Bunker Hill Read online

  “I am a Christian gentleman, my dear.”

  “It is no accident that brought us together.”

  No, indeed, he thought, but Sir Henry, who, with another station in life, would be a remarkable pimp.

  Aloud, he said, “Accident or not, you are the most desirable thing I have encountered in these cursed colonies.”

  Howe had taken over one of the best houses in the town, a fine structure, well furnished and with Chinese rugs that would have brought a fortune in London. His orderly had waited up for him, Sergeant Hawkins by name, well trained, with neither a smile nor a look of surprise at the presence of Mrs. Loring or the lateness of the hour. He spoke of hot rum toddy or tea or wine, to which General Howe replied curtly, “Go to bed, Hawkins.”

  “The candles are lit in the bedroom,” Hawkins noted, and with that he disappeared. In the bedroom, the general and Mrs. Loring stood facing each other, Sir William thinking that here, in this candlelight, she was both more and less than real.

  “Will you want privacy, Betsy? To undress?”

  “Betsy? Will that be your name for me?”

  “What do you fancy? Elizabeth?”

  She smiled, unloosed her dress, and let it fall, and then her petticoats. “Unhook me, sir,” she said, “and call me what you will.” She bent to peel down her stockings while he unhooked and unlaced her corset. Her tall, full body was on the edge of being fat, her breasts still high and firm. Sir William had never felt this way before, half crazy with desire as he tore off his uniform. “Gently, gently, sir,” she cried, laughing. “Such feathers are too fine to spoil.”

  She sprawled on the bed, and still in his silk stockings, he fairly leaped upon her. “You will rape me, sir,” she whispered.

  And he replied, “That and more,” and then, pressing his lips to her open mouth, drove into her.

  When they had finished, both of them were perspiring and exhausted, lying naked side by side. After a space of spent silence, she said to him, “Well, sir, how do you find me?”

  “I am no callow youth, my dear Betsy. I am almost forty-seven years old, but as God is my witness, I have never come this way before. You are mine. Do you understand me?”

  “Only too well, my lord.”

  “What about your husband?” he asked bluntly. “I have not spoken about him before, this Joshua Loring. Shall I have to challenge him and kill the bastard?”

  “Why should you?”

  “Does he know where you are?”

  “My dear, dear Sir William, my husband does not know, nor does he care, and if he dared to object, I would break his wretched neck. I do not fuck my husband. I have never fucked him. He fucks whores, and he is quite happy with them.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “The truth, sir.”

  “My God, woman, how did that happen? You could have had any man in Boston—”

  “As a husband, sir?” She burst out laughing. “Do you really want me, Sir William? Oh, I don’t mean to ease that raging cock of yours, but as a woman, to be with you, to stay with you, to go back to London with you, to be your lady?”

  Now there was a long silence before he answered, and then he spoke slowly, “Yes. As I said before, as God is my witness. I have played an evening of whist with you, and I have fucked you, and I know you, and I will kill Mr. Loring as cheerfully as I would tread on a cockroach.”

  “Now listen to me, William Howe,” she said, “before you dig a hole too deep to crawl out of. You say I could have had any man in Boston, which only goes to show how little you know these blue-nosed Presbyterians. I was nothing, my father a drunken fisherman, my mother a nameless slattern. I didn’t want any man in Boston. I wanted a man with enough wealth and position to take me out of the slough of filth and poverty that I was born into. God gave me wits and beauty, and I would be a lady. Do you understand! A lady. I married Joshua Loring for his money, most of which has been washed away in this stupid rebellion. If you want me, you don’t have to kill him. He had a fine house in Roxbury, but the rebels have taken it, and now we have rooms at the inn.”

  “What kind of a man is he?”

  “He’s a wretched dog. Throw him a bone.”

  “What kind of a bone?”

  “He would sell his little soul to be an officer in your army. He will do whatever you wish him to do. Yes, he’ll empty the chamber pots if you make him Captain Loring. But after tonight, I will not go back to him. If you want me—”

  “I want you.”

  “Then make love to me again. I’m tired of talking.”

  Evan Feversham was a bit in awe of Dr. Joseph Warren. His own medical education in the Old Hospital in London had been highly unorthodox. He had worked under Sir Evelyn Dundeen, a man both honored and mocked for his insistence that wounds festered not because of evil humors or the night air—a belief widely held then and for years to come—but because of filth and creatures too small to be seen. Sir Evelyn’s success won over Feversham and became the basis of his own practice of medicine. Dr. Joseph Warren, the head of the Continental Committee of Safety and, under Artemus Ward, the head of the American army, agreed with him. Now, on this morning of June 15, Evan Feversham awakened to see Warren standing over him. It seemed to Feversham that he had barely closed his eyes.

  “Forgive me, Dr. Feversham,” Warren said. “I know how precious sleep is to a man who must sleep on a wooden floor, but I need your cooperation, and the day is only too short.”

  “No apology, please,” Feversham said. “I had my few hours. Give me leave to piss and wet my eyes.”

  “There is hot coffee, and a chamber pot in the closet there.” He spoke in a whisper, the room filled with men who still slept. Feversham did his toilet and then took a cup of hot coffee from a pot in the hearth and joined Warren outside. Fourteen men were gathered around Warren, all of them in knee-length leather or linen aprons. The sun was just rising.

  “Here is our medical brigade,” Warren explained, speaking softly and unhappily. “Only six are surgeons, euphemistically. The others are barbers and leeches.”

  “And that’s all of them?”

  “All we have available.” He walked Feversham a few paces away from the group and, still speaking very softly, added, “It’s been decided, Feversham. We’re going to defend the Charlestown peninsula, and that will mean a nasty battle. Once we’re there, the British must drive us off or quit Boston. They have no other choice.”

  “What about the cannon?”

  “Not yet, but Ward and Putnam insist that we can’t wait. Perhaps they’re right, perhaps not. We’re going to fortify the heights, Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. The British can put three thousand men into the attack, and to level the field, we must double that. And the neck of land that connects the peninsula to the mainland is only a hundred paces across. Still, it’s our only hope to drive them out of Boston, and it will mean a battle. There’s no way the British can endure us on those hills.”

  “Why didn’t they take the hills before this?”

  “There’s the question. They had the hills, and then they left them. Good God, I don’t know. Perhaps they’re as stupid as we are. But I do know one thing. Over there are our surgeons, and they’re all we have, and I want you to talk to them. They’ll listen to you. You’re from the old country, and they respect that.”

  “All right, I’ll talk to them,” Feversham agreed. “But what about litters and litter bearers and bandages and catgut?”

  “The women are taking care of that. Joe Palmer and his wife are organizing it at their house.”

  “How much time have we?”

  “We’re fortifying the hills today. I don’t know when the British will decide to attack. Today. Tomorrow. The next day. God only knows. Feversham, we had a sort of battle a few weeks past, when we drove them back from Concord, but we never faced them. We were behind the stone walls and the trees, and we were strung out over miles of countryside, and every man was fighting his own war and could run away when the mood to
ok him. We never tried to stop their retreat. We never stood up to them.”

  “Even at Concord?”

  “We surprised them there,” Warren said. “We had the river and the bridge, and we took them by surprise.” Warren was a tall man, his face red and flushed. He took a deep, painful breath.

  “You’re not well,” Feversham said, and reached out to touch Warren’s brow. “You have a fever, sir. You should be in bed.”

  “Damn it,” Warren exclaimed, “I can’t afford illness! Not now. A rasping throat. It will pass.”

  Feversham nodded, aware that you did not argue with a man like Warren. “At least drink lots of water. It’s a beastly hot day.”

  Warren led him back to the waiting cluster of doctors, barbers, and leeches, announcing, “Here is Dr. Feversham. He was trained and schooled in London, he’s seen three campaigns on the Continent, and he comes with the blessing of General Putnam. He’s a Connecticut man, with his home in Ridgefìeld.” Warren ticked off their names: “Haddam, Carter, Bones, Woodly, Preston.” He paused, his finger directed at a tall, thin, dark-eyed, dark-haired man whose leather apron had a wide pocket filled with a surgeon’s tools. “Dr. Gonzales—he’s out of Providence with the Rhode Island Brigade. He thinks as we do, Feversham, regarding infection.”

  Feversham said, “Dr. Benjamin Rush spoke highly of you. I met him in Philadelphia last year. Are you Spanish, Doctor?”

  “Jewish,” Gonzales said with a thin smile.

  “Well, now, you are the first of the tribe I ever met. Myself, I am Catholic, but unhappily a fallen one.”

  “Then you must come to Providence, Feversham, where you’ll find a round number of Catholics as well as Jews.”

  “Someday, certainly.”

  Warren went on with the introductions, the attention of the other men fixed on these two rather astonishing outsiders in a world of Protestants.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Feversham said. “I’ll try not to bore you.” There were two benches in front of the Palmer house. Some of the men sat on the benches. The others squatted. Warren sprawled wearily on the ground. “Who of you were with the wounded after Concord?” Three of them raised their hands, two barbers and a young man, who apologized that he was merely a leech, only a few months into learning his trade. Bones, a Welshman, explained that he had been with the British army years before.

  “Then you know what a musket ball will do,” Feversham continued. “The habit is to probe for the bullet, and I’ve seen men bleed away their lives while a surgeon probed and cut away. There are simply not enough of us to take the time to probe in a wound. The thing is to close the wound and put the man in a litter. Stop the bleeding and get him to the hospital—”

  “We have no hospitals,” someone interrupted.

  “There’ll be at least three houses for that,” Warren said. “We have two in Cambridge and another in Roxbury. We’ll portion them out. There’ll be men and women there to help.”

  “Do we try to amputate where the battle is?” Gonzales asked.

  “I would say no. And unless the tibia or the femur is smashed by the ball, we don’t rush to amputate.” “And the humerus and the radius and the ulnar?” “No, not on the battlefield. If the arm or leg must come off, the

  poor devil has some small chance in the hospital, where the light is good and the surgeon can work slowly and carefully. The odds are all against the man who is hit, but if you try to cut away with bullets flying around you, he has no chance at all. Use a tourniquet, stop the bleeding, and pack the wound. But above all, wherever the wound is, we must try to keep it clean.”

  “What difference does it make?” someone asked.

  “The difference between life and death,” Gonzales put in.

  “Now let me tell you this,” Feversham said. “If we had a fortnight, we could argue this matter. We don’t. Dr. Warren tells me that we are already fortifying the peninsula, both hills beyond Charlestown. So you hear me well. A wound festers because the living filth spreads through the body and poisons it. It is not evil humors; it is not even the bullet. It is filth. You must carry water to wash the wound, and you must have a flask of rum, and when the wound is washed, pour a measure of rum into it—”

  “What!” “Be damned!” “Are you mad, sir?” The outcries exploded all around Feversham.

  Bones, white-haired and gaunt, cried out, “Be damned, Doctor, sir, here’s a man in screaming pain and you want to pour a liquor in the wound? I’m no tyro, sir. The very pain will kill.”

  “The pain won’t kill, and better the pain than the fester. You were a surgeon in the French war. How many men have you seen to survive an amputation or a belly wound?”

  “Some do. I never served one who did.”

  “Have you used the liquor, Feversham?” Gonzales asked.

  “I have.”

  “And did it do a miracle?”

  “There are no miracles. But I’ve seen a man here and there who survived when the odds told me he was dead.”

  “Will you provide the rum, Dr. Warren?” a leech asked him.

  “You come to Hunt’s place. I’ll have the rum there. You all come by Hunt’s this afternoon and bring your tools and probes and saws and forceps and knives. Ay, bring a couple of buckets. We’ll have some kind of plan and give your orders.”

  Finally, they drifted away. Feversham asked Gonzales to stay. Warren remained sprawled out on the grass, telling Feversham, “I want desperately to sleep, and I don’t sleep. They’ll be after me— God’s curse. The stupidity of making me the commander. I’m a doctor, not a military man.”

  “Let me look at your throat,” Gonzales said. Warren climbed to his feet. “My throat’s sore, yes.” Gonzales took a small stick and depressed Warren’s tongue. “It’s a springtime humor, flushed.” He fingered the glands in Warren’s neck. “Coddle it with hot flip and rest.”

  Warren laughed. “Rest, you say.”

  “Where did you learn, Dr. Gonzales?” Feversham asked him.

  “In Rhode Island. We have a hospital in Providence.”

  “Have you seen any war?”

  “No, but I’ve had cuts and hunting wounds, and I’ve done amputations. I had good mentors. The ships come in, you know, and the seamen are knocked about. I’m fifty-two years, so I have a lifetime behind me.”

  “Warren,” Feversham said, “we’ll not make it with a handful of barbers and leeches. It’s going to be a bloody, dreadful mess. If you could find a dozen men to help Gonzales here and myself, it might make a difference. And where is this Dr. Church?”

  “God knows! Come inside and we’ll talk to Hunt about the men you want. As for Dr. Church, Feversham, he’s too damned elusive for my taste. He’s supposed to be a member of our Committee of Safety, and I wish to God he weren’t. The man raises too many doubts in me.”

  JUNE 16

  In a royal rage, Sir William Howe, Fifth Viscount Howe, pillar of the British armed forces in America, commander in chief of the Royal Expeditionary Forces in the colonies, strode back and forth across the tastefully furnished living room of the Boston mansion appropriated for his use. Then he halted, his huge six-foot, one-inch bulk towering over Henry Clinton. He drove an accusing hand at him and shouted, “You dare, sir! And with what conscience, sir? You will preach me morality! You have taken the wife of a priest of the Church of England and are fucking her like a damned stallion for all the world to see, and you dare to teach me propriety!”

  “I beg you to be calm, sir,” Clinton said softly. “I apologize for my forthrightness. For God’s sake, let’s speak like gentlemen. We are comrades in arms. I honor you. I beg you, sir.”

  Rage was never a lasting mood with William Howe. The anger passed, and for a long moment he stood silent, staring at Henry Clinton. Then he said quietly, “You don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps not,” Clinton admitted.

  “You know me very little, sir. You take great liberties.”

  “My duty speaks, Sir William. In all of
England there is no more honored family than yours. Your brother, the Earl Richard, more than any other man, is an emblem for the Crown. For seven years, he commanded the fleet that was England’s wall against the French. You are a peer of the realm, with a wife and family in England.”

  “I’ll thank you not to read me my honors,” Howe said sourly. He fell into a spacious armchair. “I am no schoolboy,” he said. “I am no callow, horny subaltern looking for ass. Something happened to me that never happened before in all my life. I am in love, sir. I have encountered something I never believed existed. This is my woman, now and forever.”

  Sir Henry groped for words. Later, describing the scene to Burgoyne, he would say, “I was bloody speechless. Here’s this huge, overaged, overweight top dog—mind you, top dog at home as well as here—talking like a lovesick schoolboy. And over what? Over a lowborn hussy, a whore, if you will, because she has been fucked over and diddled by anyone willing to pay the price. Oh, she plays a magnificent hand of whist, and she has tits that would make a vicar’s tongue hang out, and I’ll give you her looks; but the woman’s a slut, and she married a gelding for his money—and Sir William is most certainly Sir William.” But at this moment, staring at General Howe in speechless disbelief, Henry Clinton could only say, “I don’t understand, Sir William— now and forever?”

  “Now and forever. That’s plain, straightforward king’s English. What do you fail to understand?”

  “Forgive me, do you intend to marry her?”

  “That’s a stupid question to a married man.”

  “Yes,” Clinton admitted.

  “She is to be my mistress, do you understand? Mrs. Loring will be with me through this campaign. She will share my quarters. She is to be treated and addressed as in every way a lady of quality. Any insult offered her—and hear this clearly—will call for a response on a field of honor. She will be the hostess wherever and whenever I propose a social occasion. I want this to be known around.”