Bunker Hill (12 page)

A cluster
of tents caught his eye, and he turned his horse toward them, enduring the
curses and shouts of a column of marching men that had to give way for him. In
front of one oversized brown tent, a man on a horse was shouting a stream of
profanities at a small, fat man, whom Feversham recognized as Dr. Church. The
man on the horse he knew slightly, Israel Putnam by name, whom he had met and
spoken with two days ago. Putnam was an older man, almost sixty, a farmer from
Pomfret in Connecticut and given to fits of anger. A handful of men stood
around, listening to the exchange between Church and Putnam, and as Feversham
came on the scene, Putnam was shouting, “I do not give a tinker’s fart for your
damned headaches, Dr. Church. This whole lousy day is a headache. Joe Warren
tells me he called for all doctors to be assigned, and you refused.”

“I am
unwell,” Church protested. “I have the runs. I am here at my tent, and I will
do my duty here. I will not be spoken to like some common lout. I am a member
of the Committee of Safety.”

“You could
be a member of the angel’s
chorus,
for all that I give
a damn. Your place is up on the hills, and you will set up a surgery there or
I’ll burn this fuckin’ tent down on your head!” He paused for breath and saw
Feversham.
“On the same mission, Dr. Feversham?”

Feversham
nodded.

“He’ll be
there,” Putnam said, spurring his horse away and waving an arm for Feversham to
follow him. Feversham was intrigued by the short, stocky, grizzled man, half
bald with what remained of his hair flowing down in long white locks over his
shoulders. In spite of the heat, he wore heavy leather trousers, knit
stockings, and old shoes. He carried two horse pistols and over the pommel,
hanging from a chain loop, an enormous cutlass. Though his shirt was drenched
with perspiration, he wore a leather waistcoat and, on his head, a
broad-brimmed farmer’s hat.

“Come up
alongside of me,” he shouted to Feversham, and when they were side by side, he
said to the English doctor, “I’m for the hills. Will you ride with me?”

Feversham
pulled up alongside of Putnam, who said, “That man is no damn good. It was in
my mind to tie a rope around his neck and drag him over to the peninsula.
As much as anyone, I’m in command of this army, and I had to come
here myself to talk to that little bastard.
He’s a big muckamuck on the
damned Committee of Safety, and no one will touch him. The committee holds a
meeting, and two hours later, the British know every word spoken. As sure as
there’s
a God in heaven, it comes from Church. What kind of
spell he has over them, I don’t know.”

“Do you
have any evidence?” Feversham wondered.

Putnam
shrugged and shook his head. “Devil
take
him! We have
other fish to fry. Warren tells me you fought in Europe? Why are you with us?”

“I’m
Catholic. They took all that our family had, all that my grandfather had. But
that’s a small thing. I had a bellyful of them and a land where a poor bastard
is hanged by the neck for stealing a loaf of bread. The crux of it came when I
served the wounds of a French soldier. They cashiered me. I came to America.”

“We’re
going to defend both hills, Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill. Gridley insists that
the whole defense hangs on a redoubt. I don’t agree with him, but I’m going
along. Have you ever seen a proper redoubt?”

“I’m a
surgeon, not a soldier or an engineer.”

“Warren
says you have brains and eyes in your head.”

They were
now at the Charlestown Neck, the sliver of land that connected Charlestown
peninsula with the mainland. The road was crowded with Continental troops
marching across the neck toward the two high points that dominated the
peninsula. Putnam waved at two men who sat their horses alongside the road.
Feversham recognized Dr. Warren and Artemus Ward, and remembering the order of
battle he had seen in Europe—the marvelously disciplined French and Prussian
and British troops, the lines of attack and defense, of movement and
countermovement, the rush of musket fire like eruptions from the mouth of
hell—he couldn’t help thinking that this was a tragicomic opera, a disaster on
its way to happen, the half-disciplined files of farmers and clerks and hunters
and woodcutters, the confusion, the babble of voices. Next to him rode the
tactical commander of the whole movement, who had taken time to seek out a fat
little doctor, suspected of being the enemy’s master spy, and over on the other
side of the causeway there was an elderly man ridden with the pain of kidney
stones and a gentle doctor who was running a fever and ought to be in bed.

They
pushed through to join Warren and Ward, Putnam explaining that he had run into
Feversham and had brought him along. Putnam asked about the redoubt.

“The redoubt?
I’m not sure
that we ought to build a redoubt,” Ward said. “Suppose they attack
immediately?”

“My men
are on Bunker Hill,” Putnam said. “Prescott is there with his men. I’m going to
move Nutting’s brigade through Charlestown to the shoreline.” He pointed to the
ridge that connected the two hills, Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill, the slope to
the ridge spotted with men climbing to take their position across the ridge
toward Breed’s Hill. “They’re Prescott’s men,” he said.

“Where’s
Prescott?” Ward demanded. “I don’t see him.”

To
Feversham, they looked like an aimless mob, without direction or leadership. Why
the British did not attack immediately was beyond his understanding. There were
no more than a few hundred men in Nutting’s brigade.
“How
many?
With Nutting?” he asked Putnam.

“Two hundred.”
The houses
of Charlestown obscured the view.

“There’s
at least a mile of shoreline,” Feversham said, and then bit his lips. It was
actually none of his damn business even to question them.

“We’ll
reinforce them,” Putnam said shortly.

“Feversham,”
Warren said, “would you go up there to the top of the hill? I told Gridley that
you have seen redoubts in action.”

“I’m not
equipped to interfere,” Feversham said.

“Goddamn
it, sir!” Putnam snarled. “Do what you’re ordered to do!”

His abrupt
change of mood startled Feversham. Without another word, Putnam spurred his
horse down the road toward Bunker Hill.

Artemus
Ward shook his head anxiously. “That’s the way he is,” Warren said. “At least
he has the make of a commander. Even if he doesn’t know what to do, he does
it.”

Feversham
nodded, shook his reins, and rode off on a path across a meadow toward Breed’s
Hill. He dismounted to lead his horse up the slope, passing by a division of
about sixty men, stripped to the waist, dragging four pieces of artillery up
the hill. They had three horses to help with the struggle, and when they saw
Feversham, they began to shout, “Lend us your horse, Captain!” Evidently,
captain was the proper address for anyone astride a horse.

Feversham
grinned and passed them by, thinking that if they were British, no questions
would be asked; the horse would simply have been appropriated. As the slope
lessened, he mounted again and rode to where men were digging earnestly,
looking around until he located Gridley, who was squatting over a large sheet
of paper that rested on a flat stone.

From their
position, Feversham had a view of the whole harbor, with Charlestown just below
at the base of the peninsula and Boston town across the peninsula, and in the
Charles River and off Hudson’s Point, five British warships. The sight made his
heart sink as he measured the chaos he had just passed through against the
mighty force of the British fleet.

He
dismounted, and Gridley glanced up to greet him. Col. Richard Gridley was a big
man, wide and strong and well over six feet in height, with reddish hair, a
two-day growth of blond beard, and tired, bloodshot blue eyes. He squinted at
Feversham for a

moment
then nodded.
“Feversham.
Right?”

Feversham nodded.

“Warren
said you’d be coming by.” He called to one of the diggers, “Lenny, get over
here and take the doctor’s horse.”

Feversham
gave up the reins and bent over the sheet of paper on the stone. Gridley had
sketched out the shape of a redoubt in charcoal. “Look at this, Doctor. I swear
I don’t know what the devil I’m doing. I saw redoubts when we took Quebec
during the French war, but they were built of stone and concrete. We have
fieldstone and common soil, but how on God’s earth I can build a proper
fortification out of that, I don’t know. If we pile up earth walls, the British
cannon will blow it to pieces. We could dig trenches, I suppose, but Warren
insists on a redoubt. How do they do it in the old country? Warren says you’ve
seen European battlefields.”

“Some,
yes.”

“And redoubts?”

“I’ve been trying to remember.”

“The thing
is,
what holds the walls together.”

“Yes. I
remember that well enough. They take young trees— saplings, we call them in
Connecticut—and branches the thickness of my thumb, and they weave them the way
you weave a basket, and then they wrap the basket weave around the bastions and
face the wall with the same woven stuff.”

“Of course!
I’ve seen
pictures of that, and if we had a fortnight or a week or even two days—but we
don’t.” He stood up and pointed to the British warships. “We have the rest of
today and tonight. Feversham, why don’t they attack? We’re spread out all over
these hills. They could land their troops and cut through us like a scythe cuts
wheat? Why don’t they?”

Feversham
thought about it.

“You’re one of them. You know them. Tell me why.”

“I don’t
know them that well,” Feversham said. “They know what we’re doing. But they’re
so damned arrogant and bloody well sure of themselves. To my way of thinking,
they’re simply taking their time. They can’t see what’s on the other side.
There’s the possibility that they want all of us up here, and then they cut the
causeway and here we are.
Or maybe not.
Who knows how
they think and what they think. They had the hills. They were up here, weren’t
they?”

“They
surely were.”

“And then they pulled out.
Stupidity?”

“They must
have had a reason,” Gridley said.

“I
suppose.” Feversham pointed to the rooftops of Charlestown. “When they do
attack, Colonel, they’ll fire those houses.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s
easy and because you might have riflemen in the houses. All they have to do is
drop hot shot and those wooden houses will burn like torches. I hope to God you
have gotten the householders out.”

“The
houses are empty,” Gridley said. “There’s no one left in Charlestown.”

“You’re
sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Where are
they?”

“Roxbury,
Cambridge, Dorchester,” Gridley said. “They saw the handwriting on the wall,
and they fled—modest folk, no Tories there, and they’re no different than
anyone else. We all think about a rope around the neck.”

“The
houses are empty?”

“I told
you they were.”

“Now
listen,” Feversham said. “Here’s a way to build the redoubt. Think about a bed,
any bed. You have a wooden frame with leather strips woven through it, crisscross.
Do you follow?”

“Go on,”
Gridley said.

“There’s
our basket weave. Face both aides of the wall. They’ve likely taken the pallets
with them, but they’d leave the beds. Send a party down there and take every
bed in the place.”

“My God, Feversham, that’s looting. We’re not
barbarians. Those beds belong to our own people.” “I tell you, they will burn
Charlestown. Can’t you believe me? There is no way in the world that place can
survive.” Gridley was silent, staring at the rooftops of the little village at

the
edge of the peninsula. Three of his aides had
gathered to listen. “How would we keep them in place?” Gridley finally asked.
“On the outside face and the inside face. Rope them together as

you
build it.”
“And to keep the earth
in?”
“Jackets, shirts, coats, boards.
Use
everything you can find.” Gridley turned to one of his men. “What do you
think?” “It might work.” Gridley sighed and nodded.
“All
right.
We’ll try it.”

At eleven
o’clock, on the night of the sixteenth of June, in the year 1775, Sir William
Howe and his partner, Mrs. Joshua Loring, finished their seventh rubber of
whist, taking twelve or thirteen tricks and causing Henry Clinton to exclaim,
“The woman’s a witch. A hundred years ago they would have burned her at the
stake, and I would be one hundred and twelve guineas richer.”

“Oh, for
shame,” Mrs. Loring cried, laughing. “Would you burn me at the stake, Sir Henry?
And then what would poor Sir William
do
for a partner
at cards?”