The Fort
The Fort
Bernard Cornwell
‘Captivate, kill or destroy the whole force of the enemy’ was the order given to the American soldiers.THE FORT is the blistering novel from worldwide bestseller Bernard Cornwell.Summer 1779.Seven hundred and fifty British soldiers and three small ships of the Royal Navy. Their orders: to build a fort above a harbour to create a base from which to control the New England seaboard.Forty-one American ships and over nine hundred men. Their orders: to expel the British.The battle that followed was a classic example of how the best-laid plans can be disrupted by personality and politics, and of how warfare can bring out both the best and worst in men. It is a timeless tale of men at war, written by a master storyteller.
Bernard Cornwell
The Fort
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This paperback edition 2011
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
THE FORT. Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2010. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Maps © Garry Gates 2010
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 0 00 733174 1
While some of the events and characters are based on historical incidents and figures, this novel is entirely a work of fiction.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007331765
Version: 2017-05-09
Dedication
THE FORT
is dedicated, with great admiration, to
Colonel John Wessmiller, US Army (Retired)
who would have known just what to do.
Contents
Cover (#u63304232-44bb-57cc-bc72-0481495839a8)
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
A Note on Names and Terms
One
There was not much wind so the ships headed sluggishly…
Two
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard.
Three
On Sunday, 18th July, 1779, Peleg Wadsworth worshipped at Christ…
Four
The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk south-westerly, though…
Five
The Tyrannicide, flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy,…
Six
The daylight was fading. The western sky glowed red and…
Seven
The first shots crashed into the trees, exploding twigs, pine…
Eight
Marine Captain Thomas Carnes and thirty men had been on…
Nine
‘Where the devil is Revere?’ Lovell asked. He had asked…
Ten
The sun had not risen when Peleg Wadsworth roused Lieutenant-Colonel…
Eleven
Wednesday, August 11th, started with a thick fog and still…
Twelve
And, suddenly, there was hope.
Thirteen
A Royal Marine at the taffrail of HMS North fired…
Fourteen
Peleg Wadsworth slept ashore, or rather he lay awake on…
Historical Note
Heroic Myths
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna by Charles Wolfe 1791-1823
About the Author
Other Books by Bernard Cornwell
Credits
About the Publisher
Map
A NOTE ON NAMES AND TERMS
In 1779 there was no state of Maine, it was then the eastern province of Massachusetts. Some place names have also changed. Majabigwaduce is now called Castine, Townsend is Bucks Harbor, and Falmouth is Portland, Maine. Buck’s plantation (properly Plantation Number One) is Bucksport, Orphan Island is Verona Island, Long Island (in the Penobscot River) is now Islesboro Island, Wasaumkeag Point is now Cape Jellison and Cross Island is today called Nautilus Island.
The novel frequently refers to ‘ships’, ‘sloops’, ‘brigs’, and ‘schooners’. They are all, of course, ships in the same way that they are all boats, but properly a ship was a large, square-rigged, three-masted vessel like a frigate (think of the USS Constitution) or a ship of the line (like HMS Victory). Nowadays we think of a sloop as a single-masted sailboat, but in 1779 it denoted a three-masted vessel that was usually smaller than a ship and distinguished by having a flush main deck (thus no raised poop deck). Sloops, like ships, were square rigged (meaning they carried rectangular sails hung from crosswise yards). A brig, or brigantine, was also a large square-rigged sailing vessel, but with only two masts. Schooners, like brigs, carried two masts, but were rigged with fore-and-aft sails which, when hoisted, lie along the centre line of the vessel rather than across it. There were variations, such as brig-sloops, but at Penobscot Bay, in 1779, there were only ships, sloops, brigs and schooners. With the exception of the Felicity all the names of the boats are taken from history.
Most of the characters in the novel existed. The only fictional names are those of any character whose surname begins with F (with the exception of Captain Thomas Farnham, RN), and the names of British privates and non-commissioned officers (with the exception of Sergeant Lawrence, Royal Artillery).
Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, July 2nd, 1779:
You will in all your operations consult with the Commander of the fleet that the Naval Force may cooperate with the troops under your command in Endeavoring to Captivate Kill or Destroy the whole force of the Enemy there both by sea & land. And as there is good reason to believe that some of the Principal men at Majorbagaduce requested the enemy to come there and take possession you will be peculiarly careful not to let any of them escape, but to secure them for their evil doings … We now commend you to the Supream being Sincerely praying him to preserve you and the Forces under your Command in health and safety, & Return you Crowned with Victory and Laurels.
From a postscript to Doctor John Calef’s Journal, 1780, concerning Majabigwaduce:
To this new country, the Loyalists resort with their families … and find asylum from the tyranny of Congress, and their taxgatherers … and there they continue in full hope, and pleasant expectation, that they may soon re-enjoy the liberties and privileges which would be best secured to them by the … British Constitution.
Letter from Captain Henry Mowat, Royal Navy, to Jonathan Buck, written aboard HMS Albany, Penobscot River, June 15th, 1779:
Sir, Understanding that you are at the head of a Regiment of the King’s deluded Subjects on this River and parts adjacent and that you hold a Colonel’s Commission under the influence of a body of men termed the General Congress of the United States of America, it therefore becomes my duty to require you to appear without loss of time before General McLean and the commanding Officer of the King’s Ships now on board the Blonde off of Majorbigwaduce with a Muster Roll of the People under your direction.
ONE
There was not much wind so the ships headed sluggishly upriver. There were ten of them, five warships escorting five transports, and the flooding tide did more to carry them northwards than the fitful breeze. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low, grey and direful. Water dripped monotonously from sails and rigging.
There was little to see from the ships, though all their gunwales were crowded with men staring at the river’s banks that widened into a great inland lake. The hills about the lake were low and covered with trees, while the shoreline was intricate with creeks, headlands, wooded islands and small, stony beaches. Here and there among the trees were cleared spaces where logs were piled or perhaps a wooden cabin stood beside a small cornfield. Smoke rose from those clearings and some men aboard the ships wondered if the distant fires were signals to warn the country of the fleet’s arrival. The only people they saw were a man and a boy fishing from a small open boat. The boy, who was named William Hutchings, waved excitedly at the ships, but his uncle spat. ‘There come the devils,’ he said.
The devils were mostly silent. On board the largest warship, a 32-gun frigate named Blonde, a devil in a blue coat and an oilskin-covered cocked hat lowered his telescope. He frowned thoughtfully at the dark, silent woods past which his ship slid. ‘To my mind,’ he said, ‘it looks like Scotland.’
‘Aye, it does,’ his companion, a red-coated devil, answered cautiously, ‘a resemblance, certainly.’
‘More wooded than Scotland, though?’
‘A deal more wooded,’ the second man said.
‘But like the west coast of Scotland, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not unlike,’ the second devil agreed. He was sixty-two years old, quite short, and had a shrewd, weathered face. It was a kindly face with small, bright blue eyes. He had been a soldier for over forty years and in that time had endured a score of hard-fought battles that had left him with a near-useless right arm, a slight limp, and a tolerant view of sinful mankind. His name was Francis McLean and he was a Brigadier-General, a Scotsman, commanding officer of His Majesty’s 82nd regiment of foot, Governor of Halifax, and now, at least according to the dictates of the King of England, the ruler of everything he surveyed from the Blonde’s quarterdeck. He had been aboard the frigate for thirteen days, the time it had taken to sail from Halifax in Nova Scotia, and he felt a twinge of worry that the length of the voyage might prove unlucky. He wondered if it might have been better to have made it in fourteen days and surreptitiously touched the wood of the rail. A burnt wreck lay on the eastern shore. It had once been a substantial ship capable of crossing an ocean, but now it was a ribcage of charred wood half inundated by the flooding tide that carried the Blonde upriver. ‘So how far are we now from the open sea?’ he asked the blue-uniformed captain of the Blonde.
‘Twenty-six nautical miles,’ Captain Andrew Barkley answered briskly, ‘and there,’ he pointed over the starboard bow and past the lion-crested cathead from which one of the frigate’s anchors was suspended, ‘is your new home.’
McLean borrowed the captain’s glass and, using his awkward right arm as a rest for the tubes, trained the telescope forrard. For a moment the small motions of the ship defeated him so that all he glimpsed was a blur of grey clouds, dark land and sullen water, but he steadied himself to see that the Penobscot River widened to make the great lake that Captain Barkley called Penobscot Bay. The bay, McLean thought, was really a great sea loch, which he knew from his study of Barkley’s charts was some eight miles from east to west and three miles from north to south. A harbour opened from the bay’s eastern shore. The mouth of the harbour was edged by rocks, while on its northern side was a hill crowned thick with trees. A settlement stood on the southern slope of that hill; over a score of wooden homes and barns were set among patches of corn, plots of vegetables and piles of timber. A handful of fishing boats was anchored in the harbour, along with one small brig that McLean assumed was a trading vessel. ‘So that’s Majabigwaduce,’ he said softly.
‘Back topsails!’ the captain called, ‘order the fleet to heave to. I shall trouble you to signal for a pilot, Mister Fennel!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
The frigate suddenly seethed with men running to release sheets. ‘That’s Majabigwaduce,’ Barkley said in a tone that suggested the name was as risible as the place.
‘Number one gun!’ Lieutenant Fennel shouted, provoking another rush of men who ran to the forward starboard cannon.
‘Do you have any idea,’ McLean asked the captain, ‘what Majabigwaduce signifies?’
‘Signifies?’
‘Does the name mean anything?’
‘No idea, no idea,’ Barkley said, apparently irritated by the question. ‘Now, Mister Fennel!’
The gun, charged and wadded, but without any shot, was fired. The recoil was slight, but the sound of the gun seemed hugely loud and the cloud of smoke enveloped half the Blonde’s deck. The gunshot faded, then was echoed back from the shore before fading a second time.
‘We shall discover something now, won’t we?’ Barkley said.
‘What is that?’ McLean enquired.
‘Whether they’re loyal, General, whether they’re loyal. If they’ve been infected by rebellion then they’ll hardly supply a pilot, will they?’
‘I suppose not,’ McLean said, though he suspected a disloyal pilot could well serve his rebellious cause by guiding HMS Blonde onto a rock. There were plenty of those breaking the bay’s surface. On one, not fifty paces from the frigate’s port gunwales, a cormorant spread its dark wings to dry.
They waited. The gun had been fired, the customary signal requesting a pilot, but the smoke prevented anyone aboard from seeing whether the settlement of Majabigwaduce would respond. The five transport ships, four sloops and frigate drifted upriver on the tide. The loudest noise was the groan, wheeze and splashing from the pump aboard one of the sloops, HMS North. The water spurted and gushed rhythmically from an elm spigot set into her hull as sailors pumped her bilge. ‘She should have been broken up for firewood,’ Captain Barkley said sourly.
‘There’s no patching her?’ McLean asked.
‘Her timbers are rotten. She’s a sieve,’ Barkley said dismissively. Small waves slapped the Blonde’s hull, and the blue ensign at her stern stirred slow in the fitful wind. Still no boat appeared and so Barkley ordered the signal gun fired a second time. The sound echoed and faded again and, just when Barkley was considering taking the flotilla into the harbour without the benefit of a pilot, a seaman hailed from the foremast top. ‘Boat coming, sir!’
When the powder smoke cleared, the men on Blonde saw a small open boat was indeed tacking out from the harbour. The south-west breeze was so light that the tan-coloured sails hardly gave the boat any headway against the tide, and so a young man was pulling on two long oars. Once in the wide bay he shipped the oars and sheeted his sails hard so that the small boat beat slowly up to the flotilla. A girl sat at the tiller and she steered the little craft against the Blonde’s starboard flank where the young man leaped nimbly onto the boarding steps that climbed the tumblehome. He was tall, fair-haired, with hands calloused and blackened from handling tarred rigging and fishing nets. He wore homespun breeches and a canvas jacket, had clumsy boots and a knitted hat. He climbed to the deck, then called down to the girl. ‘You take good care of her, Beth!’
‘Stop gawping, you puddin’-headed bastards!’ the bosun roared at the seamen staring at the fair-haired girl who was using an oar to push her small craft away from the frigate’s hull. ‘You’re the pilot?’ the bosun asked the young man.
‘James Fletcher,’ the young man said, ‘and I guess I am, but you don’t need no pilot anyways.’ He grinned as he walked towards the officers at the Blonde’s stern. ‘Any of you gentlemen have tobacco?’ he asked as he climbed the companionway to the poop deck. He was rewarded with silence until General McLean reached into a pocket and extracted a short clay pipe, its bowl already stuffed with tobacco.
‘Will that do?’ the general asked.
‘That’ll do just perfect,’ Fletcher said appreciatively, then prised the plug from the bowl and crammed it into his mouth. He handed the empty pipe back to the general. ‘Haven’t had tobacco in two months,’ he said in explanation, then nodded familiarly to Barkley. ‘Ain’t no real dangers in Bagaduce, Captain, just so long as you stand off Dyce’s Head, see?’ He pointed to the tree-crowned bluff on the northern side of the harbour entrance. ‘Rocks there. And more rocks off Cross Island on the other side. Hold her in the channel’s centre and you’ll be safe as safe.’
‘Bagaduce?’ General McLean asked.
‘That’s what we call it, your honour. Bagaduce. Easier on the tongue than Majabigwaduce.’ The pilot grinned, then spat tobacco juice that splattered across the Blonde’s holy-stoned planking. There was silence on the quarterdeck as the officers regarded the dark stain.
‘Majabigwaduce,’ McLean broke the silence, ‘does it mean anything?’
‘Big bay with big tides,’ Fletcher said, ‘or so my father always said. ’Course it’s an Indian name so it could mean anything.’ The young man looked around the frigate’s deck with an evident appreciation. ‘Day of excitement, this,’ he remarked genially.
‘Excitement?’ General McLean asked.
‘Phoebe Perkins is expecting. We all thought the baby would have dropped from her by now, but it ain’t. And it’ll be a girl!’
‘You know that?’ General McLean asked, amused.
‘Phoebe’s had six babes already and every last one of them a girl. You should fire another gun, Captain, startle this new one out of her!’
‘Mister Fennel!’ Captain Barkley called through a speaking trumpet, ‘sheet in, if you please.’
The Blonde gathered way. ‘Take her in,’ Barkley told the helmsman, and so the Blonde, the North, the Albany, the Nautilus, the Hope, and the five transports they escorted came to Majabigwaduce. They arrived safe in the harbour and anchored there. It was June 17th, 1779 and, for the first time since they had been driven from Boston in March, 1776, the British were back in Massachusetts.
Some two hundred miles west and a little south of where the devils arrived, Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth paraded his battalion on the town common. Only seventeen were present, not one of whom could be described as correct. The youngest, Alexander, was five, while the oldest were the twelve-year-old Fowler twins, Rebecca and Dorcas, and they all gazed earnestly at the brigadier, who was thirty-one. ‘What I want you to do,’ the general said, ‘is march forward in single file. On the word of command you stop. What is the word of command, Jared?’
Jared, who was nine, thought for a second. ‘Halt?’
‘Very good, Jared. The next command after that will be “prepare to form line”, and you will do nothing!’ The brigadier peered sternly at his diminutive troops who were in a column of march facing northwards. ‘Understand? You do nothing! Then I’m going to shout that companies one, two, three and four will face left. Those companies,’ and here the general walked down the line indicating which children comprised the leading four companies, ‘are the left wing. What are you, Jared?’
‘The left wing,’ Jared said, flapping his arms.
‘Excellent! And you,’ the general paced on down the rest of the line, ‘are companies five, six, seven and eight, the right wing, and you will face right. I shall then give the order to face front and you turn. Then we counter-wheel. Alexander? You’re the colour party so you don’t move.’
‘I want to kill a redcoat, Daddy,’ Alexander pleaded.
‘You don’t move, Alexander,’ the colour party’s father insisted, then repeated all he had said. Alexander was holding a long stick that, in the circumstances, substituted for the American flag. He now aimed this at the church and pretended to shoot redcoats and so had to be chivvied back into the column that singly and generally agreed that they understood what their erstwhile schoolmaster wanted them to do. ‘Now remember,’ Peleg Wadsworth encouraged them, ‘that when I order counter-wheel you march in the direction you’re facing, but you swing around like the arm of a clock! I want to see you turn smoothly. Are we all ready?’
A small crowd had gathered to watch and advise. One man, a visiting minister, had been appalled to see children so young being taught the rudiments of soldiery and had chided General Wadsworth on the matter, but the brigadier had assured the man of God that it was not the children who were being trained, but himself. He wished to understand precisely how a column of companies deployed into a regimental line that could blast an enemy with musket fire. It was hard to advance troops in line because a long row of men inevitably straggled and lost its cohesion, to avoid which men must advance in companies, one behind the other, but such a column was fatally vulnerable to cannon-fire and quite unable to use most of its muskets, and so the art of the manoeuvre was to advance in column and then deploy swiftly into line. Wadsworth wanted to master the drill, but because he was a general of the Massachusetts Militia, and because the militia were mostly on their farms or in their workshops, Wadsworth was using children. The leading company, which would normally hold three ranks of thirty or more men each, was today comprised of Rebecca Fowler, aged twelve, and her nine-year-old cousin, Jared, both of whom were bright children and, Wadsworth hoped, capable of setting an example that the remaining children would copy. The manoeuvre he was attempting was difficult. The battalion would march in column towards the enemy and then halt. The leading companies would turn to face one way, the rearward companies turn to face the opposite direction and then the whole line would counter-wheel about the colours in a smooth pivot until commanded to halt. That would leave the first four companies facing away from the enemy and Wadsworth would need to order those eight children to about turn, at which point the whole formidable battalion would be ready to open fire against the enemy. Wadsworth had watched British regiments perform a similar manoeuvre on Long Island and he had reluctantly admired their precision and seen for himself the swiftness with which they had been transformed from a column into a long line that had unleashed a torrent of musketry on the American forces.
‘Are we ready?’ Wadsworth asked again. If he could explain the system to children, he had decided, then teaching the state militia should be easy enough. ‘Forward march!’
The children marched creditably well, though Alexander kept skipping to try and match steps with his companions. ‘Battalion!’ Wadsworth called, ‘Halt!’
They halted. So far so good. ‘Battalion! Prepare to form line! Don’t move yet!’ He paused a moment. ‘The left wing will face left! The right wing will face right, on my word of command. Battalion! Face front!’
Rebecca turned right instead of left and the battalion milled about in a moment of confusion before someone’s hair was pulled and Alexander began shouting bang as he shot imaginary redcoats coming from the Common Burying Ground. ‘Counter-wheel, march!’ Wadsworth shouted, and the children swivelled in different directions and by now, the general thought despairingly, the British troops would have hammered two slaughterous volleys into his regiment. Perhaps, Wadsworth thought, using the children from the school where he had taught before becoming a soldier was not the best way to develop his mastery of infantry tactics. ‘Form line,’ he shouted.
‘The way to do it,’ a man on crutches offered from the crowd, ‘is company by company. It’s slower, General, but slow and steady wins the day.’
‘No, no, no!’ someone else chimed in. ‘First company front right marker to step one pace left and one pace forward, and he becomes left marker, raises his hand, and the rest fall in on him. Or her, in your regiment, General.’
‘Better company by company,’ the crippled man insisted, ‘that’s how we did it at Germantown.’
‘But you lost at Germantown,’ the second man pointed out.
Johnny Fiske pretended to be shot, staggered dramatically and fell down, and Peleg Wadsworth, he found it hard to think of himself as a general, decided he had failed to explain the manoeuvre properly. He wondered whether he would ever need to master the intricacies of infantry drill. The French had joined America’s struggle for freedom and had sent an army across the Atlantic and the war was now being fought in the southern states very far from Massachusetts.
‘Is the war won?’ a voice interrupted his thoughts and he turned to see his wife, Elizabeth, carrying their one-year-old daughter, Zilpha, in her arms.
‘I do believe,’ Peleg Wadsworth said, ‘that the children have killed every last redcoat in America.’
‘God be praised for that,’ Elizabeth said lightly. She was twenty-six, five years younger than her husband, and pregnant again. Alexander was her oldest, then came three-year-old Charles and the infant Zilpha, who stared wide-eyed and solemn at her father. Elizabeth was almost as tall as her husband who was putting notebook and pencil back into a uniform pocket. He looked good in uniform, she thought, though the white-faced blue coat with its elegant buttoned tail was in desperate need of patching, but there was no blue cloth available, not even in Boston, at least not at a price that Peleg and Elizabeth Wadsworth could afford. Elizabeth was secretly amused by her husband’s intense, worried expression. He was a good man, she thought fondly, as honest as the day was long and trusted by all his neighbours. He needed a haircut, though the slightly ragged dark locks gave his lean face an attractively rakish look. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt the war,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but you have a visitor.’ She nodded back towards their house where a man in uniform was tethering his horse to the hitching post.
The visitor was thin with a round, bespectacled face that was familiar to Wadsworth, but he could not place the man who, his horse safely tied, took a paper from his tail-coat pocket and strolled across the sunlit common. His uniform was pale brown with white facings. A sabre hung by leather straps from his sword belt. ‘General Wadsworth,’ he said as he came close, ‘it is good to see you in health, sir,’ he added, and for a second Wadsworth flailed desperately as he tried to match a name to the face, then, blessedly, the name came.
‘Captain Todd,’ he said, hiding his relief.
‘Major Todd now, sir.’
‘I congratulate you, Major.’
‘I’m appointed an aide to General Ward,’ Todd said, ‘who sends you this.’ He handed the paper to Wadsworth. It was a single sheet, folded and sealed, with General Artemas Ward’s name inscribed in spidery writing beneath the seal.
Major Todd looked sternly at the children. Still in a ragged line, they stared back at him, intrigued by the curved blade at his waist. ‘Stand at ease,’ Todd ordered them, then smiled at Wadsworth. ‘You recruit them young, General?’
Wadsworth, somewhat embarrassed to have been discovered drilling children, did not answer. He had unsealed the paper and now read the brief message. General Artemas Ward presented his compliments to Brigadier-General Wadsworth and regretted to inform him that a charge had been laid against Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere, commanding officer of the Massachusetts’ Artillery Regiment, specifically that he had been drawing rations and pay for thirty non-existent men, and General Ward now required Wadsworth to make enquiries into the substance of the allegation.
Wadsworth read the message a second time, then dismissed the children and beckoned Todd to walk with him towards the Burying Ground. ‘General Ward is well?’ he asked politely. Artemas Ward commanded the Massachusetts Militia.
‘He’s well enough,’ Todd answered, ‘other than some pains in the legs.’
‘He grows old,’ Wadsworth said, and for a dutiful moment the two men exchanged news of births, marriages, illnesses and deaths, the small change of a community. They had paused in the shade of an elm and after a while Wadsworth gestured with the letter. ‘It seems strange to me,’ he said carefully, ‘that a major should bring such a trivial message.’
‘Trivial?’ Todd asked sternly, ‘we are talking of peculation, General.’
‘Which, if true, will have been recorded in the muster returns. Does it require a general to inspect the books? A clerk could do that.’
‘A clerk has done that,’ Todd said grimly, ‘but a clerk’s name on the official report bears no weight.’
Wadsworth heard the grimness. ‘And you seek weight?’ he asked.
‘General Ward would have the matter investigated thoroughly,’ Todd answered firmly, ‘and you are the Adjutant-General of the Militia, which makes you responsible for the good discipline of the forces.’
Wadsworth flinched at what he regarded as an impertinent and unnecessary reminder of his duties, but he let the insolence pass unreproved. Todd had the reputation of being a thorough and diligent man, but Wadsworth also recalled a rumour that Major William Todd and Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere nurtured a strong dislike of each other. Todd had served with Revere in the artillery, but had resigned in protest at the regiment’s disorganization, and Wadsworth suspected that Todd was using his new position to strike at his old enemy, and Wadsworth liked it not. ‘Colonel Revere,’ he spoke mildly, though with deliberate provocation, ‘enjoys a reputation as a fine and fervent patriot.’
‘He is a dishonest man,’ Todd retorted vehemently.
‘If wars were fought only by the honest,’ Wadsworth said, ‘then we would surely have perpetual peace?’
‘You’re acquainted with Colonel Revere, sir?’ Todd asked.
‘I cannot claim more than an acquaintance,’ Wadsworth said.
Todd nodded, as if that was the proper answer. ‘Your reputation, General,’ he said, ‘is unassailable. If you prove peculation, then not a man in Massachusetts will dispute the verdict.’
Wadsworth glanced at the message again. ‘Just thirty men?’ he asked dubiously. ‘You’ve ridden from Boston for such a small affair?’
‘It’s not far to ride,’ Todd said defensively, ‘and I have business in Plymouth, so it was convenient to wait on you.’
‘If you have business, Major,’ Wadsworth said, ‘then I won’t detain you.’ Courtesy demanded that he at least offered Todd some refreshment and Wadsworth was a courteous man, but he was annoyed at being implicated in what he strongly suspected was a private feud.
‘There is talk,’ Todd remarked as the two men walked back across the common, ‘of an attack on Canada.’
‘There is always talk of an attack on Canada,’ Wadsworth said with some asperity.
‘If such an attack occurs,’ Todd said, ‘we would want our artillery commanded by the best available man.’
‘I would assume,’ Wadsworth said, ‘that we would desire that whether we march on Canada or not.’
‘We need a man of probity,’ Todd said.
‘We need a man who can shoot straight,’ Wadsworth said brusquely and wondered whether Todd aspired to command the artillery regiment himself, but he said nothing more. His wife was waiting beside the hitching post with a glass of water that Todd accepted gratefully before riding south towards Plymouth. Wadsworth went indoors and showed Elizabeth the letter. ‘I fear it is politics, my dear,’ he said, ‘politics.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘It is awkward,’ Wadsworth said. ‘Colonel Revere is a man of faction.’
‘Faction?’
‘Colonel Revere is zealous,’ Wadsworth said carefully, ‘and his zeal makes enemies as well as friends. I suspect Major Todd laid the charge. It is a question of jealousy.’
‘So you think the allegation is untrue?’
‘I have no opinion,’ Wadsworth said, ‘and would dearly like to continue in that ignorance.’ He took the letter back and read it again.
‘It is still wrongdoing,’ Elizabeth said sternly.
‘Or a false allegation? A clerk’s error? But it involves me in faction and I dislike faction. If I prove wrongdoing then I make enemies of half Boston and earn the enmity of every freemason. Which is why I would prefer to remain in ignorance.’
‘So you will ignore it?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘I shall do my duty, my dear,’ Wadsworth said. He had always done his duty, and done it well. As a student at Harvard, as a schoolteacher, as a captain in Lexington’s town troop, as an aide to General Washington in the Continental Army and now as a brigadier in the militia. But there were times, he thought, when his own side was far more difficult than the British. He folded the letter and went for his dinner.
Majabigwaduce was a hump of land, almost an island, shaped like an anvil. From east to west it was just under two miles long, and from north to south rarely more than half a mile wide, and the ridge of its rocky hump climbed from the east to the west where it ended in a blunt, high, wooded bluff that overlooked the wide Penobscot Bay. The settlement lay on the ridge’s southern side, where the British fleet lay in the harbour’s anchorage. It was a village of small houses, barns and storehouses. The smallest houses were simple log cabins, but some were more substantial dwellings of two storeys, their frames clad in cedar shingles that looked silver in the day’s watery sunlight. There was no church yet.
The ridge above the village was thick with spruce, though to the west, where the land was highest, there were fine maples, beech and birch. Oaks grew by the water. Much of the land about the settlement had been cleared and planted with corn, and now axes bit into spruce trees as the redcoats set about clearing the ridge above the village.
Seven hundred soldiers had come to Majabigwaduce. Four hundred and fifty were kilted highlanders of the 74th, another two hundred were lowlanders from the 82nd, while the remaining fifty were engineers and gunners. The fleet that had brought them had dispersed, the Blonde sailing on to New York and leaving behind only three empty transport ships and three small sloops-of-war whose masts now dominated Majabigwaduce’s harbour. The beach was heaped with landed supplies and a new track, beaten into the dirt, now ran straight up the long slope from the water’s edge to the ridge’s crest. Brigadier McLean climbed that track, walking with the aid of a twisted blackthorn stick and accompanied by a civilian. ‘We are a small force, Doctor Calef,’ McLean said, ‘but you may rely on us to do our duty.’
‘Calf,’ Calef said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My name, General, is pronounced calf.’
‘I do pray your pardon, Doctor,’ McLean said, inclining his head.
Doctor Calef was a thickset man a few years younger than McLean. He wore a low crowned hat over a wig that had not been powdered for weeks and which framed a blunt face distinguished by a determined jaw. He had introduced himself to McLean, offering advice, professional help and whatever other support he could give. ‘You’re here to stay, I trust?’ the doctor demanded.
‘Decidedly, sir, decidedly,’ McLean said, digging his stick into the thin soil, ‘oh, indeed we mean to stay.’
‘To do what?’ Calef asked curtly.
‘Let me see now,’ McLean paused, watching as two men stepped back from a half-felled tree that toppled, slowly at first, then crashed down in an explosion of splintering branches, pine needles and dust. ‘My first duty, Doctor,’ he said, ‘is to prevent the rebels from using the bay as a haven for their privateers. Those pirates have been a nuisance.’ That was mild. The American rebels held all the coastline between Canada and New York except for the beleaguered British garrison in Newport, Rhode Island, and British merchant ships, making that long voyage, were ever at risk from the well-armed, fast-sailing rebel privateers. By occupying Majabigwaduce the British would dominate Penobscot Bay and so deny the rebels its fine anchorage, which would become a base for Britain’s Royal Navy. ‘At the same time,’ McLean continued, ‘I am ordered to deter any rebel attack on Canada and thirdly, Doctor, I am to encourage trade here.’
‘Mast wood,’ Calef growled.
‘Especially mast wood,’ McLean agreed, ‘and fourthly we are to settle this region.’
‘Settle it?’
‘For the crown, Doctor, for the crown.’ McLean smiled and waved his blackthorn stick at the landscape. ‘Behold, Doctor Calef, His Majesty’s province of New Ireland.’
‘New Ireland?’ Calef asked.
‘From the border of Canada and eighty miles southwards,’ McLean said, ‘all New Ireland.’
‘Let’s trust it’s not as papist as old Ireland,’ Calef said sourly.
‘I’m sure it will be God-fearing,’ McLean said tactfully. The general had served many years in Portugal and did not share his countrymen’s distaste for Roman Catholics, but he was a good enough soldier to know when not to fight. ‘So what brought you to New Ireland, Doctor?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘I was driven from Boston by damned rebels,’ Calef said angrily.
‘And you chose to come here?’ McLean asked, unable to hide his surprise that the doctor had fled Boston to this fog-ridden wilderness.
‘Where else could I take my family?’ Calef demanded, still angry. ‘Dear God, General, but there’s no legitimate government between here and New York! In all but name the colonies are independent already! In Boston the wretches have an administration, a legislature, offices of state, a judiciary! Why? Why is it permitted?’
‘You could have moved to New York?’ McLean suggested, ignoring Calef’s indignant question, ‘or to Halifax?’
‘I’m a Massachusetts man,’ Calef said, ‘and I trust that one day I will return to Boston, but a Boston cleansed of rebellion.’
‘I pray so too,’ McLean said. ‘Tell me, Doctor, did the woman give birth safely?’
Doctor Calef blinked, as if the question surprised him. ‘The woman? Oh, you mean Joseph Perkins’s wife. Yes, she was delivered safely. A fine girl.’
‘Another girl, eh?’ McLean said, and turned to gaze at the wide bay beyond the harbour entrance. ‘Big bay with big tides,’ he said lightly, then saw the doctor’s incomprehension. ‘I was told that was the meaning of Majabigwaduce,’ he explained.
Calef frowned, then made a small gesture as if the question was irrelevant. ‘I’ve no idea what the name means, General. You must ask the savages. It’s their name for the place.’
‘Well, it’s all New Ireland now,’ McLean said, then touched his hat. ‘Good day, Doctor, I’m sure we shall talk further. I’m grateful for your support, grateful indeed, but if you’ll excuse me, duty calls.’
Calef watched the general limp uphill, then called to him. ‘General McLean!’
‘Sir?’ McLean turned.
‘You don’t imagine the rebels are going to let you stay here, do you?’
McLean appeared to consider the question for a few seconds, almost as though he had never thought about it before. ‘I would think not,’ he said mildly.
‘They’ll come for you,’ Calef warned him. ‘Soon as they know you’re here, General, they’ll come for you.’
‘Do you know?’ McLean said, ‘I rather think they will.’ He touched his hat again. ‘Good day, Doctor. I’m glad about Mrs Perkins.’
‘Damn Mrs Perkins,’ the doctor said, but too softly for the general to hear, then he turned and stared southwards down the long bay, past Long Island, to where the river disappeared on its way to the far off sea, and he wondered how long before a rebel fleet appeared in that channel.
That fleet would appear, he was sure. Boston would learn of McLean’s presence, and Boston would want to scour this place free of redcoats. And Calef knew Boston. He had been a member of the General Assembly there, a Massachusetts legislator, but he was also a stubborn loyalist who had been driven from his home after the British left Boston. Now he lived here, at Majabigwaduce, and the rebels were coming for him again. He knew it, he feared their coming, and he feared that a general who cared about a woman and her baby was a man too soft to do the necessary job. ‘Just kill them all,’ he growled to himself, ‘just kill them all.’
Six days after Brigadier-General Wadsworth had paraded the children, and after Brigadier-General McLean had sailed into Majabigwaduce’s snug haven, a captain paced the quarter-deck of his ship, the Continental Navy frigate Warren. It was a warm Boston morning. There was fog over the harbour islands, and a humid south-west wind bringing a promise of afternoon thunder.
‘The glass?’ the captain asked brusquely.
‘Dropping, sir,’ a midshipman answered.
‘As I thought,’ Captain Dudley Saltonstall said, ‘as I thought.’ He paced larboard to starboard and starboard to larboard beneath the mizzen’s neatly furled spanker on its long boom. His long-chinned face was shadowed by the forrard peak of his cocked hat, beneath which his dark eyes looked sharply from the multitude of ships anchored in the roads to his crew who, though short-handed, were swarming over the frigate’s deck, sides and rigging to give the ship her morning scrub. Saltonstall was newly appointed to the Warren and he was determined she should be a neat ship.
‘As I thought,’ Saltonstall said again. The midshipman, standing respectfully beside the larboard aft gun, braced his leg against the gun’s carriage and said nothing. The wind was fresh enough to jerk the Warren on her anchor cables and make her shudder to the small waves that flickered white across the harbour. The Warren, like the two nearby vessels that also belonged to the Continental Navy, flew the red-and white-striped flag on which a snake surmounted the words ‘Don’t Tread on Me’. Many of the other ships in the crowded harbour flew the bold new flag of the United States, striped and starred, but two smart brigs, both armed with fourteen six-pounder cannons and both anchored close to the Warren, flew the Massachusetts Navy flag that showed a green pine tree on a white field and bore the words ‘An Appeal to Heaven’.
‘An appeal to nonsense,’ Saltonstall growled.
‘Sir?’ the midshipman asked nervously.
‘If our cause is just, Mister Coningsby, why need we appeal to heaven? Let us rather appeal to force, to justice, to reason.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ the midshipman said, unsettled by the captain’s habit of looking past the man he spoke to.
‘Appeal to heaven!’ Saltonstall sneered, still gazing past the midshipman’s ear towards the offending flag. ‘In war, Mister Coningsby, one might do better to appeal to hell.’
The ensigns of other vessels were more picaresque. One low-slung ship, her masts raked sharply aft and her gun ports painted black, had a coiled rattlesnake emblazoned on her ensign, while a second flew the skull and crossbones, and a third showed King George of England losing his crown to a cheerful looking Yankee wielding a spiked club. Captain Saltonstall disapproved of all such home-made flags. They made for untidiness. A dozen other ships had British flags, but all those flags were being flown beneath American colours to show they had been captured, and Captain Saltonstall disapproved of that too. It was not that the British merchantmen had been captured, that was plainly a good thing, nor that the flags proclaimed the victories because that too was desirable, but rather that the captured ships were now presumed to be private property. Not the property of the United States, but of the privateers like the low-slung, raked-masted, rattlesnake-decorated sloop.
‘They are pirates, Mister Coningsby,’ Saltonstall growled.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning replied. Midshipman Coningsby had died of the fever a week previously, but all Fanning’s nervous attempts to correct his captain had failed and he had abandoned any hope of being called by his real name.
Saltonstall was still frowning at the privateers. ‘How can we find decent crew when piracy beckons?’ Saltonstall complained, ‘tell me that, Mister Coningsby!’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘We cannot, Mister Coningsby, we cannot,’ Saltonstall said, shuddering at the injustice of the law. It was true that the privateers were patriotic pirates who were fierce as wolves in battle, but they fought for private gain, and that made it impossible for a Continental warship like the Warren to find good crew. What young man of Boston would serve his country for pennies when he could join a privateer and earn a share of the plunder? No wonder the Warren was short-handed! She carried thirty-two guns and was as fine a frigate as any on the American seaboard, but Saltonstall had only men enough to fight half his weapons, while the privateers were all fully manned. ‘It is an abomination, Mister Coningsby!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning said.
‘Look at that!’ Saltonstall checked his pacing to point a finger at the Ariadne, a fat British merchantman that had been captured by a privateer. ‘You know what she was carrying, Mister Coningsby?’
‘Black walnut from New York to London, sir?’
‘And she carried six cannon, Mister Coningsby! Nine-pounder guns! Six of them. Good long nine-pounders! Newly made! And where are those guns now?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘For sale in Boston!’ Saltonstall spat the words. ‘For sale, Mister Coningsby, in Boston, when our country has desperate need of cannon! It makes me angry, Mister Coningsby, it makes me angry indeed.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Those cannon will be melted down for gew-gaws. For gew-gaws! It makes me angry, upon my soul, it does.’ Captain Saltonstall carried his anger to the starboard rail where he paused to watch a small cutter approach from the north. Its dark sails first appeared as a patch in the fog, then the patch took shape and hardened into a single-masted vessel about forty feet long. She was not a fishing boat, she was too narrow for such work, but her gunwales were pierced with tholes showing that she could ship a dozen oars and so be rowed on calm days and Saltonstall recognized her as one of the fast messenger boats used by the government of Massachusetts. A man was standing amidships with cupped hands, evidently shouting his news to the moored vessels through which the cutter slid. Saltonstall would dearly have liked to know what the man shouted, but he considered it was beneath his dignity as a Continental Navy captain to make vulgar enquiries, and so he turned away just as a schooner, her gunwales punctuated by gunports, gathered way to pass the Warren. The schooner was a black-hulled privateer with the name King-Killer prominent in white paint at her waist, her dirt-streaked sails were sheeted in hard to beat her way out of the harbour. She carried a dozen deck guns, enough to batter most British merchantmen into quick surrender, and she was built for speed so that she could escape any warship of the British navy. Her deck was crowded with men while at her mizzen gaff was a blue flag with the word Liberty embroidered in white letters. Saltonstall waited for that flag to be lowered in salute to his own ensign, but as the black schooner passed she offered no sign of recognition. A man at her taffrail looked at Saltonstall, then spat into the sea and the Warren’s captain bridled, suspecting an insult. He watched her go towards the fog. The King-Killer was off hunting, going across the bay, around the northern hook of Cape Cod and out into the Atlantic where the fat British cargo ships wallowed on their westward runs from Halifax to New York.
‘Gew-gaws,’ Saltonstall growled.
A stub-masted open barge, painted white with a black stripe around its gunwale, pushed off from the Castle Island quay. A dozen men manned the oars, pulling hard against the small waves, and the sight of the barge made Captain Saltonstall fish a watch from his pocket. He clicked open the lid and saw that it was ten minutes past eight in the morning. The barge was precisely on time, and within an hour he would see it return from Boston, this time carrying the commander of the Castle Island garrison, a man who preferred to sleep in the city. Saltonstall approved of the Castle Island barge. She was smartly painted and her crew, if not in real uniform, wore matching blue shirts. There was an attempt at order there, at discipline, at propriety.
The captain resumed his pacing, larboard to starboard, starboard to larboard.
The King-Killer vanished in the fog.
The Castle Island barge threaded the anchorage. A church bell began to toll.
Boston harbour, a warm morning, June 23rd, 1779.
The paymaster of His Majesty’s 82nd Regiment of Foot strode west along Majabigwaduce’s ridge. From behind him came the sound of axes striking trees, while all around him was fog. A thick fog. Every morning since the fleet had arrived there had been fog. ‘It will burn off,’ the paymaster said cheerfully.
‘Aye, sir,’ Sergeant McClure answered dully. The sergeant had a picquet of six men from the 82nd Foot, the Duke of Hamilton’s regiment and so known as the Hamiltons. McClure was thirty, older by far than his men and twelve years older than the paymaster, a lieutenant, who led the picquet at a fast, enthusiastic pace. His orders were to establish a sentry post at the peninsula’s western heights from where a lookout could be kept on the wide Penobscot Bay. If any enemy was to come, then the bay was their likeliest approach. The picquet was in thick woodland now, dwarfed by tall, dark, fog-shrouded trees. ‘The brigadier, sir,’ Sergeant McClure ventured, ‘said there might be rebels here.’
‘Nonsense! There are no rebels here! They have all fled, Sergeant!’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘I do say so,’ the young officer said enthusiastically, then stopped suddenly and pointed into the underbrush. ‘There!’
‘A rebel, sir?’ McClure asked dutifully, seeing nothing worthy of note among the pines.
‘Is it a thrush?’
‘Ah,’ McClure saw what had interested the paymaster and looked more closely, ‘it’s a bird, sir.’
‘Strangely, Sergeant, I was apprised of that fact,’ the lieutenant said happily. ‘Note the breast, Sergeant.’
Sergeant McClure dutifully noted the bird’s breast. ‘Red, sir?’
‘Red indeed. I congratulate you, Sergeant, and does it not put you in mind of our native robin? But this fellow is larger, much larger! Handsome fellow, isn’t he?’
‘Want me to shoot him, sir?’ McClure asked.
‘No, Sergeant, I merely wish you to admire his plumage. A thrush is wearing his majesty’s red coat, would you not consider that an omen of good-fortune?’
‘Oh, aye, sir, I would.’
‘I detect in you, Sergeant, a lack of zeal.’ The eighteen-year-old lieutenant smiled to show he was not serious. He was a tall lad, a full head above the stocky sergeant, and had a round, eager and mobile face, a smile quick as lightning, and shrewdly observant eyes. His coat was cut from expensive scarlet cloth, faced with black and bright with buttons that were rumoured to be made of the finest gold. Lieutenant John Moore was not wealthy, he was a doctor’s son, but everyone knew he was a friend of the young Duke’s, and the Duke was said to be richer than the next ten richest men in all Scotland, and a rich friend, as everyone also knew, was the next best thing to being wealthy oneself. The Duke of Hamilton was so rich that he had paid all the expenses of raising the 82nd Regiment of Foot, buying them uniforms, muskets and bayonets, and rumour said his grace could probably afford to raise another ten such regiments without even noticing the expense. ‘Onwards,’ Moore said, ‘onwards, ever onwards!’
The six privates, all from the Lowlands of Scotland, did not move. They just gazed at Lieutenant Moore as though he were a strange species from some far-off heathen country.
‘Onwards!’ Moore called again, striding fast once more through the trees. The fog muffled the harsh sound of the axes coming from where Brigadier McLean’s men were clearing the ridge so that their planned fort would have open fields of fire. The 82nd’s picquet, meanwhile, was climbing a gentle slope that levelled onto a wide plateau of thick undergrowth and dark firs. Moore trampled through the brush, then again stopped abruptly. ‘There,’ he said, pointing, ‘Thalassa, Thalassa.’
‘The lassie?’ McClure asked.
‘You have not read Xenophon’s Anabasis, Sergeant?’ Moore asked in mock horror.
‘Is that the one after Leviticus, sir?’
Moore smiled. ‘Thalassa, Sergeant, Thalassa,’ he said in mock reproof, ‘was the cry of the ten thousand when at last, after their long march, and after their dark ordeals, they came to the sea. That’s what it means! The sea! The sea! And they shouted for joy because they saw their safety in the gentle heaves of its bosom.’
‘Its bosom, sir,’ McClure echoed, peering down a sudden steep bluff, thick with trees, to glimpse the cold sea through the foliage and beneath the drifting fog. ‘It’s not very bosomy, sir.’
‘And it is across that water, Sergeant, from their lair in the black lands of Boston, that the enemy will come. They will arrive in their hundreds and in their thousands, they will prowl like the dark hordes of Midian, they will descend upon us like the Assyrian!’
‘Not if this fog lasts, sir,’ McClure said, ‘the buggers will get lost, sir.’
Moore, for once, said nothing. He was gazing down the bluff. It was not quite a cliff, but no man could climb it easily. An attacker would need to drag himself up the two hundred feet by pulling on the straggly saplings, and a man using his hands to keep his footing could not use his musket. The beach, just visible, was brief and stony.
‘But are the buggers coming, sir?’ McClure asked.
‘We cannot say,’ Moore said distractedly.
‘But the brigadier thinks so, sir?’ McClure asked anxiously. The privates listened, glancing nervously from the short sergeant to the tall officer.
‘We must assume, Sergeant,’ Moore said airily, ‘that the wretched creatures will resent our presence. We make life difficult for them. By establishing ourselves in this land of soured milk and bitter honey we deny their privateers the harbours they require for their foul depredations. We are a thorn in their side, we are inconvenient, we are a challenge to their quietude.’
McClure frowned and scratched his forehead. ‘So you’re saying the buggers will come, sir?’
‘I bloody hope so,’ Moore said with sudden vehemence.
‘Not here, sir,’ McClure said confidently. ‘Too steep.’
‘They’ll want to land somewhere in range of their ships’ cannons,’ Moore said.
‘Cannons, sir?’
‘Big metal tubes which expel balls, Sergeant.’
‘Oh, thank you, sir. I was wondering, sir,’ McClure said with a smile.
Moore tried and failed to suppress a smile. ‘We shall be plied with shot, Sergeant, have no doubt of that. And I’ve no doubt ships could spatter this slope with cannon fire, but how would men climb it into our musket fire? Yet even so, let’s hope they land here. No troops could climb this slope if we’re waiting at the top, eh? By God, Sergeant, we’ll make a fine cull of the rebellious bastards!’
‘And so we will, sir,’ McClure said loyally, though in his sixteen years of service he had become used to brash young officers whose confidence exceeded their experience. Lieutenant John Moore, the sergeant decided, was another such, yet McClure liked him. The paymaster possessed an easy authority, rare in a man so young, and he was reckoned to be a fair officer who cared about his troops. Even so, McClure thought, John Moore would have to learn some sense or else die young.
‘We shall slaughter them,’ Moore said enthusiastically, then held out his hand. ‘Your musket, Sergeant.’
McClure handed the officer his musket and watched as Moore laid a guinea on the ground. ‘The soldier who can fire faster than me will be rewarded with the guinea,’ Moore said. ‘Your mark is that half-rotted tree canted on the slope, you see it?’
‘Aim at the dead bent tree.’ McClure explained to the privates. ‘Sir?’
‘Sergeant?’
‘Won’t the sound of muskets alarm the camp, sir?’
‘I warned the brigadier we’d be shooting. Sergeant, your cartridge box, if you please.’
‘Be quick, lads,’ McClure encouraged his men. ‘Let’s take the officer’s money!’
‘You may load and prime,’ Moore said. ‘I propose to fire five shots. If any of you manage five before me, then you will take the guinea. Imagine, gentlemen, that a horde of malodorous rebels are climbing the bluff, then do the king’s work and send the wretches to hell.’
The muskets were loaded; the powder, wadding and shot were rammed down the barrels, the locks were primed and the frizzens closed. The clicks of the flints being cocked seemed oddly loud in the fog-shrouded morning.
‘Gentlemen of the 82nd,’ Moore demanded grandly, ‘are you ready?’
‘The buggers are ready, sir,’ McClure said.
‘Present!’ Moore ordered, ‘fire!’
Seven muskets coughed, blasting evil-smelling powder smoke that was far thicker than the swirling fog. The smoke lingered as birds fled through the thick trees and gulls called from the water. Through the echo of the shots McClure heard the balls ripping through leaves and clattering on the stones of the small beach. The men were tearing open their next cartridges with their teeth, but Lieutenant Moore was already ahead. He had primed the musket, closed the frizzen and now dropped the heavy stock to the ground and poured in the powder. He pushed the cartridge paper and ball into the muzzle, whipped the ramrod up, slid it down hard, pulled it free with the ringing sound of metal on metal, then jammed the ramrod into the turf, tossed the gun up to his shoulder, cocked, and fired.
No one had yet beaten Lieutenant John Moore. Major Dunlop had timed Moore once and, with disbelief, had announced that the lieutenant had fired five shots inside sixty seconds. Most men could manage three shots a minute with a clean musket, a few could shoot four rounds, but the doctor’s son, friend of a duke, could fire five. Moore had been trained in musketry by a Prussian, and as a boy he had practised and practised, perfecting the essential soldier’s skill, and so certain was he of his ability that, as he loaded the last two shots, he did not even bother to look at his borrowed weapon, but instead smiled wryly at Sergeant McClure. ‘Five!’ Moore announced, his ears ringing with the explosions. ‘Did any man defeat me, Sergeant?’
‘No, sir. Private Neill managed three shots, sir, the rest did two.’
‘Then my guinea is safe,’ Moore said, scooping it up.
‘But are we?’ McClure muttered.
‘You spoke, Sergeant?’
McClure stared down the bluff. The smoke was clearing and he could see that the canted tree, just thirty paces away, was unscarred by any musket ball. ‘There’s precious few of us, sir,’ he said, ‘and we’re all alone here and there’s a lot of rebels.’
‘All the more to kill,’ Moore said. ‘We shall take post here till the fog lifts, Sergeant, then look for a better vantage point.’
‘Aye, sir.’
The picquet was posted; their task to watch for the coming of an enemy. That enemy, the brigadier had assured his officers, would come. Of that McLean was sure. So he cut down trees and plotted where the fort must be.
To defend the king’s land from the king’s enemies.
Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to the Continental Navy Board in Boston, June 30th, 1779:
Gentlemen: The General Assembly of this State have determined on an Expedition to Penobscot to Dislodge the Enemy of the United States lately enter’d There who are said to be committing Hostilities on the Good People of this State … fortifying themselves at Baggobagadoos, and as They are supported by a Considerable Naval Force, to Effect our Design, it will be expedient to send there, to aid our Land Operations a Superior Naval Force. Therefore … we write you … requesting you to aid our Designs, by adding to the Naval Force of this State, now, with all Possible Speed preparing, for an expedition to Penobscot; the Continental Frigate now in this Harbour, and the other armed Continental vessells here.
Excerpts from the Warrant of Impressment issued to Masschusetts Sheriffs, July 3rd, 1779:
You are hereby authorized and Commanded taking with you such Assistance as you judge proper, forthwith to take seize and impress any able-bodied Seamen, or Mariner which you shall find in your Precinct … to serve on board any of the Vessels entered into the Service of this State to be employed in the proposed expedition to Penobscot … You are hereby Authorized to enter on board and search any Ship or Vessel or to break open and search any Dwelling house or other building in which you shall suspect any such Seamen or Mariners to be concealed.
Excerpt from a letter sent by Brigadier-General Charles Cushing to the Council of the State of Massachusetts, June 19th, 1779
I have Issued orders to the officers of my Brigade requiring them to inlist men agreeable thereto. I would inform your Honors that at present there seems no prospect of getting one man as the Bounty offered is in the Esteem of the people inadequate.
TWO
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard. He wore a light blue uniform coat faced in brown, white deerskin breeches, knee boots, and had a naval cutlass hanging from a thick brown belt. His wide-brimmed hat was made of felt, and it shadowed a broad, stubborn face that was creased in thought. ‘You making that list, boy?’ he demanded brusquely.
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy answered. He was twelve, the son of Josiah Flint who ruled the armory from his high-backed, well-padded chair that had been dragged from the office and set beside the trestle table where the boy made his list. Flint liked to sit in the yard when the weather allowed so he could keep an eye on the comings and goings in his domain.
‘Drag chains,’ Revere said, ‘sponges, searchers, relievers, am I going too fast?’
‘Relievers,’ the boy muttered, dipping his pen into the inkwell.
‘Hot today,’ Josiah Flint grumbled from the depths of his chair.
‘It’s summer,’ Revere said, ‘and it should be hot. Rammers, boy, and wad hooks. Spikes, tompions, linstocks, vent-covers. What have I forgotten, Mister Flint?’
‘Priming wires, Colonel.’
‘Priming wires, boy.’
‘Priming wires,’ the boy said, finishing the list.
‘And there’s something else in the back of my mind,’ Flint said, frowning, then thought for a moment before shaking his head. ‘Maybe nothing,’ he said.
‘You hunt through your pa’s supplies, boy,’ Revere said, ‘and you make piles of all those things. We need to know how many we’ve got. You note down how many and then you tell me. Off you go.’
‘And buckets,’ Josiah Flint added hurriedly.
‘And buckets!’ Revere called after the boy. ‘And not leaking buckets either!’ He took the boy’s vacated chair and watched as Josiah Flint bit into a chicken leg. Flint was an enormous man, his belly spilling over his belt, and he seemed intent on becoming even fatter because whenever Revere visited the arsenal he found his friend eating. He had a plate of cornbread, radishes and chicken that he vaguely gestured towards, as if inviting Colonel Revere to share the dish.
‘You haven’t been given orders yet, Colonel?’ Flint asked. His nose had been shattered by a bullet at Saratoga just minutes before a cannonball took away his right leg. He could no longer breathe through his nose and so his breath had to be drawn past the half-masticated food filling his mouth. It made a snuffling sound. ‘They should have given you orders, Colonel.’
‘They don’t know whether they’re pissing or puking, Mister Flint,’ Revere said, ‘but I can’t wait while they make up their minds. The guns have to be ready!’
‘No man better than you, Colonel,’ Josiah Flint said, picking a shred of radish from his front teeth.
‘But I didn’t go to Harvard, did I?’ Revere asked with a forced laugh. ‘If I spoke Latin, Mister Flint, I’d be a general by now.’
‘Hic, haec, hoc,’ Flint said through a mouthful of bread.
‘I expect so,’ Revere said. He pulled a folded copy of the Boston Intelligencer from his pocket and spread it on the table, then took out his reading glasses. He disliked wearing them for he suspected they gave him an unmilitary appearance, but he needed the spectacles to read the account of the British incursion into eastern Massachusetts. ‘Who would have believed it,’ he said, ‘the bastard redcoats back in New England!’
‘Not for long, Colonel.’
‘I hope not,’ Revere said. The Massachusetts government, learning that the British had landed men at Majabigwaduce, had determined to send an expedition to the Penobscot River, to which end a fleet was being gathered, orders being sent to the militia and officers being appointed. ‘Well, well,’ Revere said, peering at the newspaper. ‘It seems the Spanish have declared war on the British now!’
‘Spain as well as France,’ Flint said. ‘The bloodybacks can’t last long now.’
‘Let’s pray they last long enough to give us a chance to fight them at Maja.’ Revere paused, ‘Majabigwaduce,’ he said. ‘I wonder what that name means?’
‘Just some Indian nonsense,’ Flint said. ‘Place Where the Muskrat Pissed Down its Legs, probably.’
‘Probably,’ Revere said distantly. He took off his glasses and stared at a pair of sheerlegs that waited to lift a cannon barrel from a carriage rotted by damp. ‘Have they given you a requisition for cannon, Mister Flint?’
‘Just for five hundred muskets, Colonel, to be rented for a dollar each to the militia.’
‘Rented!’
‘Rented,’ Flint confirmed.
‘If they’re to kill the British,’ Revere said, ‘then money shouldn’t come into it.’
‘Money always comes into it,’ Flint said. ‘There are six new British nine-pounders in Appleby’s yard, but we can’t touch them. They’re to be auctioned.’
‘The Council should buy them,’ Revere said.
‘The Council don’t have the money,’ Flint said, stripping a leg-bone of its flesh, ‘not enough coinage to pay the wages, rent the privateers, purchase supplies and buy cannon. You’ll have to make do with the guns we’ve got.’
‘They’ll do, they’ll do,’ Revere said grudgingly.
‘And I hope the Council has the sense to appoint you to command those guns, Colonel!’
Revere said nothing to that, merely stared at the sheerlegs. He had an engaging smile that warmed men’s hearts, but he was not smiling now. He was seething.
He was seething because the Council had appointed the commanders of the expedition to rout the British from Majabigwaduce, but so far no man had been named to lead the artillery and Revere knew that cannons would be needed. He knew too that he was the best man to command those cannon, he was indeed the commanding officer of the Bay of Massachusetts State Artillery Regiment, yet the Council had pointedly refrained from sending him any orders.
‘They will appoint you, Colonel,’ Flint said loyally, ‘they have to!’
‘Not if Major Todd has his way,’ Revere said bitterly.
‘I expect he went to Harvard,’ Flint said, ‘hic, haec, hoc.’
‘Harvard or Yale, probably,’ Revere agreed, ‘and he wanted to run the artillery like a counting-house! Lists and regulations! I told him, make the men gunners first, then kill the British, and after that make the lists, but he didn’t listen. He was forever saying I was disorganized, but I know my guns, Mister Flint, I know my guns. There’s a skill in gunnery, an art, and not everyone has the touch. It doesn’t come from book-learning, not artillery. It’s an art.’
‘That’s very true,’ Flint wheezed through a full mouth.
‘But I’ll ready their cannon,’ Revere said, ‘so whoever commands them has things done properly. There may not be enough lists, Mister Flint,’ he chuckled at that, ‘but they’ll have good and ready guns. Eighteen-pounders and more! Bloodyback-killers! Guns to slaughter the English, they will have guns. I’ll see to that.’
Flint paused to release a belch, then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want to go to Maja, whatever it is?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
Flint patted his belly, then put two radishes into his mouth. ‘It ain’t comfortable, Colonel.’
‘What does that mean, Josiah?’
‘Down east?’ Flint asked. ‘You’ll get nothing but mosquitoes, rain and sleeping under a tree down east.’ He feared that his friend would not be given command of the expedition’s artillery and, in his clumsy way, was trying to provide some consolation. ‘And you’re not as young as you were, Colonel!’
‘Forty-five’s not old!’ Revere protested.
‘Old enough to know sense,’ Flint said, ‘and to appreciate a proper bed with a woman inside it.’
‘A proper bed, Mister Flint, is beside my guns. Beside my guns that point towards the English! That’s all I ask, a chance to serve my country.’ Revere had tried to join the fighting ever since the rebellion had begun, but his applications to the Continental Army had been refused for reasons that Revere could only suspect and never confirm. General Washington, it was said, wanted men of birth and honour, and that rumour had only made Revere more resentful. The Massachusetts Militia was not so particular, yet Revere’s service so far had been uneventful. True, he had gone to Newport to help evict the British, but that campaign had ended in failure before Revere and his guns arrived, and so he had been forced to command the garrison on Castle Island and his prayers that a British fleet would come to be battered by his cannon had gone unanswered. Paul Revere, who hated the British with a passion that could shake his body with its pure vehemence, had yet to kill a single redcoat.
‘You’ve heard the trumpet call, Colonel,’ Flint said respectfully.
‘I’ve heard the trumpet call,’ Revere agreed.
A sentry opened the armory gate and a man in the faded blue uniform of the Continental Army entered the yard from the street. He was tall, good-looking and some years younger than Revere who stood in wary greeting. ‘Colonel Revere?’ the newcomer asked.
‘At your service, General.’
‘I am Peleg Wadsworth.’
‘I know who you are, General,’ Revere said, smiling and taking the offered hand. He noted that Wadsworth did not return the smile. ‘I hope you bring me good news from the Council, General?’
‘I would like a word, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said, ‘a brief word.’ The brigadier glanced at the monstrous Josiah Flint in his padded chair. ‘A word in private,’ he added grimly.
So the trumpet call would have to wait.
Captain Henry Mowat stood on Majabigwaduce’s beach. He was a stocky man with a ruddy face now shadowed by the long peak of his cocked hat. His naval coat was dark blue with lighter blue facings, all stained white by salt. He was in his forties, a lifelong sailor, and he stood with his feet planted apart as though balancing on a quarterdeck. His dark hair was powdered and a slight trail of the powder had sifted down the spine of his uniform coat. He was glaring at the longboats that lay alongside his ship, the Albany. ‘What the devil takes all this time?’ he growled.
His companion, Doctor John Calef, had no idea what was causing the delay on board the Albany and so offered no answer. ‘You’ve received no intelligence from Boston?’ he asked Mowat instead.
‘We don’t need intelligence,’ Mowat said brusquely. He was the senior naval officer at Majabigwaduce and, like Brigadier McLean, a Scotsman, but where the brigadier was emollient and soft-spoken, Mowat was famed for his bluntness. He fidgeted with the cord-bound hilt of his sword. ‘The bastards will come, Doctor, mark my word, the bastards will come. Like flies to dung, Doctor, they’ll come.’
Calef thought that likening the British presence at Majabigwaduce to dung was an unfortunate choice, but he made no comment on that. ‘In force?’ he asked.
‘They may be damned rebels, but they’re not damned fools. Of course they’ll come in force.’ Mowat still gazed at the anchored ship, then cupped his hands. ‘Mister Farraby,’ he bellowed across the water, ‘what the devil is happening?’
‘Roving a new sling, sir!’ the call came back.
‘How many guns will you bring ashore?’ the doctor enquired.
‘As many as McLean wants,’ Mowat said. His three sloops of war were anchored fore and aft to make a line across the harbour’s mouth, their starboard broadsides facing the entrance to greet any rebel ship that dared intrude. Those broadsides were puny. HMS North, which lay closest to Majabigwaduce’s beach, carried twenty guns, ten on each side, while the Albany, at the centre, and the Nautilus, each carried nine cannons in their broadsides. An enemy ship would thus be greeted by twenty-eight guns, none throwing a ball larger than nine pounds, and the last intelligence Mowat had received from Boston indicated that a rebel frigate was in that harbour, a frigate that mounted thirty-two guns, most of which would be much larger than his small cannon. And the rebel frigate Warren would be supported by the privateers of Massachusetts, most of whose craft were just as heavily gunned as his own sloops of war. ‘It’ll be a fight,’ he said sourly, ‘a rare good fight.’
The new sling had evidently been roved because a nine-pounder gun barrel was being hoisted from the Albany’s deck and gently lowered into one of the waiting longboats. Over a ton of metal hung from the yardarm, poised above the heads of the pigtailed sailors waiting in the small boat below. Mowat was bringing his port broadsides ashore so the guns could protect the fort McLean was building on Majabigwaduce’s crest. ‘If you abandon your portside guns,’ Calef enquired in a puzzled tone, ‘what happens if the enemy passes you?’
‘Then, sir, we are dead men,’ Mowat said curtly. He watched the longboat settle precariously low in the choppy water as it took the weight of the cannon’s barrel. The carriage would be brought ashore in another boat and, like the barrel, be hauled uphill to the site of the fort by one of the two teams of oxen that had been commandeered from the Hutchings farm. ‘Dead men!’ Mowat said, almost cheerfully, ‘but to kill us, Doctor, they must first pass us, and I do not intend to be passed.’
Calef felt relief at Mowat’s belligerence. The Scottish naval captain was famous in Massachusetts, or perhaps infamous was a better word, but to all loyalists, like Calef, Mowat was a hero who inspired confidence. He had been captured by rebel civilians, the self-styled Sons of Liberty, while walking ashore in Falmouth. His release had been negotiated by the leading citizens of that proud harbour town, and the condition of Mowat’s release had been that he surrender himself next day so that the legality of his arrest could be established by lawyers, but instead Mowat had returned with a flotilla that had bombarded the town from dawn to dusk and, when most of the houses lay shattered, he had sent shore parties to set fire to the wreckage. Two thirds of Falmouth had been destroyed to send the message that Captain Mowat was not a man to be trifled with.
Calef frowned slightly as Brigadier McLean and two junior officers strolled along the stony beach towards Mowat. Calef still had doubts about the Scottish brigadier, fearing that he was too gentle in his demeanour, but Captain Mowat evidently had no such misgivings because he smiled broadly as McLean approached. ‘You’ve not come to pester me, McLean,’ he said with mock severity, ‘your precious guns are coming!’
‘I never doubted it, Mowat, never doubted it,’ McLean said, ‘not for a moment.’ He touched his hat to Doctor Calef, then turned back to Mowat. ‘And how are your fine fellows this morning, Mowat?’
‘Working, McLean, working!’
McLean gestured at his two companions. ‘Doctor, allow me to present Lieutenant Campbell of the 74th,’ McLean paused to allow the dark-kilted Campbell to offer the doctor a small bow, ‘and Paymaster Moore of the 82nd.’ John Moore offered a more elegant bow, Calef raised his hat in response and McLean turned to gaze at the three sloops with the longboats nuzzling their flanks. ‘Your longboats are all busy, Mowat?’
‘They’re busy, and so they damn well should be. Idleness encourages the devil.’
‘So it does,’ Calef agreed.
‘And there was I seeking an idle moment,’ McLean said happily.
‘You need a boat?’ Mowat asked.
‘I’d not take your matelots from their duties,’ the brigadier said, then looked past Mowat to where a young man and woman were hauling a heavy wooden rowboat down to the incoming tide. ‘Isn’t that the young fellow who piloted us into the harbour?’
Doctor Calef turned. ‘James Fletcher,’ he said grimly.
‘Is he loyal?’ McLean asked.
‘He’s a damned light-headed fool,’ Calef said, and then, grudgingly, ‘but his father was a loyal man.’
‘Then like father, like son, I trust,’ McLean said and turned to Moore. ‘John? Ask Mister Fletcher if he can spare us an hour?’ It was evident that Fletcher and his sister were planning to row to their fishing boat, the Felicity, which lay in deeper water. ‘Tell him I wish to see Majabigwaduce from the river and will pay for his time.’
Moore went on his errand and McLean watched as another cannon barrel was hoisted aloft from the Albany’s deck. Smaller boats were ferrying other supplies ashore; cartridges and salt beef, rum barrels and cannonballs, wadding and rammers, the paraphernalia of war, all of which was being hauled or carried to where his fort was still little more than a scratched square in the thin turf of the ridge’s top. John Nutting, a Loyalist American and an engineer who had travelled to Britain to urge the occupation of Majabigwaduce, was laying out the design of the stronghold in the cleared land. The fort would be simple enough, just a square of earthen ramparts with diamond-shaped bastions at its four corners. Each of the walls would be two hundred and fifty paces in length and would be fronted by a steep-sided ditch, but even such a simple fort required firesteps and embrasures, and needed masonry magazines that would keep the ammunition dry, and a well deep enough to provide plentiful water. Tents housed the soldiers for the moment, but McLean wanted those vulnerable encampments protected by the fort. He wanted high walls, thick walls, walls manned by men and studded by guns, because he knew that the south-west wind would bring more than the smell of salt and shellfish. It would bring rebels, a swarm of them, and the air would stink of powder-smoke, of turds and of blood.
‘Phoebe Perkins’s child contracted a fever last night,’ Calef said brutally.
‘I trust she will live?’ McLean said.
‘God’s will be done,’ Calef said in a tone that suggested God might not care very much. ‘They’ve named her Temperance.’
‘Temperance! Oh dear, poor girl, poor girl. I shall pray for her,’ McLean said, and pray for ourselves too, he thought, but did not say.
Because the rebels were coming.
Peleg Wadsworth felt awkward as he led Lieutenant-Colonel Revere into the shadowed vastness of one of the armory’s stores where sparrows bickered in the high beams above boxes of muskets and bales of cloth and stacks of iron-hooped barrels. It was true that Wadsworth outranked Revere, but he was almost fifteen years younger than the colonel and he felt a vague inadequacy in the presence of a man of such obvious competence. Revere had a reputation as an engraver, as a silversmith and as a metal-worker, and it showed in his hands that were strong and fire-scarred, the hands of a man who could make and mend, the hands of a practical man. Peleg Wadsworth had been a teacher, and a good one, but he had known the scorn of his pupils’ parents who reckoned their children’s futures lay not with grammar or in fractions, but in the command of tools and the working of metal, wood or stone. Wadsworth could construe Latin and Greek, he was intimate with the works of Shakespeare and Montaigne, but faced with a broken chair he felt helpless. Revere, he knew, was the opposite. Give Revere a broken chair and he would mend it competently so that, like the man himself, it was strong, sturdy and dependable.
Or was he dependable? That was the question that had brought Wadsworth to this armory, and he wished that the errand had never been given him. He felt tongue-tied when Revere stopped and turned to him at the storeroom’s centre, but then a scuffling sound from behind a pile of broken muskets gave Wadsworth a welcome distraction. ‘We’re not alone?’ he asked.
‘Those are rats, General,’ Revere said with amusement, ‘rats. They do like the grease on cartridges, they do.’
‘I thought cartridges were stored in the Public Magazine?’
‘They keep enough here for proofing, General, and the rats do like them. We call them redcoats on account they’re the enemy.’
‘Cats will surely defeat them?’
‘We have cats, General, but it’s a hard-fought contest. Good American cats and patriot terriers against dirty British rats,’ Revere said. ‘I assume you want reassurance on the artillery train, General?’
‘I’m sure all is in order.’
‘Oh, it is, you can rely on that. As of now, General, we have two eighteen-pounders, three nine-pounders, one howitzer, and four little ones.’
‘Small howitzers?’
‘Four-pounder cannons, General, and I wouldn’t use them to shoot rats. You need something heavier-built like the French four-pounders. And if you have influence, General, which I’m sure you do, ask the Board of War to release more eighteen-pounders.’
Wadsworth nodded. ‘I’ll make a note of that,’ he promised.
‘You have your guns, General, I assure you,’ Revere said, ‘with all their side arms, powder and shot. I’ve hardly seen Castle Island these last few days on account of readying the train.’
‘Yes, indeed, Castle Island,’ Wadsworth said. He towered a head over Revere, which gave him an excuse not to meet the colonel’s eyes, though he was aware that Revere was staring at him intently as if daring Wadsworth to give him bad news. ‘You command at Castle Island?’ Wadsworth asked, not because he needed confirmation, but out of desperation to say anything.
‘You didn’t need to come here to find that out,’ Revere said with amusement, ‘but yes, General, I command the Massachusetts Artillery Regiment and, because most of our guns are mounted on the island, I command there too. And you, General, will command at Majajuce?’
‘Majajuce?’ Wadsworth said, then realised Revere meant Majabigwaduce. ‘I am second in command,’ he went on, ‘to General Lovell.’
‘And there are British rats at Majajuce,’ Revere said.
‘As far as we can determine,’ Wadsworth said, ‘they’ve landed at least a thousand men and possess three sloops-of-war. Not an over-large force, but not risible either.’
‘Risible,’ Revere said, as if amused by the word. ‘But to rid Massachusetts of those rats, General, you’ll need guns.’
‘We will indeed.’
‘And the guns will need an officer in command,’ Revere added pointedly.
‘Indeed they will,’ Wadsworth said. All the senior appointments of the expedition that was being hurriedly prepared to evict the British from Majabigwaduce had been made. Solomon Lovell would command the ground forces, Commander Dudley Saltonstall of the Continental Frigate Warren would be the naval commander, and Wadsworth would be Lovell’s deputy. The troops, drawn from the militias of York, Cumberland and Lincoln counties, had their commanding officers, while the adjutant-general, quartermaster-general, surgeon-general and brigade majors had all received their orders, and now only the commander of the artillery train needed to be appointed.
‘The guns will need an officer in command,’ Revere pressed Wadsworth, ‘and I command the Artillery Regiment.’
Wadsworth gazed at a ginger-coloured cat washing itself on top of a barrel. ‘No one,’ he said carefully, ‘would deny that you are the man best qualified to command the artillery at Majabigwaduce.’
‘So I can expect a letter from the Board of War?’ Revere said.
‘If I am satisfied,’ Wadsworth said, nerving himself to raise the matter that had brought him to the armory.
‘Satisfied about what, General?’ Revere asked, still looking up into Wadsworth’s face.
Peleg Wadsworth made himself look into the steady brown eyes. ‘A complaint was made,’ he said, ‘concerning the Castle Island ration demands, a matter of surplus, Colonel … ’
‘Surplus!’ Revere interrupted, not angrily, but in a tone suggesting he found the word amusing. He smiled, and Wadsworth found himself unexpectedly warming to the man. ‘Tell me, General,’ Revere went on, ‘how many troops you’ll be taking to Majajuce.’
‘We can’t be certain,’ Wadsworth said, ‘but we expect to take an infantry force of at least fifteen hundred men.’
‘And you’ve ordered rations for that many?’
‘Of course.’
‘And if only fourteen hundred men report for duty, General, what will you do with the surplus ration?’
‘It will be accounted for,’ Wadsworth said, ‘of course.’
‘This is war!’ Revere said energetically. ‘War and blood, fire and iron, death and damage, and a man can’t account for everything in war! I’ll make as many lists as you like when the war is over.’
Wadsworth frowned. Doubtless it was war, yet the Castle Island garrison, like Lieutenant-Colonel Revere himself, had yet to fire a shot at the enemy. ‘It is alleged, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said firmly, ‘that your garrison was comprised of a fixed number of men, yet the ration demands consistently cited thirty non-existent gunners.’
Revere gave a tolerant smile, suggesting he had heard all this before. ‘Consistently,’ he said derisively, ‘consistently, eh? Long words don’t kill the enemy, General.’
‘Another long word,’ Wadsworth said, ‘is peculation.’
The accusation was now open. The word hung in the dusty air. It was alleged that Revere had ordered extra rations that he had then sold for personal gain, though Wadsworth did not articulate that full accusation. He did not need to. Colonel Revere looked up into Wadsworth’s face, then shook his head sadly. He turned and walked slowly to a nine-pounder cannon that stood at the back of the storehouse. The gun had been captured at Saratoga and Revere now stroked its long barrel with a capable, broad-fingered hand. ‘For years, General,’ he spoke quietly, ‘I have pursued and promoted the cause of liberty.’ He was staring down at the royal cipher on the gun’s breech. ‘When you were learning books, General, I was riding to Philadelphia and New York to spread the idea of liberty. I risked capture and imprisonment for liberty. I threw tea into Boston Harbour and I rode to warn Lexington when the British started this war. That’s when we first met, General, at Lexington.’
‘I remember it …’ Wadsworth began.
‘And I risked the well-being of my dear wife,’ Revere interrupted hotly, ‘and the welfare of my children to serve a cause I love, General.’ He turned and looked at Wadsworth who stood in the buttress of sunlight cast through the wide-open door. ‘I have been a patriot, General, and I have proved my patriotism …’
‘No one is suggesting …’
‘Yes, they are, General!’ Revere said with a sudden passion. ‘They are suggesting I am a dishonest man! That I would steal from the cause to which I have devoted my life! It’s Major Todd, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not at liberty to reveal …’
‘You don’t need to,’ Revere said scathingly. ‘It’s Major Todd. He doesn’t like me, General, and I regret that, and I regret that the Major doesn’t know the first thing he’s talking about! I was told, General, that thirty men of the Barnstable County Militia were being posted to me for artillery training and I ordered rations accordingly, and then Major Fellows, for his own reasons, General, for his own good reasons held the men back, and I explained all that, but Major Todd isn’t a man to listen to reason, General.’
‘Major Todd is a man of diligence,’ Wadsworth said sternly, ‘and I am not saying he advanced the complaint, merely that he is a most efficient and honorable officer.’
‘A Harvard man, is he?’ Revere asked sharply.
Wadsworth frowned. ‘I cannot think that relevant, Colonel.’
‘I’ve no doubt you don’t, but Major Todd still misunderstood the situation, General,’ Revere said. He paused, and for a moment it seemed his indignation would burst out with the violence of thunder, but instead he smiled. ‘It is not peculation, General,’ he said, ‘and I don’t doubt I was remiss in not checking the books, but mistakes are made. I concentrated on making the guns efficient, General, efficient!’ He walked towards Wadsworth, his voice low. ‘All I have ever asked, General, is for a chance to fight for my country. To fight for the cause I love. To fight for my dear children’s future. Do you have children, General?’
‘I do.’
‘As do I. Dear children. And you think I would risk my family name, their reputation, and the cause I love for thirty loaves of bread? Or for thirty pieces of silver?’
Wadsworth had learned as a schoolmaster to judge his pupils by their demeanour. Boys, he had discovered, rarely looked authority in the eye when they lied. Girls were far more difficult to read, but boys, when they lied, almost always looked uncomfortable. Their gaze would shift, but Revere’s gaze was steady, his face was earnest, and Wadsworth felt a great surge of relief. He put a hand inside his uniform coat and brought out a paper, folded and sealed. ‘I had hoped you would satisfy me, Colonel, upon my soul, I had hoped that. And you have.’ He smiled and held the paper towards Revere.
Revere’s eyes glistened as he took the warrant. He broke the seal and opened the paper to discover a letter written by John Avery, deputy-secretary of the Council of State, and countersigned by General Solomon Lovell. The letter appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere as the commander of the artillery train that was to accompany the expedition to Majabigwaduce, where he was ordered to do all in his power to ‘captivate, kill or destroy the whole force of the enemy’. Revere read the warrant a second time, then wiped his cheek. ‘General,’ he said, and his voice had a catch in it, ‘this is all I desire.’
‘I am pleased, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said warmly. ‘You will receive orders later today, but I can tell you their gist now. Your guns should be taken to the Long Wharf ready for embarkation, and you should withdraw from the public magazine whatever gunpowder you require.’
‘Shubael Hewes has to authorize that,’ Revere said distractedly, still reading the warrant.
‘Shubael Hewes?’
‘The Deputy Sheriff, General, but don’t you worry, I know Shubael.’ Revere folded the warrant carefully, then cuffed at his eyes and sniffed. ‘We are going to captivate, kill and destroy them, General. We are going to make those red-coated bastards wish they had never sailed from England.’
‘We shall certainly dislodge them,’ Wadsworth said with a smile.
‘More than dislodge the monsters,’ Revere said vengefully, ‘we shall slaughter them! And those we don’t kill, General, we’ll march through town and back just to give folk a chance to let them know how welcome they are in Massachusetts.’
Wadsworth held out his hand. ‘I look forward to serving with you, Colonel.’
‘I look forward to sharing victory with you, General,’ Revere said, shaking the offered hand.
Revere watched Wadsworth leave, then, still holding the warrant as though it were the holy grail, went back to the courtyard where Josiah Flint was stirring butter into a dish of mashed turnips. ‘I’m going to war, Josiah,’ Revere said reverently.
‘I did that,’ Flint said, ‘and I was never so hungry in all my born days.’
‘I’ve waited for this,’ Revere said.
‘There’ll be no Nantucket turnips where you’re going,’ Flint said. ‘I don’t know why they taste better, but upon my soul you can’t trump a turnip from Nantucket. You think it’s the salt air?’
‘Commanding the state’s artillery!’
‘You ever travelled down east? It ain’t a Christian place, Colonel. Fog and flies is all it is, fog and flies, and the fog chills you and the flies bite like the very devil.’
‘I’m going to war. It’s all I ever asked! A chance, Josiah!’ Revere’s face was radiant. He turned a full triumphant circle, then slammed his fist onto the table. ‘I am going to war!’
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere had heard the trumpet and he was going to war.
James Fletcher’s boat buffeted against the outgoing tide, pushed by a convenient south-west wind that drove the Felicity upriver past Majabigwaduce’s high bluff. The Felicity was a small boat, just twenty-four feet long, with a stubby mast from which a faded red sail hung from a high gaff. The sun sparkled prettily on the small waves of Penobscot Bay, but behind the Felicity a bank of thick fog shrouded the view towards the distant ocean. Brigadier McLean, enthroned on a tarry heap of nets in the boat’s belly, wanted to see Majabigwaduce just as the enemy would first see it, from the water. He wanted to put himself in his enemy’s shoes and decide how he would attack the peninsula if he were a rebel. He stared fixedly at the shore, and again remarked how the scenery put him in mind of Scotland’s west coast. ‘Don’t you agree, Mister Moore?’ he asked Lieutenant John Moore who was one of two junior officers who had been ordered to accompany the brigadier.
‘Not dissimilar, sir,’ Moore said, though abstractedly, as if he merely essayed a courtesy rather than a thoughtful response.
‘More trees here, of course,’ the brigadier said.
‘Indeed, sir, indeed,’ Moore said, still not paying proper attention to his commanding officer’s remarks. Instead he was gazing at James Fletcher’s sister, Bethany, who had the tiller of the Felicity in her right hand.
McLean sighed. He liked Moore very much, considering the young man to have great promise, but he understood too that any young man would rather gaze at Bethany Fletcher than make polite conversation to a senior officer. She was a rare beauty to find in this distant place. Her hair was pale gold, framing a sun-darkened face given strength by a long nose. Her blue eyes were trusting and friendly, but the feature that made her beautiful, that could have lit the darkest night, was her smile. It was an extraordinary smile, wide and generous, that had dazzled John Moore and his companion, Lieutenant Campbell, who also gaped at Bethany as though he had never seen a young woman before. He kept plucking at his dark kilt as the wind lifted it from his thighs.
‘And the sea monsters here are extraordinary,’ McLean went on, ‘like dragons, wouldn’t you say, John? Pink dragons with green spots?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ Moore said, then gave a start as he belatedly realized the brigadier was teasing him. He had the grace to look abashed. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
James Fletcher laughed. ‘No dragons here, General.’
McLean smiled. He looked at the distant fog. ‘You have much fog here, Mister Fletcher?’
‘We gets fog in the spring, General, and fog in the summer, and then comes the fog in the fall and after that the snow, which we usually can’t see because it’s hidden by fog,’ Fletcher said with a smile as wide as his sister’s, ‘fog and more fog.’
‘Yet you like living here?’ McLean asked gently.
‘God’s own country, General,’ Fletcher answered enthusiastically, ‘and God hides it from the heathen by wrapping it in fog.’
‘And you, Miss Fletcher?’ McLean enquired of Bethany. ‘Do you like living in Majabigwaduce?’
‘I like it fine, sir,’ she said with a smile.
‘Don’t steer too close to the shore, Miss Fletcher,’ McLean said sternly. ‘I would never forgive myself if some disaffected person was to take a shot at our uniforms and struck you instead.’ McLean had tried to dissuade Bethany from accompanying the reconnaissance, but he had not tried over-enthusiastically, acknowledging to himself that the company of a pretty girl was a rare delight.
James Fletcher dismissed the fear. ‘No one will shoot at the Felicity,’ he said confidently, ‘and besides, most folks round here are loyal to his majesty.’
‘As you are, Mister Fletcher?’ Lieutenant John Moore asked pointedly.
James paused, and the brigadier saw the flicker of his eyes towards his sister. Then James grinned. ‘I’ve no quarrel with the king,’ he said. ‘He leaves me alone and I leave him alone, and so the two of us rub along fair enough.’
‘So you will take the oath?’ McLean asked, and saw how solemnly Beth gazed at her brother.
‘Don’t have much choice, sir, do I? Not if I want to fish and scratch a living.’
Brigadier McLean had issued a proclamation to the country about Majabigwaduce, assuring the inhabitants that if they were loyal to his majesty and took the oath swearing to that loyalty, then they would have nothing to fear from his forces, but if any man refused the oath, then the proclamation promised hard times to him and his family. ‘You do indeed have a choice,’ McLean said.
‘We were raised to love the king, sir,’ James said.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ McLean said. He gazed at the dark woods. ‘I understood,’ the brigadier went on, ‘that the authorities in Boston have been conscripting men?’
‘That they have,’ James agreed.
‘Yet you have not been conscripted?’
‘Oh, they tried,’ James said dismissively, ‘but they’re leery of this part of Massachusetts.’
‘Leery?’
‘Not much sympathy for the rebellion here, General.’
‘But some folk here are disaffected?’ McLean asked.
‘A few,’ James said, ‘but some folk are never happy.’
‘A lot of folks here fled from Boston,’ Bethany said, ‘and they’re all loyalists.’
‘When the British left, Miss Fletcher? Is that what you mean?’
‘Yes, sir. Like Doctor Calef. He had no wish to stay in a city ruled by rebellion, sir.’
‘Was that your fate?’ John Moore asked.
‘Oh no,’ James said, ‘our family’s been here since God made the world.’
‘Your parents live in Majabigwaduce?’ the brigadier asked.
‘Father’s in the burying ground, God rest him,’ James said.
‘I’m sorry,’ McLean said.
‘And Mother’s good as dead,’ James went on.
‘James!’ Bethany said reprovingly.
‘Crippled, bedridden and speechless,’ James said. Six years before, he explained, when Bethany was twelve and James fourteen, their widowed mother had been gored by a bull she had been leading to pasture. Then, two years later, she had suffered a stroke that had left her stammering and confused.
‘Life is hard on us,’ McLean said. He stared at a log house built close to the river’s bank and noted the huge heap of firewood stacked against one outer wall. ‘And it must be hard,’ he went on, ‘to make a new life in a wilderness if you are accustomed to a city like Boston.’
‘Wilderness, General?’ James asked, amused.
‘It is hard for the Boston folk who came here, sir,’ Bethany said more usefully.
‘They have to learn to fish, General,’ James said, ‘or grow crops, or cut wood.’
‘You grow many crops?’ McLean asked.
‘Rye, oats and potatoes,’ Bethany answered, ‘and corn, sir.’
‘They can trap, General,’ James put in. ‘Our dad made a fine living from trapping! Beaver, marten, weasels.’
‘He caught an ermine once,’ Bethany said proudly.
‘And doubtless that scrap of fur is around some fine lady’s neck in London, General,’ James said. ‘Then there’s mast timber,’ he went on. ‘Not so much in Majabigwaduce, but plenty upriver and any man can learn to cut and trim a tree. And there are sawmills aplenty! Why there must be thirty sawmills between here and the river’s head. A man can make scantlings or staves, boards or posts, anything he pleases!’
‘You trade in timber?’ McLean asked.
‘I fish, General, and it’s a poor man who can’t keep his family alive by fishing.’
‘What do you catch?’
‘Cod, General, and cunners, haddock, hake, eel, flounder, pollock, skate, mackerel, salmon, alewives. We have more fish than we know what to do with! And all good eating! It’s what gives our Beth her pretty complexion, all that fish!’
Bethany gave her brother a fond glance. ‘You’re silly, James,’ she said.
‘You are not married, Miss Fletcher?’ the general asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Our Beth was betrothed, General,’ James explained, ‘to a rare good man. Captain of a schooner. She was to be married this spring.’
McLean looked gently at the girl. ‘Was to be?’
‘He was lost at sea, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘Fishing on the banks,’ James explained. ‘He got caught by a nor’easter, General, and the nor’easters have blown many a good man out of this world to the next.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She’ll find another,’ James said carelessly. ‘She’s not the ugliest girl in the world,’ he grinned, ‘are you?’
The brigadier turned his gaze back to the shore. He sometimes allowed himself the small luxury of imagining that no enemy would come to attack him, but he knew that was unlikely. McLean’s small force was now the only British presence between the Canadian border and Rhode Island and the rebels would surely want that presence destroyed. They would come. He pointed south. ‘We might return now?’ he suggested, and Bethany obliged by turning the Felicity into the wind. Her brother hardened the jib, staysail and main so that the small boat tipped as she beat into the brisk breeze and sharp dashes of spray slapped against the three officers’ red coats. McLean looked again at Majabigwaduce’s high western bluff that faced onto the wide river. ‘If you were in command here,’ he asked his two lieutenants, ‘how would you defend the place?’ Lieutenant Campbell, a lank youth with a prominent nose and an equally prominent Adam’s apple, swallowed nervously and said nothing, while young Moore just leaned back on the heaped nets as though contemplating an afternoon’s sleep. ‘Come, come,’ the brigadier chided the pair, ‘tell me what you would do.’
‘Does that not depend on what the enemy does, sir?’ Moore asked idly.
‘Then assume with me that they arrive with a dozen or more ships and, say, fifteen hundred men?’
Moore closed his eyes, while Lieutenant Campbell tried to look enthusiastic. ‘We put our guns on the bluff, sir,’ he offered, gesturing towards the high ground that dominated the river and harbour entrance.
‘But the bay is wide,’ McLean pointed out, ‘so the enemy can pass us on the farther bank and land upstream of us. Then they cross the neck,’ he pointed to the narrow isthmus of low ground that connected Majabigwaduce to the mainland, ‘and attack us from the landward side.’
Campbell frowned and bit his lip as he pondered that suggestion. ‘So we put guns there too, sir,’ he offered, ‘maybe a smaller fort?’
McLean nodded encouragingly, then glanced at Moore. ‘Asleep, Mister Moore?’
Moore smiled, but did not open his eyes. ‘Wer alles verteidigt, verteidigt nichts,’ he said.
‘I believe der alte Fritz thought of that long before you did, Mister Moore,’ McLean responded, then smiled at Bethany. ‘Our paymaster is showing off, Miss Fletcher, by quoting Frederick the Great. He’s also quite right, he who defends everything defends nothing. So,’ the brigadier looked back to Moore, ‘what would you defend here at Majabigwaduce?’
‘I would defend, sir, that which the enemy wishes to possess.’
‘And that is?’
‘The harbour, sir.’
‘So you would allow the enemy to land their troops on the neck?’ McLean asked. The brigadier’s reconnaissance had convinced him that the rebels would probably land north of Majabigwaduce. They might try to enter the harbour, fighting their way through Mowat’s sloops to land troops on the beach below the fort, but if McLean was in command of the rebels he reckoned he would choose to land on the wide, shelving beach of the isthmus. By doing that, the enemy would cut him off from the mainland and could assault his ramparts safe from any cannon-fire from the Royal Navy vessels. There was a small chance that they might be daring and assault the bluff to gain the peninsula’s high ground, but the bluff’s slope was dauntingly steep. He sighed inwardly. He could not defend everything because, as the great Frederick had said, by defending everything a man defended nothing.
‘They’ll land somewhere, sir,’ Moore answered the brigadier’s question, ‘and there’s little we can do to stop them landing, not if they come in sufficient force. But why do they land, sir?’
‘You tell me.’
‘To capture the harbour, sir, because that is the value of this place.’
‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven, Mister Moore,’ McLean said, ‘and they do want the harbour and they will come for it, but let us hope they do not come soon.’
‘The sooner they come, sir,’ Moore said, ‘the sooner we can kill them.’
‘I would wish to finish the fort first,’ McLean said. The fort, which he had decided to name Fort George, was hardly begun. The soil was thin, rocky and hard to work, and the ridge so thick with trees that a week’s toil had scarcely cleared a sufficient killing ground. If the enemy came soon, McLean knew, he would have small choice but to fire a few defiant guns and then haul down the flag. ‘Are you a prayerful man, Mister Moore?’ McLean asked.
‘Indeed I am, sir.’
‘Then pray the enemy delays,’ McLean said fervently, then looked to James Fletcher. ‘Mister Fletcher, you would land us back on the beach?’
‘That I will, General,’ James said cheerfully.
‘And pray for us, Mister Fletcher.’
‘Not sure the good Lord listens to me, sir.’
‘James!’ Bethany reproved her brother.
James grinned. ‘You need prayers to protect yourself here, General?’
McLean paused for a moment, then shrugged. ‘It depends, Mister Fletcher, on the enemy’s strength, but I would wish for twice as many men and twice our number of ships to feel secure.’
‘Maybe they won’t come, sir,’ Fletcher said. ‘Those folks in Boston never took much note of what happens here.’ Wisps of fog were drifting with the wind as the Felicity ran past the three sloops of war that guarded the harbour entrance. James Fletcher noted how the three ships were anchored fore and aft so that they could not swing with the tide or wind, thus allowing each sloop to keep its broadside pointed at the harbour entrance. The ship nearest the beach, the North, had two intermittent jets of water pulsing from its portside, and James could hear the clank of the elmwood pumps as men thrust at the long handles. Those pumps rarely stopped, suggesting the North was an ill-found ship, though her guns were doubtless efficient enough to help protect the harbour mouth and, to protect that entrance even further, red-coated Royal Marines were hacking at the thin soil and rocks of Cross Island, which edged the southern side of the channel. Fletcher reckoned the marines were making a battery there. Behind the three sloops and making a second line across the harbour, were three of the transport ships that had carried the redcoats to Majabigwaduce. Those transports were not armed, but their size alone made them a formidable obstacle to any ship that might attempt to pass the smaller sloops.
McLean handed Fletcher an oilcloth-wrapped parcel of tobacco and one of the Spanish silver dollars that were common currency, as payment for the use of his boat. ‘Come, Mister Moore,’ he called sharply as the paymaster offered Bethany an arm to help her over the uneven beach. ‘We have work to do!’
James Fletcher also had work to do. It was still high summer, but the log pile had to be made for the winter and, that evening, he split wood outside their house. He worked deep into the twilight, slashing the axe down hard to splinter logs into usable firewood.
‘You’re thinking, James.’ Bethany had come from the house and was watching him. She wore an apron over her grey dress.
‘Is that bad?’
‘You always work too hard when you’re thinking,’ she said. She sat on a bench fronting the house. ‘Mother’s sleeping.’
‘Good,’ James said. He left the axe embedded in a stump and sat beside his sister on the bench that overlooked the harbour. The sky was purple and black, the water glinted with little ripples of fading silver about the anchored boats; glimmers of lamplight reflected on the small waves. A bugle sounded from the ridge where two tented encampments housed the redcoats. A picquet of six men guarded the guns and ammunition that had been parked on the beach above the tideline. ‘That young officer liked you, Beth,’ James said. Bethany just smiled, but said nothing. ‘They’re nice enough fellows,’ James said.
‘I like the general,’ Bethany said.
‘A decent man, he seems,’ James said.
‘I wonder what happened to his arm?’
‘Soldiers, Beth. Soldiers get wounded.’
‘And killed.’
‘Yes.’
They sat in companionable silence for a while as the darkness closed slow on the river and on the harbour and on the bluff. ‘So will you sign the oath?’ Bethany asked after a while.
‘Not sure I have much choice,’ James said bleakly.
‘But will you?’
James picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. ‘Father would have wanted me to sign.’
‘I’m not sure Father thought about it much,’ Bethany said. ‘We never had government here, neither royal nor rebel.’
‘He loved the king,’ James said. ‘He hated the French and loved the king.’ He sighed. ‘We have to make a living, Beth. If I don’t take the oath then they’ll take the Felicity away from us, and then what do we do? I can’t have that.’ A dog howled somewhere in the village and James waited till the sound died away. ‘I like McLean well enough,’ he said, ‘but …’ He let the thought fade away into the darkness.
‘But?’ Bethany asked. Her brother shrugged and made no answer. Beth slapped at a mosquito. ‘“Choose you this day whom you will serve,”’ she quoted, ‘“whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or …”’ She left the Bible verse unfinished.
‘There’s too much bitterness,’ James said.
‘You thought it would pass us by?’
‘I hoped it would. What does anyone want with Bagaduce anyway?’
Bethany smiled. ‘The Dutch were here, the French made a fort here, it seems the whole world wants us.’
‘But it’s our home, Beth. We made this place, it’s ours.’ James paused. He was not sure he could articulate what was in his mind. ‘You know Colonel Buck left?’
Buck was the local commander of the Massachusetts Militia and he had fled north up the Penobscot River when the British arrived. ‘I heard,’ Bethany said.
‘And John Lymburner and his friends are saying what a coward Buck is, and that’s just nonsense! It’s all just bitterness, Beth.’
‘So you’ll ignore it?’ she asked. ‘Just sign the oath and pretend it isn’t happening?’
James stared down at his hands. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘You know what I think,’ Bethany said firmly.
‘Just ’cos your fellow was a damned rebel,’ James said, smiling. He gazed at the shivering reflections cast from the lanterns on board the three sloops. ‘What I want, Beth, is for them all to leave us alone.’
‘They won’t do that now,’ she said.
James nodded. ‘They won’t, so I’ll write a letter, Beth,’ he said, ‘and you can take it over the river to John Brewer. He’ll know how to get it to Boston.’
Bethany was silent for a while, then frowned. ‘And the oath? Will you sign it?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, Beth, I honestly don’t know.’
James wrote the letter on a blank page torn from the back of the family Bible. He wrote simply, saying what he had seen in Majabigwaduce and its harbour. He told how many guns were mounted on the sloops and where the British were making earthworks, how many soldiers he believed had come to the village and how many guns had been shipped to the beach. He used the other side of the paper to make a rough map of the peninsula on which he drew the position of the fort and the place where the three sloops of war were anchored. He marked the battery on Cross Island, then turned the page over and signed the letter with his name, biting his lower lip as he formed the clumsy letters.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t put your name to it,’ Bethany said.
James sealed the folded paper with candle-wax. ‘The soldiers probably won’t trouble you, Beth, which is why you should carry the letter, but if they do, and if they find the letter, then I don’t want you blamed. Say you didn’t know what was in it and let me be punished.’
‘So you’re a rebel now?’
James hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Good,’ Bethany said.
The sound of a flute came from a house higher up the hill. The lights still shimmered on the harbour water and dark night came to Majabigwaduce.
Excerpts of a letter from the Selectmen of Newburyport, Massachusetts, to the General Court of Massachusetts, July 12th, 1779:
Last Friday one James Collins an Inhabitant of Penobscot on his way home from Boston went through this Town … upon Examination (we) find that he has been an Enemy to the united States of America … and that immediately after the British Fleet arrived at Penobscot this Collins … took Passage from Kennebeck to Boston … where he arrived last Tuesday, and as we apprehend got all the Intelligence he Possibly cou’d Relative to the movements of our Fleet and Army … (we) are suspicious of his being a Spy and have accordingly Secured him in the Gaol in this Town.
Order addressed to the Massachusetts Board of War, July 3rd, 1779:
Ordered that the Board of War be and hereby are directed to procure three hundred and fifty Barrels of Flour, One hundred and sixteen Barrels of Pork, One hundred and Sixty five Barrels of Beef, Eleven Tierces of Rice, Three hundred and Fifty bushels of Pease, five hundred and fifty two Gallons of Molasses, Two Thousand, One hundred and Seventy Six pound of Soap and Seven hundred and Sixty Eight pound of Candles being a deficient Quantity … on board the Transports for the intended Expedition to Penobscot.
THREE
On Sunday, 18th July, 1779, Peleg Wadsworth worshipped at Christ Church on Salem Street where the rector was the Reverend Stephen Lewis who, until two years before, had been a British army chaplain. The rector had been captured with the rest of the defeated British army at Saratoga, yet in captivity he had changed his allegiance and sworn an oath of loyalty to the United States of America, which meant his congregation this summer Sunday was swollen by towns-folk curious about how he would preach when his adopted country was about to launch an expedition against his former comrades. The Reverend Lewis chose his text from the Book of Daniel. He related the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three men who had been hurled into King Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace and who, by God’s saving grace, had survived the flames. For an hour or more Wadsworth wondered how the scripture was relevant to the military preparations that obsessed Boston, and even whether some ancient lingering loyalty was making the rector ambivalent, but then the Reverend Lewis moved to his final peroration. He told how all the king’s men had assembled to watch the execution and instead they saw that ‘the fire had no power’. ‘The king’s men,’ the rector repeated fiercely, ‘saw that “the fire had no power!” There is God’s promise, in the twenty-seventh verse of the third chapter of Daniel! The fire set by the king’s men had no power!’ The Reverend Lewis stared directly at Wadsworth as he repeated the last two words, ‘no power!’, and Wadsworth thought of the redcoats waiting at Majabigwaduce and prayed that their fire would indeed have no power. He thought of the ships lying at anchor in Boston’s harbour, he thought of the militia who were assembling at Townsend where the ships would rendezvous with the troops, and he prayed again that the enemy’s fire would prove impotent.
After the service Wadsworth shook a multitude of hands and received the good wishes of many in the congregation, but he did not leave the church. Instead he waited beneath the organ loft until he was alone, then he went back up the aisle, opened a box pew at random, and knelt on a hassock newly embroidered with the flag of the United States. Around the flag were stitched the words ‘God Watcheth Over Us’ and Wadsworth prayed that was true, and prayed that God would watch over his family whom he named one by one: Elizabeth, his dear wife, then Alexander, Charles and Zilpha. He prayed that the campaign against the British in Majabigwaduce would be brief and successful. Brief because Elizabeth’s next child was due within five or six weeks and he was afraid for her and wanted to be with her when the baby was born. He prayed for the men whom he would lead into battle. He mouthed the prayer, the words a half-formed murmur, but each one distinct and fervent in his spirit. The cause is just, he told God, and men must die for it, and he begged God to receive those men into their new heavenly home, and he prayed for the widows who must be made and the orphans who would be left. ‘And if it please you, God,’ he said in a slightly louder voice, ‘let not Elizabeth be widowed, and permit my children to grow with a father in their house.’ He wondered how many other such prayers were being offered this Sunday morning.
‘General Wadsworth, sir?’ a tentative voice spoke behind him.
Wadsworth turned to see a tall, slim young man in a dark green uniform coat crossed by a white belt. The young man looked anxious, worried perhaps that he had disturbed Wadsworth’s devotions. He had dark hair that was bound into a short, thick pigtail. For a moment Wadsworth supposed the man had been sent to him with orders, then the memory of a much younger boy flooded his mind and the memory allowed him to recognize the man. ‘William Dennis!’ Wadsworth said with real pleasure. He did some quick addition in his head and realized Dennis must now be nineteen years old. ‘It was eight years ago we last met!’
‘I hoped you’d recollect me, sir,’ Dennis said, pleased.
‘Of course I remember you!’ Wadsworth reached across the box pew to shake the young man’s hand, ‘and remember you well!’
‘I heard you were here, sir,’ Dennis said, ‘so took the liberty of seeking you out.’
‘I’m glad!’
‘And you’re a general now, sir.’
‘A leap from school-mastering, is it not?’ Wadsworth said wryly, ‘and you?’
‘A lieutenant in the Continental Marines, sir.’
‘I congratulate you.’
‘And bound for Penobscot, sir, as are you.’
‘You’re on the Warren?’
‘I am, sir, but posted to the Vengeance.’ The Vengeance was one of the privateers, a twenty-gun ship.
‘Then we shall share a victory,’ Wadsworth said. He opened the pew door and gestured towards the street. ‘Will you walk with me to the harbour?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘You attended service, I hope?’
‘The Reverend Frobisher preached at West Church,’ Dennis said, ‘and I wanted to hear him.’
‘You don’t sound impressed,’ Wadsworth said, amused.
‘He chose a text from the Sermon on the Mount,’ Dennis said, ‘“He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”’
‘Ah!’ Wadsworth said with a grimace. ‘Was he saying that God is not on our side? If so, it sounds dispiriting.’
‘He was assuring us, sir, that the revealed truths of our faith cannot depend on the outcome of a battle, a campaign or even a war. He said we cannot know God’s will, sir, except for that part which illuminates our conscience.’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ Wadsworth allowed.
‘And he said war is the devil’s business, sir.’
‘That’s certainly true,’ Wadsworth said as they left the church, ‘but hardly an apt sermon for a town about to send its men to war?’ He closed the church door and saw that the wind-driven drizzle that had blown him uphill from the harbour had lifted and the sky was clearing itself of high, scudding clouds. He walked with Dennis towards the water, wondering when the fleet would leave. Commodore Saltonstall had given the order to set sail on the previous Thursday, but had postponed the departure because the wind had risen to a gale strong enough to part ships’ cables. But the great fleet must sail soon. It would go eastwards, towards the enemy, towards the devil’s business.
He glanced at Dennis. He had grown into a handsome young man. His dark green coat was faced with white and his white breeches piped with green. He wore a straight sword in a leather scabbard trimmed with silver oak leaves. ‘I have never understood,’ Wadsworth said, ‘why the marines wear green. Wouldn’t blue be more, well, marine?’
‘I’m told that the only cloth that was available in Philadelphia, sir, was green.’
‘Ah! That thought never occurred to me. How are your parents?’
‘Very well, sir, thank you,’ Dennis said enthusiastically. ‘They’ll be pleased to know I met you.’
‘Send them my respects,’ Wadsworth said. He had taught William Dennis to read and to write, he had taught him grammar in both Latin and English, but then the family had moved to Connecticut and Wadsworth had lost touch. He remembered Dennis well, though. He had been a bright boy, alert and mischievous, but never malevolent. ‘I beat you once, didn’t I?’ he asked.
‘Twice, sir,’ Dennis said with a grin, ‘and I deserved both punishments.’
‘That was never a duty I enjoyed,’ Wadsworth said.
‘But necessary?’
‘Oh, indeed.’
‘Their conversation was constantly interrupted by men who wished to shake their hands and wish them success against the British. ‘Give them hell, General,’ one man said, a sentiment echoed by everyone who accosted the pair. Wadsworth smiled, shook offered hands and finally escaped the well-wishers by entering the Bunch of Grapes, a tavern close to Long Wharf. ‘I think God will forgive us for crossing a tavern threshold on the Sabbath day,’ he said.
‘It’s more like the army’s headquarters these days,’ Dennis said, amused. The tavern was crowded with men in uniforms, many of whom were gathered by a wall where notices had been tacked, so many notices that they overlapped each other. Some offered bounties to men willing to serve on privateers, others had been put there by Solomon Lovell’s staff.
‘We’re to sleep aboard the ships tonight!’ a man shouted, then saw Wadsworth. ‘Is that because we’re sailing tomorrow, General?’
‘I hope so,’ Wadsworth said, ‘but make sure you’re all aboard by nightfall.’
‘Can I bring her?’ the man asked. He had his arm around one of the tavern’s whores, a pretty young red-haired girl who already looked drunk.
Wadsworth ignored the question, instead leading Dennis to an empty table at the back of the room, which was alive with conversation, hope and optimism. A burly man in a salt-stained sailor’s coat stood and thumped a table with his fist. He raised a tankard when the room had fallen silent. ‘Here’s to victory at Bagaduce!’ he shouted. ‘Death to the Tories, and to the day when we carry fat George’s head through Boston on the point of a bayonet!’
‘Much is expected of us,’ Wadsworth said when the cheers had ended.
‘King George might not oblige us with his head,’ Dennis said, amused, ‘but I’m sure we shall not disappoint the other expectations.’ He waited as Wadsworth ordered oyster stew and ale. ‘Did you know that folk are buying shares in the expedition?’
‘Shares?’
‘The privateer owners, sir, are selling the plunder they expect to take. I assume you haven’t invested?’
‘I was never a speculator,’ Wadsworth said. ‘How does it work?’
‘Well, Captain Thomas of the Vengeance, sir, expects to capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of plunder, and he’s offering a hundred shares in that expectation for fifteen pounds apiece.’
‘Good Lord! And what if he doesn’t capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of material?’
‘Then the speculators lose, sir.’
‘I suppose they must, yes. And people are buying?’
‘Many! I believe the Vengeance’s shares are trading upwards of twenty-two pounds each now.’
‘What a world we live in,’ Wadsworth said, amused. ‘Tell me,’ he pushed the jug of ale towards Dennis, ‘what you were doing before you joined the marines?’
‘I was studying, sir.’
‘Harvard?’
‘Yale.’
‘Then I didn’t beat you nearly often enough or hard enough,’ Wadsworth said.
Dennis laughed. ‘My ambition is the law.’
‘A noble ambition.’
‘I hope so, sir. When the British are defeated I shall go back to my studies.’
‘I see you carry them with you,’ Wadsworth said, nodding towards a book-shaped lump in the tail of the lieutenant’s coat, ‘or is that the scriptures?’
‘Beccaria, sir,’ Dennis said, pulling the book out of his tail pocket. ‘I’m reading him for pleasure, or should I say enlightenment?’
‘Both, I hope. I’ve heard of him,’ Wadsworth said, ‘and very much want to read him.’
‘You’ll permit me to lend you the book when I’ve finished it?’
‘That would be kind,’ Wadsworth said. He opened the book, On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria, newly translated from the Italian, and he saw the minutely written pencilled notes on the margins of almost every page, and he thought how sad it was that a sterling young man like Dennis should need to go to war. Then he thought that though the rain might indeed fall on the just and unjust alike, it was unthinkable that God would allow decent men who fought in a noble cause to lose. That was a comforting reflection. ‘Doesn’t Beccaria have strange ideas?’ he asked.
‘He believes judicial execution is both wrong and ineffective, sir.’
‘Really?’
‘He argues the case cogently, sir.’
‘He’ll need to!’
They ate, and afterwards walked the few paces to the harbour where the ships’ masts made a forest. Wadsworth looked for the sloop that would carry him to battle, but he could not make the Sally out amongst the tangle of hulls and masts and rigging. A gull cried overhead, a dog ran along the wharf with a cod’s head in its mouth and a legless beggar shuffled towards him. ‘Wounded at Saratoga, sir,’ the beggar said and Wadsworth handed the man a shilling.
‘Can I hail you a boat, sir?’ Dennis asked.
‘That would be kind.’
Peleg Wadsworth gazed at the fleet and remembered his morning prayers. There was so much confidence in Boston, so much hope and so many expectations, but war, he knew from experience, truly was the devil’s business.
And it was time to go to war.
‘This is not seemly,’ Doctor Calef said.
Brigadier McLean, standing beside the doctor, ignored the protest.
‘It is not seemly!’ Calef said louder.
‘It is necessary,’ Brigadier McLean retorted in a tone harsh enough to startle the doctor. The troops had worshipped in the open air that Sunday morning, the Scottish voices singing strongly in the blustery wind that fetched slaps of rain to dapple the harbour. The Reverend Campbell, the 82nd’s chaplain, had preached from a text in Isaiah: ‘In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan,’ a text that McLean accepted was relevant, but he wondered whether he had a sword strong and great and sore enough to punish the troops he knew would surely come to dislodge him. The rain was falling more steadily now, drenching the ridgetop where the fort was being made and where the two regiments paraded in a hollow square. ‘These men are new to war,’ McLean explained to Calef, ‘and most have never seen a battle, so they need to learn the consequences of disobedience.’ He walked towards the square’s centre where a Saint Andrew’s cross had been erected. A young man, stripped to the waist, was tied to the cross with his back exposed to the wind and rain.
A sergeant pushed a folded strip of leather between the young man’s teeth. ‘Bite on that, boy, and take your punishment like a man.’
McLean raised his voice so that every soldier could hear him. ‘Private Macintosh attempted to desert. In so doing he broke his oath to his king, to his country and to God. For that he will be punished, as will any man here who tries to follow his example.’
‘I don’t care if he’s punished,’ Calef said when the brigadier rejoined him, ‘but must it be done on the Lord’s day? Can it not wait till tomorrow?’
‘No,’ McLean said, ‘it cannot.’ He nodded to the sergeant. ‘Do your duty.’
Two drummer boys would do the whipping while a third beat the strokes on his drum. Private Macintosh had been caught trying to sneak across the low, marshy neck that joined Majabigwaduce to the mainland. That was the only route off the peninsula, unless a man stole a boat or, at a pinch, swam across the harbour, and McLean had placed a picquet in the trees close to the neck. They had brought Macintosh back and he had been sentenced to two hundred lashes, the severest punishment McLean had ever ordered, but he had few enough men as it was and he needed to deter others from desertion.
Desertion was a problem. Most men were content enough, but there were always a few who saw the promise of a better existence in the vastness of North America. Life here was a great deal easier than in the Highlands of Scotland, and Macintosh had made his run and now he would be punished.
‘One!’ the sergeant called.
‘Lay it on hard,’ McLean told the two drummer boys, ‘you’re not here to tickle him.’
‘Two!’
McLean let his mind wander as the leather whips criss-crossed the man’s back. He had seen many floggings in his years of service, and had ordered executions too, because floggings and executions were the enforcers of duty. He saw many of the soldiers staring aghast at the sight, so the punishment was probably working. McLean did not enjoy punishment parades, no one in his right mind would, but they were unavoidable and, with luck, Macintosh would reform into a decent soldier.
And what Leviathan, McLean wondered, would Macintosh have to fight? A schooner captained by a loyalist had put into Majabigwaduce a week before with a report that the rebels in Boston were assembling a fleet and an army. ‘We were told there were forty or more ships coming your way, sir,’ the schooner’s captain had told him, ‘and they’re gathering upwards of three thousand men.’
Maybe that was true and maybe not. The schooner’s captain had not visited Boston, just heard a rumour in Nantucket, and rumour, McLean knew, could inflate a company into a battalion and a battalion into an army. Nevertheless he had taken the information seriously enough to send the schooner back southwards with a despatch to Sir Henry Clinton in New York. The despatch merely said that McLean expected to be attacked soon and could not hold out without reinforcements. Why, he wondered, had he been given so few men and ships? If the crown wanted this piece of country, then why not send an adequate force? ‘Thirty-eight!’ the sergeant shouted. There was blood on Macintosh’s back now, blood diluted by rain, but still enough blood to trickle down and darken the waistband of his kilt. ‘Thirty-nine,’ the sergeant bellowed, ‘and lay it on hard!’
McLean resented the time this punishment parade stole from his preparations. He knew time was short and the fort was nowhere near completed. The trench about the four walls was scarcely two feet deep, the ramparts themselves not much higher. It was an excuse for a fort, a pathetic little earthwork, and he needed both men and time. He had offered wages to any civilian who was willing to work and, when insufficient men came forward, he sent patrols to impress labour.
‘Sixty-one!’ the sergeant shouted. Macintosh was whimpering now, the sound stifled by the leather gag. He shifted his weight and blood squelched in one shoe, then spilt over the shoe’s edge.
‘He’ll not take much more,’ Calef growled. Calef was replacing the battalion surgeon who was sick with a fever.
‘Keep going!’ McLean said.
‘You want to kill him?’
‘I want the battalion,’ McLean said, ‘to be more frightened of the lash than of the enemy.’
‘Sixty-two!’ the sergeant shouted.
‘Tell me,’ McLean suddenly turned on the doctor, ‘why is the rumour being spread that I plan to hang any civilian who supports the rebellion?’
Calef looked uncomfortable. He flinched as the whipped man whimpered again, then looked defiantly at the general. ‘To persuade such disaffected people to leave the region, of course. You don’t want rebels lurking in the woods hereabouts.’
‘Nor do I want a reputation as a hangman! We did not come here to persecute folk, but to persuade them to return to their proper allegiance. I would be grateful, Doctor, if a counter-rumour was propagated. That I have no intentions of hanging any man, rebel or not.’
‘God’s blood, man, I can see bone!’ the doctor protested, ignoring McLean’s strictures. The whimpers had become moans. McLean saw that the drummer boys were using less strength now, not because their arms were weakening, but out of pity, and neither he nor the sergeant corrected them.
McLean stopped the punishment at a hundred lashes. ‘Cut him down, Sergeant,’ he ordered, ‘and carry him to the doctor’s house.’ He turned away from the bloody mess on the cross. ‘Any of you who follow Macintosh’s example will follow him here! Now dismiss the men to their duties.’
The civilians who had volunteered or been conscripted for labour trudged up the hill. One man, tall and gaunt, with wild dark hair and angry eyes pushed his way past McLean’s aides to confront the general. ‘You will be punished for this!’ the man snarled.
‘For what?’ McLean enquired.
‘For working on the Sabbath!’ the man said. He towered over McLean. ‘In all my days I have never worked on the Sabbath, never! You make me a sinner!’
McLean held his temper. A dozen or so other men had paused and were watching the gaunt man, and McLean suspected they would join the protest and refuse to desecrate a Sunday by working if he yielded. ‘So why will you not work on a Sunday, sir?’ McLean asked.
‘It is the Lord’s day, and we are commanded to keep it holy.’ The man jabbed a finger at the brigadier, stopping just short of striking McLean’s chest. ‘It is God’s commandment!’
‘And Christ commanded that you render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,’ McLean retorted, ‘and today Caesar demands you make a rampart. But I will accommodate you, sir, I will accommodate you by not paying you. Work is paid labour, but today you will freely offer me your assistance which, sir, is a Christian act.’
‘I will not …’ the man began.
‘Lieutenant Moore!’ McLean raised his blackthorn stick to summon the lieutenant, though the gesture looked threatening and the gaunt man took a backwards step. ‘Call back the drummer boys!’ McLean called, ‘I need another man whipped!’ He turned his gaze back to the man. ‘You either assist me, sir,’ he said quietly, ‘or I shall scourge you.’
The tall man glanced at the empty Saint Andrew’s cross. ‘I shall pray for your destruction,’ he promised, but the fire had gone from his voice. He gave McLean a last defiant look, then turned away.
The civilians worked. They raised the wall of the fort another foot by laying logs along the low earthen berm. Some men cut down more trees, opening fields of fire for the fort, while others used picks and shovels to sink a well in the fort’s north-eastern bastion. McLean ordered one long spruce trunk to be trimmed and stripped of its bark, then a sailor from the Albany attached a small pulley to the narrow end of the trunk and a long line was rove through the pulley’s block. A deep hole was hacked in the south-western bastion and the spruce trunk was raised as a flagpole. Soldiers packed the hole with stones and, when the pole was reckoned to be stable, McLean ordered the union flag to be hauled into the damp sky. ‘We shall call this place …’ he paused as the wind caught the flag and stretched it into the cloud-shrouded daylight. ‘Fort George,’ McLean said tentatively, as if testing the name. He liked it. ‘Fort George,’ he announced firmly and took off his hat. ‘God save the King!’
Highlanders of the 74th started on a smaller earthwork, a gun emplacement, which they made close to the shore and facing the harbour mouth. The soil was easier near the beach and they swiftly threw up a crescent of earth that they re inforced with stones and logs. Other logs were split to make platforms for the cannon that would face the harbour mouth. A similar battery was being constructed on Cross Island so that an enemy ship, daring the harbour mouth, would face Captain Mowat’s three broadsides and artillery fire from the bastions on either side of the entrance.
The rain lifted and fog drifted over the wide river reach. The new flag flew bright above Majabigwaduce, but for how long, McLean wondered, for how long?
Monday dawned fine in Boston. The wind came from the south west and the sky was clear. ‘The glass rises,’ Commodore Saltonstall announced to General Solomon Lovell on board the Continental frigate Warren. ‘We shall sail, General.’
‘And God grant us a fair voyage and a triumphant return,’ Lovell answered.
‘Amen,’ Saltonstall said grudgingly, then snapped out orders that signals should be made ordering the fleet to raise anchor and follow the flagship out of the harbour.
Solomon Lovell, almost fifty years old, towered over the Commodore. Lovell was a farmer, a legislator and a patriot, and it was reckoned in Massachusetts that Solomon Lovell had been well named for he enjoyed a reputation as a wise, judicious and sensible man. His neighbours in Weymouth had elected him to the Assembly in Boston where he was well-liked because, in a fractious legislature, Lovell was a peace-maker. He possessed an unquenchable optimism that fairness and the willingness to see another man’s point of view would bring mutual prosperity, while his height and strong build, the latter earned by years of hard labour on his farm, added to the impression of utter dependability. His face was long and firm-jawed, while his eyes crinkled with easy amusement. His thick dark hair greyed at the temples, giving him a most distinguished appearance, and so it was no wonder that his fellow lawmakers had seen fit to give Solomon Lovell high rank in the Massachusetts Militia. Lovell, they reckoned, could be trusted. A few malcontents grumbled that his military experience was next to nothing, but Lovell’s supporters, and they were many, believed Solomon Lovell was just the man for the task. He got things done. And his lack of experience was offset by his deputy, Peleg Wadsworth, who had fought under General Washington’s command, and by Commodore Saltonstall, the naval commander, who was an even more experienced officer. Lovell would never be short of expert advice to hone his solid judgement.
The great anchor cable inched on board. The sailors at the capstan were chanting as they tramped round and round. ‘Here’s a rope!’ a bosun shouted.
‘To hang the Pope!’ the men responded.
‘And a chunk of cheese!’
‘To choke him!’
Lovell smiled approvingly, then strolled to the stern rail where he stared at the fleet, marvelling that Massachusetts had assembled so many ships so quickly. Lying closest to the Warren was a brig, the Diligent, that had been captured from Britain’s Royal Navy, and beyond her was a sloop, the Providence, which had captured her, both vessels with twelve guns and both belonging to the Continental Navy. Anchored behind them, and flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy, were two brigs, the Tyrannicide and Hazard, and a brigantine, the Active. All were armed with fourteen cannon and, like the Warren, were now fully manned because the General Court and the Board of War had given permission for press gangs to take sailors from Boston’s taverns and from merchant vessels in the harbour.
The Warren, with its eighteen-pounder and twelve-pounder cannon, was the most powerful ship in the fleet, but a further seven ships could all match or outgun any one of the three British sloops that were reported to be waiting at Majabigwaduce. Those seven ships were all privateers. The Hector and the Hunter carried eighteen guns apiece, while Charming Sally, General Putnam, Black Prince, Monmouth and Vengeance carried twenty guns each. There were smaller privateers too, like the Sky Rocket with her sixteen guns. In all, eighteen warships would sail to Majabigwaduce and those vessels mounted more than three hundred cannon, while the twenty-one transport ships would carry the men, the supplies, the guns and the fervent hopes of Massachusetts. Lovell was proud of his state. It had made up the deficiencies in the supplies, and the ships now carried enough food to feed sixteen hundred men for two months. Why, there were six tons of flour alone! Six tons!
Lovell, thinking of the extraordinary efforts that had been made to provision the expedition, slowly became aware that men were shouting at the Warren from other ships. The anchor was still not raised, but the bosun ordered the seamen to stop their chant and their work. It seemed the fleet would not leave after all. Commodore Saltonstall, who had been standing by the frigate’s wheel, turned and paced back to Lovell. ‘It appears,’ the commodore said sourly, ‘that the commander of your artillery is not aboard his ship.’
‘He must be,’ Lovell said.
‘Must?’
‘The orders were plain. Officers were to be aboard last night.’
‘The Samuel reports that Colonel Revere is not on board. So what shall we do, General?’
Lovell was startled by the question. He had thought he was being given information, not being asked to make a decision. He stared across the sun-sparkling water as though the distant Samuel, a brig that was carrying the expedition’s cannon, might suggest an answer.
‘Well?’ Saltonstall pressed, ‘do we sail without him and his officers?’
‘His officers?’ Lovell asked.
‘It transpires,’ Saltonstall appeared to relish delivering the bad news, ‘that Colonel Revere allowed his officers to spend a last night ashore.’
‘Ashore?’ Lovell asked, astonished, then stared again at the distant brig. ‘We need Colonel Revere,’ he said.
‘We do?’ Saltonstall asked sarcastically.
‘Oh, a good officer!’ Lovell said enthusiastically. ‘He was one of the men who rode to warn Concord and Lexington. Doctor Warren, God rest his soul, sent them, and this ship is named for Doctor Warren, is it not?’
‘Is it?’ Saltonstall asked carelessly.
‘A very great patriot, Doctor Warren,’ Lovell said feelingly.
‘And how does that affect Colonel Revere’s absence?’ Saltonstall asked bluntly.
‘It,’ Lovell began and realized he had no idea what he could answer, and so he straightened and squared his shoulders. ‘We shall wait,’ he announced firmly.
‘We shall wait!’ Saltonstall called to his officers. He began pacing his quarter-deck again, starboard to larboard and larboard to starboard, occasionally shooting a malevolent look at Lovell as though the general were personally responsible for the missing officer. Lovell found the commodore’s hostility uncomfortable and so turned to stare at the fleet again. Many ships had loosed their topsails and men now scrambled along the yards to furl the canvas.
‘General Lovell?’ a new voice disturbed him and Lovell turned to see a tall marine officer whose sudden presence made the general take an involuntary step backwards. There was an intensity in the marine’s face, and a ferocity, that made the face formidable. Just to see this man was to be impressed. He was even taller than Lovell, who was not a short man, and he had broad shoulders that strained the green cloth of his uniform jacket. He was holding his hat respectfully, revealing black hair that was cropped short over most of his scalp, but that he had allowed to grow long at the back so he could wear a short pigtail that was hardened with tar. ‘My name is Welch, sir,’ the marine said in a voice deep enough to match his hard face, ‘Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines.’
‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Welch,’ Lovell said, and that was true. If a man must sail into battle then he would pray to have a man like Welch at his side. The hilt of Welch’s sabre was worn down by use and, like its owner, seemed made for the efficient use of pure violence.
‘I’ve spoken to the commodore, sir,’ Welch said very formally, ‘and he gave his consent that my men should be at your disposal when not required for naval duties.’
‘That’s most encouraging,’ Lovell said.
‘Two hundred and twenty-seven marines, sir, fit for duty. Good men, sir.’
‘I’ve no doubt.’
‘Well-trained,’ Welch went on, his unblinking gaze fixed on Lovell’s eyes, ‘and well-disciplined.’
‘A most valuable addition to our force,’ Lovell said, unsure what else he could say.
‘I want to fight, sir,’ Welch said, as if he suspected Lovell might not use his marines.
‘I am confident the opportunity will come,’ Lovell said uneasily.
‘I hope so, sir,’ Welch said, then at last turned his gaze away from the general and nodded towards a fine-looking ship, the General Putnam, one of four privateers that had been commandeered by the Massachusetts Navy because their owners had baulked at volunteering their craft. The General Putnam carried twenty cannons, all of them nine-pounders, and she was reckoned one of the finest ships on the New England coast. ‘We put a score of marines on the Putnam, sir,’ Welch said, ‘and they’re led by Captain Carnes. You know him, sir?’
‘I know John Carnes,’ Lovell said, ‘he captains the Hector.’
‘This is his brother, sir, and a fine officer. He served under General Washington as a captain of artillery.’
‘A fine posting,’ Lovell said, ‘yet he left it for the marines?’
‘Captain Carnes prefers to see men up close as he kills them, sir,’ Welch said evenly, ‘but he knows his artillery, sir. He’s a very competent gunner.’
Lovell understood immediately that Saltonstall had despatched Welch with the news, implicitly suggesting that Colonel Revere could be left behind and replaced by Captain Carnes, and Lovell bristled at the suggestion. ‘We need Colonel Revere and his officers,’ he said.
‘I never suggested otherwise, sir,’ Welch said, ‘merely that Captain Carnes has an expertise that might be useful to you.’
Lovell felt acutely uncomfortable. He sensed that Welch had little faith in the militia and was trying to stiffen Lovell’s force with the professionalism of his marines, but Lovell was determined that Massachusetts should reap the credit for the expulsion of the British. ‘I’m sure Colonel Revere knows his business,’ Lovell said stoutly. Welch did not reply to that, but stared at Lovell who again felt disconcerted by the intensity of the gaze. ‘Of course, any advice Captain Carnes has … ’ Lovell said, and let his voice tail away.
‘I just wanted you to know we have an artilleryman in the marines, sir,’ Welch said, then stepped a pace back and offered Lovell a salute.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Lovell said, and felt relieved when the huge marine strode away.
The minutes passed. The church clocks in Boston struck the hour, the quarters and then the hour again. Major William Todd, one of the expedition’s two brigade majors, brought the general a mug of tea. ‘Newly made in the galley, sir.’
‘Thank you.’
‘The leaves captured by the brig King-Killer, sir,’ Todd said, sipping his own tea.
‘It’s kind of the enemy to supply us with tea,’ Lovell said lightly.
‘Indeed it is, sir,’ Todd said and then, after a pause, ‘So Mister Revere is delaying us?’
Lovell knew of the antipathy between Todd and Revere and did his best to defuse whatever was in the major’s mind. Todd was a good man, meticulous and hard-working, but somewhat unbending. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant-Colonel Revere has very good cause to be absent,’ he said firmly.
‘He always does,’ Todd said. ‘In all the time he commanded Castle Island I doubt he spent a single night there. Mister Revere, sir, likes the comfort of his wife’s bed.’
‘Don’t we all?’
Todd brushed a speck of lint from his blue uniform coat. ‘He told General Wadsworth that he supplied rations for Major Fellows’ men.’
‘I’m certain he had cause for that.’
‘Fellows died of the fever last August,’ Todd then stepped a pace back in deference to the approach of the commodore.
Saltonstall glowered again at Lovell from beneath the peak of his cocked hat. ‘If your damned fellow isn’t coming,’ Saltonstall said, ‘then perhaps we might be allowed to get on with this damned war without him?’
‘I’m sure Colonel Revere will be here very soon,’ Lovell said emolliently, ‘or we shall receive news of him. A messenger has been sent ashore, Commodore.’
Saltonstall grunted and walked away. Major Todd frowned at the retreating commodore. ‘He takes after his mother’s side of the family, I think. The Saltonstalls are usually most agreeable folk.’
Lovell was saved from responding by a hail from the brig Diligent. Colonel Revere, it seemed, had been sighted. He and three other officers were being rowed in the smart white-painted barge that served Castle Island, and the sternsheets of the barge, which was being rowed by a dozen blue-shirted men, were heaped high with baggage. Colonel Revere sat just forrard of the baggage and, as the barge came close to the Warren on its way to the brig Samuel, Revere waved up at Lovell. ‘God speed us, General!’ he shouted.
‘Where have you been?’ Lovell called sharply.
‘A last night with the family, General!’ Revere shouted happily, and then was out of earshot.
‘A last night with the family?’ Todd asked in wonderment.
‘He must have misunderstood my orders,’ Lovell said uncomfortably.
‘I think you will discover, sir,’ Todd said, ‘that Colonel Revere misunderstands all orders that are not to his liking.’
‘He’s a patriot, Major,’ Lovell reproved, ‘a fine patriot!’
It took more time for the fine patriot’s baggage to be hoisted aboard the brig, then the barge itself had to be readied for the voyage. It seemed Colonel Revere wished the Castle Island barge to be part of his equipment, for her oars were lashed to the thwarts and then she was attached by a towline to the Samuel. Then, at last, as the sun climbed to its height, the fleet was ready. The capstans turned again, the great anchors broke free and, with their sails bright in the summer sun, the might of Massachusetts sailed from Boston harbour.
To captivate, to kill and to destroy.
Lieutenant John Moore sat astride a camp stool, his legs either side of an empty powder barrel that served as a table. A tent sheltered him from a blustery west wind that brought spits of rain to patter hard on the yellowed canvas. Moore’s job as paymaster for the 82nd Regiment bored him, even though the detailed work was done by Corporal Brown who had been a clerk in a Leith counting-house before becoming drunk one morning and so volunteering for the army. Moore turned the pages of the black-bound ledger that recorded the regiment’s wages. ‘Why is Private Neill having fourpence a week deducted?’ Moore asked the corporal.
‘Lost his boot-blacking, sir.’
‘Boot-blacking cannot cost that much, surely?’
‘Expensive stuff, sir,’ Corporal Brown said.
‘Plainly. I should buy some and resell it to the regiment.’
‘Major Fraser wouldn’t like that, sir, on account that his brother already does.’
Moore sighed and turned another stiff page of the thick paybook. He was supposed to check the figures, but he knew Corporal Brown would have done a meticulous job, so instead he stared out of the tent’s open flaps to the western rampart of Fort George where some gunners were making a platform for one of their cannon. The rampart was still only waist high, though the ditch beyond was now lined with wooden spikes that were more formidable to look at than negotiate. Beyond the rampart was a long stretch of cleared ground studded with raw pine stumps. That land climbed gently to the peninsula’s bluff where trees still stood thick and where tendrils of fog drifted through dark branches. Corporal Brown saw where Moore was looking. ‘Can I ask you something, sir?’
‘Whatever enters your head, Brown.’
The corporal nodded towards the timbered bluff that was little more than half a mile from the fort. ‘Why didn’t the brigadier make the fort there, sir?’
‘You would have done so, Corporal, if you had command here?’
‘It’s the highest piece of land, sir. Isn’t that where you make a fort?’
Moore frowned, not because he disapproved of the question, which, he thought, was an eminently sensible enquiry, but because he did not know how to frame the answer. To Moore it was obvious why McLean had chosen the lower position. It was to do with the interlocking of the ships’ guns and the fort’s cannon, with making the best of a difficult job, but though he knew the answer, he did not quite know how to express it. ‘From here,’ he said, ‘our guns command both the harbour entrance and the harbour itself. Suppose we were all up on that high ground? The enemy could sail past us, take the harbour and village, and then starve us out at their leisure.’
‘But if the bastards take that high ground, sir … ’ Brown said dubiously, leaving the thought unfinished.
‘If the bastards seize that high ground, Corporal,’ Moore said, ‘then they will place cannon there and fire down into the fort.’ That was the risk McLean had taken. He had given the enemy the chance to take the high ground, but only so that he could do his job better, which was to defend the harbour. ‘We don’t have enough men,’ Moore went on, ‘to defend the bluff, but I can’t think they’ll land men there. It’s much too steep.’
Yet the rebels would land somewhere. By leaning forward on his makeshift stool Moore could just make out the three sloops of war anchored in line across the harbour mouth. General McLean had suggested the enemy might try to attack that line, break it, and then land men on the beach below the fort and Moore tried to imagine such a fight. He tried to turn the wisps of fog into powder smoke, but his imagination failed. The eighteen-year-old John Moore had never experienced battle, and every day he wondered how he would respond to the smell of powder and the screams of the wounded and the chaos.
‘Lady approaching, sir,’ Corporal Brown warned Moore.
‘Lady?’ Moore asked, startled from his reverie, then saw that Bethany Fletcher was approaching the tent. He stood and ducked under the tent flap to greet her, but the sight of her face tied his tongue, so he simply stood there, awkward, hat in hand, smiling.
‘Lieutenant Moore,’ Bethany said, stopping a pace away.
‘Miss Fletcher,’ Moore managed to speak, ‘as ever, a pleasure.’ He bowed.
‘I was told to give you this, sir.’ Bethany held out a slip of paper.
The paper was a receipt for corn and fish that James Fletcher had sold to the quartermaster. ‘Four shillings!’ Moore said.
‘The quartermaster said you’d pay me, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘If Mister Reidhead so orders, then I shall obey. And it will be my pleasure to pay you, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said. He looked at the receipt again. ‘It must have been a rare quantity of corn and fish! Four shillings’ worth!’
Bethany bridled. ‘It was Mister Reidhead who decided the amount, sir.’
‘Oh, I am not suggesting that the amount is excessive,’ Moore said, reddening. If he lost his composure when faced by a girl, he thought, how would he ever face the enemy? ‘Corporal Brown!’
‘Sir?’
‘Four shillings for the lady!’
‘At once, sir,’ Brown said, coming from the tent, though instead of holding coins he brought a hammer and a chisel that he took to a nearby block of wood. He had one silver dollar that he laid on the timber, then he carefully placed the chisel’s blade to make a single radial cut in the coin. The hammer smacked down and the coin leaped up from the chisel’s bite. ‘It’s daft, sir, to slit a coin into five pieces,’ Brown grumbled, replacing the dollar. ‘Why can’t we make four pieces worth one shilling and threepence each?’
‘Because it’s easier to cut a coin into four parts rather than five?’ Moore asked.
‘Of course it is, sir. Cutting into four only needs a wide chisel blade and two cuts,’ Brown grumbled, then hammered another cut into the dollar, slicing away a wedge of silver that he pushed across the chopping block towards Bethany. ‘There, miss, one shilling.’
Bethany took the sharp-edged slice. ‘Is this how you pay the soldiers?’ she asked Moore.
‘Oh, we don’t get paid, miss,’ Corporal Brown answered, ‘except in promissory notes.’
‘Give Miss Fletcher the remainder of the coin,’ Moore suggested, ‘and she will have her four shillings and you need cut no more.’ There was a shortage of coinage so the brigadier had decreed that each silver dollar was worth five shillings. ‘Stop staring!’ Moore called sharply to the gunners who had paused in their work to admire Beth Fletcher. Moore picked up the ravaged dollar and held it out to Bethany. ‘There Miss Fletcher, your fee.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Bethany put the shilling slice back on the block. ‘So how many promissory notes do you have to write each week?’ she asked.
‘How many?’ Moore was momentarily puzzled by the question. ‘Oh, we don’t issue notes as such, Miss Fletcher, but we do record in the ledger what wages are owed. The specie is kept for more important duties, like paying you for corn and fish.’
‘And you must need a lot of corn and fish for two whole regiments,’ she said. ‘What is that? Two thousand men?’
‘If only we were so numerous,’ Moore said with a smile. ‘In truth, Miss Fletcher, the 74th musters just four hundred and forty men and we Hamiltons number scarce half that. And we hear now that the rebels are readying a fleet and an army to assail us!’
‘And you think that report is true?’ Bethany asked.
‘The fleet, perhaps, is already on its way.’
Bethany stared past the three sloops to where wisps of mist drifted across the wide Penobscot River. ‘I pray, sir,’ she said, ‘that there will be no fighting.’
‘And I pray otherwise,’ Moore said.
‘Really?’ Bethany sounded surprised. She turned to look at the young lieutenant as if she had never really noticed him before. ‘You want there to be a battle?’
‘Soldiering is my chosen profession, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said, and felt very fraudulent as he said it, ‘and battle is the fire in which soldiers are tempered.’
‘The world would be better without such fire,’ Bethany said.
‘True, no doubt,’ Moore said, ‘but we did not strike the flint on the iron, Miss Fletcher. The rebels did that, they set the fire and our task is to extinguish the flame.’ Bethany said nothing, and Moore decided he had sounded pompous. ‘You and your brother should come to Doctor Calef’s house in the evening,’ he said.
‘We should, sir?’ Bethany asked, looking again at Moore.
‘There is music in the garden when the weather permits, and dancing.’
‘I don’t dance, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘Oh, it is the officers who dance,’ Moore said hastily, ‘the sword dance.’ He suppressed an urge to demonstrate a capering step. ‘You would be most welcome,’ he said instead.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Bethany said, then pocketed the ravaged dollar and turned away.
‘Miss Fletcher!’ Moore called after her.
She turned back. ‘Sir?’
But Moore had no idea what to say, indeed he had surprised himself by calling after her in the first place. She was gazing at him, waiting. ‘Thank you for the supplies,’ he managed to say.
‘It is business, Lieutenant,’ Beth said evenly.
‘Even so, thank you,’ Moore said, confused.
‘Does that mean you’d sell to the Yankees too, miss?’ Corporal Brown asked cheerfully.
‘We might give to them,’ Beth said, and Moore could not tell whether she was teasing or not. She looked at him, gave a half-smile and walked away.
‘A rare good-looking lassie,’ Corporal Brown said.
‘Is she?’ Moore asked most unconvincingly. He was gazing down the slope to where the settlement’s houses were spread along the harbour shore. He tried to imagine men fighting there, ranks of men blasting musket fire, the cannons thundering the sky with noise, the harbour filled with half-sunken ships, and he thought how sad it would be to die amidst that chaos without ever having held a girl like Bethany in his arms.
‘Are we finished with the ledgers, sir?’ Brown asked.
‘We are finished with the ledgers,’ Moore said.
He wondered if he really was a soldier. He wondered if he would have the courage to face battle. He stared after Bethany and felt lost.
‘Reluctance, sir, reluctance. Gross reluctance,’ Colonel Jonathan Mitchell, who commanded the Cumberland County militia, glared at Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth as though it was all Wadsworth’s fault. ‘Culpable reluctance.’
‘You conscripted?’ Wadsworth asked.
‘Of course we goddamn conscripted. We had to conscript! Half the reluctant bastards are conscripted. We didn’t get volunteers, just whining excuses, so we declared martial law, sir, and I sent troops to every township and rounded the bastards up, but too many ran and skulked, sir. They are reluctant, I tell you, reluctant!’
It had taken the fleet two days to sail to Townsend where the militia had been ordered to muster. General Lovell and Brigadier-General Wadsworth had been hoping for fifteen hundred men, but fewer than nine hundred waited for embarkation. ‘Eight hundred and ninety-four, sir, to be precise,’ Marston, Lovell’s secretary, informed his master.
‘Dear God,’ Lovell said.
‘It surely isn’t too late to request a Continental battalion?’ Wadsworth suggested.
‘Unthinkable,’ Lovell said instantly. The State of Massachusetts had declared itself capable of ejecting the British on its own, and the General Court would not look happily on a request for help from General Washington’s troops. The Court, indeed, had been reluctant to accept Commodore Saltonstall’s aid, except that the Warren was so obviously a formidable warship and to ignore its presence in Massachusetts waters would have been perverse. ‘We do have the commodore’s marines,’ Lovell pointed out, ‘and I’m assured the commodore will willingly release them to land service at Majabigwaduce.’
‘We shall need them,’ Wadsworth said. He had inspected the three militia battalions and had been appalled by what he found. Some men looked fit, young and eager, but far too many were either too old, too young or too sick. One man had even paraded on crutches. ‘You can’t fight,’ Wadsworth had told the man.
‘Which is what I told the soldiers when they came to get us,’ the man said. He was grey-bearded, gaunt and wild-haired.
‘Then go home,’ Wadsworth said.
‘How?’
‘Same way you got here,’ Wadsworth had said, despair making him irritable. A few paces down the line he found a curly-haired boy with cheeks that had never felt a razor. ‘What’s your name, son?’ Wadsworth asked.
‘Israel, sir.’
‘Israel what?’
‘Trask, sir.’
‘How old are you, Israel Trask?’
‘Fifteen, sir,’ the boy said, trying to stand straighter. His voice had not broken and Wadsworth guessed he was scarcely fourteen. ‘Three years in the army, sir,’ Trask said.
‘Three years?’ Wadsworth asked in disbelief.
‘Fifer with the infantry, sir,’ Trask said. He had a sackcloth bag hanging at his back and a slender wooden pipe protruded from the bag’s neck.
‘You resigned from the infantry?’ Wadsworth asked, amused.
‘I was taken prisoner, sir,’ Trask said, evidently offended by the question, ‘and exchanged. And here I am, sir, ready to fight the syphilitic bastards again.’
If a boy had used that language in Wadsworth’s classroom it would have provoked a caning, but these were strange times and so Wadsworth just patted the boy’s shoulder before walking on down the long line. Some men looked at him resentfully and he supposed they were the men who had been pressed by the militia. Maybe two thirds looked healthy and young enough for soldiering, but the rest were miserable specimens. ‘I thought you had a thousand men enrolled in Cumberland County alone?’ Wadsworth remarked to Colonel Mitchell.
‘Ha,’ Mitchell said.
‘Ha?’ Wadsworth responded coldly.
‘The Continental Army takes our best. We find a dozen decent recruits and the Continentals take six away and the other six run off to join the privateers.’ Mitchell put a plug of tobacco in his mouth. ‘I wish to God we had a thousand, but Boston doesn’t send their wages and we don’t have rations. And there are some places we can’t recruit.’
‘Loyalist places?’
‘Loyalist places,’ Mitchell had agreed grimly.
Wadsworth had walked on down the line, noting a one-eyed man who had some kind of nervous affliction that made his facial muscles quiver. The man grinned, and Wadsworth shuddered. ‘Does he have his senses?’ he asked Colonel Mitchell.
‘Enough to shoot straight,’ Mitchell said dourly.
‘Half don’t even have muskets!’
The fleet had brought five hundred muskets from the Boston Armory that would be rented to the militia. Most men at least knew how to use them because in these eastern counties folk expected to kill their own food and to skin the prey for clothing. They wore deerskin jerkins and trousers, deerskin shoes and carried deerskin pouches and packs. Wadsworth inspected them all and reckoned he would be lucky if five hundred would prove useful men, then he borrowed a horse from the parson and gave them a speech from the saddle.
‘The British,’ he called, ‘have invaded Massachusetts! They must despise us, because they have sent few men and few ships! They believe we are powerless to evict them, but we are going to show them that Massachusetts men will defend their land! We will embark on our fleet!’ He waved towards the masts showing above the southern rooftops. ‘And we shall fight them, we shall defeat them and we shall evict them! You will return home with laurels on your brows!’ It was not the most inspiring speech, Wadsworth thought, but he was encouraged when men cheered it. The cheer was late in starting, and it was feeble at first, but then the paraded ranks became enthusiastic.
The parson, a genial man about ten years older than Wadsworth, helped the brigadier down from the saddle. ‘I trust they will have laurels on their brows,’ the parson said, ‘but most would prefer beefsteak in their stomachs.’
‘I trust they find that as well,’ Wadsworth said.
The Reverend Jonathan Murray took the horse’s reins and led it towards his house. ‘They may not look impressive, General, but they’re good men!’
‘Who needed pressing?’ Wadsworth enquired drily.
‘Only a few,’ Murray answered. ‘They worry about their families, their crops. Get them to Majabigwaduce and they’ll serve willingly enough.’
‘The blind, the halt and the lame?’
‘Such men were good enough for our Lord,’ Murray said, evidently seriously. ‘And what if a few are half-blind? A man needs only one eye to aim a musket.’
General Lovell had quartered himself in the parson’s ample house and, that evening, he convened all the senior officers of the expedition. Murray possessed a fine round table, made of maple wood, about which he normally led studies of the scripture, but which that night served to accommodate the naval and land commanders. Those who could not find a chair stood at the edges of the room, which was lit by eight candles in pewter sticks, grouped in the table’s centre. Moths beat about the flames. General Lovell had taken the parson’s high-backed chair and he gently rapped the table for silence. ‘This is the first time,’ Lovell said, ‘that we’ve all gathered together. You probably all know each other, but permit me to make introductions.’ He went around the table, naming Wadsworth first, then Commodore Saltonstall and the three colonels of the militia regiments. Major Jeremiah Hill, the expedition’s adjutant -general, nodded solemnly as his name was pronounced, as did the two brigade majors, William Todd and Gawen Brown. The quartermaster, Colonel Tyler, sat next to Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the Surgeon General. ‘I trust we won’t require Doctor Downer’s services,’ Lovell said with a smile, then indicated the men who stood at the room’s edges. Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines glowered next to Captain Hoysteed Hacker of the Continental Navy who commanded the Providence while Captain Philip Brown commanded the brig Diligent. Six privateer captains had come to the house and Lovell named them all, then smiled at Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who stood beside the door. ‘And last, but by no means least, our commander of the artillery train, Colonel Revere.’
‘Whose services,’ Revere said, ‘I trust you will require!’
A murmur of laughter sounded in the room, though Wadsworth noticed the look of grim distaste on Todd’s bespectacled face. The major glanced once at Revere, then studiously avoided looking at his enemy.
‘I also requested the Reverend Murray to attend this council,’ Lovell went on when the small laughter had subsided, ‘and I now ask him to open our proceedings with a word of prayer.’
Men clasped their hands and bowed their heads as Murray entreated Almighty God to pour His blessings on the men and ships now assembled in Townsend. Wadsworth had his head bowed, but sneaked a sidelong look at Revere who, he noticed, had not lowered his head, but was staring balefully towards Todd. Wadsworth closed his eyes again. ‘Give these men of Thy strength, Lord,’ the Reverend Murray prayed, ‘and bring these warriors safe home, victorious, to their wives, and to their children and to their families. We ask all this in Thy holy name, O Lord. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ the assembled officers echoed.
‘Thank you, Reverend,’ Lovell said, smiling happily. He took a breath and looked about the room, then stated the reason they were gathered together. ‘The British have landed at Majabigwaduce, as you know, and our orders are to captivate, kill or destroy them. Major Todd, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what we know of the enemy’s dispositions?’
William Todd, his spectacles reflecting the candlelight, shuffled papers. ‘We have received intelligence,’ he said in his dry voice, ‘from patriots in the Penobscot region. Notably from Colonel Buck, but from others too. We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops of war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.’ Todd studied the earnest faces around the table. ‘McLean,’ he went on, ‘is an experienced soldier. Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment.’
‘A mercenary?’ Commodore Saltonstall asked in a voice that reeked of scorn.
‘I understand he was seconded to Portuguese service by the King of England,’ Todd said, ‘so no, not a mercenary. Of late he has been Governor of Halifax and is now entrusted with the forces at Majabigwaduce. My apprehension of him,’ Todd leaned back as if to suggest that he was speculating now, ‘is that he is an old man who was put out to pasture at Halifax and whose best days are, perhaps, behind him.’ He shrugged as if to express uncertainty. ‘He leads two regiments, neither of which has seen recent service. Indeed, his own regiment is newly raised and is therefore entirely inexperienced. The notional complement of a British regiment is one thousand men, but rarely do the real numbers exceed eight hundred, so a reasonable calculation suggests that our enemy comprises fifteen or sixteen hundred infantry with artillery support and, of course, the Royal Marines and the crews of the three ships.’ Todd unrolled a large sheet of paper on which was drawn a crude map of Majabigwaduce and, as the men craned forward to see the plan, he showed where the defences were situated. He began with the fort, marked as a square. ‘As of Wednesday,’ he said, ‘the walls were still low enough for a man to jump. The work goes slowly, we hear.’ He tapped the three sloops that formed a barrier just inside the harbour entrance. ‘Their broadsides face Penobscot Bay,’ he said, ‘and are supported by land batteries. There is one such battery here,’ he pointed to Cross Island, ‘and another on the peninsula here. Those two batteries will enfilade the harbour entrance.’
‘None on Dyce’s Head?’ Hoysteed Hacker asked.
‘Dyce’s Head?’ Lovell asked, and Hacker, who knew the coast well, pointed to the harbour’s southern side and explained that the entrance was dominated by a high bluff that bore the name Dyce’s Head. ‘If I recall rightly,’ Hacker went on, ‘that ground is the highest on the whole peninsula.’
‘We have not been informed of any batteries on Dyce’s Head,’ Todd said carefully.
‘So they’ve surrendered the high ground?’ Wadsworth asked in disbelief.
‘Our information is some days old,’ Todd warned.
‘High ground,’ Lovell said uncertainly, ‘will be a splendid place for our guns.’
‘Oh indeed,’ Wadsworth said, and Lovell looked relieved.
‘My guns will be ready,’ Revere said belligerently.
Lovell smiled at Revere. ‘Perhaps you will be good enough to tell our militia colonels what artillery support you will offer them?’
Revere straightened and William Todd stared fixedly at the table top. ‘I have six eighteen-pounder cannon,’ Revere said robustly, ‘with four hundred rounds apiece. They’re killers, gentlemen, and heavier than any guns I daresay the British have waiting for us. I have two nine-pounders with three hundred rounds apiece, and a pair of five-and-half-inch howitzers with one hundred rounds each.’ John Welch looked startled at that, then frowned. He began to say something, but checked his words before they became intelligible.
‘You had something to say, Captain?’ Wadsworth interrupted Revere.
The tall marine in his dark green uniform was still frowning. ‘If I were bombarding a fort, General,’ he said, ‘I’d want more howitzers. Lob bombs over the wall and kill the bastards from the inside. Howitzers and mortars. Do we have mortars?’
‘Do we have mortars?’ Wadsworth put the question to Revere.
Revere looked offended. ‘The eighteen-pounders will topple their walls like the trumpets of Jericho,’ he said, ‘and to finish,’ he looked at Lovell with some indignation as if offended that the general had permitted the interruption, ‘we have four four-pounders, two of which are French metal and the equal of any six-pounder.’
Colonel Samuel McCobb, who led the Lincoln County militia, raised a hand. ‘We can offer a field-mounted twelve-pounder,’ he said.
‘Most generous,’ Lovell said, and then threw the discussion open, though in truth nothing was decided that evening. For over two hours men made suggestions and Lovell received each one with gratitude, but gave no opinion on any. Commodore Saltonstall agreed that the three British sloops must be destroyed so that his squadron could sail into the harbour and use their broadsides to bombard the fort, but he declined to suggest how soon that could be done. ‘We must appraise their defences,’ the commodore insisted grandly, ‘I’m sure you all appreciate the good sense in a thorough reconnaissance.’ He spoke condescendingly as if it offended his dignity as a Continental officer to be dealing with mere militia.
‘We all appreciate the value of thorough reconnaissance,’ Lovell agreed. He smiled benignly about the room. ‘I shall inspect the militia in the morning,’ he said, ‘and then we shall embark. When we reach the Penobscot River we shall discover what obstacles we face, but I am confident that we shall overcome them. I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank you all.’ And with that the council of war was over.
Some men gathered in the darkness outside the parson’s house. ‘They have fifteen or sixteen hundred men?’ a militia officer grumbled, ‘and we only have nine hundred?’
‘You’ve also got the marines,’ Captain Welch snarled from the shadows, but then, before anyone could respond, a shot sounded. Dogs began barking. Officers clutched their scabbards as they ran towards the lantern lights of Main Street where men were shouting, but no more musket shots sounded.
‘What was it?’ Lovell asked when the commotion had died down.
‘A man from Lincoln County,’ Wadsworth said.
‘Fired his musket by mistake?’
‘Shot off the toes of his left foot.’
‘Oh dear, poor man.’
‘Deliberately, sir. To avoid service.’
So now one less man would sail east, and too many of the remaining men were boys, cripples or old men. But there were the marines. Thank God, Wadsworth thought, there were the marines.
From a letter by John Brewer, written in 1779 and published in the Bangor Whig and Courier, August 13th, 1846:
‘I then told the Commodore that … I thought that as the wind breezed up he might go in with his shipping, silence the two (sic) vessels and the six gun battery, and land the troops under cover of his own guns, and in half an hour make everything his own. In reply to which he hove up his long chin, and said, ‘You seem to be damned knowing about the matter! I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole!’
Excerpts of a letter from John Preble to the Honourable Jeremiah Powell, President, Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, July 24th, 1779:
I have been upon Command with the Indians five Weeks there is now there about 60 warriors the greater part firce for War and wait only for Orders to march and assist their Brothers the Americans. The Enemey coudent incurd their displeasure more than comming on their River or near it to fourtify they have declared to me they would Spil Every drop of their Blood in defence of their Land and Liberty they seem to be more and more Sensible of the diabollical intentions of the Enemy and the Justness of our Cause … This moment the Fleet appears in Sight which gives unival Joy to White and Black Soldiers Every one is Antious and desirious for action and I can acquaint your Honours that on my passage here in a burch Canoe the people at Naskeeg and up a long shore declared they were Ready … to fight for us altho they had taken the Oath of Fidelity to the British party.
FOUR
The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk south-westerly, though the privateers and naval ships, which were the quickest, had to shorten sail so that they did not out-race the lumbering transports. It took only a day’s sailing to reach the Penobscot River, though it was a long day, dawn to dusk, that was livened when a strange sail was seen to the southward. Commodore Saltonstall ordered the Hazard and the Diligent, both brigantines and both fast sailors, to investigate the stranger. Saltonstall stayed inshore while the two brigs crammed on more sail and raced away southwards, leaving the fleet to creep up the coast past rocky headlands where the great seas broke white. Every few moments a thump would echo through a ship as her bows struck an errant tree trunk that had been floated down one of the rivers and had escaped the loggers at the river’s mouth.
This was Commodore Saltonstall’s first voyage in the Warren and he fussed over her trim, ordering ballast moved forrard to improve her performance. He twice ordered more sails set and let the frigate run at her full speed through the fleet. ‘How is she?’ he asked the helmsman during the second run and after Midshipman Fanning had supervised moving another half ton of ballast from the stern.
‘She isn’t bridling as much, sir. I reckon you tamed her.’
‘Seven knots and a handful!’ a seaman who had trailed a log line from the taffrail called. Men on the transport ships cheered at the fine sight of the frigate charging under full sail through the fleet.
‘We might have tamed her upwind,’ Saltonstall said wearily, ‘but I dare say she’ll need trimming again before she goes close.’
‘I dare say she will, sir,’ the helmsman agreed. He was an elderly man, barrel-chested, with long white hair twisted into a pigtail that reached his waist. His bare forearms were smothered with tattoos of fouled anchors and crowns, evidence that he had once sailed in Britain’s Navy. He let go of the wheel, which spun clockwise, then checked itself and moved slowly back. ‘See, sir? She’s well liking it.’
‘As I am,’ Saltonstall said, ‘but we can do better. Mister Coningsby! Another two hundred weight forrard! Lively now!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning said.
The Hazard and Diligent caught up with the fleet late in the afternoon. The Diligent shortened her sails as she slid to the leeward of the Warren and made her report on the strange sail that had been glimpsed to the south, ‘She was the General Glover out of Marblehead, sir!’ Captain Philip Brown hailed Saltonstall. ‘A cargo vessel, sir, carrying baccy, rum and timber to France!’
‘Take station!’ Saltonstall shouted back and watched as the brig fell aft of him. Captain Brown, newly appointed to his command, had been First Lieutenant of the sloop Providence when it had captured the Diligent from the Royal Navy and his ship still bore the marks of that battle. Brown’s old ship, the Providence, her hull similarly patched with new timber, now sailed at the van of Saltonstall’s fleet where she flew the snake and stripe banner of the rebel navy.
The fleet was impressive, and had been joined by three more ships that had sailed direct to Townsend so that forty-two vessels, half of them warships, now sailed eastwards. Brigadier-General Lovell, gazing at the spread of sails from the afterdeck of the sloop Sally, was proud that his state, his country indeed, could assemble such a number of ships. The Warren was the largest, but a dozen other warships were almost as formidable as the frigate. The Hampden, which carried twenty-two guns and was thus the second most powerful ship in the fleet, had been sent by the state of New Hampshire and when she had arrived at Townsend she had sounded a salute, her nine-pounder guns thumping the air with their percussive greeting. ‘I just wish we could encounter one of King George’s ships now,’ Solomon Lovell said, ‘’pon my word, but we’d give her a pounding!’
‘So we would, by God’s grace, so we would indeed!’ the Reverend Jonathan Murray agreed wholeheartedly. Peleg Wadsworth had been somewhat surprised that the rector of Townsend had been invited to join the expedition, but it was evident that Murray and Lovell liked each other, and so the clergyman, who had appeared on board the Sally with a brace of large pistols belted at his waist, was now the expedition’s chaplain. Lovell had insisted that they sail from Townsend in the sloop Sally, rather than in Saltonstall’s larger frigate. ‘It’s better to be with the men, don’t you think?’ the brigadier enquired of Wadsworth.
‘Indeed, sir,’ Wadsworth agreed, though privately he suspected that Solomon Lovell found Commodore Saltonstall’s company difficult. Lovell was a gregarious man while Saltonstall was reticent to the point of rudeness. ‘Though the men do worry me, sir,’ Wadsworth added.
‘They worry you!’ Lovell responded jovially. ‘Now why should that be?’ He had borrowed Captain Carver’s telescope and was gazing seawards at Monhegan Island.
Wadsworth hesitated, not wanting to introduce a note of pessimism on a morning of bright sun and useful wind. ‘We were expecting fifteen or sixteen hundred men, sir, and we have fewer than nine hundred. And many of those are of dubious usefulness.’
The Reverend Murray, clutching a wide-brimmed hat, made a gesture as if to suggest Wadsworth’s concerns were misplaced. ‘Let me tell you something I’ve learned,’ the reverend said, ‘in every endeavour, General Wadsworth, whenever men are gathered together for God’s good purpose, there is always a core of men, just a core, that do the work! The rest merely watch.’
‘We have enough men,’ Lovell said, collapsing the telescope and turning to Wadsworth, ‘which isn’t to say I could not wish for more, but we have enough. We have ships enough and God is on our side!’
‘Amen,’ the Reverend Murray put in, ‘and we have you, General!’ He bowed to Lovell.
‘Oh, you’re too kind,’ Lovell said, embarrassed.
‘God in His infinite wisdom selects His instruments,’ Murray said effusively, bowing a second time to Lovell.
‘And God, I am sure, will send more men to join us,’ Lovell went on hurriedly. ‘I’m assured there are avid patriots in the Penobscot region, and I doubt not that they’ll serve our cause. And the Indians will send warriors. Mark my words, Wadsworth, we shall scour the redcoats, we shall scour them!’
‘I would still wish for more men,’ Wadsworth said quietly.
‘I would wish for the same,’ Lovell said fervently, ‘but we must make do with what the good Lord provides and remember that we are Americans!’
‘Amen for that,’ the Reverend Murray said, ‘and amen again.’
The waist of the Sally was filled with four flat-bottomed lighters commandeered from Boston harbour. All the transports had similar cargoes. The shallow-draught boats were for landing the troops, and Wadsworth now gazed at those militia men who, in turn, watched the coast from the Sally’s portside rail. Tall plumes of smoke rose mysteriously from the dark wooded hills and Wadsworth had the uncomfortable feeling that the pillars of smoke were signal fires. Was the coast infested by loyalists who were telling the British that the Americans were coming?
‘Captain Carver was grumbling to me,’ Lovell broke into Wadsworth’s thoughts. Nathaniel Carver was the Sally’s captain. ‘He was complaining that the state commandeered too many transports!’
‘We anticipated more men,’ Wadsworth said.
‘And I said to him,’ Lovell went on cheerfully, ‘how do you expect to convey the British prisoners to Boston without adequate shipping? He had no answer to that!’
‘Fifteen hundred prisoners,’ the Reverend Murray said with a chortle. ‘They’ll take some feeding!’
‘Oh, I think more than fifteen hundred!’ Lovell said confidently. ‘Major Todd was estimating, merely estimating, and I can’t think the enemy has sent fewer than two thousand! We’ll have to pack two hundred prisoners into each and every transport, but Carver assures me the deck hatches can be battened down. My! What a return to Boston that will be, eh Wadsworth?’
‘I pray for that day, sir,’ Wadsworth said. Did the British really have fifteen hundred men, he wondered, and if they did then what possible reason could Lovell have for his optimism?
‘It’s just a pity we don’t have a band!’ Lovell said. ‘We could mount a parade!’ Lovell, a politician, was imagining the rewards of success: the cheering crowds, the thanks of the General Court and a parade like the triumphs of Ancient Rome where the captured enemy was marched through jeering crowds. ‘I do believe,’ the brigadier went on, leaning closer to Wadsworth, ‘that McLean has brought most of Halifax’s garrison to Majabigwaduce!’
‘I’m certain Halifax is not abandoned, sir,’ Wadsworth said.
‘But under-defended!’ Lovell said warmly. ‘My word, Wadsworth, maybe we should contemplate a raid!’
‘I suspect General Ward and the General Court might want to discuss the matter first, sir,’ Wadsworth said drily.
‘Artemas is a good, brave man, but we must look ahead, Wadsworth. Once we’ve defeated McLean what’s to stop us attacking the British elsewhere?’
‘The Royal Navy, sir?’ Wadsworth suggested with a wry smile.
‘Oh, we’ll build more ships! More ships!’ Lovell was unstoppable now, imagining his victory at Majabigwaduce expanding into the capture of Nova Scotia and, who knew, maybe all Canada? ‘Doesn’t the Warren look fine?’ he exclaimed. ‘Just look at her! Can there be a finer vessel afloat?’
At twilight the fleet turned into the vast mouth of the Penobscot River where it anchored off the Fox Islands, all except the Hazard and Tyrannicide, which were ordered to make a reconnaissance upriver. The two small brigs, both from the Massachusetts navy, sailed slowly northwards, using the long evening’s gentle light to probe closer to Majabigwaduce, which lay a full twenty-six nautical miles from the open sea.
Commodore Saltonstall watched the two brigs until the gathering darkness hid their sails, then he took his supper on the quarterdeck beneath a sky bright with stars. His crew left him alone until one tall figure crossed to the commodore. ‘A pot of wine, sir?’
‘Captain Welch,’ Saltonstall greeted the tall marine, ‘I’m obliged to you.’
The two officers stood side-by-side at the Warren’s taffrail. A violin sounded from the foredeck of the brig Pallas, which was anchored closest to the frigate. For a time neither the commodore nor the marine said anything, but simply listened to the music and to the gentle sound of waves slapping against the hull. ‘So,’ Saltonstall broke their companionable silence, ‘what do you think?’
‘The same as you I reckon, sir,’ Welch said in his deep voice.
The commodore snorted. ‘Boston should have demanded a Continental regiment.’
‘That they should, sir.’
‘But they want all the credit to go to Massachusetts! That’s their idea, Welch. You mark what I say. There won’t be many thanks offered to us.’
‘But we’ll do the work, sir.’
‘Oh, we’ll have to!’ Saltonstall said. Already, in his brief tenure of command, the commodore had earned a reputation as a difficult and daunting figure, but he had struck up a friendship with the marine. Saltonstall recognized a fellow soul, a man who strove to make his men the best they could be. ‘We’ll have to do their work,’ Saltonstall went on, ‘if it can be done at all.’ He paused, offering Welch a chance to comment, but the marine said nothing. ‘Can it be done?’ Saltonstall prompted him.
Welch stayed silent for a while, then nodded. ‘We have the marines, sir, and I dare say every marine is worth two of the enemy. We might find five hundred militiamen who can fight. That should suffice, sir, if you can take care of their ships.’
‘Three sloops of war,’ Saltonstall said in a tone that suggested neither confidence nor pessimism about the prospects of destroying the Royal Navy squadron.
‘My men will fight,’ Welch said, ‘and by Christ they’ll fight like fiends. They’re good men, sir, well-trained.’
‘That I know,’ Saltonstall said, ‘but by God I won’t let Lovell throw them away. You only fight ashore with my permission.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘And if you get orders that make no sense, you refer them to me, you understand?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘He’s a farmer,’ Saltonstall said scornfully, ‘not a soldier, but a goddamned farmer.’
On board the Sally, in the captain’s cramped cabin, the farmer was cradling a mug of tea laced with rum. Lovell shared the table with his secretary, John Marston, and with Wadsworth and the Reverend Murray who appeared to have been promoted to senior aide. ‘We should reach Majabigwaduce tomorrow,’ Lovell said, looking from face to face in the feeble light of the lantern that hung from a beam, ‘and I assume the commodore will prevent the enemy ships from leaving the harbour and so obstructing us, in which case we should land immediately, don’t you think?’
‘If it’s possible,’ Wadsworth said cautiously.
‘Let us be hopeful!’ Lovell said. He dreamed of the victory parade in Boston and the vote of thanks from the legislature, but small doubts were creeping into his mind as he gazed at the crude map of Majabigwaduce’s peninsula that was spread on the table where the remains of supper still lay. The Sally’s cook had produced a fine fish stew served with newly baked bread. ‘We shall need to anchor off the land and launch the lighters,’ Lovell said distractedly, then used a crust of cornbread to tap the bluff at the western end of the peninsula. ‘Can McLean really have left this height undefended?’
‘Unfortified, certainly, if the reports are true,’ Wadsworth said.
‘Then we should accept his invitation, don’t you think?’
Wadsworth nodded cautiously. ‘We’ll know more tomorrow, sir,’ he said.
‘I want to be ready,’ Lovell said. He tapped the map again. ‘We can’t let our fellows sit idle while the commodore destroys the enemy shipping. We must put the men ashore fast.’ Lovell gazed at the map as though it might provide some solution to the morrow’s problems. Why had McLean not placed his fort on the high bluff? Was there a trap? If Lovell had been given the task of defending the peninsula he was sure he would have made a stronghold at the harbour’s entrance, high on the point of land that dominated both the wide bay and the harbour, so why had McLean not done that? And McLean, Lovell reminded himself, was a professional soldier, so what did McLean know that Lovell did not? He felt a shiver of nervousness in his soul, then took comfort that he was not alone in his responsibility. Commodore Saltonstall was the naval commander, and Saltonstall’s ships so outnumbered the enemy that surely no amount of professionalism could redress that imbalance. ‘We must believe,’ Lovell said, ‘that our enemies are afflicted by over-confidence.’
‘They are British,’ the Reverend Murray said in agreement, ‘and “pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs eighteen,’ he added helpfully, ‘verse sixteen.’
‘Words of wisdom,’ Lovell said, ‘and indeed they do underestimate us!’ The general was staring at the map and searching for the optimism that had lightened his morning.
‘They shall suffer for their arrogance,’ Murray said, and raised a reverent hand, ‘“What is this thing that ye do? Will ye rebel against the king? Then answered I them, and said unto them, the God of Heaven, he will prosper us.”’ He smiled benignly. ‘The words of the prophet Nehemiah, General.’
‘He will indeed prosper us,’ Lovell echoed, ‘and perhaps you would lead us in prayer, Reverend?’
‘Gladly.’ The men bowed their heads as the Reverend Murray prayed that God would send a swift victory. ‘May the forces of righteousness glorify Thy name, O Lord,’ the Reverend Murray beseeched, ‘and may we show magnanimity in the triumph that Thy words have promised us. We ask all this in Thy holy name, amen.’
‘Amen,’ Lovell said fervently, his eyes tight shut, ‘and amen.’
‘Amen,’ Brigadier McLean muttered in response to the grace before supper. He had been invited to Doctor Calef’s house, which lay two hundred yards east of Fort George. That name, he thought ruefully, was a grand name for a fort that was scarcely defensible. Captain Mowat had sent one hundred and eighty burly seamen to help the work, yet still the walls were only waist-high and a mere two cannons had been emplaced in the corner bastions.
‘So the wretches are here?’ Calef enquired.
‘So we hear, Doctor, so we hear,’ McLean responded. News of the enemy fleet’s arrival had come from the river’s mouth, brought by a fisherman who had fled the rebels so quickly that he had been unable to count the ships and could only say that there was a terrible lot of them. ‘It seems they’ve sent a considerable fleet,’ McLean commented, then thanked the doctor’s wife who had passed him a dish of beans. Three candles lit the table, a finely polished oval of gleaming walnut. Most of the doctor’s furniture had come from his Boston home and it looked strange here, much as if the contents of a fine Edinburgh mansion were to be moved to a Hebridean croft.
‘Will they come tonight?’ Mrs Calef enquired nervously.
‘I’m assured no one can navigate the river in the dark,’ McLean said, ‘so no, ma’am, not this night.’
‘They’ll be here tomorrow,’ Calef averred.
‘So I expect.’
‘In some force?’ Calef asked.
‘So the report said, Doctor, though I am denied any specific detail.’ McLean flinched as he bit onto a grindstone chip trapped in the cornbread. ‘Very fine bread, ma’am,’ he said.
‘We were maltreated in Boston,’ Calef said.
‘I am sorry to hear that.’
‘My wife was insulted in the streets.’
McLean knew what was in Calef’s mind, that if the rebels were to take Majabigwaduce then the persecution of the loyalists would start again. ‘I regret that, Doctor.’
‘I dare say,’ Calef said, ‘that if the rebels were to find me, General, they would imprison me.’ The doctor was merely toying with his food, while his wife watched him anxiously.
‘Then I must do my utmost,’ McLean said, ‘to keep you from imprisonment and your wife from insult.’
‘Scourge them,’ Calef said angrily.
‘I do assure you, Doctor, that is our intent,’ McLean said, then smiled at Calef’s wife. ‘These are very fine beans, ma’am.’
They ate mostly in silence after that. McLean wished he could offer a greater reassurance to the loyalists of Majabigwaduce, but the arrival of the rebel fleet surely meant an imminent defeat. His fort was unfinished. True he had made three batteries to cover the harbour entrance. There was one on Cross Island, the large Half Moon Battery down on the shore, and a third, much smaller, on the high bluff above the harbour mouth, but none of those batteries was a fort. They were emplacements for cannon that were there to fire at the enemy ships, but not one of the earthworks could withstand an assault by a company of determined infantry. There had simply not been enough time, and now the enemy was here.
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Bernard Cornwell
‘Captivate, kill or destroy the whole force of the enemy’ was the order given to the American soldiers.THE FORT is the blistering novel from worldwide bestseller Bernard Cornwell.Summer 1779.Seven hundred and fifty British soldiers and three small ships of the Royal Navy. Their orders: to build a fort above a harbour to create a base from which to control the New England seaboard.Forty-one American ships and over nine hundred men. Their orders: to expel the British.The battle that followed was a classic example of how the best-laid plans can be disrupted by personality and politics, and of how warfare can bring out both the best and worst in men. It is a timeless tale of men at war, written by a master storyteller.
Bernard Cornwell
The Fort
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This paperback edition 2011
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
THE FORT. Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2010. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Maps © Garry Gates 2010
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 0 00 733174 1
While some of the events and characters are based on historical incidents and figures, this novel is entirely a work of fiction.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007331765
Version: 2017-05-09
Dedication
THE FORT
is dedicated, with great admiration, to
Colonel John Wessmiller, US Army (Retired)
who would have known just what to do.
Contents
Cover (#u63304232-44bb-57cc-bc72-0481495839a8)
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
A Note on Names and Terms
One
There was not much wind so the ships headed sluggishly…
Two
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard.
Three
On Sunday, 18th July, 1779, Peleg Wadsworth worshipped at Christ…
Four
The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk south-westerly, though…
Five
The Tyrannicide, flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy,…
Six
The daylight was fading. The western sky glowed red and…
Seven
The first shots crashed into the trees, exploding twigs, pine…
Eight
Marine Captain Thomas Carnes and thirty men had been on…
Nine
‘Where the devil is Revere?’ Lovell asked. He had asked…
Ten
The sun had not risen when Peleg Wadsworth roused Lieutenant-Colonel…
Eleven
Wednesday, August 11th, started with a thick fog and still…
Twelve
And, suddenly, there was hope.
Thirteen
A Royal Marine at the taffrail of HMS North fired…
Fourteen
Peleg Wadsworth slept ashore, or rather he lay awake on…
Historical Note
Heroic Myths
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna by Charles Wolfe 1791-1823
About the Author
Other Books by Bernard Cornwell
Credits
About the Publisher
Map
A NOTE ON NAMES AND TERMS
In 1779 there was no state of Maine, it was then the eastern province of Massachusetts. Some place names have also changed. Majabigwaduce is now called Castine, Townsend is Bucks Harbor, and Falmouth is Portland, Maine. Buck’s plantation (properly Plantation Number One) is Bucksport, Orphan Island is Verona Island, Long Island (in the Penobscot River) is now Islesboro Island, Wasaumkeag Point is now Cape Jellison and Cross Island is today called Nautilus Island.
The novel frequently refers to ‘ships’, ‘sloops’, ‘brigs’, and ‘schooners’. They are all, of course, ships in the same way that they are all boats, but properly a ship was a large, square-rigged, three-masted vessel like a frigate (think of the USS Constitution) or a ship of the line (like HMS Victory). Nowadays we think of a sloop as a single-masted sailboat, but in 1779 it denoted a three-masted vessel that was usually smaller than a ship and distinguished by having a flush main deck (thus no raised poop deck). Sloops, like ships, were square rigged (meaning they carried rectangular sails hung from crosswise yards). A brig, or brigantine, was also a large square-rigged sailing vessel, but with only two masts. Schooners, like brigs, carried two masts, but were rigged with fore-and-aft sails which, when hoisted, lie along the centre line of the vessel rather than across it. There were variations, such as brig-sloops, but at Penobscot Bay, in 1779, there were only ships, sloops, brigs and schooners. With the exception of the Felicity all the names of the boats are taken from history.
Most of the characters in the novel existed. The only fictional names are those of any character whose surname begins with F (with the exception of Captain Thomas Farnham, RN), and the names of British privates and non-commissioned officers (with the exception of Sergeant Lawrence, Royal Artillery).
Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, July 2nd, 1779:
You will in all your operations consult with the Commander of the fleet that the Naval Force may cooperate with the troops under your command in Endeavoring to Captivate Kill or Destroy the whole force of the Enemy there both by sea & land. And as there is good reason to believe that some of the Principal men at Majorbagaduce requested the enemy to come there and take possession you will be peculiarly careful not to let any of them escape, but to secure them for their evil doings … We now commend you to the Supream being Sincerely praying him to preserve you and the Forces under your Command in health and safety, & Return you Crowned with Victory and Laurels.
From a postscript to Doctor John Calef’s Journal, 1780, concerning Majabigwaduce:
To this new country, the Loyalists resort with their families … and find asylum from the tyranny of Congress, and their taxgatherers … and there they continue in full hope, and pleasant expectation, that they may soon re-enjoy the liberties and privileges which would be best secured to them by the … British Constitution.
Letter from Captain Henry Mowat, Royal Navy, to Jonathan Buck, written aboard HMS Albany, Penobscot River, June 15th, 1779:
Sir, Understanding that you are at the head of a Regiment of the King’s deluded Subjects on this River and parts adjacent and that you hold a Colonel’s Commission under the influence of a body of men termed the General Congress of the United States of America, it therefore becomes my duty to require you to appear without loss of time before General McLean and the commanding Officer of the King’s Ships now on board the Blonde off of Majorbigwaduce with a Muster Roll of the People under your direction.
ONE
There was not much wind so the ships headed sluggishly upriver. There were ten of them, five warships escorting five transports, and the flooding tide did more to carry them northwards than the fitful breeze. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low, grey and direful. Water dripped monotonously from sails and rigging.
There was little to see from the ships, though all their gunwales were crowded with men staring at the river’s banks that widened into a great inland lake. The hills about the lake were low and covered with trees, while the shoreline was intricate with creeks, headlands, wooded islands and small, stony beaches. Here and there among the trees were cleared spaces where logs were piled or perhaps a wooden cabin stood beside a small cornfield. Smoke rose from those clearings and some men aboard the ships wondered if the distant fires were signals to warn the country of the fleet’s arrival. The only people they saw were a man and a boy fishing from a small open boat. The boy, who was named William Hutchings, waved excitedly at the ships, but his uncle spat. ‘There come the devils,’ he said.
The devils were mostly silent. On board the largest warship, a 32-gun frigate named Blonde, a devil in a blue coat and an oilskin-covered cocked hat lowered his telescope. He frowned thoughtfully at the dark, silent woods past which his ship slid. ‘To my mind,’ he said, ‘it looks like Scotland.’
‘Aye, it does,’ his companion, a red-coated devil, answered cautiously, ‘a resemblance, certainly.’
‘More wooded than Scotland, though?’
‘A deal more wooded,’ the second man said.
‘But like the west coast of Scotland, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not unlike,’ the second devil agreed. He was sixty-two years old, quite short, and had a shrewd, weathered face. It was a kindly face with small, bright blue eyes. He had been a soldier for over forty years and in that time had endured a score of hard-fought battles that had left him with a near-useless right arm, a slight limp, and a tolerant view of sinful mankind. His name was Francis McLean and he was a Brigadier-General, a Scotsman, commanding officer of His Majesty’s 82nd regiment of foot, Governor of Halifax, and now, at least according to the dictates of the King of England, the ruler of everything he surveyed from the Blonde’s quarterdeck. He had been aboard the frigate for thirteen days, the time it had taken to sail from Halifax in Nova Scotia, and he felt a twinge of worry that the length of the voyage might prove unlucky. He wondered if it might have been better to have made it in fourteen days and surreptitiously touched the wood of the rail. A burnt wreck lay on the eastern shore. It had once been a substantial ship capable of crossing an ocean, but now it was a ribcage of charred wood half inundated by the flooding tide that carried the Blonde upriver. ‘So how far are we now from the open sea?’ he asked the blue-uniformed captain of the Blonde.
‘Twenty-six nautical miles,’ Captain Andrew Barkley answered briskly, ‘and there,’ he pointed over the starboard bow and past the lion-crested cathead from which one of the frigate’s anchors was suspended, ‘is your new home.’
McLean borrowed the captain’s glass and, using his awkward right arm as a rest for the tubes, trained the telescope forrard. For a moment the small motions of the ship defeated him so that all he glimpsed was a blur of grey clouds, dark land and sullen water, but he steadied himself to see that the Penobscot River widened to make the great lake that Captain Barkley called Penobscot Bay. The bay, McLean thought, was really a great sea loch, which he knew from his study of Barkley’s charts was some eight miles from east to west and three miles from north to south. A harbour opened from the bay’s eastern shore. The mouth of the harbour was edged by rocks, while on its northern side was a hill crowned thick with trees. A settlement stood on the southern slope of that hill; over a score of wooden homes and barns were set among patches of corn, plots of vegetables and piles of timber. A handful of fishing boats was anchored in the harbour, along with one small brig that McLean assumed was a trading vessel. ‘So that’s Majabigwaduce,’ he said softly.
‘Back topsails!’ the captain called, ‘order the fleet to heave to. I shall trouble you to signal for a pilot, Mister Fennel!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
The frigate suddenly seethed with men running to release sheets. ‘That’s Majabigwaduce,’ Barkley said in a tone that suggested the name was as risible as the place.
‘Number one gun!’ Lieutenant Fennel shouted, provoking another rush of men who ran to the forward starboard cannon.
‘Do you have any idea,’ McLean asked the captain, ‘what Majabigwaduce signifies?’
‘Signifies?’
‘Does the name mean anything?’
‘No idea, no idea,’ Barkley said, apparently irritated by the question. ‘Now, Mister Fennel!’
The gun, charged and wadded, but without any shot, was fired. The recoil was slight, but the sound of the gun seemed hugely loud and the cloud of smoke enveloped half the Blonde’s deck. The gunshot faded, then was echoed back from the shore before fading a second time.
‘We shall discover something now, won’t we?’ Barkley said.
‘What is that?’ McLean enquired.
‘Whether they’re loyal, General, whether they’re loyal. If they’ve been infected by rebellion then they’ll hardly supply a pilot, will they?’
‘I suppose not,’ McLean said, though he suspected a disloyal pilot could well serve his rebellious cause by guiding HMS Blonde onto a rock. There were plenty of those breaking the bay’s surface. On one, not fifty paces from the frigate’s port gunwales, a cormorant spread its dark wings to dry.
They waited. The gun had been fired, the customary signal requesting a pilot, but the smoke prevented anyone aboard from seeing whether the settlement of Majabigwaduce would respond. The five transport ships, four sloops and frigate drifted upriver on the tide. The loudest noise was the groan, wheeze and splashing from the pump aboard one of the sloops, HMS North. The water spurted and gushed rhythmically from an elm spigot set into her hull as sailors pumped her bilge. ‘She should have been broken up for firewood,’ Captain Barkley said sourly.
‘There’s no patching her?’ McLean asked.
‘Her timbers are rotten. She’s a sieve,’ Barkley said dismissively. Small waves slapped the Blonde’s hull, and the blue ensign at her stern stirred slow in the fitful wind. Still no boat appeared and so Barkley ordered the signal gun fired a second time. The sound echoed and faded again and, just when Barkley was considering taking the flotilla into the harbour without the benefit of a pilot, a seaman hailed from the foremast top. ‘Boat coming, sir!’
When the powder smoke cleared, the men on Blonde saw a small open boat was indeed tacking out from the harbour. The south-west breeze was so light that the tan-coloured sails hardly gave the boat any headway against the tide, and so a young man was pulling on two long oars. Once in the wide bay he shipped the oars and sheeted his sails hard so that the small boat beat slowly up to the flotilla. A girl sat at the tiller and she steered the little craft against the Blonde’s starboard flank where the young man leaped nimbly onto the boarding steps that climbed the tumblehome. He was tall, fair-haired, with hands calloused and blackened from handling tarred rigging and fishing nets. He wore homespun breeches and a canvas jacket, had clumsy boots and a knitted hat. He climbed to the deck, then called down to the girl. ‘You take good care of her, Beth!’
‘Stop gawping, you puddin’-headed bastards!’ the bosun roared at the seamen staring at the fair-haired girl who was using an oar to push her small craft away from the frigate’s hull. ‘You’re the pilot?’ the bosun asked the young man.
‘James Fletcher,’ the young man said, ‘and I guess I am, but you don’t need no pilot anyways.’ He grinned as he walked towards the officers at the Blonde’s stern. ‘Any of you gentlemen have tobacco?’ he asked as he climbed the companionway to the poop deck. He was rewarded with silence until General McLean reached into a pocket and extracted a short clay pipe, its bowl already stuffed with tobacco.
‘Will that do?’ the general asked.
‘That’ll do just perfect,’ Fletcher said appreciatively, then prised the plug from the bowl and crammed it into his mouth. He handed the empty pipe back to the general. ‘Haven’t had tobacco in two months,’ he said in explanation, then nodded familiarly to Barkley. ‘Ain’t no real dangers in Bagaduce, Captain, just so long as you stand off Dyce’s Head, see?’ He pointed to the tree-crowned bluff on the northern side of the harbour entrance. ‘Rocks there. And more rocks off Cross Island on the other side. Hold her in the channel’s centre and you’ll be safe as safe.’
‘Bagaduce?’ General McLean asked.
‘That’s what we call it, your honour. Bagaduce. Easier on the tongue than Majabigwaduce.’ The pilot grinned, then spat tobacco juice that splattered across the Blonde’s holy-stoned planking. There was silence on the quarterdeck as the officers regarded the dark stain.
‘Majabigwaduce,’ McLean broke the silence, ‘does it mean anything?’
‘Big bay with big tides,’ Fletcher said, ‘or so my father always said. ’Course it’s an Indian name so it could mean anything.’ The young man looked around the frigate’s deck with an evident appreciation. ‘Day of excitement, this,’ he remarked genially.
‘Excitement?’ General McLean asked.
‘Phoebe Perkins is expecting. We all thought the baby would have dropped from her by now, but it ain’t. And it’ll be a girl!’
‘You know that?’ General McLean asked, amused.
‘Phoebe’s had six babes already and every last one of them a girl. You should fire another gun, Captain, startle this new one out of her!’
‘Mister Fennel!’ Captain Barkley called through a speaking trumpet, ‘sheet in, if you please.’
The Blonde gathered way. ‘Take her in,’ Barkley told the helmsman, and so the Blonde, the North, the Albany, the Nautilus, the Hope, and the five transports they escorted came to Majabigwaduce. They arrived safe in the harbour and anchored there. It was June 17th, 1779 and, for the first time since they had been driven from Boston in March, 1776, the British were back in Massachusetts.
Some two hundred miles west and a little south of where the devils arrived, Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth paraded his battalion on the town common. Only seventeen were present, not one of whom could be described as correct. The youngest, Alexander, was five, while the oldest were the twelve-year-old Fowler twins, Rebecca and Dorcas, and they all gazed earnestly at the brigadier, who was thirty-one. ‘What I want you to do,’ the general said, ‘is march forward in single file. On the word of command you stop. What is the word of command, Jared?’
Jared, who was nine, thought for a second. ‘Halt?’
‘Very good, Jared. The next command after that will be “prepare to form line”, and you will do nothing!’ The brigadier peered sternly at his diminutive troops who were in a column of march facing northwards. ‘Understand? You do nothing! Then I’m going to shout that companies one, two, three and four will face left. Those companies,’ and here the general walked down the line indicating which children comprised the leading four companies, ‘are the left wing. What are you, Jared?’
‘The left wing,’ Jared said, flapping his arms.
‘Excellent! And you,’ the general paced on down the rest of the line, ‘are companies five, six, seven and eight, the right wing, and you will face right. I shall then give the order to face front and you turn. Then we counter-wheel. Alexander? You’re the colour party so you don’t move.’
‘I want to kill a redcoat, Daddy,’ Alexander pleaded.
‘You don’t move, Alexander,’ the colour party’s father insisted, then repeated all he had said. Alexander was holding a long stick that, in the circumstances, substituted for the American flag. He now aimed this at the church and pretended to shoot redcoats and so had to be chivvied back into the column that singly and generally agreed that they understood what their erstwhile schoolmaster wanted them to do. ‘Now remember,’ Peleg Wadsworth encouraged them, ‘that when I order counter-wheel you march in the direction you’re facing, but you swing around like the arm of a clock! I want to see you turn smoothly. Are we all ready?’
A small crowd had gathered to watch and advise. One man, a visiting minister, had been appalled to see children so young being taught the rudiments of soldiery and had chided General Wadsworth on the matter, but the brigadier had assured the man of God that it was not the children who were being trained, but himself. He wished to understand precisely how a column of companies deployed into a regimental line that could blast an enemy with musket fire. It was hard to advance troops in line because a long row of men inevitably straggled and lost its cohesion, to avoid which men must advance in companies, one behind the other, but such a column was fatally vulnerable to cannon-fire and quite unable to use most of its muskets, and so the art of the manoeuvre was to advance in column and then deploy swiftly into line. Wadsworth wanted to master the drill, but because he was a general of the Massachusetts Militia, and because the militia were mostly on their farms or in their workshops, Wadsworth was using children. The leading company, which would normally hold three ranks of thirty or more men each, was today comprised of Rebecca Fowler, aged twelve, and her nine-year-old cousin, Jared, both of whom were bright children and, Wadsworth hoped, capable of setting an example that the remaining children would copy. The manoeuvre he was attempting was difficult. The battalion would march in column towards the enemy and then halt. The leading companies would turn to face one way, the rearward companies turn to face the opposite direction and then the whole line would counter-wheel about the colours in a smooth pivot until commanded to halt. That would leave the first four companies facing away from the enemy and Wadsworth would need to order those eight children to about turn, at which point the whole formidable battalion would be ready to open fire against the enemy. Wadsworth had watched British regiments perform a similar manoeuvre on Long Island and he had reluctantly admired their precision and seen for himself the swiftness with which they had been transformed from a column into a long line that had unleashed a torrent of musketry on the American forces.
‘Are we ready?’ Wadsworth asked again. If he could explain the system to children, he had decided, then teaching the state militia should be easy enough. ‘Forward march!’
The children marched creditably well, though Alexander kept skipping to try and match steps with his companions. ‘Battalion!’ Wadsworth called, ‘Halt!’
They halted. So far so good. ‘Battalion! Prepare to form line! Don’t move yet!’ He paused a moment. ‘The left wing will face left! The right wing will face right, on my word of command. Battalion! Face front!’
Rebecca turned right instead of left and the battalion milled about in a moment of confusion before someone’s hair was pulled and Alexander began shouting bang as he shot imaginary redcoats coming from the Common Burying Ground. ‘Counter-wheel, march!’ Wadsworth shouted, and the children swivelled in different directions and by now, the general thought despairingly, the British troops would have hammered two slaughterous volleys into his regiment. Perhaps, Wadsworth thought, using the children from the school where he had taught before becoming a soldier was not the best way to develop his mastery of infantry tactics. ‘Form line,’ he shouted.
‘The way to do it,’ a man on crutches offered from the crowd, ‘is company by company. It’s slower, General, but slow and steady wins the day.’
‘No, no, no!’ someone else chimed in. ‘First company front right marker to step one pace left and one pace forward, and he becomes left marker, raises his hand, and the rest fall in on him. Or her, in your regiment, General.’
‘Better company by company,’ the crippled man insisted, ‘that’s how we did it at Germantown.’
‘But you lost at Germantown,’ the second man pointed out.
Johnny Fiske pretended to be shot, staggered dramatically and fell down, and Peleg Wadsworth, he found it hard to think of himself as a general, decided he had failed to explain the manoeuvre properly. He wondered whether he would ever need to master the intricacies of infantry drill. The French had joined America’s struggle for freedom and had sent an army across the Atlantic and the war was now being fought in the southern states very far from Massachusetts.
‘Is the war won?’ a voice interrupted his thoughts and he turned to see his wife, Elizabeth, carrying their one-year-old daughter, Zilpha, in her arms.
‘I do believe,’ Peleg Wadsworth said, ‘that the children have killed every last redcoat in America.’
‘God be praised for that,’ Elizabeth said lightly. She was twenty-six, five years younger than her husband, and pregnant again. Alexander was her oldest, then came three-year-old Charles and the infant Zilpha, who stared wide-eyed and solemn at her father. Elizabeth was almost as tall as her husband who was putting notebook and pencil back into a uniform pocket. He looked good in uniform, she thought, though the white-faced blue coat with its elegant buttoned tail was in desperate need of patching, but there was no blue cloth available, not even in Boston, at least not at a price that Peleg and Elizabeth Wadsworth could afford. Elizabeth was secretly amused by her husband’s intense, worried expression. He was a good man, she thought fondly, as honest as the day was long and trusted by all his neighbours. He needed a haircut, though the slightly ragged dark locks gave his lean face an attractively rakish look. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt the war,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but you have a visitor.’ She nodded back towards their house where a man in uniform was tethering his horse to the hitching post.
The visitor was thin with a round, bespectacled face that was familiar to Wadsworth, but he could not place the man who, his horse safely tied, took a paper from his tail-coat pocket and strolled across the sunlit common. His uniform was pale brown with white facings. A sabre hung by leather straps from his sword belt. ‘General Wadsworth,’ he said as he came close, ‘it is good to see you in health, sir,’ he added, and for a second Wadsworth flailed desperately as he tried to match a name to the face, then, blessedly, the name came.
‘Captain Todd,’ he said, hiding his relief.
‘Major Todd now, sir.’
‘I congratulate you, Major.’
‘I’m appointed an aide to General Ward,’ Todd said, ‘who sends you this.’ He handed the paper to Wadsworth. It was a single sheet, folded and sealed, with General Artemas Ward’s name inscribed in spidery writing beneath the seal.
Major Todd looked sternly at the children. Still in a ragged line, they stared back at him, intrigued by the curved blade at his waist. ‘Stand at ease,’ Todd ordered them, then smiled at Wadsworth. ‘You recruit them young, General?’
Wadsworth, somewhat embarrassed to have been discovered drilling children, did not answer. He had unsealed the paper and now read the brief message. General Artemas Ward presented his compliments to Brigadier-General Wadsworth and regretted to inform him that a charge had been laid against Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere, commanding officer of the Massachusetts’ Artillery Regiment, specifically that he had been drawing rations and pay for thirty non-existent men, and General Ward now required Wadsworth to make enquiries into the substance of the allegation.
Wadsworth read the message a second time, then dismissed the children and beckoned Todd to walk with him towards the Burying Ground. ‘General Ward is well?’ he asked politely. Artemas Ward commanded the Massachusetts Militia.
‘He’s well enough,’ Todd answered, ‘other than some pains in the legs.’
‘He grows old,’ Wadsworth said, and for a dutiful moment the two men exchanged news of births, marriages, illnesses and deaths, the small change of a community. They had paused in the shade of an elm and after a while Wadsworth gestured with the letter. ‘It seems strange to me,’ he said carefully, ‘that a major should bring such a trivial message.’
‘Trivial?’ Todd asked sternly, ‘we are talking of peculation, General.’
‘Which, if true, will have been recorded in the muster returns. Does it require a general to inspect the books? A clerk could do that.’
‘A clerk has done that,’ Todd said grimly, ‘but a clerk’s name on the official report bears no weight.’
Wadsworth heard the grimness. ‘And you seek weight?’ he asked.
‘General Ward would have the matter investigated thoroughly,’ Todd answered firmly, ‘and you are the Adjutant-General of the Militia, which makes you responsible for the good discipline of the forces.’
Wadsworth flinched at what he regarded as an impertinent and unnecessary reminder of his duties, but he let the insolence pass unreproved. Todd had the reputation of being a thorough and diligent man, but Wadsworth also recalled a rumour that Major William Todd and Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere nurtured a strong dislike of each other. Todd had served with Revere in the artillery, but had resigned in protest at the regiment’s disorganization, and Wadsworth suspected that Todd was using his new position to strike at his old enemy, and Wadsworth liked it not. ‘Colonel Revere,’ he spoke mildly, though with deliberate provocation, ‘enjoys a reputation as a fine and fervent patriot.’
‘He is a dishonest man,’ Todd retorted vehemently.
‘If wars were fought only by the honest,’ Wadsworth said, ‘then we would surely have perpetual peace?’
‘You’re acquainted with Colonel Revere, sir?’ Todd asked.
‘I cannot claim more than an acquaintance,’ Wadsworth said.
Todd nodded, as if that was the proper answer. ‘Your reputation, General,’ he said, ‘is unassailable. If you prove peculation, then not a man in Massachusetts will dispute the verdict.’
Wadsworth glanced at the message again. ‘Just thirty men?’ he asked dubiously. ‘You’ve ridden from Boston for such a small affair?’
‘It’s not far to ride,’ Todd said defensively, ‘and I have business in Plymouth, so it was convenient to wait on you.’
‘If you have business, Major,’ Wadsworth said, ‘then I won’t detain you.’ Courtesy demanded that he at least offered Todd some refreshment and Wadsworth was a courteous man, but he was annoyed at being implicated in what he strongly suspected was a private feud.
‘There is talk,’ Todd remarked as the two men walked back across the common, ‘of an attack on Canada.’
‘There is always talk of an attack on Canada,’ Wadsworth said with some asperity.
‘If such an attack occurs,’ Todd said, ‘we would want our artillery commanded by the best available man.’
‘I would assume,’ Wadsworth said, ‘that we would desire that whether we march on Canada or not.’
‘We need a man of probity,’ Todd said.
‘We need a man who can shoot straight,’ Wadsworth said brusquely and wondered whether Todd aspired to command the artillery regiment himself, but he said nothing more. His wife was waiting beside the hitching post with a glass of water that Todd accepted gratefully before riding south towards Plymouth. Wadsworth went indoors and showed Elizabeth the letter. ‘I fear it is politics, my dear,’ he said, ‘politics.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘It is awkward,’ Wadsworth said. ‘Colonel Revere is a man of faction.’
‘Faction?’
‘Colonel Revere is zealous,’ Wadsworth said carefully, ‘and his zeal makes enemies as well as friends. I suspect Major Todd laid the charge. It is a question of jealousy.’
‘So you think the allegation is untrue?’
‘I have no opinion,’ Wadsworth said, ‘and would dearly like to continue in that ignorance.’ He took the letter back and read it again.
‘It is still wrongdoing,’ Elizabeth said sternly.
‘Or a false allegation? A clerk’s error? But it involves me in faction and I dislike faction. If I prove wrongdoing then I make enemies of half Boston and earn the enmity of every freemason. Which is why I would prefer to remain in ignorance.’
‘So you will ignore it?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘I shall do my duty, my dear,’ Wadsworth said. He had always done his duty, and done it well. As a student at Harvard, as a schoolteacher, as a captain in Lexington’s town troop, as an aide to General Washington in the Continental Army and now as a brigadier in the militia. But there were times, he thought, when his own side was far more difficult than the British. He folded the letter and went for his dinner.
Majabigwaduce was a hump of land, almost an island, shaped like an anvil. From east to west it was just under two miles long, and from north to south rarely more than half a mile wide, and the ridge of its rocky hump climbed from the east to the west where it ended in a blunt, high, wooded bluff that overlooked the wide Penobscot Bay. The settlement lay on the ridge’s southern side, where the British fleet lay in the harbour’s anchorage. It was a village of small houses, barns and storehouses. The smallest houses were simple log cabins, but some were more substantial dwellings of two storeys, their frames clad in cedar shingles that looked silver in the day’s watery sunlight. There was no church yet.
The ridge above the village was thick with spruce, though to the west, where the land was highest, there were fine maples, beech and birch. Oaks grew by the water. Much of the land about the settlement had been cleared and planted with corn, and now axes bit into spruce trees as the redcoats set about clearing the ridge above the village.
Seven hundred soldiers had come to Majabigwaduce. Four hundred and fifty were kilted highlanders of the 74th, another two hundred were lowlanders from the 82nd, while the remaining fifty were engineers and gunners. The fleet that had brought them had dispersed, the Blonde sailing on to New York and leaving behind only three empty transport ships and three small sloops-of-war whose masts now dominated Majabigwaduce’s harbour. The beach was heaped with landed supplies and a new track, beaten into the dirt, now ran straight up the long slope from the water’s edge to the ridge’s crest. Brigadier McLean climbed that track, walking with the aid of a twisted blackthorn stick and accompanied by a civilian. ‘We are a small force, Doctor Calef,’ McLean said, ‘but you may rely on us to do our duty.’
‘Calf,’ Calef said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My name, General, is pronounced calf.’
‘I do pray your pardon, Doctor,’ McLean said, inclining his head.
Doctor Calef was a thickset man a few years younger than McLean. He wore a low crowned hat over a wig that had not been powdered for weeks and which framed a blunt face distinguished by a determined jaw. He had introduced himself to McLean, offering advice, professional help and whatever other support he could give. ‘You’re here to stay, I trust?’ the doctor demanded.
‘Decidedly, sir, decidedly,’ McLean said, digging his stick into the thin soil, ‘oh, indeed we mean to stay.’
‘To do what?’ Calef asked curtly.
‘Let me see now,’ McLean paused, watching as two men stepped back from a half-felled tree that toppled, slowly at first, then crashed down in an explosion of splintering branches, pine needles and dust. ‘My first duty, Doctor,’ he said, ‘is to prevent the rebels from using the bay as a haven for their privateers. Those pirates have been a nuisance.’ That was mild. The American rebels held all the coastline between Canada and New York except for the beleaguered British garrison in Newport, Rhode Island, and British merchant ships, making that long voyage, were ever at risk from the well-armed, fast-sailing rebel privateers. By occupying Majabigwaduce the British would dominate Penobscot Bay and so deny the rebels its fine anchorage, which would become a base for Britain’s Royal Navy. ‘At the same time,’ McLean continued, ‘I am ordered to deter any rebel attack on Canada and thirdly, Doctor, I am to encourage trade here.’
‘Mast wood,’ Calef growled.
‘Especially mast wood,’ McLean agreed, ‘and fourthly we are to settle this region.’
‘Settle it?’
‘For the crown, Doctor, for the crown.’ McLean smiled and waved his blackthorn stick at the landscape. ‘Behold, Doctor Calef, His Majesty’s province of New Ireland.’
‘New Ireland?’ Calef asked.
‘From the border of Canada and eighty miles southwards,’ McLean said, ‘all New Ireland.’
‘Let’s trust it’s not as papist as old Ireland,’ Calef said sourly.
‘I’m sure it will be God-fearing,’ McLean said tactfully. The general had served many years in Portugal and did not share his countrymen’s distaste for Roman Catholics, but he was a good enough soldier to know when not to fight. ‘So what brought you to New Ireland, Doctor?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘I was driven from Boston by damned rebels,’ Calef said angrily.
‘And you chose to come here?’ McLean asked, unable to hide his surprise that the doctor had fled Boston to this fog-ridden wilderness.
‘Where else could I take my family?’ Calef demanded, still angry. ‘Dear God, General, but there’s no legitimate government between here and New York! In all but name the colonies are independent already! In Boston the wretches have an administration, a legislature, offices of state, a judiciary! Why? Why is it permitted?’
‘You could have moved to New York?’ McLean suggested, ignoring Calef’s indignant question, ‘or to Halifax?’
‘I’m a Massachusetts man,’ Calef said, ‘and I trust that one day I will return to Boston, but a Boston cleansed of rebellion.’
‘I pray so too,’ McLean said. ‘Tell me, Doctor, did the woman give birth safely?’
Doctor Calef blinked, as if the question surprised him. ‘The woman? Oh, you mean Joseph Perkins’s wife. Yes, she was delivered safely. A fine girl.’
‘Another girl, eh?’ McLean said, and turned to gaze at the wide bay beyond the harbour entrance. ‘Big bay with big tides,’ he said lightly, then saw the doctor’s incomprehension. ‘I was told that was the meaning of Majabigwaduce,’ he explained.
Calef frowned, then made a small gesture as if the question was irrelevant. ‘I’ve no idea what the name means, General. You must ask the savages. It’s their name for the place.’
‘Well, it’s all New Ireland now,’ McLean said, then touched his hat. ‘Good day, Doctor, I’m sure we shall talk further. I’m grateful for your support, grateful indeed, but if you’ll excuse me, duty calls.’
Calef watched the general limp uphill, then called to him. ‘General McLean!’
‘Sir?’ McLean turned.
‘You don’t imagine the rebels are going to let you stay here, do you?’
McLean appeared to consider the question for a few seconds, almost as though he had never thought about it before. ‘I would think not,’ he said mildly.
‘They’ll come for you,’ Calef warned him. ‘Soon as they know you’re here, General, they’ll come for you.’
‘Do you know?’ McLean said, ‘I rather think they will.’ He touched his hat again. ‘Good day, Doctor. I’m glad about Mrs Perkins.’
‘Damn Mrs Perkins,’ the doctor said, but too softly for the general to hear, then he turned and stared southwards down the long bay, past Long Island, to where the river disappeared on its way to the far off sea, and he wondered how long before a rebel fleet appeared in that channel.
That fleet would appear, he was sure. Boston would learn of McLean’s presence, and Boston would want to scour this place free of redcoats. And Calef knew Boston. He had been a member of the General Assembly there, a Massachusetts legislator, but he was also a stubborn loyalist who had been driven from his home after the British left Boston. Now he lived here, at Majabigwaduce, and the rebels were coming for him again. He knew it, he feared their coming, and he feared that a general who cared about a woman and her baby was a man too soft to do the necessary job. ‘Just kill them all,’ he growled to himself, ‘just kill them all.’
Six days after Brigadier-General Wadsworth had paraded the children, and after Brigadier-General McLean had sailed into Majabigwaduce’s snug haven, a captain paced the quarter-deck of his ship, the Continental Navy frigate Warren. It was a warm Boston morning. There was fog over the harbour islands, and a humid south-west wind bringing a promise of afternoon thunder.
‘The glass?’ the captain asked brusquely.
‘Dropping, sir,’ a midshipman answered.
‘As I thought,’ Captain Dudley Saltonstall said, ‘as I thought.’ He paced larboard to starboard and starboard to larboard beneath the mizzen’s neatly furled spanker on its long boom. His long-chinned face was shadowed by the forrard peak of his cocked hat, beneath which his dark eyes looked sharply from the multitude of ships anchored in the roads to his crew who, though short-handed, were swarming over the frigate’s deck, sides and rigging to give the ship her morning scrub. Saltonstall was newly appointed to the Warren and he was determined she should be a neat ship.
‘As I thought,’ Saltonstall said again. The midshipman, standing respectfully beside the larboard aft gun, braced his leg against the gun’s carriage and said nothing. The wind was fresh enough to jerk the Warren on her anchor cables and make her shudder to the small waves that flickered white across the harbour. The Warren, like the two nearby vessels that also belonged to the Continental Navy, flew the red-and white-striped flag on which a snake surmounted the words ‘Don’t Tread on Me’. Many of the other ships in the crowded harbour flew the bold new flag of the United States, striped and starred, but two smart brigs, both armed with fourteen six-pounder cannons and both anchored close to the Warren, flew the Massachusetts Navy flag that showed a green pine tree on a white field and bore the words ‘An Appeal to Heaven’.
‘An appeal to nonsense,’ Saltonstall growled.
‘Sir?’ the midshipman asked nervously.
‘If our cause is just, Mister Coningsby, why need we appeal to heaven? Let us rather appeal to force, to justice, to reason.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ the midshipman said, unsettled by the captain’s habit of looking past the man he spoke to.
‘Appeal to heaven!’ Saltonstall sneered, still gazing past the midshipman’s ear towards the offending flag. ‘In war, Mister Coningsby, one might do better to appeal to hell.’
The ensigns of other vessels were more picaresque. One low-slung ship, her masts raked sharply aft and her gun ports painted black, had a coiled rattlesnake emblazoned on her ensign, while a second flew the skull and crossbones, and a third showed King George of England losing his crown to a cheerful looking Yankee wielding a spiked club. Captain Saltonstall disapproved of all such home-made flags. They made for untidiness. A dozen other ships had British flags, but all those flags were being flown beneath American colours to show they had been captured, and Captain Saltonstall disapproved of that too. It was not that the British merchantmen had been captured, that was plainly a good thing, nor that the flags proclaimed the victories because that too was desirable, but rather that the captured ships were now presumed to be private property. Not the property of the United States, but of the privateers like the low-slung, raked-masted, rattlesnake-decorated sloop.
‘They are pirates, Mister Coningsby,’ Saltonstall growled.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning replied. Midshipman Coningsby had died of the fever a week previously, but all Fanning’s nervous attempts to correct his captain had failed and he had abandoned any hope of being called by his real name.
Saltonstall was still frowning at the privateers. ‘How can we find decent crew when piracy beckons?’ Saltonstall complained, ‘tell me that, Mister Coningsby!’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘We cannot, Mister Coningsby, we cannot,’ Saltonstall said, shuddering at the injustice of the law. It was true that the privateers were patriotic pirates who were fierce as wolves in battle, but they fought for private gain, and that made it impossible for a Continental warship like the Warren to find good crew. What young man of Boston would serve his country for pennies when he could join a privateer and earn a share of the plunder? No wonder the Warren was short-handed! She carried thirty-two guns and was as fine a frigate as any on the American seaboard, but Saltonstall had only men enough to fight half his weapons, while the privateers were all fully manned. ‘It is an abomination, Mister Coningsby!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning said.
‘Look at that!’ Saltonstall checked his pacing to point a finger at the Ariadne, a fat British merchantman that had been captured by a privateer. ‘You know what she was carrying, Mister Coningsby?’
‘Black walnut from New York to London, sir?’
‘And she carried six cannon, Mister Coningsby! Nine-pounder guns! Six of them. Good long nine-pounders! Newly made! And where are those guns now?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘For sale in Boston!’ Saltonstall spat the words. ‘For sale, Mister Coningsby, in Boston, when our country has desperate need of cannon! It makes me angry, Mister Coningsby, it makes me angry indeed.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Those cannon will be melted down for gew-gaws. For gew-gaws! It makes me angry, upon my soul, it does.’ Captain Saltonstall carried his anger to the starboard rail where he paused to watch a small cutter approach from the north. Its dark sails first appeared as a patch in the fog, then the patch took shape and hardened into a single-masted vessel about forty feet long. She was not a fishing boat, she was too narrow for such work, but her gunwales were pierced with tholes showing that she could ship a dozen oars and so be rowed on calm days and Saltonstall recognized her as one of the fast messenger boats used by the government of Massachusetts. A man was standing amidships with cupped hands, evidently shouting his news to the moored vessels through which the cutter slid. Saltonstall would dearly have liked to know what the man shouted, but he considered it was beneath his dignity as a Continental Navy captain to make vulgar enquiries, and so he turned away just as a schooner, her gunwales punctuated by gunports, gathered way to pass the Warren. The schooner was a black-hulled privateer with the name King-Killer prominent in white paint at her waist, her dirt-streaked sails were sheeted in hard to beat her way out of the harbour. She carried a dozen deck guns, enough to batter most British merchantmen into quick surrender, and she was built for speed so that she could escape any warship of the British navy. Her deck was crowded with men while at her mizzen gaff was a blue flag with the word Liberty embroidered in white letters. Saltonstall waited for that flag to be lowered in salute to his own ensign, but as the black schooner passed she offered no sign of recognition. A man at her taffrail looked at Saltonstall, then spat into the sea and the Warren’s captain bridled, suspecting an insult. He watched her go towards the fog. The King-Killer was off hunting, going across the bay, around the northern hook of Cape Cod and out into the Atlantic where the fat British cargo ships wallowed on their westward runs from Halifax to New York.
‘Gew-gaws,’ Saltonstall growled.
A stub-masted open barge, painted white with a black stripe around its gunwale, pushed off from the Castle Island quay. A dozen men manned the oars, pulling hard against the small waves, and the sight of the barge made Captain Saltonstall fish a watch from his pocket. He clicked open the lid and saw that it was ten minutes past eight in the morning. The barge was precisely on time, and within an hour he would see it return from Boston, this time carrying the commander of the Castle Island garrison, a man who preferred to sleep in the city. Saltonstall approved of the Castle Island barge. She was smartly painted and her crew, if not in real uniform, wore matching blue shirts. There was an attempt at order there, at discipline, at propriety.
The captain resumed his pacing, larboard to starboard, starboard to larboard.
The King-Killer vanished in the fog.
The Castle Island barge threaded the anchorage. A church bell began to toll.
Boston harbour, a warm morning, June 23rd, 1779.
The paymaster of His Majesty’s 82nd Regiment of Foot strode west along Majabigwaduce’s ridge. From behind him came the sound of axes striking trees, while all around him was fog. A thick fog. Every morning since the fleet had arrived there had been fog. ‘It will burn off,’ the paymaster said cheerfully.
‘Aye, sir,’ Sergeant McClure answered dully. The sergeant had a picquet of six men from the 82nd Foot, the Duke of Hamilton’s regiment and so known as the Hamiltons. McClure was thirty, older by far than his men and twelve years older than the paymaster, a lieutenant, who led the picquet at a fast, enthusiastic pace. His orders were to establish a sentry post at the peninsula’s western heights from where a lookout could be kept on the wide Penobscot Bay. If any enemy was to come, then the bay was their likeliest approach. The picquet was in thick woodland now, dwarfed by tall, dark, fog-shrouded trees. ‘The brigadier, sir,’ Sergeant McClure ventured, ‘said there might be rebels here.’
‘Nonsense! There are no rebels here! They have all fled, Sergeant!’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘I do say so,’ the young officer said enthusiastically, then stopped suddenly and pointed into the underbrush. ‘There!’
‘A rebel, sir?’ McClure asked dutifully, seeing nothing worthy of note among the pines.
‘Is it a thrush?’
‘Ah,’ McClure saw what had interested the paymaster and looked more closely, ‘it’s a bird, sir.’
‘Strangely, Sergeant, I was apprised of that fact,’ the lieutenant said happily. ‘Note the breast, Sergeant.’
Sergeant McClure dutifully noted the bird’s breast. ‘Red, sir?’
‘Red indeed. I congratulate you, Sergeant, and does it not put you in mind of our native robin? But this fellow is larger, much larger! Handsome fellow, isn’t he?’
‘Want me to shoot him, sir?’ McClure asked.
‘No, Sergeant, I merely wish you to admire his plumage. A thrush is wearing his majesty’s red coat, would you not consider that an omen of good-fortune?’
‘Oh, aye, sir, I would.’
‘I detect in you, Sergeant, a lack of zeal.’ The eighteen-year-old lieutenant smiled to show he was not serious. He was a tall lad, a full head above the stocky sergeant, and had a round, eager and mobile face, a smile quick as lightning, and shrewdly observant eyes. His coat was cut from expensive scarlet cloth, faced with black and bright with buttons that were rumoured to be made of the finest gold. Lieutenant John Moore was not wealthy, he was a doctor’s son, but everyone knew he was a friend of the young Duke’s, and the Duke was said to be richer than the next ten richest men in all Scotland, and a rich friend, as everyone also knew, was the next best thing to being wealthy oneself. The Duke of Hamilton was so rich that he had paid all the expenses of raising the 82nd Regiment of Foot, buying them uniforms, muskets and bayonets, and rumour said his grace could probably afford to raise another ten such regiments without even noticing the expense. ‘Onwards,’ Moore said, ‘onwards, ever onwards!’
The six privates, all from the Lowlands of Scotland, did not move. They just gazed at Lieutenant Moore as though he were a strange species from some far-off heathen country.
‘Onwards!’ Moore called again, striding fast once more through the trees. The fog muffled the harsh sound of the axes coming from where Brigadier McLean’s men were clearing the ridge so that their planned fort would have open fields of fire. The 82nd’s picquet, meanwhile, was climbing a gentle slope that levelled onto a wide plateau of thick undergrowth and dark firs. Moore trampled through the brush, then again stopped abruptly. ‘There,’ he said, pointing, ‘Thalassa, Thalassa.’
‘The lassie?’ McClure asked.
‘You have not read Xenophon’s Anabasis, Sergeant?’ Moore asked in mock horror.
‘Is that the one after Leviticus, sir?’
Moore smiled. ‘Thalassa, Sergeant, Thalassa,’ he said in mock reproof, ‘was the cry of the ten thousand when at last, after their long march, and after their dark ordeals, they came to the sea. That’s what it means! The sea! The sea! And they shouted for joy because they saw their safety in the gentle heaves of its bosom.’
‘Its bosom, sir,’ McClure echoed, peering down a sudden steep bluff, thick with trees, to glimpse the cold sea through the foliage and beneath the drifting fog. ‘It’s not very bosomy, sir.’
‘And it is across that water, Sergeant, from their lair in the black lands of Boston, that the enemy will come. They will arrive in their hundreds and in their thousands, they will prowl like the dark hordes of Midian, they will descend upon us like the Assyrian!’
‘Not if this fog lasts, sir,’ McClure said, ‘the buggers will get lost, sir.’
Moore, for once, said nothing. He was gazing down the bluff. It was not quite a cliff, but no man could climb it easily. An attacker would need to drag himself up the two hundred feet by pulling on the straggly saplings, and a man using his hands to keep his footing could not use his musket. The beach, just visible, was brief and stony.
‘But are the buggers coming, sir?’ McClure asked.
‘We cannot say,’ Moore said distractedly.
‘But the brigadier thinks so, sir?’ McClure asked anxiously. The privates listened, glancing nervously from the short sergeant to the tall officer.
‘We must assume, Sergeant,’ Moore said airily, ‘that the wretched creatures will resent our presence. We make life difficult for them. By establishing ourselves in this land of soured milk and bitter honey we deny their privateers the harbours they require for their foul depredations. We are a thorn in their side, we are inconvenient, we are a challenge to their quietude.’
McClure frowned and scratched his forehead. ‘So you’re saying the buggers will come, sir?’
‘I bloody hope so,’ Moore said with sudden vehemence.
‘Not here, sir,’ McClure said confidently. ‘Too steep.’
‘They’ll want to land somewhere in range of their ships’ cannons,’ Moore said.
‘Cannons, sir?’
‘Big metal tubes which expel balls, Sergeant.’
‘Oh, thank you, sir. I was wondering, sir,’ McClure said with a smile.
Moore tried and failed to suppress a smile. ‘We shall be plied with shot, Sergeant, have no doubt of that. And I’ve no doubt ships could spatter this slope with cannon fire, but how would men climb it into our musket fire? Yet even so, let’s hope they land here. No troops could climb this slope if we’re waiting at the top, eh? By God, Sergeant, we’ll make a fine cull of the rebellious bastards!’
‘And so we will, sir,’ McClure said loyally, though in his sixteen years of service he had become used to brash young officers whose confidence exceeded their experience. Lieutenant John Moore, the sergeant decided, was another such, yet McClure liked him. The paymaster possessed an easy authority, rare in a man so young, and he was reckoned to be a fair officer who cared about his troops. Even so, McClure thought, John Moore would have to learn some sense or else die young.
‘We shall slaughter them,’ Moore said enthusiastically, then held out his hand. ‘Your musket, Sergeant.’
McClure handed the officer his musket and watched as Moore laid a guinea on the ground. ‘The soldier who can fire faster than me will be rewarded with the guinea,’ Moore said. ‘Your mark is that half-rotted tree canted on the slope, you see it?’
‘Aim at the dead bent tree.’ McClure explained to the privates. ‘Sir?’
‘Sergeant?’
‘Won’t the sound of muskets alarm the camp, sir?’
‘I warned the brigadier we’d be shooting. Sergeant, your cartridge box, if you please.’
‘Be quick, lads,’ McClure encouraged his men. ‘Let’s take the officer’s money!’
‘You may load and prime,’ Moore said. ‘I propose to fire five shots. If any of you manage five before me, then you will take the guinea. Imagine, gentlemen, that a horde of malodorous rebels are climbing the bluff, then do the king’s work and send the wretches to hell.’
The muskets were loaded; the powder, wadding and shot were rammed down the barrels, the locks were primed and the frizzens closed. The clicks of the flints being cocked seemed oddly loud in the fog-shrouded morning.
‘Gentlemen of the 82nd,’ Moore demanded grandly, ‘are you ready?’
‘The buggers are ready, sir,’ McClure said.
‘Present!’ Moore ordered, ‘fire!’
Seven muskets coughed, blasting evil-smelling powder smoke that was far thicker than the swirling fog. The smoke lingered as birds fled through the thick trees and gulls called from the water. Through the echo of the shots McClure heard the balls ripping through leaves and clattering on the stones of the small beach. The men were tearing open their next cartridges with their teeth, but Lieutenant Moore was already ahead. He had primed the musket, closed the frizzen and now dropped the heavy stock to the ground and poured in the powder. He pushed the cartridge paper and ball into the muzzle, whipped the ramrod up, slid it down hard, pulled it free with the ringing sound of metal on metal, then jammed the ramrod into the turf, tossed the gun up to his shoulder, cocked, and fired.
No one had yet beaten Lieutenant John Moore. Major Dunlop had timed Moore once and, with disbelief, had announced that the lieutenant had fired five shots inside sixty seconds. Most men could manage three shots a minute with a clean musket, a few could shoot four rounds, but the doctor’s son, friend of a duke, could fire five. Moore had been trained in musketry by a Prussian, and as a boy he had practised and practised, perfecting the essential soldier’s skill, and so certain was he of his ability that, as he loaded the last two shots, he did not even bother to look at his borrowed weapon, but instead smiled wryly at Sergeant McClure. ‘Five!’ Moore announced, his ears ringing with the explosions. ‘Did any man defeat me, Sergeant?’
‘No, sir. Private Neill managed three shots, sir, the rest did two.’
‘Then my guinea is safe,’ Moore said, scooping it up.
‘But are we?’ McClure muttered.
‘You spoke, Sergeant?’
McClure stared down the bluff. The smoke was clearing and he could see that the canted tree, just thirty paces away, was unscarred by any musket ball. ‘There’s precious few of us, sir,’ he said, ‘and we’re all alone here and there’s a lot of rebels.’
‘All the more to kill,’ Moore said. ‘We shall take post here till the fog lifts, Sergeant, then look for a better vantage point.’
‘Aye, sir.’
The picquet was posted; their task to watch for the coming of an enemy. That enemy, the brigadier had assured his officers, would come. Of that McLean was sure. So he cut down trees and plotted where the fort must be.
To defend the king’s land from the king’s enemies.
Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to the Continental Navy Board in Boston, June 30th, 1779:
Gentlemen: The General Assembly of this State have determined on an Expedition to Penobscot to Dislodge the Enemy of the United States lately enter’d There who are said to be committing Hostilities on the Good People of this State … fortifying themselves at Baggobagadoos, and as They are supported by a Considerable Naval Force, to Effect our Design, it will be expedient to send there, to aid our Land Operations a Superior Naval Force. Therefore … we write you … requesting you to aid our Designs, by adding to the Naval Force of this State, now, with all Possible Speed preparing, for an expedition to Penobscot; the Continental Frigate now in this Harbour, and the other armed Continental vessells here.
Excerpts from the Warrant of Impressment issued to Masschusetts Sheriffs, July 3rd, 1779:
You are hereby authorized and Commanded taking with you such Assistance as you judge proper, forthwith to take seize and impress any able-bodied Seamen, or Mariner which you shall find in your Precinct … to serve on board any of the Vessels entered into the Service of this State to be employed in the proposed expedition to Penobscot … You are hereby Authorized to enter on board and search any Ship or Vessel or to break open and search any Dwelling house or other building in which you shall suspect any such Seamen or Mariners to be concealed.
Excerpt from a letter sent by Brigadier-General Charles Cushing to the Council of the State of Massachusetts, June 19th, 1779
I have Issued orders to the officers of my Brigade requiring them to inlist men agreeable thereto. I would inform your Honors that at present there seems no prospect of getting one man as the Bounty offered is in the Esteem of the people inadequate.
TWO
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard. He wore a light blue uniform coat faced in brown, white deerskin breeches, knee boots, and had a naval cutlass hanging from a thick brown belt. His wide-brimmed hat was made of felt, and it shadowed a broad, stubborn face that was creased in thought. ‘You making that list, boy?’ he demanded brusquely.
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy answered. He was twelve, the son of Josiah Flint who ruled the armory from his high-backed, well-padded chair that had been dragged from the office and set beside the trestle table where the boy made his list. Flint liked to sit in the yard when the weather allowed so he could keep an eye on the comings and goings in his domain.
‘Drag chains,’ Revere said, ‘sponges, searchers, relievers, am I going too fast?’
‘Relievers,’ the boy muttered, dipping his pen into the inkwell.
‘Hot today,’ Josiah Flint grumbled from the depths of his chair.
‘It’s summer,’ Revere said, ‘and it should be hot. Rammers, boy, and wad hooks. Spikes, tompions, linstocks, vent-covers. What have I forgotten, Mister Flint?’
‘Priming wires, Colonel.’
‘Priming wires, boy.’
‘Priming wires,’ the boy said, finishing the list.
‘And there’s something else in the back of my mind,’ Flint said, frowning, then thought for a moment before shaking his head. ‘Maybe nothing,’ he said.
‘You hunt through your pa’s supplies, boy,’ Revere said, ‘and you make piles of all those things. We need to know how many we’ve got. You note down how many and then you tell me. Off you go.’
‘And buckets,’ Josiah Flint added hurriedly.
‘And buckets!’ Revere called after the boy. ‘And not leaking buckets either!’ He took the boy’s vacated chair and watched as Josiah Flint bit into a chicken leg. Flint was an enormous man, his belly spilling over his belt, and he seemed intent on becoming even fatter because whenever Revere visited the arsenal he found his friend eating. He had a plate of cornbread, radishes and chicken that he vaguely gestured towards, as if inviting Colonel Revere to share the dish.
‘You haven’t been given orders yet, Colonel?’ Flint asked. His nose had been shattered by a bullet at Saratoga just minutes before a cannonball took away his right leg. He could no longer breathe through his nose and so his breath had to be drawn past the half-masticated food filling his mouth. It made a snuffling sound. ‘They should have given you orders, Colonel.’
‘They don’t know whether they’re pissing or puking, Mister Flint,’ Revere said, ‘but I can’t wait while they make up their minds. The guns have to be ready!’
‘No man better than you, Colonel,’ Josiah Flint said, picking a shred of radish from his front teeth.
‘But I didn’t go to Harvard, did I?’ Revere asked with a forced laugh. ‘If I spoke Latin, Mister Flint, I’d be a general by now.’
‘Hic, haec, hoc,’ Flint said through a mouthful of bread.
‘I expect so,’ Revere said. He pulled a folded copy of the Boston Intelligencer from his pocket and spread it on the table, then took out his reading glasses. He disliked wearing them for he suspected they gave him an unmilitary appearance, but he needed the spectacles to read the account of the British incursion into eastern Massachusetts. ‘Who would have believed it,’ he said, ‘the bastard redcoats back in New England!’
‘Not for long, Colonel.’
‘I hope not,’ Revere said. The Massachusetts government, learning that the British had landed men at Majabigwaduce, had determined to send an expedition to the Penobscot River, to which end a fleet was being gathered, orders being sent to the militia and officers being appointed. ‘Well, well,’ Revere said, peering at the newspaper. ‘It seems the Spanish have declared war on the British now!’
‘Spain as well as France,’ Flint said. ‘The bloodybacks can’t last long now.’
‘Let’s pray they last long enough to give us a chance to fight them at Maja.’ Revere paused, ‘Majabigwaduce,’ he said. ‘I wonder what that name means?’
‘Just some Indian nonsense,’ Flint said. ‘Place Where the Muskrat Pissed Down its Legs, probably.’
‘Probably,’ Revere said distantly. He took off his glasses and stared at a pair of sheerlegs that waited to lift a cannon barrel from a carriage rotted by damp. ‘Have they given you a requisition for cannon, Mister Flint?’
‘Just for five hundred muskets, Colonel, to be rented for a dollar each to the militia.’
‘Rented!’
‘Rented,’ Flint confirmed.
‘If they’re to kill the British,’ Revere said, ‘then money shouldn’t come into it.’
‘Money always comes into it,’ Flint said. ‘There are six new British nine-pounders in Appleby’s yard, but we can’t touch them. They’re to be auctioned.’
‘The Council should buy them,’ Revere said.
‘The Council don’t have the money,’ Flint said, stripping a leg-bone of its flesh, ‘not enough coinage to pay the wages, rent the privateers, purchase supplies and buy cannon. You’ll have to make do with the guns we’ve got.’
‘They’ll do, they’ll do,’ Revere said grudgingly.
‘And I hope the Council has the sense to appoint you to command those guns, Colonel!’
Revere said nothing to that, merely stared at the sheerlegs. He had an engaging smile that warmed men’s hearts, but he was not smiling now. He was seething.
He was seething because the Council had appointed the commanders of the expedition to rout the British from Majabigwaduce, but so far no man had been named to lead the artillery and Revere knew that cannons would be needed. He knew too that he was the best man to command those cannon, he was indeed the commanding officer of the Bay of Massachusetts State Artillery Regiment, yet the Council had pointedly refrained from sending him any orders.
‘They will appoint you, Colonel,’ Flint said loyally, ‘they have to!’
‘Not if Major Todd has his way,’ Revere said bitterly.
‘I expect he went to Harvard,’ Flint said, ‘hic, haec, hoc.’
‘Harvard or Yale, probably,’ Revere agreed, ‘and he wanted to run the artillery like a counting-house! Lists and regulations! I told him, make the men gunners first, then kill the British, and after that make the lists, but he didn’t listen. He was forever saying I was disorganized, but I know my guns, Mister Flint, I know my guns. There’s a skill in gunnery, an art, and not everyone has the touch. It doesn’t come from book-learning, not artillery. It’s an art.’
‘That’s very true,’ Flint wheezed through a full mouth.
‘But I’ll ready their cannon,’ Revere said, ‘so whoever commands them has things done properly. There may not be enough lists, Mister Flint,’ he chuckled at that, ‘but they’ll have good and ready guns. Eighteen-pounders and more! Bloodyback-killers! Guns to slaughter the English, they will have guns. I’ll see to that.’
Flint paused to release a belch, then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want to go to Maja, whatever it is?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
Flint patted his belly, then put two radishes into his mouth. ‘It ain’t comfortable, Colonel.’
‘What does that mean, Josiah?’
‘Down east?’ Flint asked. ‘You’ll get nothing but mosquitoes, rain and sleeping under a tree down east.’ He feared that his friend would not be given command of the expedition’s artillery and, in his clumsy way, was trying to provide some consolation. ‘And you’re not as young as you were, Colonel!’
‘Forty-five’s not old!’ Revere protested.
‘Old enough to know sense,’ Flint said, ‘and to appreciate a proper bed with a woman inside it.’
‘A proper bed, Mister Flint, is beside my guns. Beside my guns that point towards the English! That’s all I ask, a chance to serve my country.’ Revere had tried to join the fighting ever since the rebellion had begun, but his applications to the Continental Army had been refused for reasons that Revere could only suspect and never confirm. General Washington, it was said, wanted men of birth and honour, and that rumour had only made Revere more resentful. The Massachusetts Militia was not so particular, yet Revere’s service so far had been uneventful. True, he had gone to Newport to help evict the British, but that campaign had ended in failure before Revere and his guns arrived, and so he had been forced to command the garrison on Castle Island and his prayers that a British fleet would come to be battered by his cannon had gone unanswered. Paul Revere, who hated the British with a passion that could shake his body with its pure vehemence, had yet to kill a single redcoat.
‘You’ve heard the trumpet call, Colonel,’ Flint said respectfully.
‘I’ve heard the trumpet call,’ Revere agreed.
A sentry opened the armory gate and a man in the faded blue uniform of the Continental Army entered the yard from the street. He was tall, good-looking and some years younger than Revere who stood in wary greeting. ‘Colonel Revere?’ the newcomer asked.
‘At your service, General.’
‘I am Peleg Wadsworth.’
‘I know who you are, General,’ Revere said, smiling and taking the offered hand. He noted that Wadsworth did not return the smile. ‘I hope you bring me good news from the Council, General?’
‘I would like a word, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said, ‘a brief word.’ The brigadier glanced at the monstrous Josiah Flint in his padded chair. ‘A word in private,’ he added grimly.
So the trumpet call would have to wait.
Captain Henry Mowat stood on Majabigwaduce’s beach. He was a stocky man with a ruddy face now shadowed by the long peak of his cocked hat. His naval coat was dark blue with lighter blue facings, all stained white by salt. He was in his forties, a lifelong sailor, and he stood with his feet planted apart as though balancing on a quarterdeck. His dark hair was powdered and a slight trail of the powder had sifted down the spine of his uniform coat. He was glaring at the longboats that lay alongside his ship, the Albany. ‘What the devil takes all this time?’ he growled.
His companion, Doctor John Calef, had no idea what was causing the delay on board the Albany and so offered no answer. ‘You’ve received no intelligence from Boston?’ he asked Mowat instead.
‘We don’t need intelligence,’ Mowat said brusquely. He was the senior naval officer at Majabigwaduce and, like Brigadier McLean, a Scotsman, but where the brigadier was emollient and soft-spoken, Mowat was famed for his bluntness. He fidgeted with the cord-bound hilt of his sword. ‘The bastards will come, Doctor, mark my word, the bastards will come. Like flies to dung, Doctor, they’ll come.’
Calef thought that likening the British presence at Majabigwaduce to dung was an unfortunate choice, but he made no comment on that. ‘In force?’ he asked.
‘They may be damned rebels, but they’re not damned fools. Of course they’ll come in force.’ Mowat still gazed at the anchored ship, then cupped his hands. ‘Mister Farraby,’ he bellowed across the water, ‘what the devil is happening?’
‘Roving a new sling, sir!’ the call came back.
‘How many guns will you bring ashore?’ the doctor enquired.
‘As many as McLean wants,’ Mowat said. His three sloops of war were anchored fore and aft to make a line across the harbour’s mouth, their starboard broadsides facing the entrance to greet any rebel ship that dared intrude. Those broadsides were puny. HMS North, which lay closest to Majabigwaduce’s beach, carried twenty guns, ten on each side, while the Albany, at the centre, and the Nautilus, each carried nine cannons in their broadsides. An enemy ship would thus be greeted by twenty-eight guns, none throwing a ball larger than nine pounds, and the last intelligence Mowat had received from Boston indicated that a rebel frigate was in that harbour, a frigate that mounted thirty-two guns, most of which would be much larger than his small cannon. And the rebel frigate Warren would be supported by the privateers of Massachusetts, most of whose craft were just as heavily gunned as his own sloops of war. ‘It’ll be a fight,’ he said sourly, ‘a rare good fight.’
The new sling had evidently been roved because a nine-pounder gun barrel was being hoisted from the Albany’s deck and gently lowered into one of the waiting longboats. Over a ton of metal hung from the yardarm, poised above the heads of the pigtailed sailors waiting in the small boat below. Mowat was bringing his port broadsides ashore so the guns could protect the fort McLean was building on Majabigwaduce’s crest. ‘If you abandon your portside guns,’ Calef enquired in a puzzled tone, ‘what happens if the enemy passes you?’
‘Then, sir, we are dead men,’ Mowat said curtly. He watched the longboat settle precariously low in the choppy water as it took the weight of the cannon’s barrel. The carriage would be brought ashore in another boat and, like the barrel, be hauled uphill to the site of the fort by one of the two teams of oxen that had been commandeered from the Hutchings farm. ‘Dead men!’ Mowat said, almost cheerfully, ‘but to kill us, Doctor, they must first pass us, and I do not intend to be passed.’
Calef felt relief at Mowat’s belligerence. The Scottish naval captain was famous in Massachusetts, or perhaps infamous was a better word, but to all loyalists, like Calef, Mowat was a hero who inspired confidence. He had been captured by rebel civilians, the self-styled Sons of Liberty, while walking ashore in Falmouth. His release had been negotiated by the leading citizens of that proud harbour town, and the condition of Mowat’s release had been that he surrender himself next day so that the legality of his arrest could be established by lawyers, but instead Mowat had returned with a flotilla that had bombarded the town from dawn to dusk and, when most of the houses lay shattered, he had sent shore parties to set fire to the wreckage. Two thirds of Falmouth had been destroyed to send the message that Captain Mowat was not a man to be trifled with.
Calef frowned slightly as Brigadier McLean and two junior officers strolled along the stony beach towards Mowat. Calef still had doubts about the Scottish brigadier, fearing that he was too gentle in his demeanour, but Captain Mowat evidently had no such misgivings because he smiled broadly as McLean approached. ‘You’ve not come to pester me, McLean,’ he said with mock severity, ‘your precious guns are coming!’
‘I never doubted it, Mowat, never doubted it,’ McLean said, ‘not for a moment.’ He touched his hat to Doctor Calef, then turned back to Mowat. ‘And how are your fine fellows this morning, Mowat?’
‘Working, McLean, working!’
McLean gestured at his two companions. ‘Doctor, allow me to present Lieutenant Campbell of the 74th,’ McLean paused to allow the dark-kilted Campbell to offer the doctor a small bow, ‘and Paymaster Moore of the 82nd.’ John Moore offered a more elegant bow, Calef raised his hat in response and McLean turned to gaze at the three sloops with the longboats nuzzling their flanks. ‘Your longboats are all busy, Mowat?’
‘They’re busy, and so they damn well should be. Idleness encourages the devil.’
‘So it does,’ Calef agreed.
‘And there was I seeking an idle moment,’ McLean said happily.
‘You need a boat?’ Mowat asked.
‘I’d not take your matelots from their duties,’ the brigadier said, then looked past Mowat to where a young man and woman were hauling a heavy wooden rowboat down to the incoming tide. ‘Isn’t that the young fellow who piloted us into the harbour?’
Doctor Calef turned. ‘James Fletcher,’ he said grimly.
‘Is he loyal?’ McLean asked.
‘He’s a damned light-headed fool,’ Calef said, and then, grudgingly, ‘but his father was a loyal man.’
‘Then like father, like son, I trust,’ McLean said and turned to Moore. ‘John? Ask Mister Fletcher if he can spare us an hour?’ It was evident that Fletcher and his sister were planning to row to their fishing boat, the Felicity, which lay in deeper water. ‘Tell him I wish to see Majabigwaduce from the river and will pay for his time.’
Moore went on his errand and McLean watched as another cannon barrel was hoisted aloft from the Albany’s deck. Smaller boats were ferrying other supplies ashore; cartridges and salt beef, rum barrels and cannonballs, wadding and rammers, the paraphernalia of war, all of which was being hauled or carried to where his fort was still little more than a scratched square in the thin turf of the ridge’s top. John Nutting, a Loyalist American and an engineer who had travelled to Britain to urge the occupation of Majabigwaduce, was laying out the design of the stronghold in the cleared land. The fort would be simple enough, just a square of earthen ramparts with diamond-shaped bastions at its four corners. Each of the walls would be two hundred and fifty paces in length and would be fronted by a steep-sided ditch, but even such a simple fort required firesteps and embrasures, and needed masonry magazines that would keep the ammunition dry, and a well deep enough to provide plentiful water. Tents housed the soldiers for the moment, but McLean wanted those vulnerable encampments protected by the fort. He wanted high walls, thick walls, walls manned by men and studded by guns, because he knew that the south-west wind would bring more than the smell of salt and shellfish. It would bring rebels, a swarm of them, and the air would stink of powder-smoke, of turds and of blood.
‘Phoebe Perkins’s child contracted a fever last night,’ Calef said brutally.
‘I trust she will live?’ McLean said.
‘God’s will be done,’ Calef said in a tone that suggested God might not care very much. ‘They’ve named her Temperance.’
‘Temperance! Oh dear, poor girl, poor girl. I shall pray for her,’ McLean said, and pray for ourselves too, he thought, but did not say.
Because the rebels were coming.
Peleg Wadsworth felt awkward as he led Lieutenant-Colonel Revere into the shadowed vastness of one of the armory’s stores where sparrows bickered in the high beams above boxes of muskets and bales of cloth and stacks of iron-hooped barrels. It was true that Wadsworth outranked Revere, but he was almost fifteen years younger than the colonel and he felt a vague inadequacy in the presence of a man of such obvious competence. Revere had a reputation as an engraver, as a silversmith and as a metal-worker, and it showed in his hands that were strong and fire-scarred, the hands of a man who could make and mend, the hands of a practical man. Peleg Wadsworth had been a teacher, and a good one, but he had known the scorn of his pupils’ parents who reckoned their children’s futures lay not with grammar or in fractions, but in the command of tools and the working of metal, wood or stone. Wadsworth could construe Latin and Greek, he was intimate with the works of Shakespeare and Montaigne, but faced with a broken chair he felt helpless. Revere, he knew, was the opposite. Give Revere a broken chair and he would mend it competently so that, like the man himself, it was strong, sturdy and dependable.
Or was he dependable? That was the question that had brought Wadsworth to this armory, and he wished that the errand had never been given him. He felt tongue-tied when Revere stopped and turned to him at the storeroom’s centre, but then a scuffling sound from behind a pile of broken muskets gave Wadsworth a welcome distraction. ‘We’re not alone?’ he asked.
‘Those are rats, General,’ Revere said with amusement, ‘rats. They do like the grease on cartridges, they do.’
‘I thought cartridges were stored in the Public Magazine?’
‘They keep enough here for proofing, General, and the rats do like them. We call them redcoats on account they’re the enemy.’
‘Cats will surely defeat them?’
‘We have cats, General, but it’s a hard-fought contest. Good American cats and patriot terriers against dirty British rats,’ Revere said. ‘I assume you want reassurance on the artillery train, General?’
‘I’m sure all is in order.’
‘Oh, it is, you can rely on that. As of now, General, we have two eighteen-pounders, three nine-pounders, one howitzer, and four little ones.’
‘Small howitzers?’
‘Four-pounder cannons, General, and I wouldn’t use them to shoot rats. You need something heavier-built like the French four-pounders. And if you have influence, General, which I’m sure you do, ask the Board of War to release more eighteen-pounders.’
Wadsworth nodded. ‘I’ll make a note of that,’ he promised.
‘You have your guns, General, I assure you,’ Revere said, ‘with all their side arms, powder and shot. I’ve hardly seen Castle Island these last few days on account of readying the train.’
‘Yes, indeed, Castle Island,’ Wadsworth said. He towered a head over Revere, which gave him an excuse not to meet the colonel’s eyes, though he was aware that Revere was staring at him intently as if daring Wadsworth to give him bad news. ‘You command at Castle Island?’ Wadsworth asked, not because he needed confirmation, but out of desperation to say anything.
‘You didn’t need to come here to find that out,’ Revere said with amusement, ‘but yes, General, I command the Massachusetts Artillery Regiment and, because most of our guns are mounted on the island, I command there too. And you, General, will command at Majajuce?’
‘Majajuce?’ Wadsworth said, then realised Revere meant Majabigwaduce. ‘I am second in command,’ he went on, ‘to General Lovell.’
‘And there are British rats at Majajuce,’ Revere said.
‘As far as we can determine,’ Wadsworth said, ‘they’ve landed at least a thousand men and possess three sloops-of-war. Not an over-large force, but not risible either.’
‘Risible,’ Revere said, as if amused by the word. ‘But to rid Massachusetts of those rats, General, you’ll need guns.’
‘We will indeed.’
‘And the guns will need an officer in command,’ Revere added pointedly.
‘Indeed they will,’ Wadsworth said. All the senior appointments of the expedition that was being hurriedly prepared to evict the British from Majabigwaduce had been made. Solomon Lovell would command the ground forces, Commander Dudley Saltonstall of the Continental Frigate Warren would be the naval commander, and Wadsworth would be Lovell’s deputy. The troops, drawn from the militias of York, Cumberland and Lincoln counties, had their commanding officers, while the adjutant-general, quartermaster-general, surgeon-general and brigade majors had all received their orders, and now only the commander of the artillery train needed to be appointed.
‘The guns will need an officer in command,’ Revere pressed Wadsworth, ‘and I command the Artillery Regiment.’
Wadsworth gazed at a ginger-coloured cat washing itself on top of a barrel. ‘No one,’ he said carefully, ‘would deny that you are the man best qualified to command the artillery at Majabigwaduce.’
‘So I can expect a letter from the Board of War?’ Revere said.
‘If I am satisfied,’ Wadsworth said, nerving himself to raise the matter that had brought him to the armory.
‘Satisfied about what, General?’ Revere asked, still looking up into Wadsworth’s face.
Peleg Wadsworth made himself look into the steady brown eyes. ‘A complaint was made,’ he said, ‘concerning the Castle Island ration demands, a matter of surplus, Colonel … ’
‘Surplus!’ Revere interrupted, not angrily, but in a tone suggesting he found the word amusing. He smiled, and Wadsworth found himself unexpectedly warming to the man. ‘Tell me, General,’ Revere went on, ‘how many troops you’ll be taking to Majajuce.’
‘We can’t be certain,’ Wadsworth said, ‘but we expect to take an infantry force of at least fifteen hundred men.’
‘And you’ve ordered rations for that many?’
‘Of course.’
‘And if only fourteen hundred men report for duty, General, what will you do with the surplus ration?’
‘It will be accounted for,’ Wadsworth said, ‘of course.’
‘This is war!’ Revere said energetically. ‘War and blood, fire and iron, death and damage, and a man can’t account for everything in war! I’ll make as many lists as you like when the war is over.’
Wadsworth frowned. Doubtless it was war, yet the Castle Island garrison, like Lieutenant-Colonel Revere himself, had yet to fire a shot at the enemy. ‘It is alleged, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said firmly, ‘that your garrison was comprised of a fixed number of men, yet the ration demands consistently cited thirty non-existent gunners.’
Revere gave a tolerant smile, suggesting he had heard all this before. ‘Consistently,’ he said derisively, ‘consistently, eh? Long words don’t kill the enemy, General.’
‘Another long word,’ Wadsworth said, ‘is peculation.’
The accusation was now open. The word hung in the dusty air. It was alleged that Revere had ordered extra rations that he had then sold for personal gain, though Wadsworth did not articulate that full accusation. He did not need to. Colonel Revere looked up into Wadsworth’s face, then shook his head sadly. He turned and walked slowly to a nine-pounder cannon that stood at the back of the storehouse. The gun had been captured at Saratoga and Revere now stroked its long barrel with a capable, broad-fingered hand. ‘For years, General,’ he spoke quietly, ‘I have pursued and promoted the cause of liberty.’ He was staring down at the royal cipher on the gun’s breech. ‘When you were learning books, General, I was riding to Philadelphia and New York to spread the idea of liberty. I risked capture and imprisonment for liberty. I threw tea into Boston Harbour and I rode to warn Lexington when the British started this war. That’s when we first met, General, at Lexington.’
‘I remember it …’ Wadsworth began.
‘And I risked the well-being of my dear wife,’ Revere interrupted hotly, ‘and the welfare of my children to serve a cause I love, General.’ He turned and looked at Wadsworth who stood in the buttress of sunlight cast through the wide-open door. ‘I have been a patriot, General, and I have proved my patriotism …’
‘No one is suggesting …’
‘Yes, they are, General!’ Revere said with a sudden passion. ‘They are suggesting I am a dishonest man! That I would steal from the cause to which I have devoted my life! It’s Major Todd, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not at liberty to reveal …’
‘You don’t need to,’ Revere said scathingly. ‘It’s Major Todd. He doesn’t like me, General, and I regret that, and I regret that the Major doesn’t know the first thing he’s talking about! I was told, General, that thirty men of the Barnstable County Militia were being posted to me for artillery training and I ordered rations accordingly, and then Major Fellows, for his own reasons, General, for his own good reasons held the men back, and I explained all that, but Major Todd isn’t a man to listen to reason, General.’
‘Major Todd is a man of diligence,’ Wadsworth said sternly, ‘and I am not saying he advanced the complaint, merely that he is a most efficient and honorable officer.’
‘A Harvard man, is he?’ Revere asked sharply.
Wadsworth frowned. ‘I cannot think that relevant, Colonel.’
‘I’ve no doubt you don’t, but Major Todd still misunderstood the situation, General,’ Revere said. He paused, and for a moment it seemed his indignation would burst out with the violence of thunder, but instead he smiled. ‘It is not peculation, General,’ he said, ‘and I don’t doubt I was remiss in not checking the books, but mistakes are made. I concentrated on making the guns efficient, General, efficient!’ He walked towards Wadsworth, his voice low. ‘All I have ever asked, General, is for a chance to fight for my country. To fight for the cause I love. To fight for my dear children’s future. Do you have children, General?’
‘I do.’
‘As do I. Dear children. And you think I would risk my family name, their reputation, and the cause I love for thirty loaves of bread? Or for thirty pieces of silver?’
Wadsworth had learned as a schoolmaster to judge his pupils by their demeanour. Boys, he had discovered, rarely looked authority in the eye when they lied. Girls were far more difficult to read, but boys, when they lied, almost always looked uncomfortable. Their gaze would shift, but Revere’s gaze was steady, his face was earnest, and Wadsworth felt a great surge of relief. He put a hand inside his uniform coat and brought out a paper, folded and sealed. ‘I had hoped you would satisfy me, Colonel, upon my soul, I had hoped that. And you have.’ He smiled and held the paper towards Revere.
Revere’s eyes glistened as he took the warrant. He broke the seal and opened the paper to discover a letter written by John Avery, deputy-secretary of the Council of State, and countersigned by General Solomon Lovell. The letter appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere as the commander of the artillery train that was to accompany the expedition to Majabigwaduce, where he was ordered to do all in his power to ‘captivate, kill or destroy the whole force of the enemy’. Revere read the warrant a second time, then wiped his cheek. ‘General,’ he said, and his voice had a catch in it, ‘this is all I desire.’
‘I am pleased, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said warmly. ‘You will receive orders later today, but I can tell you their gist now. Your guns should be taken to the Long Wharf ready for embarkation, and you should withdraw from the public magazine whatever gunpowder you require.’
‘Shubael Hewes has to authorize that,’ Revere said distractedly, still reading the warrant.
‘Shubael Hewes?’
‘The Deputy Sheriff, General, but don’t you worry, I know Shubael.’ Revere folded the warrant carefully, then cuffed at his eyes and sniffed. ‘We are going to captivate, kill and destroy them, General. We are going to make those red-coated bastards wish they had never sailed from England.’
‘We shall certainly dislodge them,’ Wadsworth said with a smile.
‘More than dislodge the monsters,’ Revere said vengefully, ‘we shall slaughter them! And those we don’t kill, General, we’ll march through town and back just to give folk a chance to let them know how welcome they are in Massachusetts.’
Wadsworth held out his hand. ‘I look forward to serving with you, Colonel.’
‘I look forward to sharing victory with you, General,’ Revere said, shaking the offered hand.
Revere watched Wadsworth leave, then, still holding the warrant as though it were the holy grail, went back to the courtyard where Josiah Flint was stirring butter into a dish of mashed turnips. ‘I’m going to war, Josiah,’ Revere said reverently.
‘I did that,’ Flint said, ‘and I was never so hungry in all my born days.’
‘I’ve waited for this,’ Revere said.
‘There’ll be no Nantucket turnips where you’re going,’ Flint said. ‘I don’t know why they taste better, but upon my soul you can’t trump a turnip from Nantucket. You think it’s the salt air?’
‘Commanding the state’s artillery!’
‘You ever travelled down east? It ain’t a Christian place, Colonel. Fog and flies is all it is, fog and flies, and the fog chills you and the flies bite like the very devil.’
‘I’m going to war. It’s all I ever asked! A chance, Josiah!’ Revere’s face was radiant. He turned a full triumphant circle, then slammed his fist onto the table. ‘I am going to war!’
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere had heard the trumpet and he was going to war.
James Fletcher’s boat buffeted against the outgoing tide, pushed by a convenient south-west wind that drove the Felicity upriver past Majabigwaduce’s high bluff. The Felicity was a small boat, just twenty-four feet long, with a stubby mast from which a faded red sail hung from a high gaff. The sun sparkled prettily on the small waves of Penobscot Bay, but behind the Felicity a bank of thick fog shrouded the view towards the distant ocean. Brigadier McLean, enthroned on a tarry heap of nets in the boat’s belly, wanted to see Majabigwaduce just as the enemy would first see it, from the water. He wanted to put himself in his enemy’s shoes and decide how he would attack the peninsula if he were a rebel. He stared fixedly at the shore, and again remarked how the scenery put him in mind of Scotland’s west coast. ‘Don’t you agree, Mister Moore?’ he asked Lieutenant John Moore who was one of two junior officers who had been ordered to accompany the brigadier.
‘Not dissimilar, sir,’ Moore said, though abstractedly, as if he merely essayed a courtesy rather than a thoughtful response.
‘More trees here, of course,’ the brigadier said.
‘Indeed, sir, indeed,’ Moore said, still not paying proper attention to his commanding officer’s remarks. Instead he was gazing at James Fletcher’s sister, Bethany, who had the tiller of the Felicity in her right hand.
McLean sighed. He liked Moore very much, considering the young man to have great promise, but he understood too that any young man would rather gaze at Bethany Fletcher than make polite conversation to a senior officer. She was a rare beauty to find in this distant place. Her hair was pale gold, framing a sun-darkened face given strength by a long nose. Her blue eyes were trusting and friendly, but the feature that made her beautiful, that could have lit the darkest night, was her smile. It was an extraordinary smile, wide and generous, that had dazzled John Moore and his companion, Lieutenant Campbell, who also gaped at Bethany as though he had never seen a young woman before. He kept plucking at his dark kilt as the wind lifted it from his thighs.
‘And the sea monsters here are extraordinary,’ McLean went on, ‘like dragons, wouldn’t you say, John? Pink dragons with green spots?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ Moore said, then gave a start as he belatedly realized the brigadier was teasing him. He had the grace to look abashed. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
James Fletcher laughed. ‘No dragons here, General.’
McLean smiled. He looked at the distant fog. ‘You have much fog here, Mister Fletcher?’
‘We gets fog in the spring, General, and fog in the summer, and then comes the fog in the fall and after that the snow, which we usually can’t see because it’s hidden by fog,’ Fletcher said with a smile as wide as his sister’s, ‘fog and more fog.’
‘Yet you like living here?’ McLean asked gently.
‘God’s own country, General,’ Fletcher answered enthusiastically, ‘and God hides it from the heathen by wrapping it in fog.’
‘And you, Miss Fletcher?’ McLean enquired of Bethany. ‘Do you like living in Majabigwaduce?’
‘I like it fine, sir,’ she said with a smile.
‘Don’t steer too close to the shore, Miss Fletcher,’ McLean said sternly. ‘I would never forgive myself if some disaffected person was to take a shot at our uniforms and struck you instead.’ McLean had tried to dissuade Bethany from accompanying the reconnaissance, but he had not tried over-enthusiastically, acknowledging to himself that the company of a pretty girl was a rare delight.
James Fletcher dismissed the fear. ‘No one will shoot at the Felicity,’ he said confidently, ‘and besides, most folks round here are loyal to his majesty.’
‘As you are, Mister Fletcher?’ Lieutenant John Moore asked pointedly.
James paused, and the brigadier saw the flicker of his eyes towards his sister. Then James grinned. ‘I’ve no quarrel with the king,’ he said. ‘He leaves me alone and I leave him alone, and so the two of us rub along fair enough.’
‘So you will take the oath?’ McLean asked, and saw how solemnly Beth gazed at her brother.
‘Don’t have much choice, sir, do I? Not if I want to fish and scratch a living.’
Brigadier McLean had issued a proclamation to the country about Majabigwaduce, assuring the inhabitants that if they were loyal to his majesty and took the oath swearing to that loyalty, then they would have nothing to fear from his forces, but if any man refused the oath, then the proclamation promised hard times to him and his family. ‘You do indeed have a choice,’ McLean said.
‘We were raised to love the king, sir,’ James said.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ McLean said. He gazed at the dark woods. ‘I understood,’ the brigadier went on, ‘that the authorities in Boston have been conscripting men?’
‘That they have,’ James agreed.
‘Yet you have not been conscripted?’
‘Oh, they tried,’ James said dismissively, ‘but they’re leery of this part of Massachusetts.’
‘Leery?’
‘Not much sympathy for the rebellion here, General.’
‘But some folk here are disaffected?’ McLean asked.
‘A few,’ James said, ‘but some folk are never happy.’
‘A lot of folks here fled from Boston,’ Bethany said, ‘and they’re all loyalists.’
‘When the British left, Miss Fletcher? Is that what you mean?’
‘Yes, sir. Like Doctor Calef. He had no wish to stay in a city ruled by rebellion, sir.’
‘Was that your fate?’ John Moore asked.
‘Oh no,’ James said, ‘our family’s been here since God made the world.’
‘Your parents live in Majabigwaduce?’ the brigadier asked.
‘Father’s in the burying ground, God rest him,’ James said.
‘I’m sorry,’ McLean said.
‘And Mother’s good as dead,’ James went on.
‘James!’ Bethany said reprovingly.
‘Crippled, bedridden and speechless,’ James said. Six years before, he explained, when Bethany was twelve and James fourteen, their widowed mother had been gored by a bull she had been leading to pasture. Then, two years later, she had suffered a stroke that had left her stammering and confused.
‘Life is hard on us,’ McLean said. He stared at a log house built close to the river’s bank and noted the huge heap of firewood stacked against one outer wall. ‘And it must be hard,’ he went on, ‘to make a new life in a wilderness if you are accustomed to a city like Boston.’
‘Wilderness, General?’ James asked, amused.
‘It is hard for the Boston folk who came here, sir,’ Bethany said more usefully.
‘They have to learn to fish, General,’ James said, ‘or grow crops, or cut wood.’
‘You grow many crops?’ McLean asked.
‘Rye, oats and potatoes,’ Bethany answered, ‘and corn, sir.’
‘They can trap, General,’ James put in. ‘Our dad made a fine living from trapping! Beaver, marten, weasels.’
‘He caught an ermine once,’ Bethany said proudly.
‘And doubtless that scrap of fur is around some fine lady’s neck in London, General,’ James said. ‘Then there’s mast timber,’ he went on. ‘Not so much in Majabigwaduce, but plenty upriver and any man can learn to cut and trim a tree. And there are sawmills aplenty! Why there must be thirty sawmills between here and the river’s head. A man can make scantlings or staves, boards or posts, anything he pleases!’
‘You trade in timber?’ McLean asked.
‘I fish, General, and it’s a poor man who can’t keep his family alive by fishing.’
‘What do you catch?’
‘Cod, General, and cunners, haddock, hake, eel, flounder, pollock, skate, mackerel, salmon, alewives. We have more fish than we know what to do with! And all good eating! It’s what gives our Beth her pretty complexion, all that fish!’
Bethany gave her brother a fond glance. ‘You’re silly, James,’ she said.
‘You are not married, Miss Fletcher?’ the general asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Our Beth was betrothed, General,’ James explained, ‘to a rare good man. Captain of a schooner. She was to be married this spring.’
McLean looked gently at the girl. ‘Was to be?’
‘He was lost at sea, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘Fishing on the banks,’ James explained. ‘He got caught by a nor’easter, General, and the nor’easters have blown many a good man out of this world to the next.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She’ll find another,’ James said carelessly. ‘She’s not the ugliest girl in the world,’ he grinned, ‘are you?’
The brigadier turned his gaze back to the shore. He sometimes allowed himself the small luxury of imagining that no enemy would come to attack him, but he knew that was unlikely. McLean’s small force was now the only British presence between the Canadian border and Rhode Island and the rebels would surely want that presence destroyed. They would come. He pointed south. ‘We might return now?’ he suggested, and Bethany obliged by turning the Felicity into the wind. Her brother hardened the jib, staysail and main so that the small boat tipped as she beat into the brisk breeze and sharp dashes of spray slapped against the three officers’ red coats. McLean looked again at Majabigwaduce’s high western bluff that faced onto the wide river. ‘If you were in command here,’ he asked his two lieutenants, ‘how would you defend the place?’ Lieutenant Campbell, a lank youth with a prominent nose and an equally prominent Adam’s apple, swallowed nervously and said nothing, while young Moore just leaned back on the heaped nets as though contemplating an afternoon’s sleep. ‘Come, come,’ the brigadier chided the pair, ‘tell me what you would do.’
‘Does that not depend on what the enemy does, sir?’ Moore asked idly.
‘Then assume with me that they arrive with a dozen or more ships and, say, fifteen hundred men?’
Moore closed his eyes, while Lieutenant Campbell tried to look enthusiastic. ‘We put our guns on the bluff, sir,’ he offered, gesturing towards the high ground that dominated the river and harbour entrance.
‘But the bay is wide,’ McLean pointed out, ‘so the enemy can pass us on the farther bank and land upstream of us. Then they cross the neck,’ he pointed to the narrow isthmus of low ground that connected Majabigwaduce to the mainland, ‘and attack us from the landward side.’
Campbell frowned and bit his lip as he pondered that suggestion. ‘So we put guns there too, sir,’ he offered, ‘maybe a smaller fort?’
McLean nodded encouragingly, then glanced at Moore. ‘Asleep, Mister Moore?’
Moore smiled, but did not open his eyes. ‘Wer alles verteidigt, verteidigt nichts,’ he said.
‘I believe der alte Fritz thought of that long before you did, Mister Moore,’ McLean responded, then smiled at Bethany. ‘Our paymaster is showing off, Miss Fletcher, by quoting Frederick the Great. He’s also quite right, he who defends everything defends nothing. So,’ the brigadier looked back to Moore, ‘what would you defend here at Majabigwaduce?’
‘I would defend, sir, that which the enemy wishes to possess.’
‘And that is?’
‘The harbour, sir.’
‘So you would allow the enemy to land their troops on the neck?’ McLean asked. The brigadier’s reconnaissance had convinced him that the rebels would probably land north of Majabigwaduce. They might try to enter the harbour, fighting their way through Mowat’s sloops to land troops on the beach below the fort, but if McLean was in command of the rebels he reckoned he would choose to land on the wide, shelving beach of the isthmus. By doing that, the enemy would cut him off from the mainland and could assault his ramparts safe from any cannon-fire from the Royal Navy vessels. There was a small chance that they might be daring and assault the bluff to gain the peninsula’s high ground, but the bluff’s slope was dauntingly steep. He sighed inwardly. He could not defend everything because, as the great Frederick had said, by defending everything a man defended nothing.
‘They’ll land somewhere, sir,’ Moore answered the brigadier’s question, ‘and there’s little we can do to stop them landing, not if they come in sufficient force. But why do they land, sir?’
‘You tell me.’
‘To capture the harbour, sir, because that is the value of this place.’
‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven, Mister Moore,’ McLean said, ‘and they do want the harbour and they will come for it, but let us hope they do not come soon.’
‘The sooner they come, sir,’ Moore said, ‘the sooner we can kill them.’
‘I would wish to finish the fort first,’ McLean said. The fort, which he had decided to name Fort George, was hardly begun. The soil was thin, rocky and hard to work, and the ridge so thick with trees that a week’s toil had scarcely cleared a sufficient killing ground. If the enemy came soon, McLean knew, he would have small choice but to fire a few defiant guns and then haul down the flag. ‘Are you a prayerful man, Mister Moore?’ McLean asked.
‘Indeed I am, sir.’
‘Then pray the enemy delays,’ McLean said fervently, then looked to James Fletcher. ‘Mister Fletcher, you would land us back on the beach?’
‘That I will, General,’ James said cheerfully.
‘And pray for us, Mister Fletcher.’
‘Not sure the good Lord listens to me, sir.’
‘James!’ Bethany reproved her brother.
James grinned. ‘You need prayers to protect yourself here, General?’
McLean paused for a moment, then shrugged. ‘It depends, Mister Fletcher, on the enemy’s strength, but I would wish for twice as many men and twice our number of ships to feel secure.’
‘Maybe they won’t come, sir,’ Fletcher said. ‘Those folks in Boston never took much note of what happens here.’ Wisps of fog were drifting with the wind as the Felicity ran past the three sloops of war that guarded the harbour entrance. James Fletcher noted how the three ships were anchored fore and aft so that they could not swing with the tide or wind, thus allowing each sloop to keep its broadside pointed at the harbour entrance. The ship nearest the beach, the North, had two intermittent jets of water pulsing from its portside, and James could hear the clank of the elmwood pumps as men thrust at the long handles. Those pumps rarely stopped, suggesting the North was an ill-found ship, though her guns were doubtless efficient enough to help protect the harbour mouth and, to protect that entrance even further, red-coated Royal Marines were hacking at the thin soil and rocks of Cross Island, which edged the southern side of the channel. Fletcher reckoned the marines were making a battery there. Behind the three sloops and making a second line across the harbour, were three of the transport ships that had carried the redcoats to Majabigwaduce. Those transports were not armed, but their size alone made them a formidable obstacle to any ship that might attempt to pass the smaller sloops.
McLean handed Fletcher an oilcloth-wrapped parcel of tobacco and one of the Spanish silver dollars that were common currency, as payment for the use of his boat. ‘Come, Mister Moore,’ he called sharply as the paymaster offered Bethany an arm to help her over the uneven beach. ‘We have work to do!’
James Fletcher also had work to do. It was still high summer, but the log pile had to be made for the winter and, that evening, he split wood outside their house. He worked deep into the twilight, slashing the axe down hard to splinter logs into usable firewood.
‘You’re thinking, James.’ Bethany had come from the house and was watching him. She wore an apron over her grey dress.
‘Is that bad?’
‘You always work too hard when you’re thinking,’ she said. She sat on a bench fronting the house. ‘Mother’s sleeping.’
‘Good,’ James said. He left the axe embedded in a stump and sat beside his sister on the bench that overlooked the harbour. The sky was purple and black, the water glinted with little ripples of fading silver about the anchored boats; glimmers of lamplight reflected on the small waves. A bugle sounded from the ridge where two tented encampments housed the redcoats. A picquet of six men guarded the guns and ammunition that had been parked on the beach above the tideline. ‘That young officer liked you, Beth,’ James said. Bethany just smiled, but said nothing. ‘They’re nice enough fellows,’ James said.
‘I like the general,’ Bethany said.
‘A decent man, he seems,’ James said.
‘I wonder what happened to his arm?’
‘Soldiers, Beth. Soldiers get wounded.’
‘And killed.’
‘Yes.’
They sat in companionable silence for a while as the darkness closed slow on the river and on the harbour and on the bluff. ‘So will you sign the oath?’ Bethany asked after a while.
‘Not sure I have much choice,’ James said bleakly.
‘But will you?’
James picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. ‘Father would have wanted me to sign.’
‘I’m not sure Father thought about it much,’ Bethany said. ‘We never had government here, neither royal nor rebel.’
‘He loved the king,’ James said. ‘He hated the French and loved the king.’ He sighed. ‘We have to make a living, Beth. If I don’t take the oath then they’ll take the Felicity away from us, and then what do we do? I can’t have that.’ A dog howled somewhere in the village and James waited till the sound died away. ‘I like McLean well enough,’ he said, ‘but …’ He let the thought fade away into the darkness.
‘But?’ Bethany asked. Her brother shrugged and made no answer. Beth slapped at a mosquito. ‘“Choose you this day whom you will serve,”’ she quoted, ‘“whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or …”’ She left the Bible verse unfinished.
‘There’s too much bitterness,’ James said.
‘You thought it would pass us by?’
‘I hoped it would. What does anyone want with Bagaduce anyway?’
Bethany smiled. ‘The Dutch were here, the French made a fort here, it seems the whole world wants us.’
‘But it’s our home, Beth. We made this place, it’s ours.’ James paused. He was not sure he could articulate what was in his mind. ‘You know Colonel Buck left?’
Buck was the local commander of the Massachusetts Militia and he had fled north up the Penobscot River when the British arrived. ‘I heard,’ Bethany said.
‘And John Lymburner and his friends are saying what a coward Buck is, and that’s just nonsense! It’s all just bitterness, Beth.’
‘So you’ll ignore it?’ she asked. ‘Just sign the oath and pretend it isn’t happening?’
James stared down at his hands. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘You know what I think,’ Bethany said firmly.
‘Just ’cos your fellow was a damned rebel,’ James said, smiling. He gazed at the shivering reflections cast from the lanterns on board the three sloops. ‘What I want, Beth, is for them all to leave us alone.’
‘They won’t do that now,’ she said.
James nodded. ‘They won’t, so I’ll write a letter, Beth,’ he said, ‘and you can take it over the river to John Brewer. He’ll know how to get it to Boston.’
Bethany was silent for a while, then frowned. ‘And the oath? Will you sign it?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, Beth, I honestly don’t know.’
James wrote the letter on a blank page torn from the back of the family Bible. He wrote simply, saying what he had seen in Majabigwaduce and its harbour. He told how many guns were mounted on the sloops and where the British were making earthworks, how many soldiers he believed had come to the village and how many guns had been shipped to the beach. He used the other side of the paper to make a rough map of the peninsula on which he drew the position of the fort and the place where the three sloops of war were anchored. He marked the battery on Cross Island, then turned the page over and signed the letter with his name, biting his lower lip as he formed the clumsy letters.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t put your name to it,’ Bethany said.
James sealed the folded paper with candle-wax. ‘The soldiers probably won’t trouble you, Beth, which is why you should carry the letter, but if they do, and if they find the letter, then I don’t want you blamed. Say you didn’t know what was in it and let me be punished.’
‘So you’re a rebel now?’
James hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Good,’ Bethany said.
The sound of a flute came from a house higher up the hill. The lights still shimmered on the harbour water and dark night came to Majabigwaduce.
Excerpts of a letter from the Selectmen of Newburyport, Massachusetts, to the General Court of Massachusetts, July 12th, 1779:
Last Friday one James Collins an Inhabitant of Penobscot on his way home from Boston went through this Town … upon Examination (we) find that he has been an Enemy to the united States of America … and that immediately after the British Fleet arrived at Penobscot this Collins … took Passage from Kennebeck to Boston … where he arrived last Tuesday, and as we apprehend got all the Intelligence he Possibly cou’d Relative to the movements of our Fleet and Army … (we) are suspicious of his being a Spy and have accordingly Secured him in the Gaol in this Town.
Order addressed to the Massachusetts Board of War, July 3rd, 1779:
Ordered that the Board of War be and hereby are directed to procure three hundred and fifty Barrels of Flour, One hundred and sixteen Barrels of Pork, One hundred and Sixty five Barrels of Beef, Eleven Tierces of Rice, Three hundred and Fifty bushels of Pease, five hundred and fifty two Gallons of Molasses, Two Thousand, One hundred and Seventy Six pound of Soap and Seven hundred and Sixty Eight pound of Candles being a deficient Quantity … on board the Transports for the intended Expedition to Penobscot.
THREE
On Sunday, 18th July, 1779, Peleg Wadsworth worshipped at Christ Church on Salem Street where the rector was the Reverend Stephen Lewis who, until two years before, had been a British army chaplain. The rector had been captured with the rest of the defeated British army at Saratoga, yet in captivity he had changed his allegiance and sworn an oath of loyalty to the United States of America, which meant his congregation this summer Sunday was swollen by towns-folk curious about how he would preach when his adopted country was about to launch an expedition against his former comrades. The Reverend Lewis chose his text from the Book of Daniel. He related the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three men who had been hurled into King Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace and who, by God’s saving grace, had survived the flames. For an hour or more Wadsworth wondered how the scripture was relevant to the military preparations that obsessed Boston, and even whether some ancient lingering loyalty was making the rector ambivalent, but then the Reverend Lewis moved to his final peroration. He told how all the king’s men had assembled to watch the execution and instead they saw that ‘the fire had no power’. ‘The king’s men,’ the rector repeated fiercely, ‘saw that “the fire had no power!” There is God’s promise, in the twenty-seventh verse of the third chapter of Daniel! The fire set by the king’s men had no power!’ The Reverend Lewis stared directly at Wadsworth as he repeated the last two words, ‘no power!’, and Wadsworth thought of the redcoats waiting at Majabigwaduce and prayed that their fire would indeed have no power. He thought of the ships lying at anchor in Boston’s harbour, he thought of the militia who were assembling at Townsend where the ships would rendezvous with the troops, and he prayed again that the enemy’s fire would prove impotent.
After the service Wadsworth shook a multitude of hands and received the good wishes of many in the congregation, but he did not leave the church. Instead he waited beneath the organ loft until he was alone, then he went back up the aisle, opened a box pew at random, and knelt on a hassock newly embroidered with the flag of the United States. Around the flag were stitched the words ‘God Watcheth Over Us’ and Wadsworth prayed that was true, and prayed that God would watch over his family whom he named one by one: Elizabeth, his dear wife, then Alexander, Charles and Zilpha. He prayed that the campaign against the British in Majabigwaduce would be brief and successful. Brief because Elizabeth’s next child was due within five or six weeks and he was afraid for her and wanted to be with her when the baby was born. He prayed for the men whom he would lead into battle. He mouthed the prayer, the words a half-formed murmur, but each one distinct and fervent in his spirit. The cause is just, he told God, and men must die for it, and he begged God to receive those men into their new heavenly home, and he prayed for the widows who must be made and the orphans who would be left. ‘And if it please you, God,’ he said in a slightly louder voice, ‘let not Elizabeth be widowed, and permit my children to grow with a father in their house.’ He wondered how many other such prayers were being offered this Sunday morning.
‘General Wadsworth, sir?’ a tentative voice spoke behind him.
Wadsworth turned to see a tall, slim young man in a dark green uniform coat crossed by a white belt. The young man looked anxious, worried perhaps that he had disturbed Wadsworth’s devotions. He had dark hair that was bound into a short, thick pigtail. For a moment Wadsworth supposed the man had been sent to him with orders, then the memory of a much younger boy flooded his mind and the memory allowed him to recognize the man. ‘William Dennis!’ Wadsworth said with real pleasure. He did some quick addition in his head and realized Dennis must now be nineteen years old. ‘It was eight years ago we last met!’
‘I hoped you’d recollect me, sir,’ Dennis said, pleased.
‘Of course I remember you!’ Wadsworth reached across the box pew to shake the young man’s hand, ‘and remember you well!’
‘I heard you were here, sir,’ Dennis said, ‘so took the liberty of seeking you out.’
‘I’m glad!’
‘And you’re a general now, sir.’
‘A leap from school-mastering, is it not?’ Wadsworth said wryly, ‘and you?’
‘A lieutenant in the Continental Marines, sir.’
‘I congratulate you.’
‘And bound for Penobscot, sir, as are you.’
‘You’re on the Warren?’
‘I am, sir, but posted to the Vengeance.’ The Vengeance was one of the privateers, a twenty-gun ship.
‘Then we shall share a victory,’ Wadsworth said. He opened the pew door and gestured towards the street. ‘Will you walk with me to the harbour?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘You attended service, I hope?’
‘The Reverend Frobisher preached at West Church,’ Dennis said, ‘and I wanted to hear him.’
‘You don’t sound impressed,’ Wadsworth said, amused.
‘He chose a text from the Sermon on the Mount,’ Dennis said, ‘“He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”’
‘Ah!’ Wadsworth said with a grimace. ‘Was he saying that God is not on our side? If so, it sounds dispiriting.’
‘He was assuring us, sir, that the revealed truths of our faith cannot depend on the outcome of a battle, a campaign or even a war. He said we cannot know God’s will, sir, except for that part which illuminates our conscience.’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ Wadsworth allowed.
‘And he said war is the devil’s business, sir.’
‘That’s certainly true,’ Wadsworth said as they left the church, ‘but hardly an apt sermon for a town about to send its men to war?’ He closed the church door and saw that the wind-driven drizzle that had blown him uphill from the harbour had lifted and the sky was clearing itself of high, scudding clouds. He walked with Dennis towards the water, wondering when the fleet would leave. Commodore Saltonstall had given the order to set sail on the previous Thursday, but had postponed the departure because the wind had risen to a gale strong enough to part ships’ cables. But the great fleet must sail soon. It would go eastwards, towards the enemy, towards the devil’s business.
He glanced at Dennis. He had grown into a handsome young man. His dark green coat was faced with white and his white breeches piped with green. He wore a straight sword in a leather scabbard trimmed with silver oak leaves. ‘I have never understood,’ Wadsworth said, ‘why the marines wear green. Wouldn’t blue be more, well, marine?’
‘I’m told that the only cloth that was available in Philadelphia, sir, was green.’
‘Ah! That thought never occurred to me. How are your parents?’
‘Very well, sir, thank you,’ Dennis said enthusiastically. ‘They’ll be pleased to know I met you.’
‘Send them my respects,’ Wadsworth said. He had taught William Dennis to read and to write, he had taught him grammar in both Latin and English, but then the family had moved to Connecticut and Wadsworth had lost touch. He remembered Dennis well, though. He had been a bright boy, alert and mischievous, but never malevolent. ‘I beat you once, didn’t I?’ he asked.
‘Twice, sir,’ Dennis said with a grin, ‘and I deserved both punishments.’
‘That was never a duty I enjoyed,’ Wadsworth said.
‘But necessary?’
‘Oh, indeed.’
‘Their conversation was constantly interrupted by men who wished to shake their hands and wish them success against the British. ‘Give them hell, General,’ one man said, a sentiment echoed by everyone who accosted the pair. Wadsworth smiled, shook offered hands and finally escaped the well-wishers by entering the Bunch of Grapes, a tavern close to Long Wharf. ‘I think God will forgive us for crossing a tavern threshold on the Sabbath day,’ he said.
‘It’s more like the army’s headquarters these days,’ Dennis said, amused. The tavern was crowded with men in uniforms, many of whom were gathered by a wall where notices had been tacked, so many notices that they overlapped each other. Some offered bounties to men willing to serve on privateers, others had been put there by Solomon Lovell’s staff.
‘We’re to sleep aboard the ships tonight!’ a man shouted, then saw Wadsworth. ‘Is that because we’re sailing tomorrow, General?’
‘I hope so,’ Wadsworth said, ‘but make sure you’re all aboard by nightfall.’
‘Can I bring her?’ the man asked. He had his arm around one of the tavern’s whores, a pretty young red-haired girl who already looked drunk.
Wadsworth ignored the question, instead leading Dennis to an empty table at the back of the room, which was alive with conversation, hope and optimism. A burly man in a salt-stained sailor’s coat stood and thumped a table with his fist. He raised a tankard when the room had fallen silent. ‘Here’s to victory at Bagaduce!’ he shouted. ‘Death to the Tories, and to the day when we carry fat George’s head through Boston on the point of a bayonet!’
‘Much is expected of us,’ Wadsworth said when the cheers had ended.
‘King George might not oblige us with his head,’ Dennis said, amused, ‘but I’m sure we shall not disappoint the other expectations.’ He waited as Wadsworth ordered oyster stew and ale. ‘Did you know that folk are buying shares in the expedition?’
‘Shares?’
‘The privateer owners, sir, are selling the plunder they expect to take. I assume you haven’t invested?’
‘I was never a speculator,’ Wadsworth said. ‘How does it work?’
‘Well, Captain Thomas of the Vengeance, sir, expects to capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of plunder, and he’s offering a hundred shares in that expectation for fifteen pounds apiece.’
‘Good Lord! And what if he doesn’t capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of material?’
‘Then the speculators lose, sir.’
‘I suppose they must, yes. And people are buying?’
‘Many! I believe the Vengeance’s shares are trading upwards of twenty-two pounds each now.’
‘What a world we live in,’ Wadsworth said, amused. ‘Tell me,’ he pushed the jug of ale towards Dennis, ‘what you were doing before you joined the marines?’
‘I was studying, sir.’
‘Harvard?’
‘Yale.’
‘Then I didn’t beat you nearly often enough or hard enough,’ Wadsworth said.
Dennis laughed. ‘My ambition is the law.’
‘A noble ambition.’
‘I hope so, sir. When the British are defeated I shall go back to my studies.’
‘I see you carry them with you,’ Wadsworth said, nodding towards a book-shaped lump in the tail of the lieutenant’s coat, ‘or is that the scriptures?’
‘Beccaria, sir,’ Dennis said, pulling the book out of his tail pocket. ‘I’m reading him for pleasure, or should I say enlightenment?’
‘Both, I hope. I’ve heard of him,’ Wadsworth said, ‘and very much want to read him.’
‘You’ll permit me to lend you the book when I’ve finished it?’
‘That would be kind,’ Wadsworth said. He opened the book, On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria, newly translated from the Italian, and he saw the minutely written pencilled notes on the margins of almost every page, and he thought how sad it was that a sterling young man like Dennis should need to go to war. Then he thought that though the rain might indeed fall on the just and unjust alike, it was unthinkable that God would allow decent men who fought in a noble cause to lose. That was a comforting reflection. ‘Doesn’t Beccaria have strange ideas?’ he asked.
‘He believes judicial execution is both wrong and ineffective, sir.’
‘Really?’
‘He argues the case cogently, sir.’
‘He’ll need to!’
They ate, and afterwards walked the few paces to the harbour where the ships’ masts made a forest. Wadsworth looked for the sloop that would carry him to battle, but he could not make the Sally out amongst the tangle of hulls and masts and rigging. A gull cried overhead, a dog ran along the wharf with a cod’s head in its mouth and a legless beggar shuffled towards him. ‘Wounded at Saratoga, sir,’ the beggar said and Wadsworth handed the man a shilling.
‘Can I hail you a boat, sir?’ Dennis asked.
‘That would be kind.’
Peleg Wadsworth gazed at the fleet and remembered his morning prayers. There was so much confidence in Boston, so much hope and so many expectations, but war, he knew from experience, truly was the devil’s business.
And it was time to go to war.
‘This is not seemly,’ Doctor Calef said.
Brigadier McLean, standing beside the doctor, ignored the protest.
‘It is not seemly!’ Calef said louder.
‘It is necessary,’ Brigadier McLean retorted in a tone harsh enough to startle the doctor. The troops had worshipped in the open air that Sunday morning, the Scottish voices singing strongly in the blustery wind that fetched slaps of rain to dapple the harbour. The Reverend Campbell, the 82nd’s chaplain, had preached from a text in Isaiah: ‘In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan,’ a text that McLean accepted was relevant, but he wondered whether he had a sword strong and great and sore enough to punish the troops he knew would surely come to dislodge him. The rain was falling more steadily now, drenching the ridgetop where the fort was being made and where the two regiments paraded in a hollow square. ‘These men are new to war,’ McLean explained to Calef, ‘and most have never seen a battle, so they need to learn the consequences of disobedience.’ He walked towards the square’s centre where a Saint Andrew’s cross had been erected. A young man, stripped to the waist, was tied to the cross with his back exposed to the wind and rain.
A sergeant pushed a folded strip of leather between the young man’s teeth. ‘Bite on that, boy, and take your punishment like a man.’
McLean raised his voice so that every soldier could hear him. ‘Private Macintosh attempted to desert. In so doing he broke his oath to his king, to his country and to God. For that he will be punished, as will any man here who tries to follow his example.’
‘I don’t care if he’s punished,’ Calef said when the brigadier rejoined him, ‘but must it be done on the Lord’s day? Can it not wait till tomorrow?’
‘No,’ McLean said, ‘it cannot.’ He nodded to the sergeant. ‘Do your duty.’
Two drummer boys would do the whipping while a third beat the strokes on his drum. Private Macintosh had been caught trying to sneak across the low, marshy neck that joined Majabigwaduce to the mainland. That was the only route off the peninsula, unless a man stole a boat or, at a pinch, swam across the harbour, and McLean had placed a picquet in the trees close to the neck. They had brought Macintosh back and he had been sentenced to two hundred lashes, the severest punishment McLean had ever ordered, but he had few enough men as it was and he needed to deter others from desertion.
Desertion was a problem. Most men were content enough, but there were always a few who saw the promise of a better existence in the vastness of North America. Life here was a great deal easier than in the Highlands of Scotland, and Macintosh had made his run and now he would be punished.
‘One!’ the sergeant called.
‘Lay it on hard,’ McLean told the two drummer boys, ‘you’re not here to tickle him.’
‘Two!’
McLean let his mind wander as the leather whips criss-crossed the man’s back. He had seen many floggings in his years of service, and had ordered executions too, because floggings and executions were the enforcers of duty. He saw many of the soldiers staring aghast at the sight, so the punishment was probably working. McLean did not enjoy punishment parades, no one in his right mind would, but they were unavoidable and, with luck, Macintosh would reform into a decent soldier.
And what Leviathan, McLean wondered, would Macintosh have to fight? A schooner captained by a loyalist had put into Majabigwaduce a week before with a report that the rebels in Boston were assembling a fleet and an army. ‘We were told there were forty or more ships coming your way, sir,’ the schooner’s captain had told him, ‘and they’re gathering upwards of three thousand men.’
Maybe that was true and maybe not. The schooner’s captain had not visited Boston, just heard a rumour in Nantucket, and rumour, McLean knew, could inflate a company into a battalion and a battalion into an army. Nevertheless he had taken the information seriously enough to send the schooner back southwards with a despatch to Sir Henry Clinton in New York. The despatch merely said that McLean expected to be attacked soon and could not hold out without reinforcements. Why, he wondered, had he been given so few men and ships? If the crown wanted this piece of country, then why not send an adequate force? ‘Thirty-eight!’ the sergeant shouted. There was blood on Macintosh’s back now, blood diluted by rain, but still enough blood to trickle down and darken the waistband of his kilt. ‘Thirty-nine,’ the sergeant bellowed, ‘and lay it on hard!’
McLean resented the time this punishment parade stole from his preparations. He knew time was short and the fort was nowhere near completed. The trench about the four walls was scarcely two feet deep, the ramparts themselves not much higher. It was an excuse for a fort, a pathetic little earthwork, and he needed both men and time. He had offered wages to any civilian who was willing to work and, when insufficient men came forward, he sent patrols to impress labour.
‘Sixty-one!’ the sergeant shouted. Macintosh was whimpering now, the sound stifled by the leather gag. He shifted his weight and blood squelched in one shoe, then spilt over the shoe’s edge.
‘He’ll not take much more,’ Calef growled. Calef was replacing the battalion surgeon who was sick with a fever.
‘Keep going!’ McLean said.
‘You want to kill him?’
‘I want the battalion,’ McLean said, ‘to be more frightened of the lash than of the enemy.’
‘Sixty-two!’ the sergeant shouted.
‘Tell me,’ McLean suddenly turned on the doctor, ‘why is the rumour being spread that I plan to hang any civilian who supports the rebellion?’
Calef looked uncomfortable. He flinched as the whipped man whimpered again, then looked defiantly at the general. ‘To persuade such disaffected people to leave the region, of course. You don’t want rebels lurking in the woods hereabouts.’
‘Nor do I want a reputation as a hangman! We did not come here to persecute folk, but to persuade them to return to their proper allegiance. I would be grateful, Doctor, if a counter-rumour was propagated. That I have no intentions of hanging any man, rebel or not.’
‘God’s blood, man, I can see bone!’ the doctor protested, ignoring McLean’s strictures. The whimpers had become moans. McLean saw that the drummer boys were using less strength now, not because their arms were weakening, but out of pity, and neither he nor the sergeant corrected them.
McLean stopped the punishment at a hundred lashes. ‘Cut him down, Sergeant,’ he ordered, ‘and carry him to the doctor’s house.’ He turned away from the bloody mess on the cross. ‘Any of you who follow Macintosh’s example will follow him here! Now dismiss the men to their duties.’
The civilians who had volunteered or been conscripted for labour trudged up the hill. One man, tall and gaunt, with wild dark hair and angry eyes pushed his way past McLean’s aides to confront the general. ‘You will be punished for this!’ the man snarled.
‘For what?’ McLean enquired.
‘For working on the Sabbath!’ the man said. He towered over McLean. ‘In all my days I have never worked on the Sabbath, never! You make me a sinner!’
McLean held his temper. A dozen or so other men had paused and were watching the gaunt man, and McLean suspected they would join the protest and refuse to desecrate a Sunday by working if he yielded. ‘So why will you not work on a Sunday, sir?’ McLean asked.
‘It is the Lord’s day, and we are commanded to keep it holy.’ The man jabbed a finger at the brigadier, stopping just short of striking McLean’s chest. ‘It is God’s commandment!’
‘And Christ commanded that you render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,’ McLean retorted, ‘and today Caesar demands you make a rampart. But I will accommodate you, sir, I will accommodate you by not paying you. Work is paid labour, but today you will freely offer me your assistance which, sir, is a Christian act.’
‘I will not …’ the man began.
‘Lieutenant Moore!’ McLean raised his blackthorn stick to summon the lieutenant, though the gesture looked threatening and the gaunt man took a backwards step. ‘Call back the drummer boys!’ McLean called, ‘I need another man whipped!’ He turned his gaze back to the man. ‘You either assist me, sir,’ he said quietly, ‘or I shall scourge you.’
The tall man glanced at the empty Saint Andrew’s cross. ‘I shall pray for your destruction,’ he promised, but the fire had gone from his voice. He gave McLean a last defiant look, then turned away.
The civilians worked. They raised the wall of the fort another foot by laying logs along the low earthen berm. Some men cut down more trees, opening fields of fire for the fort, while others used picks and shovels to sink a well in the fort’s north-eastern bastion. McLean ordered one long spruce trunk to be trimmed and stripped of its bark, then a sailor from the Albany attached a small pulley to the narrow end of the trunk and a long line was rove through the pulley’s block. A deep hole was hacked in the south-western bastion and the spruce trunk was raised as a flagpole. Soldiers packed the hole with stones and, when the pole was reckoned to be stable, McLean ordered the union flag to be hauled into the damp sky. ‘We shall call this place …’ he paused as the wind caught the flag and stretched it into the cloud-shrouded daylight. ‘Fort George,’ McLean said tentatively, as if testing the name. He liked it. ‘Fort George,’ he announced firmly and took off his hat. ‘God save the King!’
Highlanders of the 74th started on a smaller earthwork, a gun emplacement, which they made close to the shore and facing the harbour mouth. The soil was easier near the beach and they swiftly threw up a crescent of earth that they re inforced with stones and logs. Other logs were split to make platforms for the cannon that would face the harbour mouth. A similar battery was being constructed on Cross Island so that an enemy ship, daring the harbour mouth, would face Captain Mowat’s three broadsides and artillery fire from the bastions on either side of the entrance.
The rain lifted and fog drifted over the wide river reach. The new flag flew bright above Majabigwaduce, but for how long, McLean wondered, for how long?
Monday dawned fine in Boston. The wind came from the south west and the sky was clear. ‘The glass rises,’ Commodore Saltonstall announced to General Solomon Lovell on board the Continental frigate Warren. ‘We shall sail, General.’
‘And God grant us a fair voyage and a triumphant return,’ Lovell answered.
‘Amen,’ Saltonstall said grudgingly, then snapped out orders that signals should be made ordering the fleet to raise anchor and follow the flagship out of the harbour.
Solomon Lovell, almost fifty years old, towered over the Commodore. Lovell was a farmer, a legislator and a patriot, and it was reckoned in Massachusetts that Solomon Lovell had been well named for he enjoyed a reputation as a wise, judicious and sensible man. His neighbours in Weymouth had elected him to the Assembly in Boston where he was well-liked because, in a fractious legislature, Lovell was a peace-maker. He possessed an unquenchable optimism that fairness and the willingness to see another man’s point of view would bring mutual prosperity, while his height and strong build, the latter earned by years of hard labour on his farm, added to the impression of utter dependability. His face was long and firm-jawed, while his eyes crinkled with easy amusement. His thick dark hair greyed at the temples, giving him a most distinguished appearance, and so it was no wonder that his fellow lawmakers had seen fit to give Solomon Lovell high rank in the Massachusetts Militia. Lovell, they reckoned, could be trusted. A few malcontents grumbled that his military experience was next to nothing, but Lovell’s supporters, and they were many, believed Solomon Lovell was just the man for the task. He got things done. And his lack of experience was offset by his deputy, Peleg Wadsworth, who had fought under General Washington’s command, and by Commodore Saltonstall, the naval commander, who was an even more experienced officer. Lovell would never be short of expert advice to hone his solid judgement.
The great anchor cable inched on board. The sailors at the capstan were chanting as they tramped round and round. ‘Here’s a rope!’ a bosun shouted.
‘To hang the Pope!’ the men responded.
‘And a chunk of cheese!’
‘To choke him!’
Lovell smiled approvingly, then strolled to the stern rail where he stared at the fleet, marvelling that Massachusetts had assembled so many ships so quickly. Lying closest to the Warren was a brig, the Diligent, that had been captured from Britain’s Royal Navy, and beyond her was a sloop, the Providence, which had captured her, both vessels with twelve guns and both belonging to the Continental Navy. Anchored behind them, and flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy, were two brigs, the Tyrannicide and Hazard, and a brigantine, the Active. All were armed with fourteen cannon and, like the Warren, were now fully manned because the General Court and the Board of War had given permission for press gangs to take sailors from Boston’s taverns and from merchant vessels in the harbour.
The Warren, with its eighteen-pounder and twelve-pounder cannon, was the most powerful ship in the fleet, but a further seven ships could all match or outgun any one of the three British sloops that were reported to be waiting at Majabigwaduce. Those seven ships were all privateers. The Hector and the Hunter carried eighteen guns apiece, while Charming Sally, General Putnam, Black Prince, Monmouth and Vengeance carried twenty guns each. There were smaller privateers too, like the Sky Rocket with her sixteen guns. In all, eighteen warships would sail to Majabigwaduce and those vessels mounted more than three hundred cannon, while the twenty-one transport ships would carry the men, the supplies, the guns and the fervent hopes of Massachusetts. Lovell was proud of his state. It had made up the deficiencies in the supplies, and the ships now carried enough food to feed sixteen hundred men for two months. Why, there were six tons of flour alone! Six tons!
Lovell, thinking of the extraordinary efforts that had been made to provision the expedition, slowly became aware that men were shouting at the Warren from other ships. The anchor was still not raised, but the bosun ordered the seamen to stop their chant and their work. It seemed the fleet would not leave after all. Commodore Saltonstall, who had been standing by the frigate’s wheel, turned and paced back to Lovell. ‘It appears,’ the commodore said sourly, ‘that the commander of your artillery is not aboard his ship.’
‘He must be,’ Lovell said.
‘Must?’
‘The orders were plain. Officers were to be aboard last night.’
‘The Samuel reports that Colonel Revere is not on board. So what shall we do, General?’
Lovell was startled by the question. He had thought he was being given information, not being asked to make a decision. He stared across the sun-sparkling water as though the distant Samuel, a brig that was carrying the expedition’s cannon, might suggest an answer.
‘Well?’ Saltonstall pressed, ‘do we sail without him and his officers?’
‘His officers?’ Lovell asked.
‘It transpires,’ Saltonstall appeared to relish delivering the bad news, ‘that Colonel Revere allowed his officers to spend a last night ashore.’
‘Ashore?’ Lovell asked, astonished, then stared again at the distant brig. ‘We need Colonel Revere,’ he said.
‘We do?’ Saltonstall asked sarcastically.
‘Oh, a good officer!’ Lovell said enthusiastically. ‘He was one of the men who rode to warn Concord and Lexington. Doctor Warren, God rest his soul, sent them, and this ship is named for Doctor Warren, is it not?’
‘Is it?’ Saltonstall asked carelessly.
‘A very great patriot, Doctor Warren,’ Lovell said feelingly.
‘And how does that affect Colonel Revere’s absence?’ Saltonstall asked bluntly.
‘It,’ Lovell began and realized he had no idea what he could answer, and so he straightened and squared his shoulders. ‘We shall wait,’ he announced firmly.
‘We shall wait!’ Saltonstall called to his officers. He began pacing his quarter-deck again, starboard to larboard and larboard to starboard, occasionally shooting a malevolent look at Lovell as though the general were personally responsible for the missing officer. Lovell found the commodore’s hostility uncomfortable and so turned to stare at the fleet again. Many ships had loosed their topsails and men now scrambled along the yards to furl the canvas.
‘General Lovell?’ a new voice disturbed him and Lovell turned to see a tall marine officer whose sudden presence made the general take an involuntary step backwards. There was an intensity in the marine’s face, and a ferocity, that made the face formidable. Just to see this man was to be impressed. He was even taller than Lovell, who was not a short man, and he had broad shoulders that strained the green cloth of his uniform jacket. He was holding his hat respectfully, revealing black hair that was cropped short over most of his scalp, but that he had allowed to grow long at the back so he could wear a short pigtail that was hardened with tar. ‘My name is Welch, sir,’ the marine said in a voice deep enough to match his hard face, ‘Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines.’
‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Welch,’ Lovell said, and that was true. If a man must sail into battle then he would pray to have a man like Welch at his side. The hilt of Welch’s sabre was worn down by use and, like its owner, seemed made for the efficient use of pure violence.
‘I’ve spoken to the commodore, sir,’ Welch said very formally, ‘and he gave his consent that my men should be at your disposal when not required for naval duties.’
‘That’s most encouraging,’ Lovell said.
‘Two hundred and twenty-seven marines, sir, fit for duty. Good men, sir.’
‘I’ve no doubt.’
‘Well-trained,’ Welch went on, his unblinking gaze fixed on Lovell’s eyes, ‘and well-disciplined.’
‘A most valuable addition to our force,’ Lovell said, unsure what else he could say.
‘I want to fight, sir,’ Welch said, as if he suspected Lovell might not use his marines.
‘I am confident the opportunity will come,’ Lovell said uneasily.
‘I hope so, sir,’ Welch said, then at last turned his gaze away from the general and nodded towards a fine-looking ship, the General Putnam, one of four privateers that had been commandeered by the Massachusetts Navy because their owners had baulked at volunteering their craft. The General Putnam carried twenty cannons, all of them nine-pounders, and she was reckoned one of the finest ships on the New England coast. ‘We put a score of marines on the Putnam, sir,’ Welch said, ‘and they’re led by Captain Carnes. You know him, sir?’
‘I know John Carnes,’ Lovell said, ‘he captains the Hector.’
‘This is his brother, sir, and a fine officer. He served under General Washington as a captain of artillery.’
‘A fine posting,’ Lovell said, ‘yet he left it for the marines?’
‘Captain Carnes prefers to see men up close as he kills them, sir,’ Welch said evenly, ‘but he knows his artillery, sir. He’s a very competent gunner.’
Lovell understood immediately that Saltonstall had despatched Welch with the news, implicitly suggesting that Colonel Revere could be left behind and replaced by Captain Carnes, and Lovell bristled at the suggestion. ‘We need Colonel Revere and his officers,’ he said.
‘I never suggested otherwise, sir,’ Welch said, ‘merely that Captain Carnes has an expertise that might be useful to you.’
Lovell felt acutely uncomfortable. He sensed that Welch had little faith in the militia and was trying to stiffen Lovell’s force with the professionalism of his marines, but Lovell was determined that Massachusetts should reap the credit for the expulsion of the British. ‘I’m sure Colonel Revere knows his business,’ Lovell said stoutly. Welch did not reply to that, but stared at Lovell who again felt disconcerted by the intensity of the gaze. ‘Of course, any advice Captain Carnes has … ’ Lovell said, and let his voice tail away.
‘I just wanted you to know we have an artilleryman in the marines, sir,’ Welch said, then stepped a pace back and offered Lovell a salute.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Lovell said, and felt relieved when the huge marine strode away.
The minutes passed. The church clocks in Boston struck the hour, the quarters and then the hour again. Major William Todd, one of the expedition’s two brigade majors, brought the general a mug of tea. ‘Newly made in the galley, sir.’
‘Thank you.’
‘The leaves captured by the brig King-Killer, sir,’ Todd said, sipping his own tea.
‘It’s kind of the enemy to supply us with tea,’ Lovell said lightly.
‘Indeed it is, sir,’ Todd said and then, after a pause, ‘So Mister Revere is delaying us?’
Lovell knew of the antipathy between Todd and Revere and did his best to defuse whatever was in the major’s mind. Todd was a good man, meticulous and hard-working, but somewhat unbending. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant-Colonel Revere has very good cause to be absent,’ he said firmly.
‘He always does,’ Todd said. ‘In all the time he commanded Castle Island I doubt he spent a single night there. Mister Revere, sir, likes the comfort of his wife’s bed.’
‘Don’t we all?’
Todd brushed a speck of lint from his blue uniform coat. ‘He told General Wadsworth that he supplied rations for Major Fellows’ men.’
‘I’m certain he had cause for that.’
‘Fellows died of the fever last August,’ Todd then stepped a pace back in deference to the approach of the commodore.
Saltonstall glowered again at Lovell from beneath the peak of his cocked hat. ‘If your damned fellow isn’t coming,’ Saltonstall said, ‘then perhaps we might be allowed to get on with this damned war without him?’
‘I’m sure Colonel Revere will be here very soon,’ Lovell said emolliently, ‘or we shall receive news of him. A messenger has been sent ashore, Commodore.’
Saltonstall grunted and walked away. Major Todd frowned at the retreating commodore. ‘He takes after his mother’s side of the family, I think. The Saltonstalls are usually most agreeable folk.’
Lovell was saved from responding by a hail from the brig Diligent. Colonel Revere, it seemed, had been sighted. He and three other officers were being rowed in the smart white-painted barge that served Castle Island, and the sternsheets of the barge, which was being rowed by a dozen blue-shirted men, were heaped high with baggage. Colonel Revere sat just forrard of the baggage and, as the barge came close to the Warren on its way to the brig Samuel, Revere waved up at Lovell. ‘God speed us, General!’ he shouted.
‘Where have you been?’ Lovell called sharply.
‘A last night with the family, General!’ Revere shouted happily, and then was out of earshot.
‘A last night with the family?’ Todd asked in wonderment.
‘He must have misunderstood my orders,’ Lovell said uncomfortably.
‘I think you will discover, sir,’ Todd said, ‘that Colonel Revere misunderstands all orders that are not to his liking.’
‘He’s a patriot, Major,’ Lovell reproved, ‘a fine patriot!’
It took more time for the fine patriot’s baggage to be hoisted aboard the brig, then the barge itself had to be readied for the voyage. It seemed Colonel Revere wished the Castle Island barge to be part of his equipment, for her oars were lashed to the thwarts and then she was attached by a towline to the Samuel. Then, at last, as the sun climbed to its height, the fleet was ready. The capstans turned again, the great anchors broke free and, with their sails bright in the summer sun, the might of Massachusetts sailed from Boston harbour.
To captivate, to kill and to destroy.
Lieutenant John Moore sat astride a camp stool, his legs either side of an empty powder barrel that served as a table. A tent sheltered him from a blustery west wind that brought spits of rain to patter hard on the yellowed canvas. Moore’s job as paymaster for the 82nd Regiment bored him, even though the detailed work was done by Corporal Brown who had been a clerk in a Leith counting-house before becoming drunk one morning and so volunteering for the army. Moore turned the pages of the black-bound ledger that recorded the regiment’s wages. ‘Why is Private Neill having fourpence a week deducted?’ Moore asked the corporal.
‘Lost his boot-blacking, sir.’
‘Boot-blacking cannot cost that much, surely?’
‘Expensive stuff, sir,’ Corporal Brown said.
‘Plainly. I should buy some and resell it to the regiment.’
‘Major Fraser wouldn’t like that, sir, on account that his brother already does.’
Moore sighed and turned another stiff page of the thick paybook. He was supposed to check the figures, but he knew Corporal Brown would have done a meticulous job, so instead he stared out of the tent’s open flaps to the western rampart of Fort George where some gunners were making a platform for one of their cannon. The rampart was still only waist high, though the ditch beyond was now lined with wooden spikes that were more formidable to look at than negotiate. Beyond the rampart was a long stretch of cleared ground studded with raw pine stumps. That land climbed gently to the peninsula’s bluff where trees still stood thick and where tendrils of fog drifted through dark branches. Corporal Brown saw where Moore was looking. ‘Can I ask you something, sir?’
‘Whatever enters your head, Brown.’
The corporal nodded towards the timbered bluff that was little more than half a mile from the fort. ‘Why didn’t the brigadier make the fort there, sir?’
‘You would have done so, Corporal, if you had command here?’
‘It’s the highest piece of land, sir. Isn’t that where you make a fort?’
Moore frowned, not because he disapproved of the question, which, he thought, was an eminently sensible enquiry, but because he did not know how to frame the answer. To Moore it was obvious why McLean had chosen the lower position. It was to do with the interlocking of the ships’ guns and the fort’s cannon, with making the best of a difficult job, but though he knew the answer, he did not quite know how to express it. ‘From here,’ he said, ‘our guns command both the harbour entrance and the harbour itself. Suppose we were all up on that high ground? The enemy could sail past us, take the harbour and village, and then starve us out at their leisure.’
‘But if the bastards take that high ground, sir … ’ Brown said dubiously, leaving the thought unfinished.
‘If the bastards seize that high ground, Corporal,’ Moore said, ‘then they will place cannon there and fire down into the fort.’ That was the risk McLean had taken. He had given the enemy the chance to take the high ground, but only so that he could do his job better, which was to defend the harbour. ‘We don’t have enough men,’ Moore went on, ‘to defend the bluff, but I can’t think they’ll land men there. It’s much too steep.’
Yet the rebels would land somewhere. By leaning forward on his makeshift stool Moore could just make out the three sloops of war anchored in line across the harbour mouth. General McLean had suggested the enemy might try to attack that line, break it, and then land men on the beach below the fort and Moore tried to imagine such a fight. He tried to turn the wisps of fog into powder smoke, but his imagination failed. The eighteen-year-old John Moore had never experienced battle, and every day he wondered how he would respond to the smell of powder and the screams of the wounded and the chaos.
‘Lady approaching, sir,’ Corporal Brown warned Moore.
‘Lady?’ Moore asked, startled from his reverie, then saw that Bethany Fletcher was approaching the tent. He stood and ducked under the tent flap to greet her, but the sight of her face tied his tongue, so he simply stood there, awkward, hat in hand, smiling.
‘Lieutenant Moore,’ Bethany said, stopping a pace away.
‘Miss Fletcher,’ Moore managed to speak, ‘as ever, a pleasure.’ He bowed.
‘I was told to give you this, sir.’ Bethany held out a slip of paper.
The paper was a receipt for corn and fish that James Fletcher had sold to the quartermaster. ‘Four shillings!’ Moore said.
‘The quartermaster said you’d pay me, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘If Mister Reidhead so orders, then I shall obey. And it will be my pleasure to pay you, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said. He looked at the receipt again. ‘It must have been a rare quantity of corn and fish! Four shillings’ worth!’
Bethany bridled. ‘It was Mister Reidhead who decided the amount, sir.’
‘Oh, I am not suggesting that the amount is excessive,’ Moore said, reddening. If he lost his composure when faced by a girl, he thought, how would he ever face the enemy? ‘Corporal Brown!’
‘Sir?’
‘Four shillings for the lady!’
‘At once, sir,’ Brown said, coming from the tent, though instead of holding coins he brought a hammer and a chisel that he took to a nearby block of wood. He had one silver dollar that he laid on the timber, then he carefully placed the chisel’s blade to make a single radial cut in the coin. The hammer smacked down and the coin leaped up from the chisel’s bite. ‘It’s daft, sir, to slit a coin into five pieces,’ Brown grumbled, replacing the dollar. ‘Why can’t we make four pieces worth one shilling and threepence each?’
‘Because it’s easier to cut a coin into four parts rather than five?’ Moore asked.
‘Of course it is, sir. Cutting into four only needs a wide chisel blade and two cuts,’ Brown grumbled, then hammered another cut into the dollar, slicing away a wedge of silver that he pushed across the chopping block towards Bethany. ‘There, miss, one shilling.’
Bethany took the sharp-edged slice. ‘Is this how you pay the soldiers?’ she asked Moore.
‘Oh, we don’t get paid, miss,’ Corporal Brown answered, ‘except in promissory notes.’
‘Give Miss Fletcher the remainder of the coin,’ Moore suggested, ‘and she will have her four shillings and you need cut no more.’ There was a shortage of coinage so the brigadier had decreed that each silver dollar was worth five shillings. ‘Stop staring!’ Moore called sharply to the gunners who had paused in their work to admire Beth Fletcher. Moore picked up the ravaged dollar and held it out to Bethany. ‘There Miss Fletcher, your fee.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Bethany put the shilling slice back on the block. ‘So how many promissory notes do you have to write each week?’ she asked.
‘How many?’ Moore was momentarily puzzled by the question. ‘Oh, we don’t issue notes as such, Miss Fletcher, but we do record in the ledger what wages are owed. The specie is kept for more important duties, like paying you for corn and fish.’
‘And you must need a lot of corn and fish for two whole regiments,’ she said. ‘What is that? Two thousand men?’
‘If only we were so numerous,’ Moore said with a smile. ‘In truth, Miss Fletcher, the 74th musters just four hundred and forty men and we Hamiltons number scarce half that. And we hear now that the rebels are readying a fleet and an army to assail us!’
‘And you think that report is true?’ Bethany asked.
‘The fleet, perhaps, is already on its way.’
Bethany stared past the three sloops to where wisps of mist drifted across the wide Penobscot River. ‘I pray, sir,’ she said, ‘that there will be no fighting.’
‘And I pray otherwise,’ Moore said.
‘Really?’ Bethany sounded surprised. She turned to look at the young lieutenant as if she had never really noticed him before. ‘You want there to be a battle?’
‘Soldiering is my chosen profession, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said, and felt very fraudulent as he said it, ‘and battle is the fire in which soldiers are tempered.’
‘The world would be better without such fire,’ Bethany said.
‘True, no doubt,’ Moore said, ‘but we did not strike the flint on the iron, Miss Fletcher. The rebels did that, they set the fire and our task is to extinguish the flame.’ Bethany said nothing, and Moore decided he had sounded pompous. ‘You and your brother should come to Doctor Calef’s house in the evening,’ he said.
‘We should, sir?’ Bethany asked, looking again at Moore.
‘There is music in the garden when the weather permits, and dancing.’
‘I don’t dance, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘Oh, it is the officers who dance,’ Moore said hastily, ‘the sword dance.’ He suppressed an urge to demonstrate a capering step. ‘You would be most welcome,’ he said instead.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Bethany said, then pocketed the ravaged dollar and turned away.
‘Miss Fletcher!’ Moore called after her.
She turned back. ‘Sir?’
But Moore had no idea what to say, indeed he had surprised himself by calling after her in the first place. She was gazing at him, waiting. ‘Thank you for the supplies,’ he managed to say.
‘It is business, Lieutenant,’ Beth said evenly.
‘Even so, thank you,’ Moore said, confused.
‘Does that mean you’d sell to the Yankees too, miss?’ Corporal Brown asked cheerfully.
‘We might give to them,’ Beth said, and Moore could not tell whether she was teasing or not. She looked at him, gave a half-smile and walked away.
‘A rare good-looking lassie,’ Corporal Brown said.
‘Is she?’ Moore asked most unconvincingly. He was gazing down the slope to where the settlement’s houses were spread along the harbour shore. He tried to imagine men fighting there, ranks of men blasting musket fire, the cannons thundering the sky with noise, the harbour filled with half-sunken ships, and he thought how sad it would be to die amidst that chaos without ever having held a girl like Bethany in his arms.
‘Are we finished with the ledgers, sir?’ Brown asked.
‘We are finished with the ledgers,’ Moore said.
He wondered if he really was a soldier. He wondered if he would have the courage to face battle. He stared after Bethany and felt lost.
‘Reluctance, sir, reluctance. Gross reluctance,’ Colonel Jonathan Mitchell, who commanded the Cumberland County militia, glared at Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth as though it was all Wadsworth’s fault. ‘Culpable reluctance.’
‘You conscripted?’ Wadsworth asked.
‘Of course we goddamn conscripted. We had to conscript! Half the reluctant bastards are conscripted. We didn’t get volunteers, just whining excuses, so we declared martial law, sir, and I sent troops to every township and rounded the bastards up, but too many ran and skulked, sir. They are reluctant, I tell you, reluctant!’
It had taken the fleet two days to sail to Townsend where the militia had been ordered to muster. General Lovell and Brigadier-General Wadsworth had been hoping for fifteen hundred men, but fewer than nine hundred waited for embarkation. ‘Eight hundred and ninety-four, sir, to be precise,’ Marston, Lovell’s secretary, informed his master.
‘Dear God,’ Lovell said.
‘It surely isn’t too late to request a Continental battalion?’ Wadsworth suggested.
‘Unthinkable,’ Lovell said instantly. The State of Massachusetts had declared itself capable of ejecting the British on its own, and the General Court would not look happily on a request for help from General Washington’s troops. The Court, indeed, had been reluctant to accept Commodore Saltonstall’s aid, except that the Warren was so obviously a formidable warship and to ignore its presence in Massachusetts waters would have been perverse. ‘We do have the commodore’s marines,’ Lovell pointed out, ‘and I’m assured the commodore will willingly release them to land service at Majabigwaduce.’
‘We shall need them,’ Wadsworth said. He had inspected the three militia battalions and had been appalled by what he found. Some men looked fit, young and eager, but far too many were either too old, too young or too sick. One man had even paraded on crutches. ‘You can’t fight,’ Wadsworth had told the man.
‘Which is what I told the soldiers when they came to get us,’ the man said. He was grey-bearded, gaunt and wild-haired.
‘Then go home,’ Wadsworth said.
‘How?’
‘Same way you got here,’ Wadsworth had said, despair making him irritable. A few paces down the line he found a curly-haired boy with cheeks that had never felt a razor. ‘What’s your name, son?’ Wadsworth asked.
‘Israel, sir.’
‘Israel what?’
‘Trask, sir.’
‘How old are you, Israel Trask?’
‘Fifteen, sir,’ the boy said, trying to stand straighter. His voice had not broken and Wadsworth guessed he was scarcely fourteen. ‘Three years in the army, sir,’ Trask said.
‘Three years?’ Wadsworth asked in disbelief.
‘Fifer with the infantry, sir,’ Trask said. He had a sackcloth bag hanging at his back and a slender wooden pipe protruded from the bag’s neck.
‘You resigned from the infantry?’ Wadsworth asked, amused.
‘I was taken prisoner, sir,’ Trask said, evidently offended by the question, ‘and exchanged. And here I am, sir, ready to fight the syphilitic bastards again.’
If a boy had used that language in Wadsworth’s classroom it would have provoked a caning, but these were strange times and so Wadsworth just patted the boy’s shoulder before walking on down the long line. Some men looked at him resentfully and he supposed they were the men who had been pressed by the militia. Maybe two thirds looked healthy and young enough for soldiering, but the rest were miserable specimens. ‘I thought you had a thousand men enrolled in Cumberland County alone?’ Wadsworth remarked to Colonel Mitchell.
‘Ha,’ Mitchell said.
‘Ha?’ Wadsworth responded coldly.
‘The Continental Army takes our best. We find a dozen decent recruits and the Continentals take six away and the other six run off to join the privateers.’ Mitchell put a plug of tobacco in his mouth. ‘I wish to God we had a thousand, but Boston doesn’t send their wages and we don’t have rations. And there are some places we can’t recruit.’
‘Loyalist places?’
‘Loyalist places,’ Mitchell had agreed grimly.
Wadsworth had walked on down the line, noting a one-eyed man who had some kind of nervous affliction that made his facial muscles quiver. The man grinned, and Wadsworth shuddered. ‘Does he have his senses?’ he asked Colonel Mitchell.
‘Enough to shoot straight,’ Mitchell said dourly.
‘Half don’t even have muskets!’
The fleet had brought five hundred muskets from the Boston Armory that would be rented to the militia. Most men at least knew how to use them because in these eastern counties folk expected to kill their own food and to skin the prey for clothing. They wore deerskin jerkins and trousers, deerskin shoes and carried deerskin pouches and packs. Wadsworth inspected them all and reckoned he would be lucky if five hundred would prove useful men, then he borrowed a horse from the parson and gave them a speech from the saddle.
‘The British,’ he called, ‘have invaded Massachusetts! They must despise us, because they have sent few men and few ships! They believe we are powerless to evict them, but we are going to show them that Massachusetts men will defend their land! We will embark on our fleet!’ He waved towards the masts showing above the southern rooftops. ‘And we shall fight them, we shall defeat them and we shall evict them! You will return home with laurels on your brows!’ It was not the most inspiring speech, Wadsworth thought, but he was encouraged when men cheered it. The cheer was late in starting, and it was feeble at first, but then the paraded ranks became enthusiastic.
The parson, a genial man about ten years older than Wadsworth, helped the brigadier down from the saddle. ‘I trust they will have laurels on their brows,’ the parson said, ‘but most would prefer beefsteak in their stomachs.’
‘I trust they find that as well,’ Wadsworth said.
The Reverend Jonathan Murray took the horse’s reins and led it towards his house. ‘They may not look impressive, General, but they’re good men!’
‘Who needed pressing?’ Wadsworth enquired drily.
‘Only a few,’ Murray answered. ‘They worry about their families, their crops. Get them to Majabigwaduce and they’ll serve willingly enough.’
‘The blind, the halt and the lame?’
‘Such men were good enough for our Lord,’ Murray said, evidently seriously. ‘And what if a few are half-blind? A man needs only one eye to aim a musket.’
General Lovell had quartered himself in the parson’s ample house and, that evening, he convened all the senior officers of the expedition. Murray possessed a fine round table, made of maple wood, about which he normally led studies of the scripture, but which that night served to accommodate the naval and land commanders. Those who could not find a chair stood at the edges of the room, which was lit by eight candles in pewter sticks, grouped in the table’s centre. Moths beat about the flames. General Lovell had taken the parson’s high-backed chair and he gently rapped the table for silence. ‘This is the first time,’ Lovell said, ‘that we’ve all gathered together. You probably all know each other, but permit me to make introductions.’ He went around the table, naming Wadsworth first, then Commodore Saltonstall and the three colonels of the militia regiments. Major Jeremiah Hill, the expedition’s adjutant -general, nodded solemnly as his name was pronounced, as did the two brigade majors, William Todd and Gawen Brown. The quartermaster, Colonel Tyler, sat next to Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the Surgeon General. ‘I trust we won’t require Doctor Downer’s services,’ Lovell said with a smile, then indicated the men who stood at the room’s edges. Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines glowered next to Captain Hoysteed Hacker of the Continental Navy who commanded the Providence while Captain Philip Brown commanded the brig Diligent. Six privateer captains had come to the house and Lovell named them all, then smiled at Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who stood beside the door. ‘And last, but by no means least, our commander of the artillery train, Colonel Revere.’
‘Whose services,’ Revere said, ‘I trust you will require!’
A murmur of laughter sounded in the room, though Wadsworth noticed the look of grim distaste on Todd’s bespectacled face. The major glanced once at Revere, then studiously avoided looking at his enemy.
‘I also requested the Reverend Murray to attend this council,’ Lovell went on when the small laughter had subsided, ‘and I now ask him to open our proceedings with a word of prayer.’
Men clasped their hands and bowed their heads as Murray entreated Almighty God to pour His blessings on the men and ships now assembled in Townsend. Wadsworth had his head bowed, but sneaked a sidelong look at Revere who, he noticed, had not lowered his head, but was staring balefully towards Todd. Wadsworth closed his eyes again. ‘Give these men of Thy strength, Lord,’ the Reverend Murray prayed, ‘and bring these warriors safe home, victorious, to their wives, and to their children and to their families. We ask all this in Thy holy name, O Lord. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ the assembled officers echoed.
‘Thank you, Reverend,’ Lovell said, smiling happily. He took a breath and looked about the room, then stated the reason they were gathered together. ‘The British have landed at Majabigwaduce, as you know, and our orders are to captivate, kill or destroy them. Major Todd, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what we know of the enemy’s dispositions?’
William Todd, his spectacles reflecting the candlelight, shuffled papers. ‘We have received intelligence,’ he said in his dry voice, ‘from patriots in the Penobscot region. Notably from Colonel Buck, but from others too. We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops of war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.’ Todd studied the earnest faces around the table. ‘McLean,’ he went on, ‘is an experienced soldier. Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment.’
‘A mercenary?’ Commodore Saltonstall asked in a voice that reeked of scorn.
‘I understand he was seconded to Portuguese service by the King of England,’ Todd said, ‘so no, not a mercenary. Of late he has been Governor of Halifax and is now entrusted with the forces at Majabigwaduce. My apprehension of him,’ Todd leaned back as if to suggest that he was speculating now, ‘is that he is an old man who was put out to pasture at Halifax and whose best days are, perhaps, behind him.’ He shrugged as if to express uncertainty. ‘He leads two regiments, neither of which has seen recent service. Indeed, his own regiment is newly raised and is therefore entirely inexperienced. The notional complement of a British regiment is one thousand men, but rarely do the real numbers exceed eight hundred, so a reasonable calculation suggests that our enemy comprises fifteen or sixteen hundred infantry with artillery support and, of course, the Royal Marines and the crews of the three ships.’ Todd unrolled a large sheet of paper on which was drawn a crude map of Majabigwaduce and, as the men craned forward to see the plan, he showed where the defences were situated. He began with the fort, marked as a square. ‘As of Wednesday,’ he said, ‘the walls were still low enough for a man to jump. The work goes slowly, we hear.’ He tapped the three sloops that formed a barrier just inside the harbour entrance. ‘Their broadsides face Penobscot Bay,’ he said, ‘and are supported by land batteries. There is one such battery here,’ he pointed to Cross Island, ‘and another on the peninsula here. Those two batteries will enfilade the harbour entrance.’
‘None on Dyce’s Head?’ Hoysteed Hacker asked.
‘Dyce’s Head?’ Lovell asked, and Hacker, who knew the coast well, pointed to the harbour’s southern side and explained that the entrance was dominated by a high bluff that bore the name Dyce’s Head. ‘If I recall rightly,’ Hacker went on, ‘that ground is the highest on the whole peninsula.’
‘We have not been informed of any batteries on Dyce’s Head,’ Todd said carefully.
‘So they’ve surrendered the high ground?’ Wadsworth asked in disbelief.
‘Our information is some days old,’ Todd warned.
‘High ground,’ Lovell said uncertainly, ‘will be a splendid place for our guns.’
‘Oh indeed,’ Wadsworth said, and Lovell looked relieved.
‘My guns will be ready,’ Revere said belligerently.
Lovell smiled at Revere. ‘Perhaps you will be good enough to tell our militia colonels what artillery support you will offer them?’
Revere straightened and William Todd stared fixedly at the table top. ‘I have six eighteen-pounder cannon,’ Revere said robustly, ‘with four hundred rounds apiece. They’re killers, gentlemen, and heavier than any guns I daresay the British have waiting for us. I have two nine-pounders with three hundred rounds apiece, and a pair of five-and-half-inch howitzers with one hundred rounds each.’ John Welch looked startled at that, then frowned. He began to say something, but checked his words before they became intelligible.
‘You had something to say, Captain?’ Wadsworth interrupted Revere.
The tall marine in his dark green uniform was still frowning. ‘If I were bombarding a fort, General,’ he said, ‘I’d want more howitzers. Lob bombs over the wall and kill the bastards from the inside. Howitzers and mortars. Do we have mortars?’
‘Do we have mortars?’ Wadsworth put the question to Revere.
Revere looked offended. ‘The eighteen-pounders will topple their walls like the trumpets of Jericho,’ he said, ‘and to finish,’ he looked at Lovell with some indignation as if offended that the general had permitted the interruption, ‘we have four four-pounders, two of which are French metal and the equal of any six-pounder.’
Colonel Samuel McCobb, who led the Lincoln County militia, raised a hand. ‘We can offer a field-mounted twelve-pounder,’ he said.
‘Most generous,’ Lovell said, and then threw the discussion open, though in truth nothing was decided that evening. For over two hours men made suggestions and Lovell received each one with gratitude, but gave no opinion on any. Commodore Saltonstall agreed that the three British sloops must be destroyed so that his squadron could sail into the harbour and use their broadsides to bombard the fort, but he declined to suggest how soon that could be done. ‘We must appraise their defences,’ the commodore insisted grandly, ‘I’m sure you all appreciate the good sense in a thorough reconnaissance.’ He spoke condescendingly as if it offended his dignity as a Continental officer to be dealing with mere militia.
‘We all appreciate the value of thorough reconnaissance,’ Lovell agreed. He smiled benignly about the room. ‘I shall inspect the militia in the morning,’ he said, ‘and then we shall embark. When we reach the Penobscot River we shall discover what obstacles we face, but I am confident that we shall overcome them. I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank you all.’ And with that the council of war was over.
Some men gathered in the darkness outside the parson’s house. ‘They have fifteen or sixteen hundred men?’ a militia officer grumbled, ‘and we only have nine hundred?’
‘You’ve also got the marines,’ Captain Welch snarled from the shadows, but then, before anyone could respond, a shot sounded. Dogs began barking. Officers clutched their scabbards as they ran towards the lantern lights of Main Street where men were shouting, but no more musket shots sounded.
‘What was it?’ Lovell asked when the commotion had died down.
‘A man from Lincoln County,’ Wadsworth said.
‘Fired his musket by mistake?’
‘Shot off the toes of his left foot.’
‘Oh dear, poor man.’
‘Deliberately, sir. To avoid service.’
So now one less man would sail east, and too many of the remaining men were boys, cripples or old men. But there were the marines. Thank God, Wadsworth thought, there were the marines.
From a letter by John Brewer, written in 1779 and published in the Bangor Whig and Courier, August 13th, 1846:
‘I then told the Commodore that … I thought that as the wind breezed up he might go in with his shipping, silence the two (sic) vessels and the six gun battery, and land the troops under cover of his own guns, and in half an hour make everything his own. In reply to which he hove up his long chin, and said, ‘You seem to be damned knowing about the matter! I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole!’
Excerpts of a letter from John Preble to the Honourable Jeremiah Powell, President, Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, July 24th, 1779:
I have been upon Command with the Indians five Weeks there is now there about 60 warriors the greater part firce for War and wait only for Orders to march and assist their Brothers the Americans. The Enemey coudent incurd their displeasure more than comming on their River or near it to fourtify they have declared to me they would Spil Every drop of their Blood in defence of their Land and Liberty they seem to be more and more Sensible of the diabollical intentions of the Enemy and the Justness of our Cause … This moment the Fleet appears in Sight which gives unival Joy to White and Black Soldiers Every one is Antious and desirious for action and I can acquaint your Honours that on my passage here in a burch Canoe the people at Naskeeg and up a long shore declared they were Ready … to fight for us altho they had taken the Oath of Fidelity to the British party.
FOUR
The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk south-westerly, though the privateers and naval ships, which were the quickest, had to shorten sail so that they did not out-race the lumbering transports. It took only a day’s sailing to reach the Penobscot River, though it was a long day, dawn to dusk, that was livened when a strange sail was seen to the southward. Commodore Saltonstall ordered the Hazard and the Diligent, both brigantines and both fast sailors, to investigate the stranger. Saltonstall stayed inshore while the two brigs crammed on more sail and raced away southwards, leaving the fleet to creep up the coast past rocky headlands where the great seas broke white. Every few moments a thump would echo through a ship as her bows struck an errant tree trunk that had been floated down one of the rivers and had escaped the loggers at the river’s mouth.
This was Commodore Saltonstall’s first voyage in the Warren and he fussed over her trim, ordering ballast moved forrard to improve her performance. He twice ordered more sails set and let the frigate run at her full speed through the fleet. ‘How is she?’ he asked the helmsman during the second run and after Midshipman Fanning had supervised moving another half ton of ballast from the stern.
‘She isn’t bridling as much, sir. I reckon you tamed her.’
‘Seven knots and a handful!’ a seaman who had trailed a log line from the taffrail called. Men on the transport ships cheered at the fine sight of the frigate charging under full sail through the fleet.
‘We might have tamed her upwind,’ Saltonstall said wearily, ‘but I dare say she’ll need trimming again before she goes close.’
‘I dare say she will, sir,’ the helmsman agreed. He was an elderly man, barrel-chested, with long white hair twisted into a pigtail that reached his waist. His bare forearms were smothered with tattoos of fouled anchors and crowns, evidence that he had once sailed in Britain’s Navy. He let go of the wheel, which spun clockwise, then checked itself and moved slowly back. ‘See, sir? She’s well liking it.’
‘As I am,’ Saltonstall said, ‘but we can do better. Mister Coningsby! Another two hundred weight forrard! Lively now!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning said.
The Hazard and Diligent caught up with the fleet late in the afternoon. The Diligent shortened her sails as she slid to the leeward of the Warren and made her report on the strange sail that had been glimpsed to the south, ‘She was the General Glover out of Marblehead, sir!’ Captain Philip Brown hailed Saltonstall. ‘A cargo vessel, sir, carrying baccy, rum and timber to France!’
‘Take station!’ Saltonstall shouted back and watched as the brig fell aft of him. Captain Brown, newly appointed to his command, had been First Lieutenant of the sloop Providence when it had captured the Diligent from the Royal Navy and his ship still bore the marks of that battle. Brown’s old ship, the Providence, her hull similarly patched with new timber, now sailed at the van of Saltonstall’s fleet where she flew the snake and stripe banner of the rebel navy.
The fleet was impressive, and had been joined by three more ships that had sailed direct to Townsend so that forty-two vessels, half of them warships, now sailed eastwards. Brigadier-General Lovell, gazing at the spread of sails from the afterdeck of the sloop Sally, was proud that his state, his country indeed, could assemble such a number of ships. The Warren was the largest, but a dozen other warships were almost as formidable as the frigate. The Hampden, which carried twenty-two guns and was thus the second most powerful ship in the fleet, had been sent by the state of New Hampshire and when she had arrived at Townsend she had sounded a salute, her nine-pounder guns thumping the air with their percussive greeting. ‘I just wish we could encounter one of King George’s ships now,’ Solomon Lovell said, ‘’pon my word, but we’d give her a pounding!’
‘So we would, by God’s grace, so we would indeed!’ the Reverend Jonathan Murray agreed wholeheartedly. Peleg Wadsworth had been somewhat surprised that the rector of Townsend had been invited to join the expedition, but it was evident that Murray and Lovell liked each other, and so the clergyman, who had appeared on board the Sally with a brace of large pistols belted at his waist, was now the expedition’s chaplain. Lovell had insisted that they sail from Townsend in the sloop Sally, rather than in Saltonstall’s larger frigate. ‘It’s better to be with the men, don’t you think?’ the brigadier enquired of Wadsworth.
‘Indeed, sir,’ Wadsworth agreed, though privately he suspected that Solomon Lovell found Commodore Saltonstall’s company difficult. Lovell was a gregarious man while Saltonstall was reticent to the point of rudeness. ‘Though the men do worry me, sir,’ Wadsworth added.
‘They worry you!’ Lovell responded jovially. ‘Now why should that be?’ He had borrowed Captain Carver’s telescope and was gazing seawards at Monhegan Island.
Wadsworth hesitated, not wanting to introduce a note of pessimism on a morning of bright sun and useful wind. ‘We were expecting fifteen or sixteen hundred men, sir, and we have fewer than nine hundred. And many of those are of dubious usefulness.’
The Reverend Murray, clutching a wide-brimmed hat, made a gesture as if to suggest Wadsworth’s concerns were misplaced. ‘Let me tell you something I’ve learned,’ the reverend said, ‘in every endeavour, General Wadsworth, whenever men are gathered together for God’s good purpose, there is always a core of men, just a core, that do the work! The rest merely watch.’
‘We have enough men,’ Lovell said, collapsing the telescope and turning to Wadsworth, ‘which isn’t to say I could not wish for more, but we have enough. We have ships enough and God is on our side!’
‘Amen,’ the Reverend Murray put in, ‘and we have you, General!’ He bowed to Lovell.
‘Oh, you’re too kind,’ Lovell said, embarrassed.
‘God in His infinite wisdom selects His instruments,’ Murray said effusively, bowing a second time to Lovell.
‘And God, I am sure, will send more men to join us,’ Lovell went on hurriedly. ‘I’m assured there are avid patriots in the Penobscot region, and I doubt not that they’ll serve our cause. And the Indians will send warriors. Mark my words, Wadsworth, we shall scour the redcoats, we shall scour them!’
‘I would still wish for more men,’ Wadsworth said quietly.
‘I would wish for the same,’ Lovell said fervently, ‘but we must make do with what the good Lord provides and remember that we are Americans!’
‘Amen for that,’ the Reverend Murray said, ‘and amen again.’
The waist of the Sally was filled with four flat-bottomed lighters commandeered from Boston harbour. All the transports had similar cargoes. The shallow-draught boats were for landing the troops, and Wadsworth now gazed at those militia men who, in turn, watched the coast from the Sally’s portside rail. Tall plumes of smoke rose mysteriously from the dark wooded hills and Wadsworth had the uncomfortable feeling that the pillars of smoke were signal fires. Was the coast infested by loyalists who were telling the British that the Americans were coming?
‘Captain Carver was grumbling to me,’ Lovell broke into Wadsworth’s thoughts. Nathaniel Carver was the Sally’s captain. ‘He was complaining that the state commandeered too many transports!’
‘We anticipated more men,’ Wadsworth said.
‘And I said to him,’ Lovell went on cheerfully, ‘how do you expect to convey the British prisoners to Boston without adequate shipping? He had no answer to that!’
‘Fifteen hundred prisoners,’ the Reverend Murray said with a chortle. ‘They’ll take some feeding!’
‘Oh, I think more than fifteen hundred!’ Lovell said confidently. ‘Major Todd was estimating, merely estimating, and I can’t think the enemy has sent fewer than two thousand! We’ll have to pack two hundred prisoners into each and every transport, but Carver assures me the deck hatches can be battened down. My! What a return to Boston that will be, eh Wadsworth?’
‘I pray for that day, sir,’ Wadsworth said. Did the British really have fifteen hundred men, he wondered, and if they did then what possible reason could Lovell have for his optimism?
‘It’s just a pity we don’t have a band!’ Lovell said. ‘We could mount a parade!’ Lovell, a politician, was imagining the rewards of success: the cheering crowds, the thanks of the General Court and a parade like the triumphs of Ancient Rome where the captured enemy was marched through jeering crowds. ‘I do believe,’ the brigadier went on, leaning closer to Wadsworth, ‘that McLean has brought most of Halifax’s garrison to Majabigwaduce!’
‘I’m certain Halifax is not abandoned, sir,’ Wadsworth said.
‘But under-defended!’ Lovell said warmly. ‘My word, Wadsworth, maybe we should contemplate a raid!’
‘I suspect General Ward and the General Court might want to discuss the matter first, sir,’ Wadsworth said drily.
‘Artemas is a good, brave man, but we must look ahead, Wadsworth. Once we’ve defeated McLean what’s to stop us attacking the British elsewhere?’
‘The Royal Navy, sir?’ Wadsworth suggested with a wry smile.
‘Oh, we’ll build more ships! More ships!’ Lovell was unstoppable now, imagining his victory at Majabigwaduce expanding into the capture of Nova Scotia and, who knew, maybe all Canada? ‘Doesn’t the Warren look fine?’ he exclaimed. ‘Just look at her! Can there be a finer vessel afloat?’
At twilight the fleet turned into the vast mouth of the Penobscot River where it anchored off the Fox Islands, all except the Hazard and Tyrannicide, which were ordered to make a reconnaissance upriver. The two small brigs, both from the Massachusetts navy, sailed slowly northwards, using the long evening’s gentle light to probe closer to Majabigwaduce, which lay a full twenty-six nautical miles from the open sea.
Commodore Saltonstall watched the two brigs until the gathering darkness hid their sails, then he took his supper on the quarterdeck beneath a sky bright with stars. His crew left him alone until one tall figure crossed to the commodore. ‘A pot of wine, sir?’
‘Captain Welch,’ Saltonstall greeted the tall marine, ‘I’m obliged to you.’
The two officers stood side-by-side at the Warren’s taffrail. A violin sounded from the foredeck of the brig Pallas, which was anchored closest to the frigate. For a time neither the commodore nor the marine said anything, but simply listened to the music and to the gentle sound of waves slapping against the hull. ‘So,’ Saltonstall broke their companionable silence, ‘what do you think?’
‘The same as you I reckon, sir,’ Welch said in his deep voice.
The commodore snorted. ‘Boston should have demanded a Continental regiment.’
‘That they should, sir.’
‘But they want all the credit to go to Massachusetts! That’s their idea, Welch. You mark what I say. There won’t be many thanks offered to us.’
‘But we’ll do the work, sir.’
‘Oh, we’ll have to!’ Saltonstall said. Already, in his brief tenure of command, the commodore had earned a reputation as a difficult and daunting figure, but he had struck up a friendship with the marine. Saltonstall recognized a fellow soul, a man who strove to make his men the best they could be. ‘We’ll have to do their work,’ Saltonstall went on, ‘if it can be done at all.’ He paused, offering Welch a chance to comment, but the marine said nothing. ‘Can it be done?’ Saltonstall prompted him.
Welch stayed silent for a while, then nodded. ‘We have the marines, sir, and I dare say every marine is worth two of the enemy. We might find five hundred militiamen who can fight. That should suffice, sir, if you can take care of their ships.’
‘Three sloops of war,’ Saltonstall said in a tone that suggested neither confidence nor pessimism about the prospects of destroying the Royal Navy squadron.
‘My men will fight,’ Welch said, ‘and by Christ they’ll fight like fiends. They’re good men, sir, well-trained.’
‘That I know,’ Saltonstall said, ‘but by God I won’t let Lovell throw them away. You only fight ashore with my permission.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘And if you get orders that make no sense, you refer them to me, you understand?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘He’s a farmer,’ Saltonstall said scornfully, ‘not a soldier, but a goddamned farmer.’
On board the Sally, in the captain’s cramped cabin, the farmer was cradling a mug of tea laced with rum. Lovell shared the table with his secretary, John Marston, and with Wadsworth and the Reverend Murray who appeared to have been promoted to senior aide. ‘We should reach Majabigwaduce tomorrow,’ Lovell said, looking from face to face in the feeble light of the lantern that hung from a beam, ‘and I assume the commodore will prevent the enemy ships from leaving the harbour and so obstructing us, in which case we should land immediately, don’t you think?’
‘If it’s possible,’ Wadsworth said cautiously.
‘Let us be hopeful!’ Lovell said. He dreamed of the victory parade in Boston and the vote of thanks from the legislature, but small doubts were creeping into his mind as he gazed at the crude map of Majabigwaduce’s peninsula that was spread on the table where the remains of supper still lay. The Sally’s cook had produced a fine fish stew served with newly baked bread. ‘We shall need to anchor off the land and launch the lighters,’ Lovell said distractedly, then used a crust of cornbread to tap the bluff at the western end of the peninsula. ‘Can McLean really have left this height undefended?’
‘Unfortified, certainly, if the reports are true,’ Wadsworth said.
‘Then we should accept his invitation, don’t you think?’
Wadsworth nodded cautiously. ‘We’ll know more tomorrow, sir,’ he said.
‘I want to be ready,’ Lovell said. He tapped the map again. ‘We can’t let our fellows sit idle while the commodore destroys the enemy shipping. We must put the men ashore fast.’ Lovell gazed at the map as though it might provide some solution to the morrow’s problems. Why had McLean not placed his fort on the high bluff? Was there a trap? If Lovell had been given the task of defending the peninsula he was sure he would have made a stronghold at the harbour’s entrance, high on the point of land that dominated both the wide bay and the harbour, so why had McLean not done that? And McLean, Lovell reminded himself, was a professional soldier, so what did McLean know that Lovell did not? He felt a shiver of nervousness in his soul, then took comfort that he was not alone in his responsibility. Commodore Saltonstall was the naval commander, and Saltonstall’s ships so outnumbered the enemy that surely no amount of professionalism could redress that imbalance. ‘We must believe,’ Lovell said, ‘that our enemies are afflicted by over-confidence.’
‘They are British,’ the Reverend Murray said in agreement, ‘and “pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs eighteen,’ he added helpfully, ‘verse sixteen.’
‘Words of wisdom,’ Lovell said, ‘and indeed they do underestimate us!’ The general was staring at the map and searching for the optimism that had lightened his morning.
‘They shall suffer for their arrogance,’ Murray said, and raised a reverent hand, ‘“What is this thing that ye do? Will ye rebel against the king? Then answered I them, and said unto them, the God of Heaven, he will prosper us.”’ He smiled benignly. ‘The words of the prophet Nehemiah, General.’
‘He will indeed prosper us,’ Lovell echoed, ‘and perhaps you would lead us in prayer, Reverend?’
‘Gladly.’ The men bowed their heads as the Reverend Murray prayed that God would send a swift victory. ‘May the forces of righteousness glorify Thy name, O Lord,’ the Reverend Murray beseeched, ‘and may we show magnanimity in the triumph that Thy words have promised us. We ask all this in Thy holy name, amen.’
‘Amen,’ Lovell said fervently, his eyes tight shut, ‘and amen.’
‘Amen,’ Brigadier McLean muttered in response to the grace before supper. He had been invited to Doctor Calef’s house, which lay two hundred yards east of Fort George. That name, he thought ruefully, was a grand name for a fort that was scarcely defensible. Captain Mowat had sent one hundred and eighty burly seamen to help the work, yet still the walls were only waist-high and a mere two cannons had been emplaced in the corner bastions.
‘So the wretches are here?’ Calef enquired.
‘So we hear, Doctor, so we hear,’ McLean responded. News of the enemy fleet’s arrival had come from the river’s mouth, brought by a fisherman who had fled the rebels so quickly that he had been unable to count the ships and could only say that there was a terrible lot of them. ‘It seems they’ve sent a considerable fleet,’ McLean commented, then thanked the doctor’s wife who had passed him a dish of beans. Three candles lit the table, a finely polished oval of gleaming walnut. Most of the doctor’s furniture had come from his Boston home and it looked strange here, much as if the contents of a fine Edinburgh mansion were to be moved to a Hebridean croft.
‘Will they come tonight?’ Mrs Calef enquired nervously.
‘I’m assured no one can navigate the river in the dark,’ McLean said, ‘so no, ma’am, not this night.’
‘They’ll be here tomorrow,’ Calef averred.
‘So I expect.’
‘In some force?’ Calef asked.
‘So the report said, Doctor, though I am denied any specific detail.’ McLean flinched as he bit onto a grindstone chip trapped in the cornbread. ‘Very fine bread, ma’am,’ he said.
‘We were maltreated in Boston,’ Calef said.
‘I am sorry to hear that.’
‘My wife was insulted in the streets.’
McLean knew what was in Calef’s mind, that if the rebels were to take Majabigwaduce then the persecution of the loyalists would start again. ‘I regret that, Doctor.’
‘I dare say,’ Calef said, ‘that if the rebels were to find me, General, they would imprison me.’ The doctor was merely toying with his food, while his wife watched him anxiously.
‘Then I must do my utmost,’ McLean said, ‘to keep you from imprisonment and your wife from insult.’
‘Scourge them,’ Calef said angrily.
‘I do assure you, Doctor, that is our intent,’ McLean said, then smiled at Calef’s wife. ‘These are very fine beans, ma’am.’
They ate mostly in silence after that. McLean wished he could offer a greater reassurance to the loyalists of Majabigwaduce, but the arrival of the rebel fleet surely meant an imminent defeat. His fort was unfinished. True he had made three batteries to cover the harbour entrance. There was one on Cross Island, the large Half Moon Battery down on the shore, and a third, much smaller, on the high bluff above the harbour mouth, but none of those batteries was a fort. They were emplacements for cannon that were there to fire at the enemy ships, but not one of the earthworks could withstand an assault by a company of determined infantry. There had simply not been enough time, and now the enemy was here.
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Bernard Cornwell
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ‘Captivate, kill or destroy the whole force of the enemy’ was the order given to the American soldiers.THE FORT is the blistering novel from worldwide bestseller Bernard Cornwell.Summer 1779.Seven hundred and fifty British soldiers and three small ships of the Royal Navy. Their orders: to build a fort above a harbour to create a base from which to control the New England seaboard.Forty-one American ships and over nine hundred men. Their orders: to expel the British.The battle that followed was a classic example of how the best-laid plans can be disrupted by personality and politics, and of how warfare can bring out both the best and worst in men. It is a timeless tale of men at war, written by a master storyteller.