The Sons of Liberty

Chapter 3

        "He was just a little boy." Joe whispered and shook his head as he looked over the body of Christopher Seider. "God, he was just a little boy..." Sam stared on blankly as Joe pulled the cover over the body and looked up at him, "Is this what you wanted?"

        Sam turned and glared at him, "You think I wanted to see a kid dead, Joe? Huh? Is that what you think this is all about?"

        "No, but sometimes you don't think and this is what happens!" Joe snapped. That could have easily been his own son lying there under that blanket. He passed a hand across his forehead and turned to Sam, "I am just as behind this cause as you, but we cannot let eleven year old boys die for us, Sam! That boy could have been my son, or John's, for that matter!"

        A stony silence passed between them. Sam hadn't wanted this. None of them had. He wanted a statement made, but not across the backs of children. Not like this. Never like this. He was doing this for their sake, so they would not be held under the thumb of a government who did not care about them. God knows they were not the ones who were supposed to die. "I have already begun arranging his funeral." Joe did not even look up as he cleaned his tools. "It is going to be a public one. I am paying for everything." Still, Joe did not look up. He cleaned his tools fastidiously, his eyes never leaving them and his jaw tightly clamped shut. "Dammit, Joe, look at me!"

        Joe looked up and curtly turned around with his face set in a disgusted scowl, "Don't you have somewhere else to be with merrier company, Mister Adams?" Sam pushed himself up off of the table that he was leaning on and went to protest, but Joe held up a hand, "I am too damned tired to deal with this right now, Sam. Go find Hancock and Revere and plan this boy's funeral and leave me in peace." As Sam reached the door, Joe stopped him, "If you turn this into a political statement, I will beat the devil out of you myself, you hear, Samuel Adams."

        Sam froze with his hand on the doorknob and replied quietly, "I won't make it one, Joe. The boy did that himself as soon as that Tory pulled the trigger." The door swung open and Sam vanished out into the cold February morning and let the door bang closed behind him.

        Joe sat down and rested his head in his hands. His boys were up in their own rooms by his orders. He did not want them to see this. Not yet. There was a commotion outside and in through the front door rushed Nathaniel, panting with a rivulet of blood rushing down his face and a fellow regular in toe. "Nathaniel? My lord, are you all right?" Joe pushed himself up as Nathaniel raised his hand to stop him.

        "Don't worry about me, Doctor Warren. Take a look at Ensign Havard, will you? They got him good with some clubs earlier." He gestured to the man beside him, a timid and bruised young officer who looked beyond terrified. Joe nodded and motioned for Havard to have a seat. "Madness... They just assaulted us. Called us child-killers and murderers... Is this about that Seider boy? I was not even in the area when he was shot last night. We responded after he was shot to clear the crowd..." His voice trailed off when he saw the blanket on the table. Joe saw that he knew at once who it was and watched him remove his hat. "Children should not be the victims, sir. Not now and not ever, yet how they always end up as such is a cruelty brought down by God that I shall never truly understand."

        "You said that you had brothers, lieutenant?" Joe was desperate to change the subject as he began to clean up the cuts around the Ensign's eye.

        Nathaniel caught the nuance and nodded, "Aye, Doctor, three brothers. Two younger twins and one older brother. He's First Lieutenant of the HMS Séraphine. She was a ship I used to serve on. The twins want to become sailors, but father is adamant that they become lawyers instead."