A moment later they were in the street outside, trailing along after a sorry-looking group of men and women, poor folk, mostly, who had stayed in town in spite of all the warnings of danger, because they had nowhere else to go.
“I’m glad,” murmured Gran as they plodded over the cobblestones, their eyelids smarting and their throats choked with the thick smokiness that seemed to be flooding over the whole world, “I’m glad we sent Timothy to Cambridge, two days back—Timothy and that poor horse, too. At least, we’re leaving no living thing behind to burn.”
Kitty thought of all the living things who were left to their fate in that tiny fortress on the Hill.
Iron shot blasted the roofs about them, and balls of living flame burst in the street. All along their way the old wooden houses were beginning to catch fire. Just as they passed out of town and into the green country at the rear of Bunker Hill, Kitty looked back. Clouds of black smoke billowed upward from the docks, the warehouses, the dwellings, the shops in the market square. The church steeple lifted up one soaring pyramid of fire.
Her eyes hurt suddenly with tears that did not come from the smoke.
“Come away, child,” said Gran, putting her arm about the girl’s shoulders, using her other hand to guide the half-blinded Sally Rose.
How far they had gone before the little procession came to a halt, she did not know, but she did know they toiled a long way down the dusty road, constantly shelled by the heavy guns of the ships.
When they did stop, it was in the front dooryard of a little tavern, The Sign of the Sun. The raggle-taggle company scattered themselves about on the grass, but Gran led the girls inside.
“They say the firing’s too heavy for us to cross the Neck and flee inland,” she explained, “but ’tis to this place they are bringing the wounded men. Perhaps we can help here.”
The taproom they entered was not unlike the taproom at the Bay and Beagle, but tables and benches had been moved back to clear the floor. Some dozen men in tattered shirts and bloody breeches were lying on the wide pine boards. Some moaned, and some lay very still. Three women worked among them, and a man in a buff coat, a doctor, most like, knelt by one soldier probing a wounded knee.