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gave
them.” He turned to Gage. “I don’t speak in criticism. Heaven knows, you could
not have anticipated what happened at Concord, but the plain fact of the matter
is that they ran our asses off. We have the best damn army in the world, and
that is not boasting or vainglory. It’s a matter of plain fact, which the world
knows, and as far as I am concerned, the world must continue to know. I never
wanted this rotten mess. My sentiments are with the colonies, and I have never
made a secret of that, gentlemen. But the fact remains that they have a vision
of a British army running like a pack of beaten dogs, and all Europe knows and
all Europe is farting with delight. What if we starve a few thousand of them
into surrender? What will it change? No, sir! We must see these bleeding
bastards face-to-face.”
    “Hear! Hear!” cried Burgoyne.
    “Does that finish it, or does that start it?” Clinton
wondered.
    “Devil
only knows,” Gage said hopelessly. “It’s inconceivable that they want to make a
war with us. There’s no reason for war. Their complaints are petty, and we’ve
given into one demand after another. Except land,” he added hopelessly. “God
knows, there’s enough land out there for everyone. Most of it never touched or
explored. They want it, and the Crown wants it. They are a stiff-necked,
ignorant, and vulgar people—and righteous. They are the most righteous folk on
the face of this earth. I know, gentlemen.” He sighed. “I married one of them.
I’m sure you know that my wife is a Kemble, out of New Jersey, and while they
are not this devilish Puritan strain down there, they share the arrogance.”
    Margaret
Gage came into the room in time to hear the last of this conversation. Clinton
saw her enter and noticed how her face tightened and her body stiffened.
    “General
Gage,” she said very formally to her husband.
    He
reddened and rose with the others to face her.
    “I have no
desire to interrupt important councils, and I know your distinguished
companions speak of nothing but matters of the greatest import, still, we are
all of us to be at dinner with Reverend Hallsbury at eight o’clock. There is
only time to change.”
    “Of course, my dear. I had
forgotten.”
    She turned
and left the room. Howe wanted to know who Reverend Hallsbury was.
    “Very important High Church. He’s the grandson of Lord Hallsbury, the old man in Suffolk who died a few
years ago. He’s it with the handful who are totally
loyal.”
    “Also,”
Burgoyne added, “a young wife whose fire he stokes poorly. By God, she’s a
beauty—gifted as the fairies are, and with a magnificent pair of tits.”
    Clinton
noticed how uncomfortable Gage had become. Too long among the
Presbyterians and too long away from London. The disgraceful, running
reteat from Concord only two months ago, a British army chivied and torn to
shreds by a pack of loutish farmers, had broken his ego. The empire’s response
to his disgrace was to send to his aid the three brightest lights in the
British military, all of them men who had fought in America during the French
and Indian Wars. Gage would not cross Burgoyne, or any of them, and this was a
pity, Clinton thought, since he was the only one among them who had any real
knowledge of the situation.
    Gage saw
them to the door. Howe had a house of his own, as befitting his ranking
position; Clinton and Burgoyne were quartered together in a fine brick house
that had belonged to a cousin of James Otis’s and which he had vacated some
weeks before. They walked there together, followed by four grenadiers—a fact
that irked Burgoyne.
    “It’s a
pain in the ass, Sir Henry,” Burgoyne remarked. “I’ll talk to Gage about it.
He’s an old woman. It’s utterly ridiculous, walking around this city and
trailing a military guard.”
    Clinton agreed with him. “Of course you could simply
take off, the way Sir William does.” “We’re none of us Sir William, are we?”
Burgoyne smiled. “I was