Our mysterious ferryman having deposited us on a wharf off Essex Street, we made our way to South Street, where Dr. Trefusis recalled that there was an inn that might accommodate us. This found — the Graven Bull — we roused the innkeeper and begged a room.

It must be admitted that we presented an image little calculated to quell fears of the indigent and the beggar: a tall, gawky Negro boy in torn breeches and loose smock (and, as most certainly I was, wild-eyed with fatigue and the allure of the cook-fire within), and an aged man in tattered stockings and breeches so involved in mud that their color could no longer be descried. Though that very morning, Dr. Trefusis had been dressed in all the finery of leisure and the cut of fashion, now was he reduced to the appearance of one who had snatched his clothes from a rag-cart, being slashed from barnacles, bruised from falls on stone, wigless and almost hairless, a few wisps straggling down the side of his skull, dripping with rain as he shivered and coughed profoundly.

The innkeeper informed us that he had no rooms, the most of them being enjoyed by the King’s officers, but that for a few shillings we might sleep by the kitchen fire, though he complained of entertaining such vagabonds. Notwithstanding the price was exorbitant for such hard accommodation, Dr. Trefusis nodded, which movement was imperceptible almost from the palsy of his chill, and we were admitted into the house.

We slept, therefore, upon benches next to paltry flames. The hearth smoked immoderately, given the dampness and warmth of the night. During the early hours of the morning, I stoked the fire more than perhaps I should have, attempting to warm my tutor, whose very life I feared for, so clutched was he by shivering and agues. I slept but little.

In the morning, with great anxiety I left Dr. Trefusis huddled upon the hearthstone and went forth to seek us more permanent lodgings.

Beneath gray skies, I wandered the streets, engaged not simply in my errand, but also in wonder at what was about me. By the light of day, I saw the changes wrought upon Boston by military rule. A great metamorphosis had come upon the city since last I had been there, the winter previous. The whole of that town was occupied in making preparations to repel the assaults of rebellion.

All that I saw struck me with the transports of wonder, for these habitual scenes were so greatly transformed, the familiar mingling so unreservedly with the confusions of combat, as to suggest the landscape of dream. Still could one mark the bustle of citizens with baskets, the cluck of drovers, their flocks reduced; still did one see the chaise and coach resting before houses; still did one hear the banter of livestock, the cry of the hawker, the tears of children, the exasperation of drays; but now, the hustle of commerce gave way in every corner to the demands of martial regularity and the irregularity of hasty defense.

Soldiers in red marched ranked down private avenues, muskets held at ready. At certain intersections were deposited mortars and cannon, a few idle powder-monkeys lying atop them to guard them, awaiting commands or playing cards in the shadow of these engines of destruction.

By the Common, the almshouse yard was thick that morning with Tory refugees fled to the city, groping now through the palings of the fence and clamoring for coin. Such an uproar and the sight of those pathetic faces could not but spur me on my errand, and impress upon me the necessity for swift accommodation and employment; for I had no wish to end my voyage incarcerated there.

The Common itself was little more than an encampment, the infantry having erected their tents in among the malls and grazing-fields. Many of the trees that had lined the gracious and pleasant walks of the Common were cut down, and the smoke of countless cook-fires hung heavily in the humid air upon those denuded slopes. The paths and lawns were turned to muck with exercises and evolutions.

The regulars marched upon the green in their formations as tiny men snapped orders.

The beacon-mast upon Beacon Hill had been removed, and replaced instead with a wooden turret; there was another fort stood opposite Carver Street, and a battery of guns atop Fox Hill. Flag-Staff Hill was dug up with entrenchments. Down at the bottom of the Common, where on sunny days in years of peace, the tanners had pursued their noxious trade in yards, and the clamor of tinsmiths shearing and riveting their goods with doors thrown wide had fallen upon the ear as harsh and lively as the tanners’ art upon the nose, now doors were closed; the Marines were encamped along the road. Graves were dug for soldiers, some still open pits, others marked with wooden crosses.

There was, as I wandered through the streets, a continual popping and cracking as the guns on Copp’s Hill fired, though I have no notion of what they might have aimed at.

At the first instances of shelling, my breath was arrested and my motions strangulated by the alarums of fear, lest at any moment return fire should be hurled back across the roofs and channel; but no such return was offered, and gradually I perceived that this dialogue of shot was empty of communication, its leaden utterance falling short, rebel and soldier gasconading as two libertines discoursing in their cups, lain on two sides of a ditch, their language full of gesture and epithet, but debating to no purpose, their subjects dissimilar, their logic a-ramble, their ears closed to suasion.

The populace went unimpeded about their business, little regarding the detonations, betraying no notice that invisible to sight, all about us on the streets and the green sward of the hillside were extended sweeping the dotted lines of ordnance calculation and the hovering directrix, focus, and vector of martial geometry.

The streets near the city gates were almost entirely evacuated, owners fearing too much the assaults of enemy artillery. To frustrate invasion, the avenue hard by had been torn up into trenches; fascines and abatis — bound together out of tree trunks stripped of bark and sharpened to fierce points — lay on the street before the empty houses of society dames and gentlemen of fashion. Stacks of cobbles, pulled up out of the dirt, were piled in yards.

Along the road there were mounds of furniture and clothing: stacks of headboards, gaming tables, stools, and Dutch kasten; these being the belongings of such as petitioned to be allowed to quit the city, but who had not yet received their exit pass, and so had been forced to tarry. Many of these chattels were on their way to ruin by the late rains, their veneer being invaded by the water and swelling so that the wood wrinkled and buckled. A soldier stood by to frustrate the designs of thieves.

For a time I regarded the picket-guards patrolling the gates of the city. I meditated upon the peculiar circumstance, that but a half mile away, across the Neck, my former companions — good Mr. G—g among them — glowered back from the fortifications at Roxbury.

Such was the state of the city at this time.

My search for accommodation did not go easily. Officers had laid claim to most of the rooms in likely inns; others were taken by the wealthier of Loyalists come in from the countryside.

I passed by the abandoned habitation of the College of Lucidity on Cambridge Street. Notwithstanding the hazard was too great for us to take refuge in that mansion, lest some agent of the College return, I wished to see it now that my circumstances were so deeply changed.

I lingered before its gates. Guards in red coats with buff facings were stationed by the door. I made bold to approach them and, in the guise of a slave, make inquiries as to who dwellt there. They replied that the house had belonged to members of the rebel faction, and had been requisitioned as barracks for Clavering’s Regiment, the 52^nd. As they spoke, the doors opened, and several officers issued forth, laughing and tripping down the steps.

I bowed my thanks and walked on. I marveled at the strangeness of those rooms so well known to me — the moldings and wainscot, the herbs hung to dry on the back stairs — now echoing with the tread of martial boots and the shouts of command, the arcane experimental chambers, perhaps, housing the pallets of rank and file.

I left behind that scene and sought our accommodation further.

The difficulty lay not in finding vacant rooms — for there were whole houses vacant — but rather vacant rooms in houses where owners were present still to let out their property. At length, inquiring at an inn, I heard of a woman of some quality who wished to take on boarders and put them in her former bedroom, where her husband had died of an hectic fever in the most exquisite agonies some months before, the chamber being now loathsome to her, associated with the remembrance of pain and the tauntings of former felicity.

The price, given her distress, was such as would not soon be met with elsewhere. I told her therefore that likely my master — for so I called Dr. Trefusis, though he would have protested — would soon return with me and we would take up residence there.

Now I hurried through the streets beneath a new drizzle to the inn where we had stayed. Upon entering that house, I discovered a pathetic scene that moved my heart: The room now was filled with merrymakers and roustabouts upon the trestle-benches, calling toasts to one another. Slumped by the fire, in the midst of all of that shouting, was Dr. Trefusis, insensate, shivering though near flame, stubble upon his cheeks and chin, his scarce hair still clammy.

I woke him and told him that I had located a room for us in the North End, upon Staniford Street. He congratulated me, and asked that we might remove ourselves there instanter so he could sleep without being roused by Irish balladry and ensigns lifting their shirts to compare back-hair.

I helped him rise to his feet, though he was unsteady. He begged me find a hired chaise on which he could be conveyed to our new dwelling, to which I eagerly assented; we only then discovering that, while he had slept, his purse had been stolen.

We did not even have money sufficient to pay for our miserable night’s stay at the inn.

The landlord, little inclined to believe our tale of distress, pointed out that he had seen our money the night before, and that we should make good on our promises now. We begged — we remonstrated — and, at last, he agreed to take Dr. Trefusis’s silk waistcoat, ruined as it was, in payment.

So we walked the mile to our new lodging. Dr. Trefusis leaned upon me. I could feel the expansion and contraction of his ribs with each breath. He scarcely showed the spark of consciousness in his eyes. I am certain we looked to those we passed like a scene of utmost destitution and ruin; and indeed, perhaps we were: myself, newly liberated into penury; and Dr. Trefusis, who had, just twenty-four hours previous, sat drinking tea in a country house, surrounded by all the trappings of luxury, waited upon by servants and bondsmen, now stripped to his shirt.

We arrived at our destination; where our hostess, seeing the state of my quondam master, refused us the room. I begged. She denied. I pled. She was hard as iron, saying that her nuptial chamber should not be subjected to the stench of the sea-bottom that accompanied this penniless wretch.

Dr. Trefusis, for his part, reached over and picked a white cushion off the chair and held it on top of his head.

I assumed he had gone deranged.

The cushion held to shield his balding pate, he said, “Madame, your servant.”

The hostess regarded him first with disgust — then with fury — then with astonishment — then, finally, with abashment.

“Dr. Trefusis,” she said. “Sir.” She curtseyed. “I knew you not, without the wig. . . .”

“Indeed,” he said. “I shall have to purchase another. But first, I have some need of sheets, a bolster, a fire, and, with an even greater show of celerity, Madame, a bucket into which I may vomit broth.”