Читать книгу Rabble on a Hill - Robert Edmond Alter - Страница 10

Shad was in a fever to get away from the theater right after the show the following night. He barely bothered to remove the grease paint from his face, saying:

“Something’s up, don’t ask me what. But Harvey Allen just sent word that Warren wants me quicker than a starvin’ man wants a meal!”

“Well, what about me?” Nat wanted to know.

Shad was already to the door. “Beats me, Natty. But if I was you, I’d scoot over to Jessie’s just as soon as you finished here. See you!”

Nat cleaned himself, switched to his street clothes, grabbed his hat, and hurried from the dressing room. He bumped into Benny in the wings. The manager was toting a fat bag of clinking coins, and he started cooing ecstatically like a mother over her first-born.

“A fortune, Nathaniel, dear lad! A veritable fortune! Remind me to consider doubling your wages and presenting a bonus to Shad—some day.”

“All right, Benny. I’m in a hurry now. See you tomorrow.”

He’d never been more wrong in his life. A sergeant from the Fourth (King’s Own) Regiment was tacking a fresh proclamation onto the billboard in front of the theater. The date it bore was April 18, 1775.

Ed Norton let him into the warehouse. The old fellow was so excited he kept plucking at Nat’s sleeve all the way down the corridor.

“What’s up, Ed?”

“Big doings. The regulars are going out!”

“Out? You mean out of Boston? To where?”

“Concord, you idiot! Where else?”

“Well, what’s about Concord?”

“Gunpowder!” Ed cried. “That’s what about Concord! For months our boys have been raiding the King’s stores, and they’ve made a military depository in Concord. Why, child, Concord’s full of cartridge paper, flints, musket balls, bombs, fuses, spades, kettles, billhooks, swords, and powder!”

“And Gage knows it?”

“Bless you, to be sure he does! His Tory spies know everything. And what’s more, he aims to get it! And I mean tonight!”

Nat left old Ed at the door and started down the steps on his own, only to have to step aside as a nameless stranger came hurrying up the stairs. The man gave him a quick sideways look and a fleeting grin in passing.

“Some excitement, eh bucko?”

“I reckon,” Nat agreed. And then the man was gone and Nat went downstairs.

Billy Dawes and Dr. Warren were alone for the moment, both standing, bending over the table, studying a map. Billy looked up and grinned.

“Hear the news, Nat-o?”

“Yes. Is it true?”

Warren reached for his pipe absently, still staring at the map.

“Very true. One of Paul’s men, Jasper, a gunsmith, heard about the intended movement this afternoon from a British sergeant. Gage planned to make this a secret expedition—but there’s one thing no general has ever been able to do, and that’s keep a soldier’s mouth shut.”

“Colonel Smith of the Tenth Foot, and Major Pitcairn of the marines are taking the grenadier and light infantry companies,” Billy said. “We figure there’ll be about seven hundred men in the detachment.”

You had to hand it to Revere’s agents, Nat marveled. They really kept their eyes and ears cocked.

And later, much later, he had to marvel at the vagaries of history. Somehow, in legends, Revere was to emerge as the hero of the night. Actually Warren had already sent out about a dozen riders to warn the countryside and arouse the minutemen and the militia. And Shad had been one of them. Now Warren looked up at Nat.

“Are you at all acquainted with the countryside, Nat?”

Nat had to confess that he wasn’t. The doctor merely nodded, glancing back at his map.

“Billy and Paul are going to ride direct to Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock—it’s very possible that Smith will attempt to place them under arrest. Then they’ll continue on to Concord.

“There are two main roads leading to Concord. One by way of the Neck toward Roxbury, then around to Cambridge and Menotomy, and so on through Lexington. This is much the longer road, and I’m going to send Billy along it, because Paul seems to be rather tardy arriving tonight.” He looked at Nat again.

“Will you go with Billy? There might be patrols out. If one man is stopped the other might still get through.”

“Yes, sir. I’d like to.” Next to Shad, Nat didn’t know of anyone he’d rather join in a night of adventure. Billy was a casually courageous young character who had recently made a name for himself when he had beaten a British soldier silly for insulting his pretty wife. Billy grinned and slapped Nat on the shoulder.

“All right, Nat-o! Let’s see if you can make a horse move!”

“Nat,” Warren suddenly called. “I have a feeling that this is the moment we were talking about last night.”

Nat stared at the older man, the recognized intellectual head of the Committee of Safety.

“All right, Doctor. I guess it can only happen to us once.”

Warren nodded. “That’s right. No matter how bad it is—only once.”

They both knew they were talking about death.

Nat was on a roan liberally sprinkled with gray pepper. Billy had a horse so coal-black it would probably shine purple-blue in the sun. The two mounts went plok-plok nonchalantly down the road to Boston Neck. Billy kept standing in his stirrups to peer ahead into the gloom. As impulsively inclined as he was for action and excitement, he was, on the other hand, not foolhardy. He knew when to bide his time.

A platoon of soldiers was slowly filing over the Neck some distance ahead of them. Nat saw Billy’s teeth flash in the dark.

“Turn your hat, Nat,” he said, doing so to his own. “Cock it like an officer’s lid. You’re an actor, ain’t you? Well, now’s the time to strut your stuff. We’re going to mingle with those soldiers like we were officers. God willing, we’ll elude the guard at the blockhouse and cross over with the redcoats.”

The big thing in their favor was the pitchy darkness of the spring night. Nat reset his hat on his head at an aggressive angle and spurred the roan into the lead.

He was a pretty good mime for his time, and he’d had two months in which to study the mannerisms and affectations of British officers. He put the roan to a canter and came loping in among the platoon of foot soldiers, heedless of their safety, shouting:

“Gad’s life! Whose ragamuffin squad is this? Don’t you dolts know enough to clear the road for a general officer? I say, you there, Leftenant! Plague take it, man, I mean you! Cawn’t you move your beastly guttersnipes aside? Cawn’t you recognize Lord Percy when you see him? Deuced stupid of you, if I do say so!”

All in a dither, the luckless lieutenant and the Neck guards shouting at them, the foot soldiers tumbled frantically aside into a general disorder in the dark, as Billy Dawes—his hat cocked, his right hand akimbo on his hip, disdainfully tall and ramrod-straight in his saddle—came jinglety-bump, jinglety-bump through the tumult; out-Percying Percy for all he was worth.

“Majaw!” he snapped at Nat’s silhouette, “get that leftenant’s name. Put the blightaw on report, what?”

But Nat, bigheartedly, elected to give the bamboozled lieutenant a break and merely called back: “Carry on, Leftenant. A trifle more alertness and respect the next time, what?”

And then the two of them were pounding down the road one after the other, the eight hoofs of the horses going thup-thuppity-thup!

Nat pulled alongside Billy to shout: “Which way is Revere going?”

“The short way! Across the Charlestown Neck!”

“Hope he has the luck we just had!”

Billy’s grin flashed in the moony night.

“If he ever gets started! He has to go through no end of nonsense about hanging lanterns in the North Church steeple!”

“What for?”

“Beats the nathun out of me! That’s Paul’s way. He’s afraid he won’t be able to get across the Charles River, and the lanterns will warn a Colonel Conant in Charlestown that he and his pals had better take off for Concord in Paul’s place!”

The moon was successfully breaking through the cloud-strung April night as Billy and Nat came pounding into Roxbury, and Billy—grinning as usual—looked back and called: “Let’s really rouse ’em, Nat-o! Let’s get these fat farmers out of their warm beds and into their fields with something besides plows and spades for a change!”

“All right, let’s go, old boy!” Nat yelled.

And so they came banging down the main street whooping like demented Shawnees on a dawn attack. “HEEE-YAH-YAH-YAH-Yaaaah!”

“UP! Every fat farmer’s son of you—UP! Turn out! Turn out! Grab your firelocks! You rabbly rebels! The regulars are coming out!

“EEEE-YU-YU-YU-Yuuuu!”

The night flowed by them, ghostly with the grotesque stark attitude of the leafless trees. The wind of their own headlong passage blew chill upon their faces, knifing through their jackets and shirts and trembling their blood. The pale road wound on ahead of them, through the damp salt swamps, moist and cold and moon-struck.

Then they were galloping through Brookline and scalp-yelling again and waving their hats and spurring the horses on on and on.

“The regulars are coming out! On to Lexington and Concord!”

They saw lights light up, small bright squares set in the large black squares of the looming houses. Windows and shutters were shot aside and nightcapped heads appeared; and once, fleetingly, Nat saw a woman step back behind her husband leaning at the window and put her hands to her face. And he thought: They know. The women always seem to know when it’s going to be bad. Because it was probably something in them, in their nature or blood—a hangover from their cave-dwelling ancestors, when their menfolk had gone out with a club in their mighty fists to face a savage enemy, and had never returned.

He looked at Billy Dawes humping and hunched and flying before him and thought: Billy—good luck to you, old boy, tomorrow.

Then they were going pam-a-pam-a-pamma across the Charles River bridge and slicing a noisy passage through sleeping Cambridge.

“EEEE-Yuuuu! Up! Up! Everybody up! The regulars are coming out!”

The coming-to-life town fell in their pulsating wake, and now they were going pell-mell down the lonely road to Menotomy and the road was so hard under those sure-flying hoofs that Nat could feel the slam of it all the way up his backbone and he exulted in the jarring, rhythmic sensation of inexorable motion. As yet they hadn’t encountered a single patrol, and it looked as though their luck was in.

There was activity in Menotomy. Lights were ablaze in the homes and there was a bustle of movement around the dooryards.

“Eee-YAH!” Billy cried. “The regulars are coming out!”

A tousled head popped through an upper window and an irate voice shouted: “We know it! How many times you gonna tell us?”

Billy looked back at Nat. “Guess Paul’s already been through here!”

Or someone, Nat thought. Because by now Colonel Conant and others were spreading the alarm far and wide across eastern Massachusetts. At Lynn and Billerica and Acton, at Woburn and Reading and Danvers, at Tewksbury and Andover and Pepperell and Worcester, farmers were tumbling out of their beds to reach for muskets issued in King George’s War thirty years before or for fowling pieces or blunderbusses—any excuse for a gun that would fire any excuse for ammunition.

It was half past midnight when Nat and Billy galloped into Lexington. The town had been aroused, and Parson Clarke’s home bore the festive aspect of a public house. They dismounted and went by a well-lathered horse to the door, where an excited militiaman on guard greeted them.

“Heard the news?” he asked, only too eager to tell them.

“No,” Billy said. “What?”

“The regulars are coming out!”

Billy dropped his jaw and clasped his hands, turning to Nat with a look of horror. “Did you hear that? The regulars are coming out!”

“Do tell,” Nat said, and they went by the bewildered guard, laughing.

Paul was toasting his feet at the fireplace. His face was a polished rose with firelight and sweat. He beamed at his two friends.

“Hello, Billy! Hi, Nat. You boys have any trouble? Let me tell you what happened to me at Medford. Got jumped by a British patrol! Yessir! Two of ’em, mounted and waiting for me in the middle of the road. So I had to miss Cambridge and double back to Medford like I had the devil on my tail! Did you get Cambridge, Billy?”

“Yeah. Where’s Adams and Hancock?”

Paul jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Packing up their papers. They’re going to spend the night in the swamp. I been waiting here for you for half an hour.”

Nat was going to ask him why he hadn’t gone on to warn Concord, but just then a bluff-faced man somewhere in his fifties, entered from another room with his wig awry and with papers clutched in both hands. He gave Billy a harassed smile and glanced curiously at Nat.

“This is Nat Towne, Sam. One of my boys. He rode with Billy tonight,” Paul said.

Sam Adams transferred the papers in his right hand to his left and offered his right to Nat. “Are you going on to Concord tonight?”

“Yes, sir,” Nat said. “Quick as we can.”

Adams nodded, a look of abstract dissatisfaction on his bluff face.

“I’ve waited years for this moment—and now when it’s finally come, John and I have to run and hide in some stinking swamp like cravens.”

Nat supposed that Adams was referring to the well-known fact that General Gage had been quite willing to extend amnesty to all the Patriots except Adams and Hancock. Those two firebrands he had sworn to conduct to England in chains. That was the trouble with being the figurehead of any revolutionary attempt: you were always the target.

“Well,” Paul said, clumping for the door, “we’d best get along.”

Nat looked back at Sam Adams. Was he a great man, or was he a rogue and a thief who talked other men into fighting for him? Nat had no way of knowing, and it didn’t really matter. The thing had started now, and Adams had become a symbol of the snowballing; for that he deserved respect.

“Goodby, sir,” Nat said.

Adams, looking at them soberly, nodded. “Good luck, gentlemen.”

The three riders started down the road, Revere now in the lead. All at once Billy called: “Hi! Hold up, Paul. Somebody’s coming!”

Nat reined in and put a hand on the cantel to turn back in his saddle. He could hear the thuppity-thup of hoofs chopping the road.

“Think it’s a patrol?” Paul asked anxiously.

Billy shook his head. “No. Just one man. I can see him now.”

A solitary rider materialized out of the gloom and made a smooth transition from canter to walk with his mount. In the moonlight they could see that he was a young gentleman dressed to the nines in his Sunday best. He halted before them, touching his hatbrim jauntily with one finger.

“Good evening, gentlemen! I understand the regulars are coming out. I’m Doctor Samuel Prescott from Concord. I’m just now returning home from a—uh call I made in Lexington.”

Billy grinned at the young doctor. “By draggit, Doc, it’s a heck of an hour to have to tend a patient.”

Dr. Prescott coughed decorously behind his hand. “Well uh—to tell the truth it wasn’t quite a patient I was calling upon.”

Paul chuckled. “Don’t stop now, Doc. This is just getting good!”

The doctor laughed good-naturedly. “I confess you’ve caught me out. I was visiting my fiancée. A Mistress Millikan—a very proper young lady, I might add, even though the hour is now quite late.”

“Care to join us, Doctor?” Nat offered. “We’re on our way to rouse Concord.”

The doctor, it seemed, was young enough to still be romantically restless. “A capital suggestion!” he said. “It sounds exhilarating. My Concord patients are forever getting me up at all hours of the night, and now I have the opportunity of paying them back! Onward, gentlemen!”

Paul and the doctor in the lead, the four-man troop went bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump down the shadow-flickering road, down to a turn-off where the Hartwell farm sat crouching back from the road.

Right out of nowhere two British officers sprang before them with a flash of swords.

“Halt, you rebels, or we’ll blow the bally lot of you to Kingdom come!” And one of them went ta-wee—ta-wee on a whistle, and instantly two more redcoats emerged from a field bordering the road.

“Go it, Nat-o!” Billy cried, and he wheeled his horse into a sharp oblique and booted home the spurs.

“YAH!” Nat roared, and he humped over and went booting after Billy, sweeping by Prescott’s off side—and the doctor must have been mounted on the horse of horses, because it took off from practically a dead halt and caught up to Nat within three bounds.

Now the two regulars in the field were smack before them, and Nat caught the long brittle-bright glint of their raised bayonets. He swerved right, nearly colliding with Billy’s near side, and shot a look across his shoulder to see Prescott lashing his way through the scrambling, shouting soldiers with his whip. Then he looked ahead and saw the black ragged line of a stone wall rushing to meet him and heard Billy yell: “All together now!”

Then he felt the bunch and gather of the roan’s barrel between his legs and the sudden gut-grabbing lift as he went up up into the star-streaming night . . . but something was wrong, very wrong, because when Billy said “all together,” he hadn’t meant all on top of each other. But they were, or nearly so, and that’s the way they tried to go over that blame wall: Nat’s right stirrup hooking with Billy’s left, and Billy himself tilting over against Nat’s shoulder as the blackness of the sod field sprang up at them.

And then an absolute nothing for a suspended moment: no pain, no shock, no realization of what had happened to them—spilling together, and striking the solid black loam so hard that they saw only stars that didn’t belong to the night but only existed behind their knocked-silly eyes.

Nat rolled over, hearing a multitude of hoofbeats pounding everywhere at once, and pawed at his eyes to rake the swirling stars from them. He felt Billy grip his right arm.

“Hi! Nat-o! Lookit old Doc go! Cannon balls couldn’t catch him!”

Straight across the moony field, the hoofs kicking back black clods, the doctor was hunkered down and winging on like a hurricane, the horse (undoubtedly the horse of horses) reaching, throwing, going, getting out of there.

That was the ride. And not one of those who had started out from Boston ever reached Concord. History had decided to brush its shoulder with a pretty young miss called Millikan, and that night her sweetheart would “pay back” his Concord patients.

Nat and Billy crawled to the far end of the stone wall, where it fell into a crumbling pile, and into an azalea thicket. They looked across the field and at the moon-bright road. Paul had evidently tried to ride for a nearby copse of wood but had been captured by six more regulars who had been in hiding there.

Now they had him in the road and were questioning him. A Major Mitchell was in charge of the patrol, and he wasn’t being very nice about it. He clapped a pistol to the side of Paul’s head.

“Who are you?”

“Paul Revere.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful! So we’ve caught the famous Revere, have we? The bully boy of the Sons of Liberty. Paugh! I’ve seen better looking parodies of a man on Guy Fawkes Day! What are you up to? Answer quick, or by Jove, I’ll put daylight ’tween your waxy ears!”

“Rousing the countryside,” Paul said. “Every town for miles around has been alarmed, and five hundred men are assembling at Lexington.”

“Why is he telling them that, for goshsake?” Nat whispered.

“Good old Paul,” Billy whispered back. “He can’t help boasting.”

But the boast served a useful purpose, for just at that moment they all heard the distant pam-pam of alarm guns from somewhere to the east. The regulars started looking around at the surrounding darkness apprehensively.

They held a greatly agitated council and finally decided to get on their way. They actually had no authority to place Paul under arrest, so they told him he was free to go—without his horse, which they commandeered.

Nat and Billy waited until the road was vacant and then they came out of hiding and started walking back to Lexington, hoping to overtake Revere. But they never did. By the time they reached the town, Paul had already departed from Parson Clarke’s house in a chaise with Adams and Hancock. A passing militiaman told them that the trio had taken off for Burlington.

It was now after two o’clock.

It was the morning of April 19.