We presented The Blockade of Boston, Major-General Burgoyne’s farce upon rebel hypocrisy, as one of the most celebrated events of our hivernal concert series. It was to be the last concert I played.

The preparations that evening were hectic, for it was to be acted by the officers themselves for the entertainment of not simply their peers and commanders, but also their troops, who were become restless with their long confinement. The officers, little acclimated to the exertions of drama — and the great rule, I have found, with stagecraft is that drama begets drama — filled the retiring-chambers of Faneuil Hall with their shouts and remonstrances as they were painted and clothed. There a man who had but a few months before stood proud upon the field, conducting men down some declivity with bayonets fixed, now, flustered with comedy, repeated lines while his valet drew lids upon his eyes. There drummers who sounded the advance and retreat across the battlefields thumped upon the skins of their raucous instruments, judging the quality of the attack. Here a man dressed as General Washington in hay-filled wig brandished a rusty sword.

In the midst of the preparations, Mr. Turner approached me. “Augustus,” said he, “a moment.”

I stepped aside to allow passage for a bustle of men who dragged a wooden howitzer.

Said Mr. Turner, “I have, at long last, recognized you. Some years ago you played a devilish ugly Tartini article for a subscription concert.”

I assented; and he, in his curious way, was not unforward in his praise, saying, “Excellent. I recall it as a beautiful head-ache. Con spirito. Perhaps con spirito maligno. There was about it a whiff of sulphur; maybe sal ammoniac.”

I averred that I was honored by his recollection, no less than by his attendance upon the first performance.

“Perhaps you should play a more prominent part in the orchestra.”

“You honor me with your notice, sir.”

“Famous,” said he. “Cracking. For our next concert, I shall shift you to play with the first violins.”

“May I express my gratitude to you for the opportunity, no less sweet for being unsought, and the hope that I shall prove in every respect —”

“I’faith, you’d dull a man to death. Go move chairs.”

We organized the chairs before the dais and lit the candles upon the stands so that the hall sparkled with illumination. My spirits were in a tumult: On the one hand, my heart trembled with anticipation of future performance; and I found myself surprised with hope that the siege should never end — for did it end, there ended also my freedom in this band, this glorious exercise of all I found most pleasant and agreeable; and I absurdly wished we could remain here, ever stranded, nestled in this tenuous moment; and yet, at the selfsame instant, I thought on those who encircled us, threatening, and wished my joy at the liberties I now took could blast them where they stood, that the brilliance of defiance might destroy forever those who prated of freedom and denied it so coarsely; and having thought thus, I found my hands wishing for a more devastating instrument than a violin; and scarcely was sensible of which emotion extended dominion over my disorganized nerves.

I tuned, frowning, and concentrated upon the music at hand.

The seats were filling with officers in full uniform and their ladies; in remoter areas, the rank and file were admitted to celebrate their favorite Regimental commanders in this act of buffoonage. In the farthest balcony, unaccompanied women in masks raised their fans to obscure their pox-marks, observed by men guessing at identity.

We sat through a farce entitled The Busy-Body, with jests regarding stays and lecherous inspections of bosoms.

When its badinage was completed, we picked up our instruments and began to play the overture for The Blockade of Boston.

For the benefit of the untried officers who acted in the piece, we had sat many times through some portions: General Washington seducing a widow, so he might melt down her family pewter for bullets; comic numbers for rustic paupers singing of their sheep; a chorus of effeminate Harvardians, full of the pious cant of Puritan theology, which sour ephebes spurred on rough apprentices to fight for them and then wept and hid when battle began, terrified they should lose their lives or, far worse, their fortunes; we had seen also a bumptious dialogue between two ragged colonial majors, one a shoemaker by trade, the other a dentist’s apprentice, each protesting their fellow-feeling while picking the other’s pocket. Finally, I had witnessed with some interest a ballad we played mocking the rebels’ Congress for crying, in the midst of wealth and luxury, that England had enslaved them, while all the time holding slaves themselves and trading Negroes at cards.

We finished the overture’s concluding fugato. The action opened in Watertown, which was painted upon old linens; General Washington stomped out from the wings, his jacket ill-fitting and crude. He opened his mouth to speak the prologue.

Abruptly, one of the King’s soldiers, dressed in the costume of a serjeant of the militia, rushed out the wings and sprinted to the center of the stage, shoving the Commander-in-Chief of the rebel faction to the side with little ceremony — and declared in Hibernian accents, “Turn out! Turn out! They are at it, hammer and tongs! The rebels!”

He paused, the audience gaped; he cried, by way of amplification, “Tooth and nail!”

The theater was for a moment silent.

Washington, knocked asunder, reeled and brayed, “I say,” seizing the King’s soldier by the arm and struggling with him.

The two wrestled there for a moment, which sight was enough to actuate laughter and applause in all who watched — as the two grunted there — until the King’s soldier, bursting free of Washington’s elbows, cried, “What the deuce are you all about? If you won’t believe me, by Jesus, you need only go to the door, and there you will see!”

Despite the action of the drama was somewhat confused, the audience still liked it well enough, it clearly conducing to the debasement of the rebel General, so they laughed again; but the story became even more unaccountable as the soldier addressed the audience again, pleading, “Sirs! M’lords! At Charlestown! The rebels are attacking the mill-dam at Charlestown!”

This time, there was no laughter; merely an astonished silence. An anxiety at what was real and what was display beset us. Some few men started to rise from their seats.

Major-General Burgoyne, dressed as a cow-herd, rushed onto the stage. “It is not in the script!” he cried. “The man speaks truth!”

For one moment longer, stupor held court; his scepter was absolute and we all were subjected unto him.

And then chaos usurped with his animal junto.

Officers rose and there was a general clamor; a woman wailed; from the wings, through luffing coulisses, men ran panting, wiping paint from their faces upon their oznabrig sleeves. There was a struggle on the stairs. The doors bristled with men in panic. Officers hauled themselves off the stage, shoving and pushing amidst the orchestra as we hastily turned aside that they might pass — one slid beneath the harpsichord for avenue — while in the audience, men groped to climb over seats, heaving themselves up, boots on velvet cushions; ladies rising and sitting; one fainting; cries for help; no language left but jabbering.

I held up my violin so it might not be smashed by colonels who clambered over my lap.

Regimental commanders shouted for order, but there was no maintaining it. Chairs were kicked over. Women suffered the assaults of their neighbors climbing towards freedom.

Gradually, the theater emptied, Mr. Turner shouting to us that we, at least, must remain stationary and minimize, rather than enhance, the violence of the rout.

Once the way was clear, we dispersed toward the doors.

In the market square, we found ragged companies forming, several led by men habited as milkmaids.

As I wandered home — little fearing, amidst the confusion, any harassment — I passed individual soldiers sprinting down alleys, seeking their station.

In the streets, companies marched.

Through the ways of the city, I heard the call of the drums, beating the soldiers into formation.

At Mrs. Platt’s house, we ascended to the roof, where she had watched the burning of Charlestown some months before. Sally and I prepared tea and brought it up for the widow, Dr. Trefusis, and her old servant, Jacob, who was wrapped in blankets.

Not much could be seen on the other side of the channel; bursts of flame that illuminated only smoke. As we observed, Dr. Trefusis delivered a proud oration on how none could truly see, but all the world was smoke, flame, and night; and we stumblers in that obscurity, glimpsing figures that struggled and fell; which discourse I could not attend to, for my thoughts were deep engaged upon another matter.

“What,” said Sally to Dr. Trefusis, “will you be diving off the roof to your death, now you’ve said your pretty speeches?”

Swifts roused by the volleys rose and called in darkness.

There are vistas which not only gratify with a demonstration of geography, but which act as the cartographers of our history, mapping time itself; so, then, this prospect: which took in, at a swivel of the head, the spires of Boston, its brick houses and slate roofs, its hills, on which campfires burned and murky Redcoats paraded; and indeed, one could make out, featureless from this vantage in this dark, the Novanglian College of Lucidity’s town-house, where I had spent my youth; and there, across the Bay, were ships of the line awaiting combat, quiescent and pregnant with menace; their tenders cutting across the waves; and to the northwest, across the Charles, the heights of Breed’s and Bunker Hills, which I, with my own hands, had helped fortify for the rebels, at the side of Mr. G—g, but which works now were in the hands of the King’s Army, and hotly disputed. Far in the blue distance, I believed I could see the hills of Stow and Concord and Canaan, where Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Gitney still dwellt, for all I knew, in their experimental chambers, conducting trials in the dead of night. Behind us, the moon shone down upon the mud-flats of Roxbury, where Dr. Trefusis and I had struggled for our lives against the rising tide. Bound here together beneath the wind and touched by the tide were rebel and regular, Tory and Whig, all scrutinizing each other across the blue spaces between them, awaiting the moment either might rally and seize the landscape for their own.

Across the Charles, the calamity was bright and confusing.

They had, in impudence, chosen this night, the night of our festive lampoon, for their attack, knowing our officers engaged in the drama; there could be little question of that.

And ’twas as if one said to me, Play as you will. Elsewhere, the battle commences. Play your sweet tunes, boy, and stay away from the business of men. Forget justice, for you have what you desired.

I peered across the Charles. My palms wanted detonation. I held out my hands toward the minute battle, and yearned to feel the full shock of the blast, to tear away at the enemy’s vile obstinacy, which kept us corralled; to feel the full eruption of justice visited upon them.

There could be no safety, no repose but illusory while such deeds went on in darkness.

I smellt the smoke blown through the black air.

We later heard that Major Knowlton of the rebels had led two hundred men to Charlestown to assault it; they making their way across the mill-dam. They burned houses that night, killed one man, and took five prisoners.

I know only that I looked across the houses, inlets, and isles of my youth, and was sensible that I had to leave them behind. There was staged a great transformation in the world, and when ’twas done, nothing would be as it had been; and nor could I be. We must lay aside one thing to grasp another.

I stood upon the flashing of the roof, and watched the houses burn.