The Fort

‘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.