The Bloody Massacre in King Street

Chapter 1

A warm breeze met my face as I entered the back room at the White Horse Tavern. My friends greeted me cheerily as I entered our group’s meeting spot. Everything was the same as usual. Cyrus and Levi entertaining a few others, Josiah and Jonathan having a peaceful argument over philosophy, and George in a drunken sleep in the corner.

“Good to see your face again, my friend,” said James, the head of our small group. His hand clapped onto my shoulder and he smiled. “I haven’t seen your face around here in a while. What’s got you busy?”

“I’m just finishing law school. I’ve spent so many nights studying, I realized I’d forgotten my friends. A night of rest sounded nice for a change.”

“Well we’re happy to see you again. Not much has changed in these few months. Did you hear of the attack in New York?”

“No,” I replied, aghast. “I haven’t the time to follow the news. What happened?”

“Someone attacked a British soldier staying in his house,” said Samuel, another of our friends. “A group of them caught on and attacked a whole group of soldiers living in the area.”

“Did anyone die?”

“No, but lots of people were hurt.” Samuel’s voice grew somber. “We can’t be sure it won’t happen again either. What happens when someone does die?”

“Then we’ll fight back,” James replied simply. “They can’t abuse us. Though we may not like it, we are still Englishmen. If they attack us, they’ll be attacking their own people.” Suddenly, the room fell silent. James’s voice grew louder with every word.

“It is a soldier’s duty to protect the common man. But what happens when he doesn’t? What happens when the government acts in ways to harm its own people?” In the second he paused to take in a breath, Jonathan shouted out.

“Revolution!” A loud cheer went up among us and James smiled slightly.

“Revolution, indeed! Though they cannot hurt us without reason, we can still stand up to them! We are not helpless. We are strong!”

Once again, the room erupted into a chaos of cheering and banging on the tables. I joined Cyrus and Levi at a table as a pretty, brunette barmaid passed around drinks. She was well received by my friends, and she didn’t seem to mind.

The night carried on and a few of us had perhaps too much to drink. Even the girl joined in our merriments, though I didn’t doubt she was too young for the alcohol. The room was full of singing and talking loudly. It was hard to believe there were only a few of us in there, maybe twelve or fifteen. Still, we enjoyed our night. Eventually, we decided to turn in for the night and we left the tavern in our group.

I reached for my coat that I had draped over the back of my chair, but a hand shot out and snatched it up before I could grab it. I looked up to see the girl’s face in front of me. She seemed to be about nineteen years old, just three years younger than myself. She held out the coat for me with a smile.

“Your coat, sir.” I thanked her and turned to leave. “Wait, sir.” I stopped and turned back to face her. “Are you just going to leave your friend here tonight or should we wake him?” Her small hand rested gently on George’s mop of black hair. A laugh escaped me.

“We won’t be able to wake him no matter how hard we try. Leave him here. He’ll figure out what happened in the morning.” With that I turned to leave once more, but the girl caught my hand.

“What do they call you, sir?”

“Riley.”

“I’m Scarlett.” I pulled my hand from hers and resumed exiting the room.

“It was nice to meet you, Miss Scarlett.” I pulled the door shut behind me and left.

I made my way through the back passage and returned to the main room where the owner wiped down the bar.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen your face, Riley,” said the man. “Nice to see you again. Your friends just left. Shouldn’t be too far ahead.”

I smiled and waved a thank you. The door of the tavern closed quietly. My friends’ voices carried loudly down the street. I jogged to catch up with them as they began the walk around the city dropping everyone off at home.

“So Riley is finally finishing school!” Cyrus said, patting my back. “With a degree, maybe he’ll finally be able to get a woman!” Everyone burst into laughter. I scratched my head and dropped my gaze while they mocked me for not caring about being in a relationship.

I did not care, though. I was happy and that was all that mattered to me. Being with my friends made me happy too. We made our rounds about the city merrily, chattering loudly as we went. Along the way, a younger boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, joined our group.

The night air was unusually warm for a March night in Boston. A cool breeze blew down the sidewalk, bringing a momentary silence over our group. The sudden peace felt nice. I made my way over to Josiah, who had stepped off to the side of the group to walk alone for a minute.

“So things really haven’t changed?” I asked.

“No. Only that English government is becoming more and more difficult to deal with. Tea taxes keep rising. That has everyone upset, if anything,” he replied calmly.

“How long do you think it’ll be before something bad happens?”

“It’s hard to say, really. The smallest spark can start a fire. Then again, we could simply end up like this forever, just waiting for something to happen but never actually doing anything. You really can never know for sure.” I nodded as Josiah talked. His voice was smooth and calming. I doubted he had much to drink, if anything at all.

“It troubles me to know I’ve missed so much. Once school is over, I will definitely help you and everyone else more.” Josiah nodded and smiled, ducking his chin.

“We should join the others before they do something ill advised. With those Redcoats roaming the streets, something bad could happen.” I nodded and we joined our friends as they walked and chatted merrily down the moonlit road.

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Hello people. This is just a little thingy I wrote for English. We had to write a 5 chapter legend, like King Arthur and stuff like that, so this is what I came up with. I think it came out good enough. My English teacher liked it, so I think it's not completely terrible... Anyways, I hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading. Keep on readin'.

~gymnastxx