Читать книгу The Fort - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 12

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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.

The Fort

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