Prelude to Glory, Vol. 2 Page 6

  “No, no,” Billy exclaimed. “They were soldiers, not tyrants.”

  “Think, Billy. There are some things every man has to face and decide, whether he be king or peasant. The important things. At the very bottom of it all is the plain, simple choice on which we will all stand one day and be judged by God. Did I choose good or evil to build my life on? On that choice, some kings will fall and some peasants be exalted at God’s judgment bar.”

  “Those red-coated regulars didn’t choose to be evil! They chose to be soldiers.”

  “They made a choice without thinking deeply enough. It led them here to take away our liberty. That was wrong. Against God.”

  Billy’s face was a study in pain, indecision. “Is it worth killing for? liberty?”

  “Ask Sam Adams.”

  “I’m here asking you.”

  Silas drew and exhaled a great breath, then locked eyes with Billy. “Maybe more than any other thing on this earth. The evil one wants to own you, Billy, body and soul. That’s tyranny at its worst. God wants you to grow the good that’s in you until it fills you. That’s liberty at its best. I will fight tyranny wherever it is. And if I must take a man’s life to do it, then I will, even if it is a British regular who doesn’t understand what he’s doing. If I have to give my life, I will. I can’t think of a way to say it any better.”

  “Are you sure, Silas? Sure?” Billy didn’t breathe as he waited for the answer.

  “Certain. Do you remember the day the regulars came to this church—held me and Mattie under armed guard?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Before he died, did John Dunson tell you about that night?”

  “No.”

  “He came here with Warren. We talked in here after the British left. Something happened. I saw this war coming, so plain and clear. We wanted to be loyal to our king, but Parliament was forcing us to submit to tyranny. I saw it then. There would be blood. Then when the king refused to intervene for us and control Parliament, it was beyond hope. We had to fight. This land had to be free! Had to be! We all felt it. Overpowering. We knew. There was no way to deny it.”

  Silas paused to swallow against a lump in his throat as a feeling came creeping into the room, gradual, sure. Billy felt his arms begin to tingle.

  “John knew then he had to go. His head said stay home with Margaret and the children, while his heart said the Almighty wanted him to go. It rose above anything to do with this earth. I think he had a premonition he would be killed, but it didn’t matter. He went.”

  Billy sat white-faced, wide-eyed while the tingling slowly spread. Silas moved his feet and rubbed the palms of his hands together for a moment while he gathered his thoughts. His voice softened as he spoke. Billy lowered his eyes to listen. “Billy, if the Almighty had blessed Mattie and me with sons, we would have wished them to be like you and Matthew. What I’ve told you tonight—it’s a sorry thing that you had to learn these things so young, and in war.”

  Billy raised his eyes and asked the final question. “Silas, are you telling me God wants me to take the life of another man?”

  The answer was instant. “God wants you to put down the tyranny that is now threatening us. If you can do it without bloodshed, then do it. If you cannot, then lives must be taken, perhaps your own.” Silas reached deep inside, searching for a way to give Billy peace, and it came. “Think about God’s own Son. Jesus went to the cross and gave his life to make us free from the tyranny of sin. He thought it was worth it.”

  The strange feeling strengthened, and Billy slowly straightened, eyes wide as it spread. Neither man moved. They sat for a long time while the room seemed charged; and then the feeling receded, and then it was gone.

  Silas broke the silence. “It was right that you hated taking life. It was right that you had to find an answer. You’re good, Billy. Stay close to God. Pray often. Learn to trust the feelings he sends to you. You’ll be fine. A good man.”

  Billy swallowed and stood. Silas stood and faced him, and then the little man threw his arms about Billy, and Billy held him, and for a few moments the two men shared the embrace before Billy relaxed and they separated. Without a word, Billy walked from the room, and his footsteps echoed in the dark chapel as he strode up the center aisle and out into the soft, warm air of a beautiful Boston night.

  Lantern glow showed on the drawn window curtains as he pushed through the front gate and opened the front door. Dorothy was seated in her rocking chair, Bible in her hands, when he entered.

  “Trudy?” Billy asked.

  “Asleep.” Dorothy closed the Bible and rose. “Your supper’s in the oven. I’ll get it. You must have had quite a talk.” Billy sat down at the table while his mother set the hot food before him, and he said grace. She remained silent while she waited.

  “I didn’t know Silas was at Bunker Hill.”

  “I thought you knew.”

  Billy broke off a piece of bread and began to chew it thoughtfully. “He told me about the night John Dunson and Joseph Warren came to his place—when the British came to his church.”

  “I heard about it.”

  “He said he saw war coming, like in a vision.”

  “He did. It came. It’s here.”

  Billy added cheese to the bread and continued chewing while he worked with his thoughts. “He talked about good and evil. He said the choice all of us have to make is which one we follow. Everything else that happens to us depends on how we decide.”

  Dorothy nodded but remained silent.

  He slowed and stopped chewing for a moment. “Sometimes we even have to decide about taking life.”

  “He’s right,” Dorothy answered.

  Billy shook his head. “It’s all too new. I’ll have to think about it, get used to it.”

  They talked on, Dorothy listening, watching, judging whether or not Silas had reached him. He finished his food and pushed the plate back. “Thank you. Let me help with the dishes.”

  She washed, he wiped, and they blew out the lamp and left the kitchen. Billy glanced at the clock on the mantel and stopped short. “Past eleven o’clock?”

  Dorothy smiled. “Lost track?”

  He grinned. “Where did it go?”

  “Time for evening prayer.”

  They knelt together beside the dinner table, and Dorothy bowed her head and offered her thanks and supplications to the Almighty.

  They rose together and walked towards the archway into the bedroom wing, when Dorothy slowed. “Margaret and Brigitte came. They want you to go see them tomorrow after work.”

  “What about?”

  “They saw you in church. They’re worried.”

  The Potter and Wallace counting house rented street-level office space in a square, plain brown brick building on King Street near the center of the Boston Peninsula. They opened at precisely 8:00 a.m. daily except for Sunday, and closed at 6:00 p.m. Cyrus Wallace had retired at age seventy-one. Hubert Potter bought him out, along with the right to use his name in perpetuity to preserve the firm intact. At age sixty-four, Hubert had semi-retired from active accounting and was spending most of his days managing the firm. Under his strict eye, there was little meaningless talk, little idle time between the five employees. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Hardheaded, dour New England discipline.

  At five minutes past six p.m. Billy wiped the point of his quill on a piece of paper, closed his ink bottle, and put a large leather-bound ledger in its place on a shelf. He was walking towards the door, when the high-pitched voice of Hubert Potter stopped him. “Billy, could I see you?”

  The door rattled when Billy closed it behind him and sat down in an ancient leather-bound chair facing Potter in his office. “Yes, sir?” Billy waited.

  Corpulent, balding, Hubert Potter leaned back in his chair, thumb hooked in his watch pocket. “Something on your mind? You seemed distant all day.”

  Billy’s eyes dropped for a moment. “Lemuel Hosking has orders from General Washington to raise a company of
men from Boston. He visited the churches yesterday.”

  “You considering it?”

  Billy drew and released a great breath. “I don’t know.”

  “How soon?”

  “They leave Wednesday morning.”

  Hubert’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “That quick?”

  “They’re expecting trouble in New York.”

  Hubert leaned forward, arms on his worn desk, and remained silent for a time before he spoke. “It’s going to be hard on the office if you leave that quick. You have some big accounts.”

  “I know. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “You better tell me as soon as you can.”

  “I will.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  Billy rose and walked out of the small, austere office, made his way across the main floor of the firm, and closed and locked the street door behind him. The heat of the day sat heavy in the streets, and he slipped out of his coat for the walk home. At the sound of the door opening, Dorothy called from the kitchen. “That you? Wash for supper.”

  She wiped the light perspiration from her face before sitting down with Billy and Trudy at the table to cold sliced mutton, cheese, homemade bread, and vegetable soup if they wanted it.

  Billy offered grace and poured cool milk. “Hubert talked to me about leaving.”

  Dorothy laid down her fork. “What did you say?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Be as fair with him as you can.”

  With supper and the dishes finished, Billy went to his room to change clothes, and called to Dorothy, “Am I still supposed to see Margaret and Brigitte?”

  “They’re waiting.”

  The heat of the day was past, and a cool, gentle salt breeze from the Atlantic stirred the leaves on the oaks and maples that lined the familiar, narrow cobblestone street. The sun had reached the western rim of the world and cast long shadows in the yards and on the fences and houses. An unexpected, quiet sense of peace came creeping as Billy walked, and for a time the war seemed to fade. He turned through the white picket gate leading into the yard with the carved wooden sign, “John Phelps Dunson, Master Clockmaker and Gunsmith,” and rapped on the door.

  Margaret Dunson opened the door and exclaimed, “Billy! Come in.”

  Unexpectedly a thousand warm memories of this home and of Margaret and the family came flooding, and Billy felt himself relax, smile at the lift in his spirit. He sat at the dinner table and Margaret sat facing him.

  “Heard anything from Matthew?”

  “He’s still at sea.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “His last letter said so.”

  “Coming home any time soon?”

  “He never knows.”

  Billy reflected on it for a moment before he continued. “Mother said you came by.”

  Margaret sobered. “Did I see something bothering you in church yesterday?”

  They both turned at the sound of Brigitte’s bedroom door closing, and she entered through the archway to the bedroom wing and came directly to the point. “Billy, what was wrong in church yesterday?”

  He dropped his eyes to order his thoughts, and then poured it all out to them while they listened intently, scarcely moving.

  “I thought so,” Margaret said quietly. “Silas was right. We have to see this thing through with the British.” She hesitated, weighing whether Billy could yet answer the single heavy question.

  Brigitte barged straight into it. “Are you going with Lemuel?”

  Billy pursed his mouth for a moment. “I don’t know yet.”

  “If you decide to go,” Margaret said quietly, “do it for your own reasons. Don’t go because of what people will say.”

  Billy nodded, and for long moments they remained quiet before Billy turned to Brigitte. “Heard anything about Captain Buchanan?”

  Brigitte’s face lighted at the thought of Richard Arlen Buchanan, tall and capable, with a deep scar in his left brow and gentle, strong eyes. A captain in the command of British general William Howe, he had saved her from arrest in the shadowy side street beside the church the night the British regulars held Silas and Mattie in their own church. He knew that Brigitte and other women had smuggled into the church some militia muskets wrapped with quilting frames, but he had quietly ordered her to get away from the church—go home—and he stirred her heart as no one had before. She remembered the panic when he was shot twice in the catastrophic retreat from Concord, and she spent weeks frantically searching before she found him in a British hospital. She remembered the most unforgettable evening in her life, when she invited him to supper in their home, and he came, and then the black day, March 17, when the British vacated Boston, and he rode past with his column, peering down at her for long moments, and then he was gone. When Billy was able to hobble with a cane, she had begged him and he had helped her search, but Captain Buchanan had vanished.

  “Nothing,” she said, and her face dropped for a moment. “I’m still trying.”

  Billy sadly shook his head. “He has to be somewhere, maybe with their army in New York.”

  Brigitte shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Margaret served cool apple cider from the root cellar, and for a time they chattered about little things and laughed and basked in the warm glow.

  Finally Billy rose from the table. “I better be going.”

  Margaret stood. “Promise you’ll tell us how you decide.”

  “I promise.”

  The two women followed him out into the warm night and stood inside the front gate to wave at him until he disappeared in the darkness. As he walked, he raised his eyes to the black velvet heavens and the million points of light, and he slowed in wonder and awe. So vast—so much. Is Silas right? War up there? No one can count the creations—are they all empty? just to look at? Besides the Almighty, who’s up there? others like us? different? wiser? better? worse? He could not comprehend the immensity of the endless reaches above, nor could his mind cope with the unanswerable question of who, or what, may be there. He pushed through the front gate and into the house.

  Dorothy was seated in the rocker, reading a small pamphlet by lamplight. She studied his face for a moment. “Everything all right at Margaret’s?”

  He nodded and went to the water pail in the kitchen to dip and drink cool water, and she followed with the booklet in her hand. “You may want to read this,” she said. “It talks about what Silas said.”

  “What is it?”

  “Common Sense. Written by an Englishman who came here.”

  His eyebrows arched. “I heard about it. What was his name? Paine?”

  “Thomas Paine.”

  “You said an Englishman?”

  “Yes. Thetford, England. A Quaker’s son. A common corsetmaker. Ben Franklin sent him here. He wrote this earlier this year and it’s being read all over the colonies—New York, Philadelphia, here.”

  Billy dropped the dipper back in the water bucket, took the pamphlet, and walked back to the parlor and turned the cover to the light. Philadelphia. Published by Benjamin Towne for William and Thomas Bradford. February 14, 1776. Without a word he placed the lamp on the dining table and sat down with the pamphlet before him. Twenty minutes later Dorothy said, “Trudy’s gone to bed, and I’m going too. Shall we have evening prayers?”

  Half an hour later, hunched over the booklet, Billy slowed, then retraced a line with his finger and read it aloud. “ ‘How came the king by a power which the people are afraid to trust, and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, which needs checking, be from God.’ ”

  Ten minutes later he again slowed.

  To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession. . . . For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever.

  A stirring began in his heart. Five minutes later he stopped and carefully retraced mo
re lines.

  In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places. . . . Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. . . .

  . . . This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their descendants still.

  His arms and fingers tingled as he continued.

  Is there any inhabitant of America so ignorant as not to know that . . . this continent can make no laws but what the king gives leave to; and is there any man so unwise as not to see, that . . . he will suffer no law to be made here, but such as suits his purpose? We may be as effectually enslaved by the want of laws in America, as by submitting to laws made for us in England . . . Independency means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us, “there shall be no laws but such as I like.”

  Billy leaned back in his chair and pushed the booklet away. The king of England—the greatest enemy this continent has? Never had printed words reached into his soul as these did. In his mind flashed the image of Silas, sitting bolt upright in his tiny, austere parlor, eyes flashing. Tyranny. I will fight it. If lives fall, even my own, so be it. More precious than life—liberty. Liberty!

  Hardly breathing, Billy read on.

  A government of our own is our natural right; and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.

  The mantel clock read a little past two o’clock when Billy lay down on his bed and stared into the black darkness of his room. It was nearly four o’clock when he drifted into a dreamless sleep. At six-thirty Dorothy gently moved his shoulder. He sat up in his bed and swung his legs over the side as Dorothy waited.