The Fort

‘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.