“Come, girls,” said Granny. “I aim to learn what this commotion is all about.”
They followed her out of the house and along High Street, past the Frog Pond and the new training green laid out where the windmill used to be.
A crowd had gathered in front of the Wolfe Tavern, and they paused at the outskirts of it. Torches flared all about, lighting up the portrait of General Wolfe that hung on a pole near the tavern door, flickering on the windowpanes along Fish Street and on the startled faces of the Newburyport folk. Fashionable flounced ladies stood side by side with barefooted fishwives from Flatiron Point, while toddlers clung to their skirts, and urchins raced here and there, shouting with shrill voices, as if they played some sort of exciting game. Most of the men were gathered round the tavern’s high front steps, and new arrivals kept elbowing their way forward every minute. The throng bristled everywhere with gun barrels; a flintlock, a fowling piece, an old queen’s arm.
“There’s Johnny,” said Sally Rose suddenly, and sure enough, Kitty craned her neck and saw him standing with the other men, his hands gripping a heavy musket. He was watching the tavern door intently. He did not look their way.
“What’s going on here?” demanded Granny in a querulous tone. Everybody seemed to be talking at once, but nobody answered her.
A man wearing a blue coat and carrying a sword came out of the tavern and stood still at the top of the steps, looking round him. He held up his hand. The urchins stopped shouting. The bells down the street pealed a time or two and then were silent. The voices of the crowd died away. A sudden burst of spring wind lifted a heap of dead leaves from the gutter and swirled it high in the face of the round white moon.
The man on the steps began to speak. “Men o’ the Port,” he called out, in a voice that was low and deep, a voice that without lifting or straining itself could be heard in all the streets and lanes nearby, “New England blood’s been spilt, as some o’ you know. But for them that don’t, I’ll read the word the postrider brought.” He waved a paper aloft, then held it square in front of him.
“‘To all friends of American Liberty, let it be known! This morning before break of day, a brigade consisting of some twelve hundred redcoats ... marched to Lexington ... and on to Concord Bridge. Many were slain both sides, and the roads are bloody. Another brigade is now upon the march from Boston!’”
He put the paper down. “Men o’ the Port, such as signed the pledge, ‘We do enlist ourselves as Minutemen and do engage that we will hold ourselves in readiness to march!’ All such men to the training green! Fall in by companies! Come, lads! Up the hill!”
With a cheer the men surged up Fish Street, shoulders hunched and heads thrust forward, their guns gripped in their hands. With cries of dismay and alarm the women began to trail after them. Granny stood still, leaning on her cane.