He had, in the last days of 1773, ridden swiftly along the wintry Post Road the twelvescore miles from Boston to New York City to deliver, as he called it, an "account of the destruction of the tea"—the seminal event that had so powerfully churned the spirit of rebellion along the docks and waters of Boston Harbor. Revere had ridden that Post Road route again in the late summer and early fall of 1774, following the stone mile markers to New York and then continuing, still farther south, to Philadelphia, a 350-mile journey in all, to arrive at the First Continental Congress carrying dispatches from the selectmen of Boston. He had made a northward ride as well that year, more than sixty miles through a hard December wind on a failing horse, to arrive at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there pass along intelligence that led the Patriots to ambush the Royal watchmen and seize the powder at Fort William and Mary, fortifying themselves for the battles ahead. Revere rode missions at other times and to other places as well. When the movement needed a message delivered faithfully and without delay, Revere was the man to deliver it.
Now, it was the spring of 1775, warm for mid-April, and the white moon was already up in the clear, star-strewn sky, and the village roads and the country roads were quiet. At least seemingly so, for the moment. Rain had fallen that afternoon, big drops and then a misting before it cleared. It had rained the day before as well. Revere was preparing to set out on another ride, a much shorter ride than the earlier journeys, more pressing and less precise. He traveled light and bore no documents to support a message or directive—only his voice and what he knew. Revere had thirteen miles ahead of him on the first leg that night, maybe thirteen and a half. He might meet Dawes as he neared Lexington, he suspected. He would get to Adams and Hancock whatever the cost.
Revere stood for a moment on the muddy ground, the Old North Church tall across the river before him, the mare, Brown Beauty, shifting on her hooves. Revere understood that for himself and for the others who might ride on this night—along close wooded paths and over wet meadows to visit the farmhouses and boardinghouses and homesteads, to sound the warning and make the appeal—this was the most important horseback ride of his life. The Regulars were out. The Royal Army was on the move.
CHAPTER TWO
THE BELL RINGER, 1750
As a young man living in the North End of Boston Paul Revere got himself a job as a bell ringer, a change ringer to be precise, sounding the church bells in the same way that bells were sounded in churches across the English countryside, a many-toned, overlapping rhythmic sound, a small well-ordered symphony. Revere was fifteen years old and the bell-ringing job was at the Old North Church, Christ Church, overlooking the shore from where boats pushed off toward Charlestown, across the waterway north of Boston.
This was in 1750, and the men and women of the colonies, those whose families had been there for generations and those who had recently come from England or elsewhere, were living together and alongside one another, under the authority of the Crown. Relations with the indigenous people were calm and cooperative in the area around Boston at this time. The French and Indian War, which would enlist Revere and so many other young men, and which would thunder for nine years through Canada and the western sweep of the colonies, had not yet begun.
Change ringing is a particular endeavor, a learned skill that came over to the colonies from England, where it began in the seventeenth century. In this kind of churchbell ringing a group of ringers, maybe as many as sixteen and rarely fewer than six, stand in a circle, each with a rope in his or her hands. Each bell is rung in succession, according to a precise preestablished pattern or sometimes as instructed by a leader, who calls out the order of ringing in real time. The Old North Church featured a peal of eight bells. They had been cast in Gloucester, England, by Abel Rudhall, whose father, Abraham, established the bell-casting company Rudhall of Gloucester in the 1680s, nearly seven decades before. Men had been founding bells in Gloucester since the 1200s, at least. One of the bells in the Old North Church bore—and still bears today—the inscription We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North America, A.R. 1744.
Each bell in the Old North belfry was, and is, affixed to a wooden wheel. From the wheel hangs the rope, maybe twenty-five feet down and through two ceilings and into the bell ringers' room. The smallest and lightest of the bells at Old North Church, the treble, weighs 620 pounds, and the heaviest bell, the tenor, weighs 1,545 pounds. Yet a change ringer does not need to be unusually strong. Gravity does most of the work. The bell starts in a mouth-up position, and as it gets swung around full circle to a stop, the clapper hits the sound bow just as the mouth faces outward from the belfry. From Old North Church the bells rang out loudly and splendidly for miles. They could be heard down around Beacon Hill, and over in Cambridge on the campus of Harvard, and up into Charlestown and out by the docks at Long Wharf. When Revere and the others rang the bells on a clear evening, the greater part of Boston heard a kind of waterfall of sound, a pattern full of discernible individual notes that then ran into the next.
