The Schoolmaster's Daughter (40 page)

“He says we're doomed here,” Ezra said.

“It's not always a matter of running
from
,” Lumley hissed. “You've got to consider what you're running
to
. I ran away from the army, and now look where I am.” He laughed with a snort. “Of course, we're doomed. When the British figure out what we're up to, do you have any idea what we're in for? There are cannon in Boston, there are cannon on every ship in the harbor, all aimed in this direction. This is not Lexington and Concord. They had no field pieces there, no howitzers, no mortars. We cannot hide behind stone walls in the woods like so many Indians. After their artillery soften up this hill, they'll send over the troops in longboats. If executed properly, it should be over by noon.”

“I gather we are doing this to divert them from their planned assault to the south on Dorchester Heights,” Benjamin said.

Lumley paused a moment and leaned on his shovel. “That's what you glean, is it?”

“You have to admit, Lumley,” Ezra said, raising a full box of dirt up out of the trench. “It's a sound strategy. If the Brits are about to march out, we must needs divert them as best we can, make them adapt and change their plans.”

“Strategy?”
Lumley spat as though his mouth were filled with dirt. “You're dealing with the greatest war machine in the world, and you establish your fortress here, on Bunker Hill?”

Ezra pointed to the higher hill behind them. “That's Bunker Hill.”

“No, that's Breed's Hill.”

Ezra picked up his shovel again and drove it into the dirt. “You're an Englishman. What do you know about the hills of Massachusetts?”

“I have studied maps of the land surrounding Boston—”

“Accurate, are they?” Ezra asked.

“—and this is Bunker Hill.”

“A hill is a hill, and dirt is dirt,” Ezra said, sing-song fashion. “It's simple: this hill is where a farmer, named
Breed
, grazes his animals.”

“It is simple:
that
dirt is higher than
this
dirt,” Lumley said. “It's also farther away from Boston and the harbor—”

“I see,” Ezra said. “You gleaned such crucial information from your maps.”

“—and for every hundred yards, do you know what the reduced percentage in the accuracy of artillery is?”

Ezra stepped on his shovel and jammed it into the ground. “Perhaps that's the point, Lumley. Maybe that's our strategy. We
want
to be closer to them, so close they can see us claiming our turf. That'll bring them out of Boston and up this hill—whatever you want to call it.” He looked at Benjamin, as though in search of someone reasonable who might intercede. “We have two commanders here. William Prescott, that fellow who has been patrolling the top of the wall, and then Israel Putnam, the old man from Connecticut who took charge of things on Noddle's Island. Remember how he climbed up out of that ditch and told the Brits to lay down their arms. Fearless, Old Put is. This be his doing, I tell you. The man has stones. You taunt the redcoats by establishing your fortress on the near hill—
Breed's
Hill—”

“Bunker Hill.”

“Breed's Hill.”

Ezra and Lumley looked as though they were both about to take a swing at each other with their shovels.

“Shut up,” Benjamin said.

“If we're going to die for this mound of dirt,” Lumley said, “we should at least call it by its proper name.”

“Exactly my point,” Ezra said.

“Both
of you!” Benjamin shouted, causing them to turn to him, quite startled. “Shut up and dig.”

He drove his spade into the dirt.

Then, as they leaned down to dig, they all—all the men in the trench—suddenly froze at the loud percussive sound that cracked out across the harbor.

The first shell rattled Abigail's bedroom windows.

Yet she clung to her dream. There was Ezra. Something to do with a carriage. It was cold, a winter's night, and he had his hand upon her thigh. His fingers were warm.

But then several cannon fired in rapid succession and she sat upright in bed, confused. Down the hall she could hear her parents stirring. There came another volley of cannon fire, and then it was silent.

In the distance church bells rang: four in the morning. Outside there was the sound of running feet. Across the way a window was opened and old Mrs. Pierce shouted, “What's that?”

“The British,” a boy called as he ran down School Street.
“British cannon!”

All the men had climbed up out of the ditch. From the top of the redoubt walls they could see flames and smoke pouring out of the side of one of the smaller ships.

“It's the
Lively
,” Lumley said. “Her guns may be too light to reach us.”

“Imagine,” Ezra said. “If we had been way back there—” He turned to point.

“They wouldn't even have bothered firing,” Lumley said.

“What was the name of that hill?” Ezra said.

Lumley turned to him. There was a roar from the ship as several cannon were set off in rapid succession. They were talking, nearly shouting at each other, and though Benjamin was standing right next to them he couldn't hear what was said. And then came that whistling the balls made as they flew through the air.

Quite suddenly, beyond the dark hulking profile of Boston, the sky out over the Atlantic changed. At first Benjamin thought it was only a trick of the eye, an illusion. But, no, there was on the horizon the faintest shimmer. He looked away, up at the stars tucked in velvety black, and then gazed toward the ocean once more, and there, due east, there was no question now: first light.

The cannonballs landed in the meadow below the redoubt, each with a solid thud. One skipped up through the tall grass, like a stone hurled upon the water, and then suddenly to the left men were shouting. Some gathered in a crowd, while Colonel Prescott and Old Put shouted for the men to return to the ditch and continue digging.

In the confusion, Benjamin saw some men sprinting back toward Charlestown Neck. Others called after them, but they kept running. He went down into the ditch with Lumley—Ezra had disappeared. They began digging, frantic now. The guns were quiet, but the silence seemed even more threatening.

“He's run off, he has,” Lumley said.

“I don't believe that,” Benjamin said.

“When he gets to Cambridge, I hope he remembers to send us reinforcements.”

Benjamin raised his pick over his head and drove it into the ground, striking rock. Lumley shoveled loose dirt into the box.

“It was a fellow named Pollard, Asa Pollard,” Ezra said, pushing his way through the men in the ditch. “I'm a surgeon's apprentice, but he's beyond my assistance.”

All the men stopped in their labor. “Dead, is he?” one of them asked.

Another said, “He's in the house not built by hands.”

“Decapitated.” Ezra picked up his shovel and jammed it into the ground. “Prescott ordered that he be buried immediately. No prayers. It's the right thing. We've much work to do.” He threw dirt into the box and then dug deeper into the ground.

XXVI

Dirt, Stones, Straw, and Blood

A
BIGAIL FOUND
J
OSHUA
T
IGGE IN HIS SAIL LOFT, SPYGLASS RAISED
to his eye. Throughout the North End, crowds had gathered on roofs and in upper windows, any elevated place that afforded a better view across the harbor.

Joshua handed her the glass. “Our boys have guts, if they stay on that hill.”

Then he looked at her. In her haste, she had pulled on the linen dress, which was wrinkled and the fabric stiff with sea salt. Her hair was undone, trailing well down her back. She peered through the glass. She could see the hills of Charlestown in the deep, clear light of daybreak. There was a wall of earth etched into the hill nearest the harbor; it looked like a scar in the green meadow and it was crawling with men, festering.

“It's just a victory to say to that old woman Tommy Gage we know your plans to march on Dorchester, but we'll determine where we'll engage you.”

“What will the British do?”

“Thus far they've moved one of their ships up into the Charles River basin—see it, off to the left?”

“Yes.”

“From there they can rake Charlestown Neck, challenging any reinforcements that might try to get out on the peninsula.”

“The British will attack,” Abigail said.

“Indeed they will, and as soon as possible, I would think.” She handed him the glass, and looking through it he said, “But where will they land? They can't send longboats full of troops to the Neck, because there's a millpond dam there, blocking access to the beach. They could land at the wharves in Charlestown, but who knows—our boys may be waiting in every window, ready to open fire.” He raised his other hand and pointed. “My guess is they'll land below that little mound, Morton's Hill, at the mouth of the Mystic, or go by it and up the river on the north side. They could easily flank the redoubt from that side. Holding the peninsula won't be easy, considering the lay of the land.”

“I've never been there.”

“To Charlestown?”

“Only as far as the clam flats.” She returned the spyglass to him. He seemed incredulous. “I've only been out of Boston twice, Joshua.” She dragged her fingers through her tangled hair. “And that was just to visit my mother's relatives in Roxbury.”

As the sun rose up off the eastern horizon, Benjamin could see the open meadows rolling down to the water. The problem was evident: the redoubt could easily be flanked on either side. There was, down to the left, a spit with an old kiln on a mound called Morton's Point. The Mystic River ran by it, forming the northern border of the peninsula, and there was ample beach on which to land. To the right, the fields were open, broken only by occasional fences and a cart path, until the land leveled out at the village.

Benjamin, Ezra, and Lumley discussed this as they helped construct shooting platforms in the side of the fortification. There was little wood—only some planks that had been pulled from barns in the village—so they made rough steps by laying stones in the dirt and tamping them down with their boots.

“These rocks,” Lumley said with a snort. “They may come in handy.”

Ezra looked back toward Charlestown Neck. “If reinforcements do come, they'll bring ammunition.”

Since the death of Asa Pollard, it seemed the two men had made a tacit peace. Benjamin also suspected that Lumley was impressed—though he'd never say it—by the fact that Ezra had not run off.

“If they bring ammunition,” Benjamin said, jumping up and down on a stone until it burrowed in the dirt, flat side up, “I hope they bring me a musket to fire it with.”

Ezra said to Lumley, “He's a good loader.”

“Is he now?”

“I trained him.” Ezra smiled, tamping down his own rock. “We practiced a full day, from Concord all the way back to Cambridge.”

Cannons fired from one of the ships in the harbor. The British volleys had been sporadic, usually erupting in a cluster, and then there would be silence for minutes. The men continued to work and many didn't bother to look up, until they could hear the whistling balls approaching. Several more men had been wounded, but the worrisome news that came down the line was that one ball had smashed the two hogsheads of drinking water.

“Straw.” Lumley shook his head, pointing off to the left. A group of men had been sent out to the north from the redoubt and they were gathering mown hay in the field and packing it into a fence that ran down toward the Mystic. He took his flask from his vest pocket. “Those boys are going to protect our left flank from behind a straw wall?” He hadn't offered any rum but now he did, saying, “It's just about finished. Can I buy you gentlemen a drink?”

Ezra hesitated.

“It's wet,” Lumley suggested.

Ezra took the flask and tipped it up to his mouth. And then he passed it on to Benjamin, who finished the last few drops of rum, which burned all the way down to his stomach.

Ezra took the empty flask and returned it. “Thank you, Lumley.”

“My pleasure.” Lumley climbed down in to the ditch and began to gather more stones. “I hear that the fields of Vermont are full of rocks, but once they are cleared the soil is good for planting.” He tossed a stone up to Ezra, who dropped it on the ground; and then another and another made flight.

“You were in Boston,” Ezra said without looking at Benjamin.

“I was.” Benjamin knew what was coming. He got down on his knees and with his bleeding fingers dug a hole, into which he eased one of the stones.

“How fares your sister?”

Benjamin kept working.

Ezra knelt next to him and also began digging with his bloody hands. “She is well?” When Benjamin didn't respond, he sat back on his haunches. “What?”

“I did what you asked,” Benjamin said. “I said nothing to her about seeing you.”

After a moment Ezra resumed digging. “You should not think that I don't care for Abigail. I do, truly. But—”

“But what, Ezra?” Benjamin rolled his stone into the hole. “But
what?”

“There are circumstances that I, for which I am responsible—”

“Circumstances?” Benjamin stood up. “Don't
tell
me about circumstances.” Using his boots, he pushed the stone deeper into the hole, which only aggravated the blisters on his feet. Disgusted, he slid down into the ditch and began collecting more stones.

Working next to him, Lumley said quietly, “Easy now, Benjamin, easy. We've a long day ahead of us.”

The British bombardment continued through the morning. More and more Bostonians sought any place high enough to offer them a view across the harbor. Shortly after ten bells, Abigail left Joshua Tigge's sail loft, to see that her parents were all right. They were not at home, so she stopped at James's house. He was confined to bed and Mary said he was quite ill, probably due to all the activity in the city. The percussion of artillery was nearly constant, as was the beat of drums as redcoats marched through the streets.