“Ah! Detailed for spy duty, perhaps?”
Gerry felt his face flush. I talk too much, he thought.
The dusk was drawing in thickly now, with a little fog winding up from the river. Flashes of light burst out on the road behind him, like fireflies in a hawthorn thicket, all the way back towards Cambridge where the relief regiments under Lord Percy were trying to cover the rout of the troops that had charged so proudly that morning on Lexington Green.
He heard a whoosh in the dull air behind them. “Duck, lads,” he cried, and flung himself down on the floor of the cart. The whoosh turned to a shrill whistle and then to a scream as it passed overhead. Then came a thud and a splash as the heavy ball fell harmlessly on the sludgy ground.
Gerry lifted his head. “Drive like the devil, Sergeant,” he shouted. “Once we get over Charlestown Neck, we’re as safe as the Tower of London. They’ll never follow us under the guns of our own ships.”
“Causeway’s just ahead!” shouted back Sergeant Higgs, whipping the horses.
Gerry stood up and looked around him. They were well down on the narrow neck of wasteland now, between the wide, sea-flowing mouths of the Charles and the Mystic. He could smell the salt air and feel the cool wind on his hot face. Groups of weary red-coated men straggled into the marsh grass to let them drive through. How many had preceded him into safety, how many were left in the running fight behind, he couldn’t tell. But he saw campfires on the smooth green hills above Charlestown village, and he thought longingly of the farms and orchards there, a little more longingly of the Bay and Beagle Tavern and a girl called Sally Rose.
“Not detailed for spy duty?” asked the veteran persistently.
Gerry looked down at him, and he was enough of a soldier to realize that the wounded man wanted to engage in conversation in order to forget his pain. He seated himself on the floor of the wagon and answered evasively.
“No, but I go about sometimes. I like to know what kind of men the Rebels are, and what their country is like. Maybe walk out with a girl and play a prank or two. I be West Country-bred, and not too fond o’ towns and barracks life.” Then he thought of a way to shift the attention to another matter. “But what were you saying about the way I shoot?”