Bunker Hill

by Howard Fast

  Feversham saw the man called Knowlton smile grimly, a hard-faced man in his forties with a pair of tired blue eyes. “Yes, Richie, you paint a fine picture, and we’ve been breaking our asses to make something of that two hundred paces, but every time I turned around, half my men were gone for the building of your damned redoubt. They’re so tired they can’t stand. I told them to sleep. There are stones enough for Breed’s Hill. We never needed that damned redoubt. You have a hundred men on the redoubt. What in hell are we building the bloody fortress for! It’s indefensible!”

  “We had the argument yesterday and the day before,” Putnam snarled. “Let it go, Tom!”

  “He’s right!” someone cried. “It’s a death trap.”

  “Ah, please, please,” Warren begged them, rising and spreading his arms. “What matters most is for us to be together.”

  They had enormous respect for him, and the hubbub of voices died down. Feversham realized that this slender, aristocratic physician occupied a unique place among these men. Feversham was new to the group, and he wondered what circumstances led to their choice of Warren, a man with limited military knowledge, as their leader. He had heard that Warren defied the British openly in a manner that only Samuel Adams dared to match. Now the man was seriously ill, if Feversham was any judge of sickness. Yet some fire within him rejected sickness, as if spirit alone could make him whole.

  “You gave me the command of our forces,” Warren said gently. “Half of you fought in the French war, and I bow to you. But if I must command, then I must. It was my decision to build the redoubt. Now it is built. There are more important matters to discuss.”

  “You are damn right!” Putnam boomed. “I didn’t want the redoubt, but it’s built. You can’t saw sawdust. But it’s true that we wasted ourselves. Ward tells us that they’ll attack tomorrow—”

  “Today is tomorrow,” someone interrupted.

  “I don’t mean that. Today is the seventeenth. Ward said on the eighteenth. I know today is tomorrow. It’s three o’clock in the morning. Suppose they attack today. Suppose they attack at dawn, two hours from now.”

  “God help us.”

  Artemus Ward rose. “We only know what we know,” he said, his face tight with pain. “We have one man with the British, but the Almighty Jehovah has given us his voice and his truth.”

  “If you believe him.”

  “He risked his life to come to us,” Ward said. “You must trust me. I have spoken with him, and I believe him.”

  “Why can’t we know his name?” Knowlton demanded.

  “Because I gave him my sacred trust that no one but myself would know his name. He is an officer in the king’s army, and he came to me because he believes in our cause. He says that they will attack on the eighteenth of June. Gage wants to hold off, but Clinton and Burgoyne have convinced Howe that an attack will succeed. Mostly, it’s Burgoyne. To Burgoyne, we are a joke, a witless crowd of peasants. They have only three thousand men, but Burgoyne said they will sweep us away like so much dirt. At the first sight of their bayonets, we will break and run.”

  “I heard Gage wanted out of the whole thing,” Prescott said.

  “Our friend says that Gage is more or less in disgrace. It’s Burgoyne and Clinton, and both of them in a rage to destroy us, and they use Sir William Howe as they will.”

  “General Ward,” Putnam said stiffly, “I put my trust in no man who serves the king. When the sun rises today—today, mind you—they will see that damned redoubt. It stands up on Breed’s Hill like some stinking castle. They will see men digging, and unless they are brainless, they will attack.”

  “General Putnam,” Warren said, “if they attack today, we will fight them today. If they attack tomorrow, we will fight them tomorrow. And now there is still work to be done, and we have argued enough. We will have a prayer, and then we will go to our commands.” He put his hands together and bent his head. “Great Lord of Hosts, we place our lives and our cause in thy trust. Grant us to be of stout heart and good will.”

  Yet they talked on and argued and argued, and while they talked, the first light of dawn touched Breed’s Hill. His Majesty’s warship Lively, a brig of twenty guns, rested at anchor in Boston Harbor off the meadowland that sloped up to Breed’s Hill. On board the bell sounded the third watch. Midshipman Earnest Copeley crawled out of his hammock and, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, climbed up to the main deck and urinated into Boston Harbor. It had been beastly hot below, and it was none too cool on deck. Knowing that he would be officer of the deck until the next watch, Copeley took the liberty of appearing in shirt and trousers, barefoot. Midshipman Copeley was fourteen years old, and this was his first assignment aboard ship. He was totally intrigued with Boston and the rebellion, and with the possibility that he might witness a great battle. Until now, his life in Boston Harbor had been dull indeed, with only two short shore leaves and both of them under the supervision of Lieutenant Kent. Now, as he came on deck, he was called over by Henderson, the midshipman he was to relieve.

  “Barefoot again,” Henderson said, being two years Copeley’s senior and entitled to rebuke.

  “Too bloody hot for shoes.”

  “Tell that to Lieutenant Kent. All right, have a look up there on the hill,” he said, pointing to the top of Breed’s Hill.

  “Oh?” Midshipman Copeley stared and squinted. “It’s a damned fortress.”

  “Precisely. And was it there yesterday?”

  “No, it was not.”

  “Exactly. Now get below and put your bloody shoes on and wake the Lieutenant Kent.”

  Midshipman Copeley scampered below and a few minutes later appeared again, followed by Lieutenant Kent and Captain Dexter, the latter with a spyglass, which he trained on Breed’s Hill. “Well, I will be everlastingly damned, it’s a bloody redoubt! Here, have a look,” he said, handing the spyglass to Lieutenant Kent.

  “So it is,” Kent agreed, “and rebels all over the place, digging away like maggots in an offal pit.”

  “What will you do, sir?” Copeley asked, fairly hopping with excitement.

  “We’ll soon put an end to that,” Dexter decided. “Rouse the drummer and beat to quarters, Copeley. Clear for action, Mr. Kent, and you, Henderson, get up topside and report.”

  Copeley dashed off, fairly tumbling down below, while Henderson scrambled up the rigging to the lookout station. Minutes later, the drummer’s beat to quarters sounded across the bay, while Lieutenant Kent supervised the launching of the ship’s longboat so that the Lively could be swung around so that its guns might bear on Breed’s Hill. Captain Dexter and his chief of gunnery checked the elevation of the guns, and within fifteen minutes of Midshipman Copeley’s arrival on deck, the ship was swinging into proper target position. Just before 5:00 a.m., on the morning of the seventeenth of June, Lively launched its first broadside at the redoubt of Breed’s Hill.

  Sir William Howe slept in his singlet but without covers, for his room was hot. Next to him, Mrs. Loring lay naked, in defiance of the attitude that attributed the custom to whores. As she had explained to Sir William, since all the ladies, both here and in London, would call her a whore, she might just as well sleep in comfort. Her forthrightness endeared her to Sir William, and when he was awakened on the morning of the seventeenth, thinking that he had dreamed of gunfire, he looked with warm pleasure at the sight of Elizabeth Loring’s abundant pink buttocks. For a bit less than a minute, he allowed this pleasant contemplation to continue, feeling his own groin come alive, and then a second salvo of guns made him realize that this was no dream. He tumbled out of bed, threw open the door of his bedroom, and roared, “Hasgood! Hasgood, get the hell up here!”

  Awake, her knees drawn up, her arms across her breasts, Mrs. Loring cried out in alarm. “What is it, sir? What is happening?”

  “Cover yourself,” he said as his orderly, Hasgood, knocked at the door. She drew the sheet over herself, and Howe threw open the door for Hasgood.

  “What the devil
is that, Hasgood?”

  “Cannon fire, Sir William.”

  “I know that, you idiot! What cannon?”

  “If I may open the shutters, sir?”

  “Open them.”

  Sir William followed Hasgood to the window that looked out over the bay.

  “The Lively, sir,” Hasgood said. “I believe she’s firing broadsides.”

  “At what? Move aside.”

  “At Breed’s Hill, sir, as near as I can make out.”

  “Yes—yes—there it goes again,” he said as a third broadside thundered out. “What’s that up on the hill?”

  “Some sort of fortress, sir, as near as I can make it.”

  “It wasn’t there yesterday.”

  “No, your lordship. No, it was not, as nearly as I can remember.”

  “Well, it’s there now. Where’s my glass?” He turned to Mrs. Loring. “Betsy, where did I put my glass?”

  The night before, he had been showing her the wonders of the moon through his spyglass. “There on the chest. What is happening, Sir William?”

  He took the spyglass and strode to the window. “Be damned,” he exclaimed. “They’re as thick as fleas up there on the hill. Bad aim, bad aim. Who commands Lively, Hasgood?”

  “Captain Dexter, sir.”

  “Yes, of course. Dark chap with a stupid look. The idiot quoted Dryden to me. I can’t tolerate people who quote poetry. Can you, my dear?” turning to Mrs. Loring.

  “Of course not. Bores, Sir William. Bores.”

  “Hasgood, turn out Lieutenant Jefferies and tell him I want him to round up Clinton, Burgoyne, and Gage. I want them all here not later than”—he paused to look at a tall cabinet clock in one corner of the bedroom—“no later than six o’clock. And Admiral Graves. He’s aboard ship, so tell Jefferies to send a lolly boat for him. And then you get back here. They’ll want breakfast, tea and sausage and hot bread—”

  “Oh, leave the breakfast to me, sir,” Mrs. Loring put in. “I’ll wake the kitchen and take care of it.”

  Another volley of gunfire thundered out across the bay.

  “Get to it, Hasgood,” Sir William said. Hasgood left the room, and Howe peered through his spyglass. “He’ll piss off all his gunpowder for nothing.”

  “What a gift for words, dear sir. Piss off his gunpowder.”

  He turned to face her. She had cast off the sheet. “What does it mean? All this shooting?”

  “They’re becoming insufferable. We have to dress.”

  “Now? This moment? You wake me at this ungodly hour and tell me to dress?”

  “There’s work afoot, my dear one.”

  “And a little play,” she said, smiling. “What do they say—all work and no play makes Jack a dull clod. Come kiss me.”

  He threw up his hands in despair and fell into the bed.

  Betsy Palmer stopped Feversham as the officers were leaving. “About Dr. Warren, he’s not well, is he?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I have a room upstairs where he could rest.”

  “I don’t think he means to rest,” Feversham said.

  “Would you talk to him, please? As a favor to me?”

  Warren was in the dooryard, speaking to Colonel Prescott. Without meaning to eavesdrop, Feversham realized that they were talking about the redoubt. In the pale light of dawn, there was not even a touch of breeze to disturb the early heat, and Warren mopped his face constantly. “It was my own notion from the beginning, and God help me if I have forced a death trap upon us.”

  The other officers were untying their horses at the hitching rail. A few had mounted and were riding off. Others were clustered in the road, still talking.

  “Who’s to say it’s a death trap?” Prescott shook his head in annoyance. “Knowlton? Does he have a crystal ball? Stop whipping yourself, Doctor. It may turn out that the redoubt is our salvation.”

  I won’t urge him to bed, Feversham thought, convinced that Warren would die before he took to his bed. He saw Artemus Ward approaching and moved to step away.

  “No, stay here, Feversham. You’re a doctor, and that may give you the best chance of surviving what’s coming. I’ve been thinking about our informant. If I should be killed, someone must know his name.”

  “Feversham’s British,” Prescott said shortly.

  “Colonel, he’s my friend and colleague. If we lose on the hills, he’ll hang as high as any of us.”

  “I’ll leave you,” Feversham said.

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry,” Prescott muttered. “We’re all too tense and tired.” He nodded at Artemus Ward. “Go ahead, General.”

  “Johnny Lovell,” Ward said.

  “No!” Warren exclaimed. “Lovell’s son?”

  “His father’s the worst swine in the whole lousy Tory crew,” Prescott exclaimed. “Lovell’s son! Well, I’ll be damned!”

  “He’s given me every move, every step, they planned. It comes from his father, who’s trying to organize a Tory brigade. He put his life in my hands, and now I put it in yours. I have business now, gentlemen. God willing, I’ll see you later.” With that, he turned and shambled away to where his horse was tethered.

  “Johnny Lovell,” Warren murmured. “I tried to speak to his father once. I tried reason, but the man is filled with bile.”

  “I would guess,” Feversham said slowly, “that there are more men in London who pray for our cause than over there in Boston, where they lick the ass of the redcoats and open their homes to them and wait to see us all hanged.”

  The three men mounted their horses. The other officers had left. They rode slowly toward the causeway that led to the Charlestown peninsula. In the east, the sky turned from gray to pearl, and as they rode toward Charlestown, they heard the first salvo of guns from the warship Lively.

  “A proper breakfast,” Sir William Howe said, “after a proper roll in the hay, equips a man for whatever the day might bring.”

  He moved along the sideboard, heaping his plate with eggs, sausage, ham, turnips, and parsnip. “You have a talent for the best things in life, my dear,” he said to Mrs. Loring, who was pouring tea. “I prefer my eggs boiled hard rather than coddled, but these look delicious.”

  It was half-past seven in the morning, and the thunder of guns from the ships in the bay shook the house. They were all gathered in the dining room of Howe’s house—that is, the house which he had appropriated for himself, the largest and best rebel house that Boston boasted—Sir Henry Clinton, Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne, Gen. Thomas Gage, and Adm. Thomas Graves.

  “All ships firing, ” Admiral Graves said. He was a large man with a protruding stomach and bright pink cheeks, hunched over a plate piled to abundance. “The sweet rolls are delicious. My compliments to the cook, Mrs. Loring.”

  “The rolls are my doing. I thank you, Admiral.”

  Burgoyne, helping himself at the sideboard, opined that it was all noise and bluster.

  “I beg to differ,” the admiral said.

  “Admiral,” said Burgoyne, seating himself at the table, “if you had a mind to wager, I’d say that all that storm and sound outside won’t kill half a dozen rebels. Meanwhile, you’re shooting away your cannonballs as if they grew on trees.”

  “I resent that, sir.”

  “My word,” Clinton said, “you worry about cannonballs as if they came out of your pay, Johnny. On the other hand, they built that damn redoubt up on the hill. That’s an insolent piece of business. Do you think you can knock it down, Admiral?”

  They turned to Graves, who shrugged and shook his head. “It’s a piece of work. No. We’re not having any real effect on the redoubt. I ordered Dexter on Lively to halt his fire. You know, he opened up on his own. Then Gage here countermanded me. He ordered a bombardment of Breed’s Hill by all ships. Goddamn it, gentleman,

  who is in command here?”

  “I am in command,” Sir William said flatly.

  “Do you want the bombardment stopped?” Graves d
emanded.

  “No.”

  “Sir William,” Clinton said, “we are to attack tomorrow. Do you intend to go on shooting for the next twenty-four hours?”

  Sir William finished chewing and washed his food down with a swallow of tea before he replied. “No, Henry, we will attack today.”

  There was a long moment of silence, broken by Burgoyne, who clapped his hands with pleasure. “Absolutely. From all I can learn, there’s total chaos up there on the hills. The damn rebels are milling around like cattle in a thunderstorm. We watch them crowding over the neck into Charlestown, some going on to the peninsula, others running out of it. Dr. Church says every militia commander has a different notion of what they should do, defend the peninsula or abandon it. There’s a brigade from Jersey that simply picked up and marched off. Old Artemus Ward is in agony over his stones, and Church says his mind is addled. They’re tearing at each other over the redoubt. Putnam and Prescott never wanted it, and Gridley and Warren, who were the instigators, as I am given to understand, have fallen out with the others. They go on arguing endlessly on how to defend the hills and Charlestown, and Church says they’re all over the place in total confusion.”

  “You want some meat,” Howe said to Gage. “There’s no bloody life in eggs and sweet rolls. Try the ham, sir. Betsy,” he called out to Mrs. Loring, who stood by the sideboard, “put a slice of ham on General Gage’s plate.”

  It was a deliberate slight, as the others realized. Sir William had small liking for Gage. “Thank you,” Gage said coldly. “I have had quite enough.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Admiral Graves, “is why we don’t simply cut off the Charlestown Neck and let their damn rebellion die on the peninsula. They’d soon run out of food and water.”

  “Yes,” Clinton said, “but in spite of Johnny’s enthusiasm with Church’s intelligence, his word is not gospel for me. Who has counted the number of farmers around Boston? Ten thousand? Fifteen thousand? If we muster the Forty-seventh Marine Brigade along with everything else we have, it adds up to three thousand and two hundred men. If we place ourselves on the Charlestown Neck, we are between two armies, the men on the peninsula and the damn mob outside of Boston. It’s a position no army should ever be in.”