Bunker Hill (11 page)

“As a husband, sir?”
She
burst out laughing. “Do you really want me, Sir William? Oh, I don’t mean to
ease that raging cock of yours, but as a woman, to be with you, to stay with
you, to go back to London with you, to be your lady?”

Now there
was a long silence before he answered, and then he spoke slowly, “Yes. As I
said before, as God is my witness. I have played an evening of whist with you,
and I have fucked you, and I know you, and I will kill Mr. Loring as cheerfully
as I would tread on a cockroach.”

“Now
listen to me, William Howe,” she said, “before you dig a hole too deep to crawl
out of. You say I could have had any man in Boston, which only goes to show how
little you know these blue-nosed Presbyterians. I was nothing, my father a
drunken fisherman, my mother a nameless slattern. I didn’t want any man in
Boston. I wanted a man with enough wealth and position to take me out of the
slough of filth and poverty that I was born into. God gave me wits and beauty,
and I would be a lady. Do you understand!
A lady.
I
married Joshua Loring for his money, most of which has been washed away in this
stupid rebellion. If you want me, you don’t have to kill him. He had a fine
house in Roxbury, but the rebels have taken it, and now we have rooms at the
inn.”

“What kind
of a man is he?”

“He’s a wretched dog. Throw him a bone.”

“What kind
of a bone?”

“He would
sell his little soul to be an officer in your army. He will do whatever you
wish him to do. Yes, he’ll empty the chamber pots if you make him Captain
Loring. But after tonight, I will not go back to him. If you want me—”

“I want
you.”

“Then
make love to me again. I’m tired of talking.”

Evan
Feversham was a bit in awe of Dr. Joseph Warren. His own medical education in
the Old Hospital in London had been highly unorthodox. He had worked under Sir
Evelyn Dundeen, a man both honored and mocked for his insistence that wounds
festered not because of evil humors or the night air—a belief widely held then
and for years to come—but because of filth and creatures too small to be seen.
Sir Evelyn’s success won over Feversham and became the basis of his own
practice of medicine. Dr. Joseph Warren, the head of the Continental Committee
of Safety and, under Artemus Ward, the head of the American army, agreed with
him. Now, on this morning of June 15, Evan Feversham awakened to see Warren
standing over him. It seemed to Feversham that he had barely closed his eyes.

“Forgive
me, Dr. Feversham,” Warren said. “I know how precious sleep is to a man who
must sleep on a wooden floor, but I need your cooperation, and the day is only
too short.”

“No apology,
please,” Feversham said. “I had my few hours. Give me leave to piss and wet my
eyes.”

“There is
hot coffee, and a chamber pot in the closet there.” He spoke in a whisper, the
room filled with men who still slept. Feversham did his toilet and then took a
cup of hot coffee from a pot in the hearth and joined Warren outside. Fourteen
men were gathered around Warren, all of them in knee-length leather or linen
aprons. The sun was just rising.

“Here is
our medical brigade,” Warren explained, speaking softly and unhappily. “Only
six are surgeons, euphemistically. The others are barbers and leeches.”

“And
that’s all of them?”

“All we
have available.” He walked Feversham a few paces away from the group and, still
speaking very softly, added, “It’s been decided, Feversham. We’re going to
defend the Charlestown peninsula, and that will mean a nasty battle. Once we’re
there, the British must drive us off or quit Boston. They have no other
choice.”

“What
about the cannon?”

“Not yet,
but Ward and Putnam insist that we can’t wait. Perhaps they’re right, perhaps
not. We’re going to fortify the heights, Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. The
British can put three thousand men into the attack, and to level the field, we
must double that. And the neck of land that connects the peninsula to the
mainland is only a hundred paces across. Still, it’s our only hope to drive
them out of Boston, and it will mean a battle. There’s no way the British can
endure us on those hills.”

“Why
didn’t they take the hills before this?”

“There’s
the question. They had the hills, and then they left them. Good God, I don’t
know. Perhaps they’re as stupid as we are. But I do know one thing. Over there
are our surgeons, and they’re all we have, and I want you to talk to them.
They’ll listen to you. You’re from the old country, and they respect that.”

“All
right, I’ll talk to them,” Feversham agreed.
“But what about
litters and litter bearers and bandages and catgut?”

“The women
are taking care of that. Joe Palmer and his wife are organizing it at their
house.”

“How much
time
have
we?”

“We’re
fortifying the hills today. I don’t know when the British will decide to attack.
Today.
Tomorrow.
The next day.
God only knows. Feversham, we had a sort of
battle a few weeks past, when we drove them back from Concord, but we never
faced them. We were behind the stone walls and the trees, and we were strung
out over miles of countryside, and every man was fighting his own war and could
run away when the mood took him. We never tried to stop their retreat. We never
stood up to them.”

“Even at Concord?”

“We
surprised them there,” Warren said. “We had the river and the bridge, and we
took them by surprise.” Warren was a tall man, his face red and flushed. He
took a deep, painful breath.

“You’re
not well,” Feversham said, and reached out to touch Warren’s brow. “You have a
fever, sir. You should be in bed.”

“Damn it,”
Warren exclaimed, “I can’t afford illness! Not now.
A rasping
throat.
It will pass.”

Feversham
nodded, aware that you did not argue with a man like Warren. “At least drink
lots of water. It’s a beastly hot day.”

Warren led
him back to the waiting cluster of doctors, barbers, and leeches, announcing,
“Here is Dr. Feversham. He was trained and schooled in London, he’s seen three
campaigns on the Continent, and he comes with the blessing of General Putnam.
He’s a Connecticut man, with his home in Ridgefìeld.” Warren ticked off their
names: “Haddam, Carter, Bones, Woodly, Preston.” He
paused,
his finger directed at a tall, thin, dark-eyed, dark-haired man whose leather
apron had a wide pocket filled with a surgeon’s tools. “Dr. Gonzales—he’s out
of Providence with the Rhode Island Brigade. He thinks as we do, Feversham,
regarding infection.”

Feversham
said, “Dr. Benjamin Rush spoke highly of you. I met him in Philadelphia last
year. Are you Spanish, Doctor?”

“Jewish,” Gonzales said with a thin smile.

“Well,
now, you are the first of the tribe I ever met. Myself, I am Catholic, but
unhappily a fallen one.”

“Then you
must come to Providence, Feversham, where you’ll find a round number of
Catholics as well as Jews.”

“Someday, certainly.”

Warren went
on with the introductions, the attention of the other men fixed on these two
rather astonishing outsiders in a world of Protestants.

“Make
yourselves
comfortable,” Feversham said. “I’ll try not to
bore you.” There were two benches in front of the Palmer house. Some of the men
sat on the benches. The others squatted. Warren sprawled wearily on the ground.
“Who of you were with the wounded after Concord?” Three of them raised their
hands, two barbers and a young man, who apologized that he was merely a leech,
only a few months into learning his trade. Bones, a Welshman, explained that he
had been with the British army years before.

“Then you
know what a musket ball will do,” Feversham continued. “The habit is to probe
for the bullet, and I’ve seen men bleed away their lives while a surgeon probed
and cut away. There are simply not enough of us to take the time to probe in a
wound. The thing is to close the wound and put the man in a litter. Stop the
bleeding and get him to the hospital—”

“We have
no hospitals,” someone interrupted.

“There’ll
be at least three houses for that,” Warren said. “We have two in Cambridge and
another in Roxbury. We’ll portion them out. There’ll be men and women there to
help.”

“Do we try
to amputate where the battle is?” Gonzales asked.

“I would say no. And unless the tibia or the femur is
smashed by the ball, we don’t rush to amputate.” “And the humerus and the
radius and the ulnar?”
“No, not on the battlefield.
If
the arm or leg must come off, the

poor
devil has some small chance in the hospital, where
the light is good and the surgeon can work slowly and carefully. The odds are
all against the man who is hit, but if you try to cut away with bullets flying
around you, he has no chance at all. Use a tourniquet, stop the bleeding, and
pack the wound. But above all, wherever the wound is, we must try to keep it
clean.”

“What
difference does it make?” someone asked.

“The
difference between life and death,” Gonzales put in.

“Now let
me tell you this,” Feversham said. “If we had a fortnight, we could argue this
matter. We don’t. Dr. Warren tells me that we are already fortifying the
peninsula, both hills beyond Charlestown. So you hear me well. A wound festers
because the living filth spreads through the body and poisons it. It is not
evil humors; it is not even the bullet. It is filth. You must carry water to
wash the wound, and you must have a flask of rum, and when the wound is washed,
pour a measure of rum into it—”

“What!”
“Be damned!” “Are you mad, sir?” The outcries exploded all around Feversham.

Bones,
white-haired and gaunt, cried out, “Be damned, Doctor, sir, here’s a man in
screaming pain and you want to pour
a liquor
in the
wound? I’m no tyro, sir. The very pain will kill.”

“The pain
won’t kill, and better the pain than the fester. You were a surgeon in the
French war. How many men have you seen to survive an amputation or a belly
wound?”

“Some do.
I never served one who did.”

“Have you used the liquor, Feversham?” Gonzales asked.

“I have.”

“And did
it do a miracle?”

“There are
no miracles. But I’ve seen a man here and there who survived when the odds told
me he was dead.”

“Will you
provide the rum, Dr. Warren?” a leech asked him.

“You come
to Hunt’s place. I’ll have the rum there. You all come by Hunt’s this afternoon
and bring your tools and probes and saws and forceps and knives. Ay, bring a
couple of buckets. We’ll have some kind of plan and give your orders.”

Finally,
they drifted away. Feversham asked Gonzales to stay. Warren remained sprawled
out on the grass, telling Feversham, “I want desperately to sleep, and I don’t
sleep. They’ll be after me— God’s curse.
The stupidity of
making me the commander.
I’m a doctor, not a military man.”

“Let me
look at your throat,” Gonzales said. Warren climbed to his feet. “My throat’s
sore, yes.” Gonzales took a small stick and depressed Warren’s tongue. “It’s a
springtime humor, flushed.” He fingered the glands in Warren’s neck. “Coddle it
with hot flip and rest.”

Warren
laughed. “Rest, you say.”

“Where
did you learn, Dr. Gonzales?” Feversham asked him.

“In Rhode Island.
We have a hospital in Providence.”

“Have you
seen any war?”

“No, but I’ve had cuts and hunting wounds, and I’ve done amputations.
I had good mentors. The ships come in, you know, and
the seamen are knocked about. I’m fifty-two years, so I have a lifetime behind
me.”

“Warren,”
Feversham said, “we’ll not make it with a handful of barbers and leeches. It’s
going to be a bloody, dreadful mess. If you could find a dozen men to help
Gonzales here and myself, it might make a difference. And where is this Dr.
Church?”

“God knows!
Come inside and we’ll talk to Hunt about the men you want. As for Dr. Church,
Feversham, he’s too damned elusive for my taste. He’s supposed to be a member
of our Committee of Safety, and I wish to God he weren’t. The man raises too
many doubts in me.”

I
n a royal rage, Sir William Howe, Fifth Viscount Howe,
pillar of the British armed forces in America, commander in chief of the Royal
Expeditionary Forces in the colonies, strode back and forth across the
tastefully furnished living room of the Boston mansion appropriated for his
use. Then he halted, his huge six-foot, one-inch bulk towering over Henry
Clinton. He drove an accusing hand at him and shouted, “You dare, sir!
And with what conscience, sir?
You will preach me morality!
You have taken the wife of a priest of the Church of England and are fucking
her like a damned stallion for all the world to
see,
and you dare to teach me propriety!”

“I beg you
to be calm, sir,” Clinton said softly. “I apologize for my forthrightness. For
God’s sake, let’s speak like gentlemen. We are comrades in arms. I honor you. I
beg you, sir.”

Rage was
never a lasting mood with William Howe. The anger passed, and for a long moment
he stood silent, staring at Henry Clinton. Then he said quietly, “You don’t
understand.”

“Perhaps
not,” Clinton admitted.

“You know
me very little, sir. You take great liberties.”

“My duty
speaks, Sir William. In all of England there is no more honored family than
yours. Your brother, the Earl Richard, more than any other man, is an emblem
for the Crown. For seven years, he commanded the fleet that was England’s wall
against the French. You are a peer of the realm, with a wife and family in
England.”

“I’ll
thank you not to read me my honors,” Howe said sourly. He fell into a spacious
armchair. “I am no schoolboy,” he said. “I am no callow, horny subaltern
looking for ass. Something happened to me that never happened before in all my
life. I am in love, sir. I have encountered something I never believed existed.
This is my woman, now and forever.”

Sir Henry
groped for words. Later, describing the scene to Burgoyne, he would say, “I was
bloody speechless. Here’s this huge, overaged, overweight top dog—mind you, top
dog at home as well as here—talking like a lovesick schoolboy.
And over what?
Over a lowborn hussy, a whore, if you will,
because she has been fucked over and diddled by anyone willing to pay the
price. Oh, she plays a magnificent hand of whist, and she has tits that would
make a vicar’s tongue hang out, and I’ll give you her looks; but the woman’s a
slut, and she married a gelding for his money—and Sir William is most certainly
Sir William.” But at this moment, staring at General Howe in speechless
disbelief, Henry Clinton could only say, “I don’t understand, Sir William— now
and forever?”

“Now and forever.
That’s
plain, straightforward king’s English. What do you fail to understand?”

“Forgive
me,
do you intend to marry her?”

“That’s a stupid question to a married man.”

“Yes,”
Clinton admitted.

“She is to
be my mistress, do you understand? Mrs. Loring will be with me through this
campaign. She will share my quarters. She is to be treated and addressed as in
every way a lady of quality. Any insult offered her—and hear this clearly—will
call for a response on a field of honor. She will be the hostess wherever and
whenever I propose a social occasion. I want this to be known around.”

Clinton
nodded.

“I would like an audible reply!” Howe snapped.

“Yes, Sir William. I understand.”

“Good.”

Very
tentatively, Clinton responded, “May I simply say, that as you propose this, it
cannot be sub rosa.”

“I don’t
give a bloody fuck,” Howe said flatly. “And damn it to hell, will you sit down
and stop standing there like some bleeding schoolmaster.”

Sir Henry
seated himself. “It will be an incredible scandal.”

“I suppose it will.”

“Not only here but in England and in Europe.”

“Yes, but
I don’t choose to discuss that, Sir Henry. I wish to discuss the lady’s
husband, Mr. Joshua Loring. Have you met him?”

“Oh yes.
He’s been ass licking around for a commission.”

“I gather
he’s queer.”

“He makes
no secret of it,” Clinton said. “He married her to give himself some probity in
the Tory crowd.”

“What is
he like?”

“Despicable.”

“I want
you to talk to him. Be open. Tell him exactly what I have told you. His wife
will live with me. He is not to open his mouth concerning that, and if I hear a
tittle of gossip or complaint, I will cut his
balls off, that
is
, considering he has any.”

“What do
we give him?” Clinton wondered.

“He wants
to be a captain in the grenadiers.”

“Oh, does
he? And how long would the officers in the grenadiers put up with him?”

“Not very long, sir.”
Howe
began to chuckle, and Clinton waited patiently to share his humor.

“How many
rebel prisoners do we have, Sir Henry?”

“I don’t have an exact count. Not many.”

“And what do we do with them?” Howe asked.

“Do with them? Well, damned if I know what to do with
them!”

“Where are they?”

“We put them in Boston jail.
Where
else?”

“Who’s in charge?”

“No one.
Just a few guards.”

“Well, by
God, we’ll soon have many more. Give our friend, Mr. Joshua Loring, the
commission he wants so badly. Make him Captain Joshua Loring, and give him a
command over the rebel prisoners. Find a dozen louts that you want to rid of
and make them his brigade.”

Clinton
hesitated before replying, and then he shook his head uneasily. “These are
prisoners of war, Sir William. They should be in the charge of a gentleman.”

“These are
stinking rebels, and they are no more prisoners of war than any footpad or
highwayman at home.
Captain Joshua Loring, in charge of His
Majesty’s prisoners.
Does he hate the rebels?”

“Oh, that
he does, and with a vengeance. They stripped him clean.”

“Good,” General Howe said.
“I know his kind. Give him a little power over another and he’ll be a happy man.”

Evan
Feversham was troubled that Dr. Benjamin Church had absented himself from the
gathering of doctors and leeches. When he raised the matter with Dr. Warren,
Warren was disposed to shake it off. “He’s an odd lot, Dr. Benjamin Church,” he
said, not willing to go into details and explain to Feversham that when he,
Warren, had raised the matter of the impending battle with Church, the little
man had fumed with anger and denounced Feversham as a damned papist and
Englishman, with whom he desired no further intercourse. Warren had heard the
tale of the misdiagnosed smallpox incident and of Feversham’s rescue of Church
from the angry crowd, and he thought it best to let the business rest.

“Still and
all,” Feversham argued, “he’s a member of the Committee of Safety. He’s an
established physician, and we are in desperate need. If he nurses a grudge
against me, I’ll try to talk him out of it.”

“And if
you do,” Warren said without enthusiasm, “you’ll never get him up there on the
hills.”

“Where can
I find him?”

“He’s with
the Middlesex men, over by Willis Creek. He has a tent there, and he
dispenses.”

“Really?
What does he
dispense?”

“Poultices.
He has a leech
who
bleeds for a shilling. It’s not a business I care
for.”

“Those
fourteen men,” Feversham said, shaking his head. “Surely we could find a dozen
more. Good heavens, there must have been a dozen doctors in Boston town alone.”

“And
they’re still there,” Warren agreed. “Tending the British, who pay in real
coin.
”

It was
about two miles to where the Massachusetts farmers had encamped at Willis
Creek. Feversham walked his horse through as noisy and disorganized a crowd of
men as he had ever seen. Officers, many of them self-appointed, shouted orders,
trying to form their men in ranks. Still other units were on the move, more or
less orderly, marching three abreast. There were town militias from as far away
as Pennsylvania, units that numbered anywhere from a dozen to a hundred men, a
variety of uniforms as colorful as they were improbable, small brigades, large
brigades, either carrying banners or calling out their origin—Albany, Stamford,
Marblehead, Basking Ridge, Bridgeport, Providence, Fall River, Cape Cod, New
London, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Newport, New Haven, Milford,
Springfield. There was even a company of two hundred riflemen from Virginia,
smart and romantic with their six-foot-long rifles, their doeskin leggings, and
their fringed smocks. The uniforms were as colorful and different as the sewing
circles in a hundred different villages could devise—red coats with white
facings, blue coats with red facings, green coats, yellow coats, brown coats,
pink coats, and shirts and vests and sashes in all the colors of the rainbow.

On the day
before, the great army of thirteen or fourteen or fifteen thousand men had been
sprawled all over the circumference of Boston. No count was valid, and no one
actually knew how many they were, and it seemed incredible to Feversham that
now they were at least somewhat organized and on the march to a great battle.
Here and there were mounted units of twelve or twenty or thirty men, never many
more than that, but in wonderful fettle, one unit with metal cuirasses and
lances and feathered helms, making their horses prance and rear to the hoots
and jibes of the men on foot.
And in and among them, women
and children, the children strutting with sticks of wood, and in front of every
house along the way, the women and children of the house whistling and
cheering.

Feversham
had tended the wounded in three battles on the Continent, European wars, where
the men stood against each other in solid ranks, and he had watched men die
like pigs in a slaughterhouse. These men were ebullient. They knew of war only
what they had seen or heard of the long, stretched-out battle of Concord, where
each man was an army unto himself, where he could pot away at the retreating
British soldiers from behind a stone wall or from the shelter of a tree or a
barn or a house. War was like a turkey shoot, and as long as one kept his head
down, he could come to no harm. And here he was with sixteen doctors, including
himself and Joseph Warren, who was walking his horse to participate in
eternity. He was too old for this. He was too far from home, and these men were
as strange to him as men on the moon, if indeed there were men on the moon. He
was a Catholic and fallen beyond redemption. He had married a lovely woman in
Ridgefield in Connecticut, and he had left her to be a part of this madness for
reasons beyond his understanding. He was not good at understanding himself.

It was a
hot June day. Feversham saw a girl standing in the doorway. She had a pitcher
in one hand, a mug in the
other,
and poured water into
the mug for a thirsty young fellow to drink. She had hair as yellow as corn
silk, and her firm breasts were bursting from her bodice. Her blue eyes fixed
on him, and he pulled up his horse, his body seized suddenly with desire so
strong it weakened him.

She took
the mug back, poured water, and cried out to him, “Here, Captain, wet your
throat.”

He had no
sense of himself as a good-looking man, his long, dark face bringing him no
comfort when he regarded it in a mirror. He had his Welsh mother’s brown eyes,
her black hair, now streaked through with gray. But he cut a fine figure on his
horse, with his black boots and doeskin breeches and loose white shirt. The
girl handed him the mug, watching him with pleasure as he drank.

“More,
Captain?”

“Oh, no.
Thank you.” He
found himself smiling at her. What a blessing to find something to smile at. He
leaned down to hand back the mug, asking her, “Why do you call me captain,
lass?”

“The
officers ride, sir. The common men walk.”

“I’m a common man, but I am a doctor, which earns me a
horse.”

“And what a strange way of speech you have, Captain!”

“I’m English.”

“Ah, so you are. And why are you not over there with
the lobsters?”

“I would find no such beauty as you over there with
the lobsters.”

“Come
inside out of the heat,” she said. “The war will wait.”

He was almost
sick with desire. Cursing himself, he rode on without looking back, the foot
soldiers passing by, grinning and hooting and offering themselves as
substitutes. As so often, he wondered what strange forces drove him that he
should be here of his own will, among these alien bumpkins who lived cheek by
jowl with their angry Protestant God and were making this bloody war out of
slights that English commoners had endured for centuries without protest.