Bunker Hill Read Online Free PDF

a bit of an ass before, wasn’t I?”
    “I’ve
forgotten the whole matter,” Clinton replied.
    “That’s
jolly good of you.”
    “I think we’re a bit tight underneath, aren’t we? It’s
the strangest damn place. I grew up in the colonies, but that gave me no
intimacy. I was the governor’s son, and that set me apart.” “It’s the emptiness
of the place that does it,” Burgoyne com
    mented . “Ever been in a half-empty town before?”
    “In Germany,” Clinton remembered. “Bizarre.”
    “Notice
the damn bloody dogs. Always slinking around.”
    They were
at their quarters now, and each went to his rooms. Clinton’s quarters, on the
second floor of the house, were hot and airless. He began to sweat the moment
he entered his sitting room. Where the devil was O’Brian? Why hadn’t he aired
the place? Why weren’t his clothes laid out? He was irritable, tired, and then
it occurred to him that he experienced this state of mind whenever there was a portend of disaster. But what
conceivable disaster? Out in the harbor lay a
mighty British fleet. The three generals had brought with them from England
fifteen hundred of the best troops in the world. Add that to the fifteen
hundred troops already at Gage’s disposal and there were better than three
thousand.
    He tore
himself out of his reverie and shouted for O’Brian, and when there was no
response, he stormed out of the room and down the stairs two at a time. He felt
some relief in the use of his body and his muscles. He was forty-five years old
and going to fat, but a look in his mirror pleased him, with its reflection of
blond hair and a boyish face. Outside the scullery, he heard the shrill voice
of O’Brian’s wife.
    “Devil
take you, me boyo! You sit on your bloody ass, and here I am with five shirts
and twelve singlets and all the stinking lace that adorns the high and the
mighty and you tell me I am a slut not to have it finished. Call me a slut once
more and as sure as Mary is the mother of God, I’ll cut your bleeding heart
out.”
    “It was a
loose word came from me lips.”
    “Loose words and loose britches. Ah, ye make me sick.”
    “And what are you, me lass? Some shining inspiration?”
    “O’Brian!”
Clinton shouted, and then entered the room, reflecting on the curious madness
of the British military that allowed wives to accompany their husbands
overseas. Mary O’Brian sputtered her apologies. She was a large, stout woman,
quite comely but with most of her teeth missing. Her husband was lean,
fox-faced, and given to stealing anything he could. Yet he was a good servant
and a good soldier, with a sergeant’s rank and twenty years of military
experience behind him.
    “Sure, and
what the devil was I thinking?” O’Brian said. “It’s the time that does me an
injustice, and me thinking it’s no more than noon and at least two hours before
Your Excellency would be coming.”
    “It is six
o’clock in the afternoon,” said Clinton. “I want hot water and my dress uniform
and clean linen, and so help me, I will break you if it is not ready and
waiting in half an hour.”
    He turned
on his heel and mounted the stairs again. In his bedroom, he stripped off his
sweat-soaked clothes and looked at himself in the mirror. The roll of fat
around his belly was fast becoming a paunch. He kneaded the belly fat with his
hands and regarded himself with disgust and despair.
    O’Brian
entered with a tub of hot water and began to rub down Clinton’s back and
buttocks with a hot towel. Suddenly, Clinton found himself staring at the rug
and at the spreading pool of dampness. It was a Chinese rug, a pale blue
background decorated with intertwining dragons, a thousand pounds in the best
London carpet shop and probably brought from China by one of those incredible
Yankee square riggers that roamed the whole world as if it were theirs without
doubt or question; and suddenly he was aware of the seat of his disquiet and
misgiving—the arrogance of