Bunker Hill Read Online Free PDF Page B

these people, not guts or gallantry but simply an
astonishing and righteous arrogance that he alone among the four generals
appeared to sense and respond to.
    “Goddamn
you,” he exploded at O’Brian, “we are not in a stable, you stupid Irish sot!
See what you are doing to the rug—if you know what a rug is !
Get me a towel to put under my feet and stop slopping the bloody water.”
    “Yes, sir, Your Excellency. Goddamn me for a pig, and not knowing
even the smell of the finer things,” he said, leaping into the next room and
returning with a thick towel for Clinton to stand on. “There ye are , me lord. Sure as there is a God in heaven, ye’ll be giving
me thirty lashes for the stupidity of me behavior.”
    “Oh, shut
up,” Clinton said.
    “Yes, sir.”
    He washed
Clinton expertly. Lost in his own thoughts, Clinton stood there while O’Brian
parted his buttocks, lifted the testicles and penis, washing and currying him
as a mother washes a child. His wife came into the room, carrying the freshly
ironed linen, paying no more attention to the naked general than she might have
given a piece of furniture. But suddenly Clinton was aroused, not only
conscious of her but hot with desire.
    “Get me my
robe!” he snapped at O’Brian.
    As if
O’Brian had a map of every nerve in his body, he grinned as he handed the robe
to Clinton, and Mary O’Brian, laying out the linen, watched the general
covertly as he covered himself. O’Brian went after her as she left the room,
and at the door out of the sitting room, he whispered to her, “Now there’s a
bit of humping would make me a master sergeant before ye could say Paddy’s pig,
and it ain’t no small thing, me love, to have a bastard out of the nobility.”
    “You’re a
dirty louse, O’Brian.” She swept off, grinning out of her toothless mouth.
    As for
Clinton, he had been dead for weeks, and now he was wonderfully alive, his
blood coursing through his veins, his sex throbbing, his mind filled with
pictures of taking the great, fat Irish woman to bed. Watching him, O’Brian
read his thoughts and made his own plans. Clinton did not dwell upon what had
happened to him. He simply allowed himself to fall into the fact that it had
happened, and reserving Mary O’Brian and thoughts of her for the future, he
began to dwell on Reverend Hallsbury’s wife. His pique faded. It would be an
exciting evening. By and large, he had found no pleasure in Boston women. They
were dull, narrow, obsessed with their own tiny class structure.
    He was
almost dressed, O’Brian hovering over him, when Lieutenant Parker, Burgoyne’s
aide, entered and told him that the general was waiting. Parker was a
pink-cheeked, handsome, ebullient lad of twenty. He took the occasion to
observe to Clinton how positively splendid he looked, as indeed he did in his
scarlet coat, his white linen and lace, powdered wig, white silk trousers, and
fine boots.
    “Well,
Parker, an old man does his best, doesn’t he?”
    “My good fortune to look like you someday, sir.”
    “Well
said.” Clinton smiled. “You’ll do, Parker.”
    Clinton
and Burgoyne were the last of the guests to arrive, and even as the servant
ushered them into Reverend Hallsbury’s rather splendid sitting room, Clinton
noticed Howe deep in conversation with one of the most beautiful women he had
ever seen, a tall, slender, but full-breasted blonde with bright blue eyes and
exquisite features. Unquestionably, Clinton decided, she was the reverend’s
wife. Nor was he at all disturbed by Howe’s initial place on the starting line.
He had no small opinion of himself in that direction when it came to William
Howe, or to Johnny Burgoyne, for that matter. The reverend himself was a
gray-haired, turning-white gentleman in his middle sixties. He had his own
money from his family, and it was reflected in the imported furniture, the
rugs, the silver, the great chandelier, which held at least a hundred candles,
the diamond set in the cross