07 - The Last Day of Magic

March 1776

The day after the snow storm General Howe sent out an envoy to establish a seize fire under which the British agreed evacuate the City of Boston intact so long as the Continentals held their cannon fire and allowed them to leave.  These terms were not what Washington had hoped for at the outset of the siege however Washington agreed to them.  It was better to have a victory and reclaim Boston than it was to press the fight and suffer severe casualties.

As the British made preparations the evacuate Boston Washington summoned his generals to establish a plan for the next phase of the war.  The Howe's forces would be evacuating Boston and heading for New York, however there were sources that said that another army of equal force had set sail from England and was due to land in Quebec to push the Continentals back out of the Canadian Territory.  The Continentals would soon be facing a two front war and resources, men, and morale were becoming scarce.

As the generals meet Fisher, Rose, and Crowe meet to discuss the aftermath of the storm.  Crowe couldn’t explain how such a powerful storm had come up on them so quickly.  Fisher and Rose shared their theory that the storm was the result of them magically holding back the weather from the area for the past week.  Crowe wasn’t convinced and he was reluctant take any credit for the storm for fear that his superiors would ask for him to conjure something off that scale again.

In the end Fisher, Rose, and Crowe decided to neither claim nor deny responsibility for the storm in order to avoid the generals counting on magic of that magnitude and putting their men in danger when it couldn't reliably be done again.  Crowe, however, was intrigued by the prospect of creating such powerful weather events by bottling up storms for long periods of time.  The three magicians agreed to test this theory again as soon as they could.

Knox came looking for the magicians after Washington’s war council was completed to deliver orders to Crowe and make a proposal to Fisher and Rose.  Crowe’s orders had come from Canada.  Benedict Arnold had once again requested Crowe’s services in the fight to claim Canada.  Crowe had already fought alongside Arnold to great effect in the year previous.  Their efforts resulted in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown, along with its artillery which had just been used to dislodge the British from Boston.  Arnold wanted the magician again to help claim Quebec and seal the British out of the Northern Territory once and for all.

After giving Crowe his orders Knox delivered a letter to Charlotte that had come back from New York for her. The letter carried her uncle’s seal and was dated only two weeks after she left on Knox’s expedition.  The letter revealed that Charlotte’s uncle had returned to Montreal almost immediately after she left with Knox.  Charlotte had lied to her uncle telling him that she was making a trip up to Montreal to visit with the family to explain her absence and her uncle, concerned for her safety, left New York to find her.  In the letter Charlotte’s uncle explained that the Continentals had seized Montreal and that their city was the center of ongoing warfare between the Canadian Loyalists and the Continentals.

Charlotte felt terrible for lying to her uncle and causing him to go off chasing her into a war zone.  Furthermore, her absence in Montreal would cause further heartache for her uncle and relatives.  She determined that she needed to return to Montreal to clear things up and make sure that her family were all safe.

As Charlotte made up her mind to return to Montreal, Knox made a proposal to Fisher to join the Continentals and act as the practical magician of the army tasked with establishing a base around New York to continue the fight with General Howe’s forces.  Fisher was torn between his desire to serve with the Continentals and also his promise to Charlotte that he would see her safely back to her family once they had finished their journey with Knox.  In the end Fisher kept his promise to Charlotte and postponed his enlistment in the Continental Army.  Fisher agreed to travel north with Charlotte to find her family and keep her safe.  Knox would be sorry to see his magicians go but he understood.

It was determined that Fisher and Rose would travel with Crowe up to Montreal together since it was a shared destination.  The trip had the added bonus of providing a good opportunity to test their theory of building up storms once they arrived in Canada.  Knox invited Fisher and Rose to stay in Cambridge for a few days longer to wait for the British to evacuate before they set off for Canada. Knox wanted the opportunity to walk the streets of their mutual city together in order to appreciate what their journey had accomplished.  Fisher and Rose agreed.

Almost a week later on March 17th 11,000 British troops cast off from the port of Boston carrying with them 1,000 loyalist citizens.  The city was left mostly intact as Howe had promised but the British made sure to dispose of any food, clothing, livestock, weapons, and munitions that they couldn't carry with them into the bay before they left.  The British may have been defeated but they made sure that no spoils of victory went to the Continentals on that day.

Throughout the day the Continental Army paraded into the war torn city to salvage what they could. For Knox and Fisher Boston had been their home.  The day was bittersweet for both men as they walked the streets and surveyed the damage done to their city.  The bookstore and home of Knox was ransacked, nothing useable remained.  As for Fisher his warehouse along the docks was in complete ruins from artillery fire in addition to the fact that the British had fouled the building by using it as a stable.  Regardless their homes were once again theirs, and this first victory felt like something upon which the Continentals could build momentum for their cause.