Colleen McCullough: Morgan’s Run

“I agree, I agree!” cried Jem, lifting his gratis rum in a toast to the landlord, who was rarely generous. “The colonists probably will never win a battle. But they do not need to win battles, Dick. All they need to do is to endure. For it is their land we will be fighting in, and it is not England.” His hand went to the left pocket of his greatcoat; out came the massive pistol, down it went on the table with a crash, while the tavern’s other occupants squealed and shrieked in terror-and Richard, his infant son on his lap, pushed its muzzle sideways so quickly that no one saw him move. The pistol, as everybody knew, was loaded. Oblivious to the consternation he had caused, Mr. Thistlethwaite burrowed into the depths of the pocket and produced some folded pieces of flimsy paper. These he examined one by one, his spectacles enlarging his pale blue and bloodshot eyes, his dark and curling hair escaping from the ribbon with which he had carelessly tied it back-no wigs or queues for Mr. James Thistlethwaite.

“Ah!” he exclaimed finally, flourishing a London news sheet. “Seven and a half months ago, ladies and gentlemen of the Cooper’s Arms, there was a great debate in the House of Lords, during which that grand old man, William Pitt the Earl of Chatham, gave what is said to be his greatest oration. In defense of the colonists. But it is not Chatham’s words thrill me,” continued Mr. Thistlethwaite, “it is the Duke of Richmond’s, and I quote: ‘You may spread fire and desolation, but that will not be government!’ How true, how very true! Now comes the bit I judge one of the great philosophical truths, though the Lords snored as he said it: ‘No people can ever be made to submit to a form of government they say they will not receive.’ ”

He stared about, nodding. “That is why I say that all the battles we will win can be of no use and can have little effect upon the outcome of the war. If the colonists endure, they must win.” His eyes twinkled as he folded the paper, shoved the quire or so back into his pocket, and jammed the horse pistol on top of them. “You know too much about guns, Richard, that is your trouble. The child was not endangered, nor any of the other folk here.” A rumble commenced in his throat and vibrated through his pursed lips. “I have lived in this stinking cesspool called Bristol for all of my life, and I have alleviated the monotony by making some of our festering Tory sores in government the object of my lampoons, from Quaker to Shaker to Kingmaker.” He waved his battered tricorn hat at his audience and closed his eyes. “If the colonists endure, they must win,” he repeated. “Anybody who lives in Bristol has made the acquaintance of a thousand colonists-they flit about the place like bats in the last light. The death of Empire, Dick! It is the first rattle in our English throats. I have come to know the colonists, and I say they will win.”

A strange and ominous sound began to percolate in from outside, a sound of many angry voices; the distorted shapes of passersby flickering unhurriedly across the windows suddenly became blurs moving at a run.

“Rioters!” Richard was getting to his feet even as he handed the child to his wife. “Peg, straight upstairs with William Henry! Mum, go with them.” He looked at Mr. Thistlethwaite. “Jem, do you intend to fire with one in either hand, or will you give me the second pistol?”

“Leave be, leave be!” Dick emerged from behind his counter to reveal himself a close physical counterpart to Richard, taller than most, muscular in build. “This end of Broad Street does not see rioters, even when the colliers came in from Kingswood and snatched old man Brickdale. Nor does it when the sailors go on the rampage. Whatever is going on, it is not a riot.” He crossed to the door. “However, I am of a mind to see what is afoot,” he said, and disappeared into the running throng. The occupants of the Cooper’s Arms followed him, including Richard and Jem Thistlethwaite, his horse pistols still snug in his greatcoat pockets.

People were boiling everywhere at street level, people leaned from every penthouse with necks craning; not a stone of the flagged road could be seen, nor a single slab of the new pedestrian pavement down either side of Broad Street. The three men pushed into the crush and moved with it toward the junction of Wine and Corn Streets-no, these were not rioters. These were affluent, extremely angry gentlemen who carried no women or children with them.

On the opposite side of Broad Street and somewhat closer to the hub of commerce around the Council House and the Exchange stood the White Lion Inn, headquarters of the Steadfast Society. This was the Tory club, source of much encouragement to His Britannic Majesty King George III, whose men they were to the death. The center of the disturbance was the American Coffee House next door, its sign the red-and-white flag of many stripes most American colonists used as a general banner when the flag of Connecticut or Virginia or some other colony was not appropriate.

“I believe,” said Dick Morgan, on fruitless tiptoe, “that we would do better to go back to the Cooper’s Arms and watch from the penthouse.”

So back they went, up the shaky crumbling stairs at the inner end of the counter and thus eventually to the casement windows which leaned perilously far out over Broad Street below. In the back room little William Henry was crying, his mother and grandmother bent over his cot cooing and clucking; the hubbub outside held no interest for Peg or Mag while William Henry displayed such terrible grief. Nor did the hubbub tempt Richard, joining the women.

“Richard, he will not perish in the next few minutes!” snapped Dick from the front room. “Come here and see, damn ye!”

Richard came, but reluctantly, to lean out the gaping window and gasp in amazement. “Yankeys, Father! Christ, what are they doing to the things?”

“Things” they certainly were: two rag effigies stuffed quite professionally with straw, tarred all over with pitch still smoking, and encrusted with feathers. Except for their heads, upon which sat the insignia of colonists-their abysmally unfashionable but very sensible hats, brim turned down all the way around so that the low round crown sat like the yolk blister in the middle of a fried egg.

“Holloa!” bellowed Jem Thistlethwaite, spying a well-known face belonging to a well-known, expensively suited body, the whole perched upon a geehoe sledge loaded with tall barrels. “Master Harford, what goes?”

“The Steadfast Society saith it hangeth John Hancock and John Adams!” the Quaker plutocrat called back.

“What, because General Gage refused to extend his pardon to them after Concord?”

“I know not, Master Thistlethwaite.” Clearly terrified that he too would be lampooned in some highly uncomplimentary way, Joseph Harford descended from his vantage point and melted into the crowd.

“Hypocrite!” said Mr. Thistlethwaite under his breath.

“Samuel Adams, not John Adams,” said Richard, his interest now fairly caught. “Surely it would be Samuel Adams?”

“If the richest merchants in Boston are whom the Steadfast Society mean to hang, then yes, it ought to be Samuel. But John writes and speaks more,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite.

In a nautically oriented city, the production of two ropes efficiently tied into hangman’s knots did not present a difficulty; two such magically appeared, and the stark, bristly, man-sized dolls were hoisted by their necks to the signpost of the American Coffee House, there to turn lazily and smolder sluggishly. Rage spent, the throng of Steadfast Society men vanished through the welcoming, Tory-blue doors of the White Lion Inn.

“Tory pricks!” said Mr. Thistlethwaite, descending the stairs with a nice mug of rum uppermost in his mind.