Bunker Hill by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

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.

JUNE 14
     
    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