Bunker Hill (2 page)

T
he party of four men and two women had lunched with
the captain of
Somerset
, a splendid frigate of sixty-four guns, and now
they were on their way to the boat that would row them back to Boston when they
paused to note the preparations for Merton’s flogging. The first officer,
bidding farewells for the captain, who was engaged elsewhere, would have
hurried them by; but the tallest of the four, Sir William Howe, stayed him and
remarked that this was the business of the rat—was it not?

“Case of
one rat being punished for another rat—nothing the ladies should see.”

“We ate
rats in Germany,” Sir Henry Clinton said, and one of the ladies, Patience
Carter, a pretty widow of thirty or so, squealed with horror. Miss Ambleton,
her companion, a plump, dull young lady, reacted not at all. “Not bad, either,
done properly,” Clinton went on. He knew he was being nasty and that it emerged
out of his petulance with the two ladies. Childish behavior for a man of
forty-five who was wretchedly lonely and wanted to be in love, or what went for
love or at least a pretense of love that would allow him to be amorous with a
modicum of passion. The two ladies were dull and stupid and unattractive.

“Nothing
the ladies should see,” the first officer repeated.

A watch of
twenty-two seamen was drawn up on the deck of the frigate to observe. There
were two drummer boys and a piper. A large, fat, and brawny seaman, stripped to
the waist, fondled a heavy bull-hide whip, and bound to the mast was Seaman
Merton, no bigger than a child and as skinny as a plucked chicken.
And over all, the warm and gentle June sun and a sky of pure blue.

Gen.
Thomas Gage, fifty-four, by one year the eldest of the party of four and
nominally the commander of the British forces in the port of Boston, served as
host to the ladies and was also somewhat embarrassed by the situation. He was a
rather simple-minded
man,
slow in his perceptions, yet
he felt that fifty lashes on the back of a skinny, undersized British seaman
was not a sight and a tale that should be carried back to the town.

“Suppose
we go now, gentlemen,” he said to the others.

“Curious situation,” Sir William observed.
“Rat stew.”

“Soup,
sir,” said the first officer.

“Tell you
what,” said the fourth man in the party, Gen. John Burgoyne—Gentleman Johnny,
as they knew him—tall, slender, handsome, meticulously attired, a man who lived
secretively inside himself, well hidden by his reputation as the gayest of
blades, the most gallant gambler. He would bet on anything, and you make the
odds. “Tell you what,” he said. “A fiver says he can’t live through fifty
lashes. What about it, Clinton?”

Clinton
frowned in distaste. Sir William Howe said, “Give me ten to five.”

“Little faith in His Majesty’s seaman.”

“For
heaven’s sake,” General Gage said, beginning a protest. Then he shook his head
and asked the first officer to see the ladies to shore. Clinton noticed that they
went reluctantly. He would have gone with them, but he could stand their
company no longer. Anyway, he was curious.

“All
right, Sir William,” Burgoyne agreed.
“A tenner to your five.
Trouble is your bloody army background. If your brother were here, he would
stand up for the guts and tenacity of an old seadog.”

“Old
seadog,” Clinton muttered. “That skinny little bastard’s no more than twenty
years.”

“Your
humanity’s admirable,” Howe said. “I share your compassion, Sir Henry, but a
ship’s a ship.
Discipline’s discipline.

You don’t want to double that bet?” he asked Burgoyne.

“You’re on.”

The drums
rolled, and the first lash fell, curling around Merton’s back and leaving a red
welt on the white flesh.

“Creative
little bugger,” said Burgoyne. “Imagine—a rat in the officers’ soup.”

The second lash, and then the third and the fourth and the fifth.
A pattern of red lines appeared on the bony little
back. At the tenth lash, Merton began to scream. At twenty-two lashes, he
stopped screaming. At thirty lashes, the pattern of red lines disappeared from
his back; it was a red, bubbling froth of meat, and he had lost consciousness.
At forty-two lashes, the second officer signaled for the flogging to stop. He
went over to Merton, lifted the seaman’s head and then an eyelid.

“Cut him
down. He’s dead,” the second officer said.

“Heart
gave out,” Howe said, accepting defeat. “Never know about a man’s heart.”

“Could we
go now, gentlemen?” Clinton
asked,
an edge of anger
and disgust in his voice.

When they
were in the ship’s boat and being rowed to shore, Gage pointed out that it was
precisely such an incident as they had just witnessed that produced rage and
resentment in the taverns and meeting places of Boston.

Burgoyne
disagreed. “They are a stinking, narrow lot,” he said. “In this time of enlightenment
and understanding, they burn witches.”

“Enlightenment
and understanding,” Clinton reflected.

“They have stopped burning witches,” Howe said.

“Recently.”

“I don’t
think they give two damns about a seaman’s punishment,” Howe continued. “Use it
for agitation—no doubt. I wouldn’t put it beyond Sam Adams and his crowd. But
as far as

compassion
is concerned—
pah
!”

“We have compassion,” said
Sir Henry Clinton.

“The
trouble with you, Clinton, is that you’re a bloody Continental yourself.
Too much time in America.”

Clinton
shook his head and remained silent. He had closed his eyes and given over his
body to the sway of the boat. He felt sick and empty and dirty, and he tried to
comfort himself by pretending that the salt spray in his face was an anointment
of some sort, some holy liquid whose secret God shared with Britain, as in the
past he had shared it with other nations that made the sea their wall and
salvation. Merton was a single skinny little cockney whose life or death made
no difference whatsoever, and this was not the first time, not even the
fiftieth time, Clinton had seen a man flogged and often enough flogged to
death.

Gage, on
the other hand, was more deeply troubled. He had lived twenty years in America,
married the daughter of a wealthy Jersey landowner, and had come to think of
himself, at least in part, as a colonial. Here was his home, and here he had a
wide circle of friends, Tories most of them, but enough of the Puritan bent to
have adopted some of their egalitarian notions. He had fought alongside the
Americans during Braddock’s campaign, and he had more respect for their
fighting ability than either Howe or Burgoyne. He knew that the story of the
whipping of Seaman Merton would soon be all over Boston, and he could picture Presbyterian
and Congregational clerics busily scribbling sermons on the subject of British
brutality and disregard for human life, while Sam Adams applied himself to the
publication of another fiery pamphlet.

Like
Clinton, he would have preferred that the punishment had been less severe—at
least while the fleet was in the port of Boston.

The boat
touched the dock, and Sir William Howe exploded, “Goddamn it to hell, I had the
company of a lady today, and I clean

forgot
it!”

“Do you ever think of
anything else?” Burgoyne asked.

“Not when I am off duty, laddy.
I’ll see you gentlemen.” Then he hurried down the street,
half-running.

“Amazing
man,” said Burgoyne.
“Utterly preoccupied with fucking.
He literally exists for it. Here in Boston just a fortnight or so and he knows
every lady available.”

“It’s not
the screwing,” Clinton said. “He wants to be loved, Johnny. We all do.”

“Turned
Christian?” Burgoyne grinned, and Gage said, why don’t they amble along to his
place and have some tea and some sensible talk about what was to be done?

“I’ll have
something stronger than tea,” said Clinton.

They
walked on, a squad of Gage’s troops marching six on either side, accompanying
them through the almost deserted city of Boston. Clinton wondered how many had
gone and how many were left. He saw only two civilians, and they were hurriedly
on their way.

“One in
three, perhaps,” said Gage. “The others have taken off. They have relatives
everywhere. They’re a close-knit lot.”

“And
what’s left
are
loyal?”

“You tell
me.”

“They bolt
their doors and stay inside,” Burgoyne said. “I’d root them out, and damned if
I wouldn’t make them declare themselves!”

“To what
end?” Gage asked tiredly. “It’s not a war and it’s not a peace, and I can’t say
that I know what it is.”

“If we’re
going to talk seriously,” Clinton said, “and it’s high time that we did, we’ll
want our happy lad Howe with us, won’t we? Why the devil can’t he do his
fornicating at night?”

“Because
he’s screwing a lady called Amanda Blaketon whose husband spends his days
plotting with the rebels and his nights at home.”

“Why
not arrest him and make it easy for Sir William?”

“For what?
For being her husband?”
Clinton asked.

“Plotting
with the rebels,” Burgoyne suggested.

“Good
heavens, Johnny, where do I start, and where do I finish? You really have no
idea. It’s not a simple question of loyalty or disloyalty. They regard
themselves as proper Englishmen.”

“Proper Englishmen?”
Gage
wondered aloud.

“The
column into Concord botched it. I know that.”

“They shot
the very hell out of us. Proper Englishmen be damned!” Gage said.

“Then you
tell me, dear fellow. Do we start a war?”

“It is a war,” Burgoyne snapped.

“It’s not
a war,” Clinton said sourly.

“My
business is war. That’s why I was sent here,” said Burgoyne. “You deal with a
war by ending it. I would have put every one of the bastards into irons.”

“How many?
A thousand?
Five thousand?
Ten thousand?”
Gage said.

“That
wretched seaman Merton spelled it out.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“He died.”

“I haven’t
heard two sensible words about this whole mess since I have been here,” Clinton
said. “Suppose we drop it now and have a spot of tea and put our heads together
sanely. It’s quite ridiculous, you know. The best army in the world backed by
the best navy in the world bottled up here in this wretched Continental village
by a lot of hotheaded, disorganized farmers. We are supposed to be hardheaded,
intelligent military men. Or are we?”

Then they
were at Province House, Gage’s home and executive mansion, where Mrs. Gage
greeted them almost somberly. It gave Clinton the thought that already she knew
about the disgusting mess of the flogging, but then he realized that that was
impossible.

They had come straight from
the ship. As they entered the house, Howe joined them, mumbling something about
thinking better of the whole thing and that they ought to get down to business
after all. His big, shambling form took on the stance of a penitent little boy,
and looking at his swarthy face, Clinton realized that he was blushing.

“I don’t
believe it,” Burgoyne said. Howe told him to shut his bloody mouth and then
apologized profusely to Mrs. Gage.

Clinton,
watching Mrs. Gage, realized that she had apparently heard neither Howe’s oath
nor his apology. Margaret Gage was a lovely, intelligent woman, and Clinton had
fallen into the habit of flirting with her, not crudely or even noticeably but
with the smallest and gentlest of gestures and courtesies. Gage himself never
noticed, or if he did, shrugged it off as a matter of no importance. The truth
of it was that he was so utterly entrapped and frustrated by his situation that
he might hardly have noticed had Clinton and his wife embraced in front of him.

“Is there
trouble, Margaret?” Clinton asked her. He had fallen into calling her by her
first name the first day they met, cozened it out of her with his easy manner,
and with that her permission to use it. Sir William noticed. He envied both
Clinton and Burgoyne for their easy manner with women. Arriving with them in
America a few days ago, he as a Whig had expected that his reputation as a
great friend of the colonies would have preceded him, and since he lived with a
dream of politics as seduction, he was almost always disappointed.

In reply
to Clinton’s question, Margaret Gage told her husband that Dr. Benjamin Church
had been there.

“We’ll
have tea, my dear, if it’s no trouble.
With a bottle of
sherry or Madeira.
I think the Madeira would be better.”