Bunker Hill (7 page)

“Is O’Brian really asleep?”

“Who the
hell
cares!
”

She
unbelted her robe and slipped it off, a great mountain of a woman, as tall as
Clinton, yet not fat, as he had thought; her breasts high and enormous, her
hips wide and womanly, and quite beautiful, with her dead white skin and her
mountain of red hair.

Clinton
crawled into the bed. She stood at the foot of the bed, naked, until he
growled, “What in the devil’s name are you waiting for?”

“For your
sweet summons,
me
lord.”

Then she
snuffed the candles, and a moment later he felt her warm body next to him.

F
eversham did not like Dr. Church, and as always when
he disliked a person, he found himself bending backward to disguise his
distaste and replying to the obvious with inanities. The small, fat man played
the role of patriot and fire-eater—a condition which Feversham despised—and at
the same time he toadied to Feversham’s English accent and English manner. He
had assumed Feversham like a garment; Feversham was his.

“Did I not
tell you, sir,” said Dr. Benjamin Church, “that Joe Warren is my friend.
Friend and student.
I said to him, I am bringing around a
Dr. Evan Feversham.
Connecticut man, but born and trained in
the old country.
You will want to meet him, I said to Warren.
Just those words.
You will profit from meeting him. Are you
a married man, Doctor?”

Feversham
nodded. They were walking their horses through Cambridge in the early afternoon
of a lovely June day. On both sides of the road, shoulder to shoulder, it would
seem, in two unbroken lines, stood the endless tents, shelters, lean-tos, and
brush huts of the volunteers who had flocked in from all over Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and even from Vermont and New Hampshire and
Maine, with their muskets and bullet pouches and not much else. Now they lay
around, sunning themselves, picking lice from their clothes, shaving, cooking,
urinating, playing games of lacrosse and Johnny-jump-the-pony and tag, or
flirting with the girls and women, who were almost as numerous as the
men.

“Good
heavens,” Feversham said, “how many of them are there?”

Dr. Church
shrugged. “Who
knows!
We try to make a count, and one
day it comes out fifteen thousand and the next day perhaps ten thousand, and
then maybe twelve thousand. They drift in, and then they go home, and then
sometimes they come back again. Or a captain will come in with a band of a
hundred or so, and he’ll make his camp in one place, and then, by golly, off he
goes to another place, or maybe he marches them through the back country to
scrounge for food. Now if you were not a married man, you could get yourself as
fine a little filly as you’d want to look at for a shilling for a night.”

“Where do
the women come from?” Feversham asked.

“Everywhere, Doctor.
It’s
in the nature of women.”

“Is no one
trying to make something out of it? They’re wallowing in their own filth. If
someone doesn’t take it in hand, the British won’t have to move out of Boston.
Disease will do the job for them.”

Church
smiled smugly and nodded. “So you’re one of them.”

“What the
devil does that mean?”

“Oh, yes,
Dr. Feversham, I know the story, dirt breeds disease. It’s one of Warren’s
small pets.”

“And you
don’t think dirt breeds disease, Doctor?”

“Rank
superstition. The evil humor comes from within, not from without.”

“Does it?
Then how do you account for plagues?”

“Not from
filth but from man to man, sir. It awakens the evil humor within.”

Feversham
stared at him in amazement. There was no retort to such an argument, nor did he
see any profit in persuading Dr. Church to accept his views.

“How much
farther is it?” Feversham asked.

“Watertown.
Just a few miles.
He’s staying with the Hunts, you
know.” Church was a name user and a name dropper. “We’re all doubling up, since
we’ve been kicked out of Boston. Joe and Betsy Palmer are there—she’s Hunt’s
daughter—and Joe Warren’s children. Well, these are sacrifices a patriot makes.
Hunt is a patriot.”

He broke
off as a cluster of men in front of one of the shacks moved out into the road.
One of them pointed to Church.

“That’s him!” another shouted. “That’s the bastard!”

“Hey, Doctor. Hold on!”

They were
a wretched-looking lot to Feversham’s eyes, four of them, unshaven, barefoot,
their shirts stained and dirty. When Church would have ridden by, one man
grabbed his bridle while another caught him by the arm and tumbled him into the
dust. For all of Feversham’s dislike, he felt pity for the fat little man lying
face down in the road. Other men and women came running to see what the
excitement was all about, and by the time Feversham had reached Church and
helped him to his feet, there was quite a crowd around them. The man who had
tumbled Church off his horse grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and began
to shake him violently.

“Let go of him!” Feversham snapped.

“He put death’s touch on my brother.”

Church
tried to speak, but he had lost his breath, and he could not get a word out.
“The devil you say!” cried Feversham. “No one puts death’s touch on anyone.
Suppose you talk sense.”

“Who are you?”

“He’s a
limey, that’s who he is,” said the man who was still hanging on to the bridle
of Church’s horse.

“I’m Dr. Feversham. Now what’s all this about your
brother?”

Church
found his voice and remembered. He had been called there the day before and had
given the boy medicine. He had a bit of fever and vomiting.

“What kind of medicine?” Feversham demanded.

“Salts.”

“No one dies of salts.”

“Are you a
real doctor?” the man asked him. Feversham simply stared at him. At the
coldness of his look, the crowd quieted.

“Is your
brother dead or alive?”

“Alive.”

“Where is
he?”

The man
pointed to the shack. Feversham started for the hut, and the four men stood
still, watching him silently. Then, when Feversham reached the door, the man
with the brother ran after him, grasped his arm, and whispered into his ear,
“Smallpox.”

Feversham
took a deep breath. “How do you know?”

“
I seen
it plenty. Don’t go in. Make that little bastard go
in. He
give
it to him.”

“
Don’t be an ass
,” Feversham muttered, and went on into the
shack. It was hot, dark, and airless inside. A boy of fourteen or fifteen lay
on a blanket, and as Feversham bent over him, he began to whimper.

“I got the
pox, mister. Don’t you come near
me.
”

“Sit up,” Feversham told him brusquely.

“I
be
sick nigh to death.”

“Sit up!”

He sat up,
and Feversham peered at his face. From outside, Church whispered hoarsely, “Get
out of there, Feversham. It’s the pox.”

“Look,
son,” Feversham said gently, “I want you to get up and come out into the
light.”

“I can’t.
I’m dying.”

“You’re
not dying. Now do as I say!”

The boy
groaned, climbed to his feet, and then followed Feversham out of the shack. By
now almost a hundred men and women had gathered around from the sprawl of tents
and lean-tos. Feversham looked at the boy’s face and touched one of the sores
with his finger.

“Church!”

The doctor
hung back, just in front of the crowd that was carefully keeping its distance.
Now a tall, lean man, who had an old sword slung over his shoulder, pushed
through the crowd and made his way over to Feversham.

“I’m
Captain Hawkins,” he declared. “What’s all this? Has the lad the smallpox? If
he has, it’s sure enough hell in store for us.”

“Goddamn
you, Church,” Feversham said. “Will you come over here and look at this boy, or
must I drag you over?”

Church
came with slow steps, stared, and then smiled.

“Chicken pox?” asked Feversham.

“Chicken pox,” Church agreed.
“Plain
as the nose on his face.”

“Chicken pox!”
Hawkins
yelled to the crowd.
“Chicken pox!”

“Ignorant
louts,” said Church as they mounted their horses. Feversham made no comment.
“Connecticut,” Church went on. He was thick-skinned. His feelings were not to
be hurt, or else they had been hurt so often that it no longer mattered.
“There’s the most benighted place on earth, and what a pretty rabble they sent
us here!”

“I’m from
Connecticut,” Feversham said.

“Well, no.
Only in a manner of speaking.”

Feversham
could endure it no longer. “Dr. Church, I asked you to bring me to Dr. Warren,
and now I am bloody damn sorry that I ever did. Ride with me if you wish, but
keep your mouth shut. I cannot tolerate your conversation.”

“Well,
now—” He rode on a few paces more, took a deep breath, and exploded, “You are
an arrogant son of a bitch. Just who in hell do you think you are? How dare you
speak to me like
that.
I am Dr. Benjamin Church,
member of the Committee of Safety. Do you know what that means? How the devil
would you know?
You, a damned Englishman.
Or a spy.
Would you be a spy, sir? I find you intolerable,
sir. To hell with you and be damned.”

He reined
his horse aside, and Feversham rode on, regretting his own outburst. The little
man had done nothing so terrible. It was his own malaise operating here, his
doubts and loneliness, his sense of disorder and chaos, riding for hours
through the disorganized rabble that called itself an army, and then turning it
against the wretched little man. It was arrogant of him, and he felt sick at
the thing that was eating his craw and tying him up in knots. Well, it was
done, and if he wanted to see Warren, he would have to do
so
on
his own. Certainly he would have no trouble finding his way to
Watertown, since the little village was now the functioning capital of
Massachusetts, and for all of his guilt, it was a relief to be traveling alone.

Asking the
way, he was told to follow the path along the river and that it would bring him
to Watertown in no more than an hour. In any case, he could hardly desire a
lovelier day to be traveling. The river path was shaded by great elms, maples,
and oaks, and the countryside was as pretty as anything he had ever seen. As he
made his journey away from Boston, he left the tents and shacks of the
militiamen behind him—and this with a sense of relief. It was beyond his
comprehension that an army of several thousand British regulars should consider
themselves besieged in Boston. Why didn’t they simply cut their way through, or
was the memory of how they were decimated on their march back from Concord too
much for them? Or were they simply unwilling to make war?

He found
the latter thought comforting, at least to some degree. He had insisted to his
wife that there would be no war, and then her question was inevitable: “Then
why must you go there?” His action was not connected with anything he could put
to words.

Yet now,
as he pondered it, he realized that he had fled her and the responsibilities
that went with
her,
and his home and his practice, for
war was the ultimate male liberation, especially the war that was no war but
only an eloquent excuse for the children to escape from the schoolroom. Men
were a race of children, he thought, more sadly than bitterly, and war was a
child’s game until death and horror brought maturity. And then the young were
old, and there was no interval to mark the passage of time.

So it had
been with him. He once had a childhood, but no youth, and now, past forty, he
comforted himself with the thought that he was a healer, not a destroyer. But
even such small comfort was fraught with deceit, for he had shed all
responsibility except the bundle of surgical instruments in his saddlebags.
Even the label of patriot was no rationale, for the sense of himself as a Roman
Catholic in this rocky bed of Protestantism never left him, nor did he truly
know whether his taste for New England was so much deeper than his distaste for
old England, whether he was a man of principle or a turncoat. As always, such
musings always led Feversham to accept the fact that he knew himself very
little.

His period
of introspection had carried him some miles on his way, and now, ahead of him,
he saw a cluster of buildings that might well be Watertown.
And
coming toward him, a group of twelve mounted men in striking, if outlandish,
uniforms of yellow and green and pink.
He hailed them to ask directions.
The leader of the group was a bright-faced young man of nineteen or so who
hastened to inform Feversham that they were the Independent and Loyal Third
Company of Mounted Artillery out of New Haven, Connecticut, that they had been
assigned to duty in Dorchester, whence they were bound—and while they did not
have any cannon at the moment, they had been promised two of the guns that were
captured at Fort Ticonderoga—and that he himself was Capt. Emil Williams.
Through it all he grinned with pride, for what could be more fun than riding
through the countryside on a delightful June day in their wonderful uniforms?

Feversham
informed him that he himself was from Ridgefield, in Connecticut.

“By golly,
isn’t that a fine thing,” Captain Williams said.