Free Bunker Hill by Howard Fast Page B

can see that. If
you held Boston, it would be different. But if you go into Charlestown, they
will cut the causeway, and you’ll never get out.”
    “We have
bled it enough,” Warren said. “We’ll have some food, and we’ll talk to the women
and pretend for a little while that things are as they should be.” He rose and
took Feversham by the arm. “Come! Be a good colleague and a physician now.
We’ll have a medical talk, which is the best talk of all.” He turned to Ward.
“Eat with us, Artemus. We are all good Englishmen, and God wounds us for hating
our mother. Have you ever felt that way, Feversham?”
    “At times, yes.”
    That night, five men slept on the rug in
the Hunts’ living room, Putnam and Prescott among them. Feversham shared the
rug for a while, but what with the wheezing and grunting and snoring and his
own thoughts, sleep evaded him, and finally he gave up the attempt and went
into the kitchen. A four-inch-thick night candle burned there, and Feversham
took foolscap and pen and ink from the trestle table and then sat down in the
kitchen to write a letter to his wife.
    My
dear Alice, I am here safely at Watertown in Massachusetts, where I have been
welcomed at the house of Mr. Hunt, even though the house is so crowded already
that men sleep on the floor in every room. I myself have been quartered in the
sitting room, where, on a very splendid Chinese rug, I share very distinguished
company. Perhaps you remember an Israel Putnam, who says that he remembers you
and that he dined at your father’s house on two occasions. He has been made a
general in this strange army that is besieging Boston and the British army
there. He is one of the rug sleepers, and I must say that when awake he has by
far the foulest mouth in New England—and asleep, a snore like a bugle. I decided that rather than lie in the sitting room awake with my own
thoughts, I would share them with you, and since the kitchen is the only room
in the house without sleeping guests, here I am.
    I
must explain that this condition of the little village of Watertown is due to
the fact that half the population of Boston has fled to the suburbs and that
right now Watertown is in the way of being the nerve center of this strange
war. And a very strange war it is—if indeed we are at war—with this tiny colony
of Puritan and Presbyterian farmers facing the might of the British Empire.
    Strangely,
I find them a more worldly and understanding lot than your Connecticut
countrymen, for they are not shocked by the fact that I am Catholic, and they
regard my being English and trained in the English army almost with worship.
They are desperately looking for English officers to help them out of the
almost indescribable confusion of affairs that exists here, and they constantly
express the hope that if the colonies to the south decide to send men to
reinforce them, such troops will be put under the command of either Charles Lee
or Horatio Gates, both of them Englishmen, as I am given to understand.
    As
to who is actually in command of the fourteen or fifteen thousand men who have
gathered around Boston, it is almost impossible to say. Nominally, the command
would be in the hands of an elderly gentleman named Artemus War, but he is
quite ill and suffering from stones. A certain Dr. Church, whom I have met and
find most distasteful, bled him for the stones, which I think only worsens the pain, and Dr. Warren here agrees with me. Both Dr. Warren
and I concur in grave doubts about the whole process of bleeding for cure, but
I am afraid that our voices will little prevail on the subject.
    This
Dr. Warren, whose full name is Joseph Warren, is quite a remarkable man—one of
those men whose plain manner of greeting and response is so gentle and, if I
may use the expression, so noble, that he is virtually adored by everyone
around him. He is a tall, handsome man, with wide shoulders and a shock of
yellow hair, and simply by virtue of personal integrity has