’ selfish need to keep fresh food, fodder, clothing, and arms to themselves.”
Angels & Patriots_Book One Page 29
