Bunker Hill (3 page)

“I don’t
want him in my house again!” Mrs. Gage said.

“Really, my dear.”

“Please
understand me, Thomas. He is a disgusting man, and he disgusts me.”

“But why suddenly? You know how useful
he is to me.”

“You want to know why?
In front of
these gentlemen?”

“I have no secrets from them.”

“Very well.
He made
advances.”

“Dr.
Church?” Gage exclaimed in amazement.
“That fat, foolish
little man!
Oh, no, my dear. You must be mistaken. What advances?”

“He
fondled my tits, if you must, sir!” she cried out in a rage, then turned on her
heel and left the room.

Burgoyne
stifled his grin, and they all looked at Gage, who whispered, “Well, I’ll be
damned!”

“None of
our business,” Clinton said.

“Talk for
yourself, son,” said Howe. “I’m dying of curiosity, and
devil
take
the niceties! Who is this bastard? The man wants a whipping.”

“Dr.
Benjamin Church.” Gage sighed.
“Oh, no.
No indeed.
You don’t want to whip him, Sir William. He’s a
fat little man, half your size, and he’s a sort of nasty treasure to me. I
always think of him as a toad. You see, he’s a very important muckamuck among
the rebels.
Great patriot.
Member of
the Committee of Safety.
Sits in on all their
important meetings.
Absolutely invaluable.
And
I bought him. Offer and purchase—fifty pounds for the dirty little swine. But I
can’t treat him like a gentleman. He’s much too important to me. You can see
what a wretched mess this whole thing is.” And with that, he followed his wife
out of the room.

“I’ll be
damned!” said Howe.

Burgoyne
wandered around the room, studying the hand-blocked wallpaper, the paintings,
the beautifully wrought Queen Anne side chairs. Good taste. It astonished him
how well they managed to live here at the edge of the wilderness. Clinton
watched him. Burgoyne was a playwright, a rotten one, as Clinton appraised him,
but still a playwright. If I ever write anything, it’ll be better than his,
Clinton thought.
Books.
We’re here to destroy, not to
write books. Still, he

gets
his silly plays produced.

Howe was muttering, “Fondled
her tits, did he.”

“Henry,”
Burgoyne said to Clinton, “this is a damn strange place, this America of yours.
How do you feel about it? I mean, how do you see yourself?
One
of them or one of us?”

“That’s an
odd question.”

“You grew
up in the colonies. Where?
In New York?”

The
servants were setting up the tea, and Howe poured the Madeira. Gage rejoined
them.

“Terribly
sorry,” Burgoyne said to him.

“She’s in
a pet. I don’t blame her,” Gage said. “She loves this place, you know. And she
blames us. We’re going to make a war and destroy it.”

“Not
necessarily,” Howe said.

The
servants put the chairs to the table, and Gage motioned for them to sit down.

“Not
necessarily,” Howe said again.

Sir
William Howe had a reputation to uphold. All the Howes were friends of America,
a great, powerful family, a general, an admiral, a foot in the court. They sat
down with the king and talked to him face-to-face.

We can
deal with our enemies, Clinton thought. God save us from our friends. Us, he
repeated to himself. Who
is
us
and who the devil
am I? He had grown up here in this place, ten years of his youth in New York
City, where his father was governor. The whole thing made no damn sense
whatsoever—a British army pinned down in the little town of Boston by fifteen
thousand boys and grown men and old men who were filled with a senseless rage
generated by a senseless act. The act was Thomas Gage’s fault and Gage’s
stupidity. Gage had sent the army into their land, to the village of Concord,
to take away from them the gunpowder and the shot they had so carefully stored.

They were playing a game, a
game filled with words of freedom and independence and the right to do as they
damn pleased, and then Gage joined their game, and the world went mad. You
don’t send generals to do a man’s job; you send the generals to kill.

“Let’s
have a toast.” John Burgoyne lifted his glass.
“His Majesty,
gentlemen.”
He was grinning.

The
bastard was thinking of Margaret Gage’s tits. This afternoon, perhaps, they
would decide the fate of the world, and Burgoyne was sitting there trying to
decide whether it was worth his while to seduce Margaret Gage. Well, how far
was that from
his own
thoughts? Howe wondered.

The
servants brought cake and hard-boiled eggs and bread and sliced ham. Gage and
Howe ate hungrily. They had finished lunch an hour ago, and here they were
stuffing themselves again. Burgoyne sat with his smile and his thoughts.
Clinton poured himself more wine.

“What do
you mean, not necessarily?” Clinton asked Howe.

“Do
nothing. They’ll cool off and go home. They’re not soldiers. No one is paying
them or feeding them. They’ll be bloody well disenchanted in a week or two, if
they’re not already. Ask Thomas here,” Howe said, nodding at Gage.

“I am
offended,” said Burgoyne.

“He’s
right, you know,” Gage said. “They’re breaking up already. They’re in a much
more impossible situation than we are.”

“I said I
was offended,” Burgoyne repeated.

“Oh,
Christ, Johnny,” Clinton said, “what in hell are you offended about? Why don’t
you take your bleeding honor and shove it up your ass.”

“How dare
you!” Burgoyne exploded.

“Come on,
chaps,” Howe said. “We’re a lot of paunchy middle-aged men, not children.
You’ve been bitching all day, Henry.”

“I’m
sorry.”

“The hell you are!” Burgoyne snapped. “Talk to me like
that again, Clinton, and so help me God I’ll put you on a field of honor. So
help me, I will!”

“Oh, yes,
yes, indeed,” Howe said, and Clinton reflected that he was nowhere such a fool
as he appeared. “They send the three best iron-assed generals they have over
here, and Henry Clinton and John Burgoyne work out the problem on a field of
honor. Score one for lunacy. Eat something, Henry. I can’t tolerate a man who
sneers at food.”

“Johnny,
please end this right here,” Gage said worriedly.

Burgoyne shrugged.
“Ended.”

“I’m
sorry,” said Clinton with cold formality. “That is an apology.”

“Now about
the Yankees,’’ Howe continued. “Tell us, Thomas. What does it add up to? Have
they been going home? You have people like this wretched Dr. Church. What do
they say?”

“It’s a
matter of hay—feed for their stock.”

“You mean
for their horses here?”

“No,
no—you know, most of them are farmers, what we call yeomen farmers back at
home, but they have land. Good God, that’s the crux of this place, all the land
in the world and no end to it as you move west. Well, they put pastures of it
to grass, and the grass is ready for the cutting between the middle of May and
the middle of June. That’s how they raise their stock—so much grass to feed so
many animals. They cut the grass now, and they cut it again in six or seven
weeks. It’s not fine grain, but it serves for feed. Well, today is the twelfth
of June, and it’s on to the end of the time for them. If they don’t cut the
grass, they will have to kill the animals.”

“Then
they’ll go home?” Clinton asked with sudden interest.

“Come on,
come on, you don’t win wars that way,” Burgoyne said.

“Not
proper wars, but damn it all, this is no proper war, Johnny. They have no army,
no uniforms,
no
tactics. Heavens, they don’t even have
a table of organization, and the men from—well, say Connecticut—they won’t even
tolerate officers. They’re damn sodden with the leveler business, and when they
don’t like an

officer
, they hold a meeting and vote him out.”

“No!”

“God’s truth.
Now, according to Church, on the ninth about two hundred walked
out, two hundred and fifty or so on the tenth, and yesterday almost three
hundred.
They just pick up and off they go, and the food is so tight
that no one complains. After all, it’s a bit of a bore—no drill, no discipline,
just sitting out there and chewing their nails.”

Clinton
was aware of Burgoyne’s anger before the others sensed it. “A maggot’s eating
the man,” he said to himself. “He’s full of maggots.” The others didn’t know
him. He was Gentleman Johnny, who would rather write plays and screw the prima
donnas than be out in the field. But that was a total lie and a pose, and it
was blood the man wanted. Not like the other three. Howe had a taste for
success and a soft spine, and Gage had a taste for comfort. That was the worst
disease for a military man, to prefer comfort.

At this
moment Clinton’s whole being ached to be away from the three of them and naked
in bed with a woman, but comfort wasn’t entirely what he wanted. Then what was?
Did he have a taste for glory? Or did he have a taste for nothing at all, which
would be the final jest.

Burgoyne
was on his feet, pacing across the room. Suddenly he turned and thrust a finger
at the three men and half-shouted, his voice high-pitched, “To let those lousy
peasants walk away from here and eat shit. No, gentlemen! Give me a thousand
grenadiers and this wretched rebellion will be a memory!”

The three
generals sat in silence. Howe continued to eat, his black eyes fixed on
Burgoyne.

“You let
them go home, Thomas. Go ahead. You command!” he shouted at Gage. “I am an
Englishman. I represent the majesty of the most splendid empire this world has
known.”

“I don’t
believe it,” Clinton told himself. “I truly don’t believe it. The horse’s ass
is writing himself into his own play.”

“Ah, now,
Johnny, calm down,” Howe said. “We haven’t a thought among the lot of us.
Thomas spelled out some facts, and likely enough we’ll see the farmers in hell,
but we’ll deal with fewer of them. Tell you what my notion is.” He turned to
Gage. “Put a map on the table, Thomas, and we’ll see where we are and what’s to
do.”

“After
all,” he said to Burgoyne, “we’re a trio of tyros. Nice phrase that, don’t you
think, Johnny? We’re the new elegance from the homeland, and poor Thomas has
been sitting on this powder keg for months. I am not one to suggest a war, not
with Englishmen, don’t you know—and they are Englishmen—but a battle’s another
thing.
A purgative effect.
They caught us by our cocks
at Lexington and Concord, and it’s time we did a bit of gelding.”

“I’ll get
the map,” Gage replied gloomily, and left the table and went into the next
room. Howe poured a glass of wine and offered it to Burgoyne. “Come drink with
us, Johnny.” Burgoyne stood his distance. “Ah, Johnny, Johnny, you have a quick
temper.” Gage came back into the room with a servant, who cleared the table, and
then Gage spread out the map. Burgoyne, mollified, joined them.

“This is
Clifton Trowman’s work,” Gage explained, “and he’s a damn good cartographer.
I’m sure you know the lay of the land, gentlemen, so I will simply orient you.
Here’s the neck of Boston, here the Charles River, here the Mystic River. These
are Dorchester Heights, and this is the village of Charlestown. The broken line
traces the Yankee position.”

They
studied the map for a little while, and then Clinton wondered how many men they
actually had out there.

“Ten,
twelve, fifteen thousand—I don’t think they really know themselves,” Gage said.
“They come and they go.”

“Who’s in
command, and what’s the beggar like?” Burgoyne asked.

“That’s hard to say,” Gage admitted, “and it’s
questionable whether anyone is truly in command. There’s this old gentleman
from Worcester, Artemus Ward’s his name. Pleasant enough chap—bit fanatical,
but that’s the Puritan in him. He’s in command of the Massachusetts men, if you
call it command. He has a bellyful of trouble.”

“What kind
of trouble?” Howe demanded.

“He pisses
in agony.
Stones in the bladder or something of the sort.
Drives him crazy with pain, so mostly it’s John Thomas who
does his work.
They both style themselves generals. Thomas has something
less than half the Massachusetts men here”—Gage traced it on the map—“between
Dorchester and Roxbury, covering the Boston Neck. The rest of the Massachusetts
contingent is over here at Cambridge, spread out. With them, perhaps two,
three, four thousand from Connecticut and Rhode Island. I get different figures
every day. And some of the same lot are over at Roxbury.
A
good bit of shifting from day to day.
And here, right at the water edge,
about a thousand more from Connecticut. They’re a bad lot.”