by Ron Carter
“Identify yourself.”
The man snapped to attention. “Lieutenant Randall Milhouse Ambrose, Twenty-third Welch Fusiliers, sir.”
“What’s your message?”
“Written, sir.” He thrust the paper to Gage.
With quivering fingers Gage unfolded the small paper and read it, then reread it. His mouth compressed, and he stood for a moment in deep thought. “Wait here.”
Five minutes later Gage strode from his bedroom, passed them without a word, and walked quickly to his office, the others following.
“Orderly, wait outside. Lieutenant Ambrose, be seated.” Gage settled into his great chair, Ambrose opposite him. “Where was the column when you were sent back?”
“About one mile this side of Lexington, sir.”
“When did you leave the column?”
“Over an hour ago, sir. I used my horse hard.”
“They got to Lexington about four o’clock this morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They were supposed to be there between one and two o’clock. What happened?”
Ambrose dropped his eyes. “Confusion at loading and un-loading. Bogs at Lechmere.”
Gage smacked the flat palm of his hand on the tabletop and cursed, and Ambrose jumped. “What do you mean, confusion at loading and unloading?”
“The troops were not ferried in the marching order. The troops didn’t know their officers. No one told them about the Lechmere marshes. We spent an hour in the bog up to our waists.”
Gage stood and thumped his desk with his clenched fist. “What do you know personally about the number of militia?”
“We captured a few colonials. They told us the numbers. More than six thousand.”
“What’s this about a volley being fired in the night?”
“I heard the volley. It had to be over 150 muskets.”
“Shooting at what?”
“I don’t know, sir. None of us knew.”
Gage sagged back in his chair. Disorganized—late—outnumbered—this whole campaign in disarray. “Orderly,” he called, and Sotheby was instantly in the room.
“Yes, sir.”
“Have Brigadier Percy here within ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Sotheby ran out the front door, and ten minutes later returned with Percy behind.
“Be seated,” Gage invited, and Percy sat down beside Lieutenant Ambrose while Sotheby walked out and closed the door.
“This is Lieutenant Ambrose, a messenger from Smith’s column,” Gage said. “Smith is convinced he’s facing vastly superior numbers. He’s continuing but asks for reinforcements.”
Percy felt his breath come short. The colonials don’t wage war, they wage ambushes. No command, no organization, no training, no discipline—swarm and shoot from hiding. Percy remained silent, intent, waiting.
“Earlier I ordered your First Brigade on standby alert, in case something like this happened. Did you execute that order?”
“I did, sir.”
“Take the First Brigade and proceed to support Smith.” Gage turned to Lieutenant Ambrose. “Can you guide Brigadier Percy back?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll need a fresh mount.”
“Arrange it. Brigadier Percy, do you have any questions?”
“Yes, sir. Do I pursue Smith until I catch him, or do I set up to cover his return?”
“That will be your decision based on what you observe in the field.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“No, sir. Your standby order was clear.”
“Move your regiment out at earliest opportunity.”
“Yes, sir.”
At six o’clock a.m. Percy signed the order for the First Brigade, including the infantry, grenadiers, and marines, to be in marching formation in full battle gear, with cannon on their carriages and teams of horses to pull them by seven-thirty a.m. At seven o’clock Percy was riding his tall, high-blooded sorrel horse before the troops as they assembled. There was not a marine in sight.
Percy reined in his horse before the sergeant major. “Where’re the marines?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later the whiskered sergeant major returned to Percy, shoulders heaving as he fought for breath. “Sir, the marines are under the command of Major Pitcairn, who is already with Smith. The messenger forgot and laid the orders on Pitcairn’s desk. They’re still there, sir. They were never delivered to his second in command. The marines are still asleep, sir.”
Percy cursed and thundered from his saddle, “Tell those marines the whole brigade is assembled and waiting, and they had better be here by the time we march.”
“Yes, sir.”
The marines trickled in until eight twenty-five a.m., turning grim but silent faces to the shouted wrath of the grenadiers and light infantry, who had been standing for over an hour in full battle gear, waiting.
In full, beautiful morning sunlight, Percy sat his tall gelding and considered. He looked north towards the Charlestown ferry, then south, back towards the guard lines and the Neck, and made his decision. The ferry was too small; it would take four trips to move the brigade across the Back Bay. It would be faster to march them down across the Neck, then back west past Cambridge to Lexington. Farther but faster.
“Regular marching pace,” Percy ordered his drummers. “Three miles per hour. We don’t want to alarm the countryside, and we have to keep the men fresh enough to fight when we get there. Three miles per hour. Ready! Forrrrard, march.”
The drummers hit the cadence and the column moved south, through the barricades, south down across the Neck to Roxbury, then turned hard right, northwest, towards Brookline.
Percy reined in his horse and called for Captain John Montresor, the brigade engineer. “Pick four men and load a pack horse with bridge-repairing equipment and immediately go to the Great Bridge over the Charles River, by Harvard College. See to it the bridge is passable.”
“Yes, sir.” Half an hour later Montresor pulled his horse to a stop on the south side of the bridge, facing a pile of ripped-up bridge planking. He studied the bridge for a moment, then cursed. “They tore it up! It’s impassable.”
“But they left the planking on this side,” volunteered a lieutenant. “We can nail it back down.”
Percy and the incoming column were a scant four hundred yards away when the five men nailed down the last plank, and they mounted their horses to watch the column march onto the bridge, break step, then pick it up again on the north side and march on until the entire column had passed. They worked their way north towards Harvard College, with Percy growing steadily aware that something was wrong. He loped his horse to the front of the column, and as they marched past the buildings and school grounds of Harvard, drums pounding, it struck him.
The college grounds were vacant. Nothing moved. The windows were closed, curtains drawn, the flagpole bare. He glanced at the few scattered homes about the college, and the single movement came from a spotted dog that barked once and slunk away, out of sight.
“We haven’t seen one living soul on any of the farms,” he exclaimed. “The countryside is deserted!”
They continued in the eerie silence, with a foreboding sense of uneasiness creeping into the column as they passed homes and farms with the windows staring back vacantly and nothing, no one, moving. No sound. No animals. Nothing.
“Keep a sharp watch,” Percy ordered. “The colonials won’t come out in the open and fight. They shoot from ambush. Watch sharp.”
Margaret Dunson waited in Brigitte’s bedroom until Brigitte was in her bed and the lamp was out before she closed the door and walked back through the shadows to the parlor. For long moments she stood in the lamplight, staring at the glow of the banked coals in the great fireplace, weary in mind and soul, thoughts in a whirl of confusion, not knowing what she should be thinking or doing. Finally, because she could think of
nothing else to do, she walked down the hall in the bedroom wing and quietly entered the room of Caleb, then the twins’ room. She knelt beside their beds and gently touched their faces and their hair, and she kissed each of them and felt the warmth of their touch.
Then she rose and went to her own bedroom and sat on the bed in the darkness for a time before she put on her nightgown, braided her hair, and knelt in prayer. Then she got into the bed, refusing to look at the pillow on John’s side. For more than an hour she lay without moving, staring upward in the darkness. She could not remember drifting into troubled sleep, only lunging up when the images of Matthew and John dead in the green grass and spring flowers of a battlefield flashed bright in her brain. She sat in the dark for minutes, feeling the clammy sweat on her face and between her shoulder blades and the dampness of her nightgown about her shoulders.
She rose in the dark and washed herself with cool water and put on a fresh, dry nightgown. Then she wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and sat rigid in the rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth with the drawn curtains a dull gray from the bright light of the nearly full moon. When her eyelids became heavy she walked about the dark room, forcing herself to stay awake, fearful of what her dreams would be. In the deep twilight of the room, sitting in the rocking chair, staring at the gray curtains, thoughts came uninvited, and she let them run because she was exhausted, with no strength nor will left to control or manage them.
Genesis, war—Isaiah, war—war in heaven—Lucifer at war with God—men have sons to go to war—for honor or pride or country—any reason, no reason—always war.
She sighed, and her thoughts continued with a will of their own.
Women know—the message of the womb—nurture your offspring—not war—women know, and they bear the sorrow of the world.
The room was cast in the dusky gray that precedes sunrise when Margaret jerked her head up and her eyes opened wide as she looked about and remembered why she was sitting in the rocking chair. She looked at the mantel clock—six-twenty a.m., Wednesday, April 19, 1775—and she rose quickly as the image of John and Matthew dead in battle once again rose in her mind.
She awakened Brigitte, and they had hot griddle cakes waiting for the children when they were dressed for school. Margaret told them only that John and Matthew were gone for a while on business with the British. She kissed them and locked their lunch baskets under their arms, and followed them to the front gate to watch them until they crossed the first street and were soon lost to view. Brigitte cleared the breakfast table while Margaret set a kettle of water on the stove for the dishes.
Finished, Brigitte settled onto a chair at the table, absentmindedly working one hand with the other, lost in her own thoughts. Margaret returned the milk pitcher to the cool of the root cellar, and walked back to the kitchen to quietly study Brigitte. Never had she seen her so morose. Always, always, Brigitte had been the one so sure of her own mind. Slowly Margaret walked to the table, her shoes clicking loudly on the hardwood floor in the silence, and sat down in John’s large chair. Brigitte continued slowly working her hands on the table without looking.
Margaret opened her mouth to speak, when they heard the first faint rumble of heavy iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestones, and then the rattle of drums and the shrill of fifes, and then the rhythm of marching men.
Brigitte’s head jerked towards Margaret. “What is it?” she blurted.
“It sounds like soldiers marching,” Margaret murmured.
“I’m going to go see,” Brigitte exclaimed.
“See what? that young officer?”
Without a word Brigitte snatched her shawl from the coat tree and threw it around her shoulders as she rushed out the door and blinked in the bright sunlight of a beautiful spring day in Boston City. At the front gate she paused to look up and down the street, and slowed when she realized the street was vacant. Nothing moved beneath the reaching boughs of the oak and maple trees lining the cobblestones. She pulled the shawl tighter and walked rapidly to the corner, then turned east and trotted towards the sounds of an army in motion. She had covered two blocks when a few hesitant citizens ventured from their doors to look eastward, and then she was on the corner and she stopped, facing north.
Other colonials stood near the street, some partially hidden behind trees or fences, mouths set, eyes flat, faces vacant as the British came to the sounds of drum and fife and boots and horses drawing cannon. Then the leaders were there, and she felt the ground tremble as the broad-wheeled gun carriages rumbled towards her. Brigadier Hugh Percy, sitting tall and rigid and oblivious to the colonials in the streets, grand in his spotless crimson coat, led his relief column south on his high-headed sorrel gelding.
She turned to look at the ugly snouts of the first two cannon as they passed and at the strong, iron-bound oak boxes filled with the black twenty-four-pound cannonballs and the black powder that would hurl them at the Massachusetts ragtag militia and minutemen, and she swallowed and turned back to the column following and suddenly her breath stopped and she froze.
Her eyes locked with those of Lieutenant Richard Arlen Buchanan, and her hand darted to cover her mouth. She tried to tear her eyes from his and she could not, nor did his eyes leave hers as he held his horse at a nervous walk, leading the two horses harnessed to the gun carriage of the fourth cannon. In that stunned, unprepared moment the open frankness of their wide eyes held back nothing.
He saw the deep conflict in her soul, and she saw him torn between duty and heart. She sensed his need and she fought the urge to reach out her hand as he rode past her, his stirrup less than five feet from her as he stared down. And then he snapped his head up and forward, and once again he was a British soldier committed only to his duty.
She was oblivious to the next gun carriage as it came rumbling. She saw only his rigid back as he moved on, and she started to call to him but didn’t. Then he turned for one moment and once more stared into her eyes. She felt her breath catch, and then he was gone as the grenadiers and marines came marching smartly in their shining uniforms and tall hats, and the drums and fifes and boots drowned all other sound. She stood rooted, unmoving until the last of the column passed and the sounds faded and died, and they were gone. Slowly, doors opened and citizens ventured into the street to peer south, to be certain the British column had passed without stopping.
Brigitte suddenly became aware there were those nearby pointing and staring, and she turned on her heel and walked, slowly, then rapidly, back through the quiet beauty of the morning, through her front gate and into the parlor.
Margaret walked in from the kitchen. “Regulars?”
Brigitte hung her shawl on the coat tree and answered, refusing to look at her mother. “Yes. Cannon and foot soldiers. Going south.”
Margaret saw the devastated expression. “What’s wrong? Was he among them?”
Brigitte’s shoulders slumped and she raised her eyes. “Yes.”
“Did he see you?”
“Yes.”
“What was said?”
“Nothing. He rode past.”
Margaret walked slowly towards her and for long moments searched for words. “What are you going to do?”
Brigitte slumped onto a chair at the table and shook her head and remained silent, staring at her clasped hands.
Margaret sat down next to her. “You know nothing can come of it.” The words were quiet, and Brigitte could hear the deep compassion. Seconds passed, and a silent tear crept down Brigitte’s face, and Margaret felt the pain. Still Brigitte remained silent because she could find no escape from the torture of where she found herself.
“He’s an enemy officer. He’s gone to fight the militia—your father and Matthew and Tom.”
Brigitte faintly nodded her head.
“Have you thought that maybe he has a wife waiting in En-gland?”
Brigitte shook her head. “He doesn’t.”
“How do you know?”
Brigitte shrugged. “I know.”
“Tell me what you know about him.”
“He’s honorable.”
“You’ve seen him three times and spoken to him once, and you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“You’ve listened to your heart, now listen to your head. If he came courting, where would you go? To church with a British officer, or walking on the green? What would he and your father talk about? shooting each other? What would you and he talk about? his view of the war or yours? the oppression his army has put on us, and us trying to drive them back to England? Where would you go to live? him here, or you there?”
Brigitte sat impassively, wiping silent tears, staring at her hands.
“Tell me about his family in England.”
Brigitte said nothing and Margaret sat quietly, letting seconds tick into a full minute.
“This has happened all wrong, child. You’ve never even looked at a boy before, and now something in this young officer has touched you. Most of your life hangs on how you handle it, and no one—not even me—can tell you what to do, because that has to come from you.”
Brigitte wiped her eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Then will you take enough time to find out?”
“How long? How do you know when?”
“You’ll know.”
Brigitte nodded. “All right. I’ll take time.”
Margaret released her grip on Brigitte’s hand and stood. “There are things I have to do.” She turned and walked to her bedroom and dropped onto her bed, sitting with her shoulders slumped, face impassive, staring at the floor. She did not move when she heard the footsteps in the hallway, nor did she look up when Brigitte walked into the room and sat beside her on the bed. Brigitte said nothing, and the two women sat in the rich silence for a time, each lost in her own thoughts and fears.
Margaret stirred. “You need to keep busy. Go to the garden and dig around the tulips. They need it and so do you.”
For several moments Brigitte did not move, and then she went to her room and changed clothes, and Margaret listened as she walked through the parlor and the outside door closed.
