The Fort (10 page)

“Thank you, sir.” Bethany put the shilling slice back on the block. “So how many promissory notes do you have to write each week?” she asked.

“How many?” Moore was momentarily puzzled by the question. “Oh, we don’t issue notes as such, Miss Fletcher, but we do record in the ledger what wages are owed. The specie is kept for more important duties, like paying you for corn and fish.”

“And you must need a lot of corn and fish for two whole regiments,” she said. “What is that? Two thousand men?”

“If only we were so numerous,” Moore said with a smile. “In truth, Miss Fletcher, the 74th musters just four hundred and forty men and we Hamiltons number scarce half that. And we hear now that the rebels are readying a fleet and an army to assail us!”

“And you think that report is true?” Bethany asked.

“The fleet, perhaps, is already on its way.”

Bethany stared past the three sloops to where wisps of mist drifted across the wide Penobscot River. “I pray, sir,” she said, “that there will be no fighting.”

“And I pray otherwise,” Moore said.

“Really?” Bethany sounded surprised. She turned to look at the young lieutenant as if she had never really noticed him before. “You want there to be a battle?”

“Soldiering is my chosen profession, Miss Fletcher,” Moore said, and felt very fraudulent as he said it, “and battle is the fire in which soldiers are tempered.”

“The world would be better without such fire,” Bethany said.

“True, no doubt,” Moore said, “but we did not strike the flint on the iron, Miss Fletcher. The rebels did that, they set the fire and our task is to extinguish the flame.” Bethany said nothing, and Moore decided he had sounded pompous. “You should come to Doctor Calef’s house in the evening,” he said.

“We should, sir?” Bethany asked, looking again at Moore.

“There is music in the garden when the weather permits, and dancing.”

“I don’t dance, sir,” Bethany said.

“Oh, it is the officers who dance,” Moore said hastily, “the sword dance.” He suppressed an urge to demonstrate a capering step. “You would be most welcome,” he said instead.

“Thank you, sir,” Bethany said, then pocketed the ravaged dollar and turned away.

“Miss Fletcher!” Moore called after her.

She turned back. “Sir?”

But Moore had no idea what to say, indeed he had surprised himself by calling after her in the first place. She was gazing at him, waiting. “Thank you for the supplies,” he managed to say.

“It is business, Lieutenant,” Beth said evenly.

“Even so, thank you,” Moore said, confused.

“Does that mean you’d sell to the Yankees too, miss?” Corporal Brown asked cheerfully.

“We might give to them,” Beth said, and Moore could not tell whether she was teasing or not. She looked at him, gave a half smile, and walked away.

“A rare good-looking lassie,” Corporal Brown said.

“Is she?” Moore asked most unconvincingly. He was gazing down the slope to where the settlement’s houses were spread along the harbor shore. He tried to imagine men fighting there, ranks of men blasting musket-fire, the cannons thundering the sky with noise, the harbor filled with half-sunken ships, and he thought how sad it would be to die amidst that chaos without ever having held a girl like Bethany in his arms.

“Are we finished with the ledgers, sir?” Brown asked.

“We are finished with the ledgers,” Moore said.

He wondered if he really was a soldier. He wondered if he would have the courage to face battle. He stared after Bethany and felt lost.

“Reluctance, sir, reluctance. Gross reluctance,” Colonel Jonathan Mitchell, who commanded the Cumberland County militia, glared at Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth as though it was all Wadsworth’s fault. “Culpable reluctance.”

“You conscripted?” Wadsworth asked.

“Of course we goddamn conscripted. We had to conscript! Half the reluctant bastards are conscripted. We didn’t get volunteers, just whining excuses, so we declared martial law, sir, and I sent troops to every township and rounded the bastards up, but too many ran and skulked, sir. They are reluctant, I tell you, reluctant!”

It had taken the fleet two days to sail to Townsend where the militia had been ordered to muster. General Lovell and Brigadier-General Wadsworth had been hoping for fifteen hundred men, but fewer than nine hundred waited for embarkation. “Eight hundred and ninety-four, sir, to be precise,” Marston, Lovell’s secretary, informed his master.

“Dear God,” Lovell said.

“It surely isn’t too late to request a Continental battalion?” Wadsworth suggested.

“Unthinkable,” Lovell said instantly. The State of Massachusetts had declared itself capable of ejecting the British on its own, and the General Court would not look happily on a request for help from General Washington’s troops. The Court, indeed, had been reluctant to accept Commodore Saltonstall’s aid, except that the
Warren
was so obviously a formidable warship and to ignore its presence in Massachusetts waters would have been perverse. “We do have the commodore’s marines,” Lovell pointed out, “and I’m assured the commodore will willingly release them to land service at Majabigwaduce.”

“We shall need them,” Wadsworth said. He had inspected the three militia battalions and had been appalled by what he found. Some men looked fit, young and eager, but far too many were either too old, too young, or too sick. One man had even paraded on crutches. “You can’t fight.” Wadsworth had told the man.

“Which is what I told the soldiers when they came to get us,” the man said. He was gray-bearded, gaunt, and wild-haired.

“Then go home,” Wadsworth said.

“How?”

“Same way you got here,” Wadsworth had said, despair making him irritable. A few paces down the line he found a curly-haired boy with cheeks that had never felt a razor. “What’s your name, son?” Wadsworth asked.

“Israel, sir.”

“Israel what?”

“Trask, sir.”

“How old are you, Israel Trask?”

“Fifteen, sir,” the boy said, trying to stand straighter. His voice had not broken and Wadsworth guessed he was scarcely fourteen. “Three years in the army, sir,” Trask said.

“Three years?” Wadsworth asked in disbelief.

“Fifer with the infantry, sir,” Trask said. He had a sackcloth bag hanging at his back and a slender wooden pipe protruded from the bag’s neck.

“You resigned from the infantry?” Wadsworth asked, amused.

“I was taken prisoner, sir,” Trask said, evidently offended by the question, “and exchanged. And here I am, sir, ready to fight the syphilitic bastards again.”

If a boy had used that language in Wadsworth’s classroom it would have provoked a caning, but these were strange times and so Wadsworth just patted the boy’s shoulder before walking on down the long line. Some men looked at him resentfully and he supposed they were the men who had been pressed by the militia. Maybe two thirds looked healthy and young enough for soldiering, but the rest were miserable specimens. “I thought you had a thousand men enrolled in Cumberland County alone?” Wadsworth remarked to Colonel Mitchell.

“Ha,” Mitchell said.

“Ha?” Wadsworth responded coldly.

“The Continental Army takes our best. We find a dozen decent recruits and the Continentals take six away and the other six run off to join the privateers.” Mitchell put a plug of tobacco in his mouth. “I wish to God we had a thousand, but Boston doesn’t send their wages and we don’t have rations. And there are some places we can’t recruit.”

“Loyalist places?”

“Loyalist places,” Mitchell had agreed grimly.

Wadsworth had walked on down the line, noting a one-eyed man who had some kind of nervous affliction that made his facial muscles quiver. The man grinned, and Wadsworth shuddered. “Does he have his senses?” he asked Colonel Mitchell.

“Enough to shoot straight,” Mitchell said dourly.

“Half don’t even have muskets!”

The fleet had brought five hundred muskets from the Boston Armory that would be rented to the militia. Most men at least knew how to use them because in these eastern counties folk expected to kill their own food and to skin the prey for clothing. They wore deerskin jerkins and trousers, deerskin shoes, and carried deerskin pouches and packs. Wadsworth inspected them all and reckoned he would be lucky if five hundred would prove useful men, then he borrowed a horse from the parson and gave them a speech from the saddle.

“The British,” he called, “have invaded Massachusetts! They must despise us, because they have sent few men and few ships! They believe we are powerless to evict them, but we are going to show them, that Massachusetts men will defend their land! We will embark on our fleet!” He waved towards the masts showing above the southern rooftops. “And we shall fight them, we shall defeat them and we shall evict them! You will return home with laurels on your brows!” It was not the most inspiring speech, Wadsworth thought, but he was encouraged when men cheered it. The cheer was late in starting, and it was feeble at first, but then the paraded ranks became enthusiastic.

The parson, a genial man about ten years older than Wadsworth, helped the brigadier down from the saddle. “I trust they will have laurels on their brows,” the parson said, “but most would prefer beefsteak in their stomachs.”

“I trust they find that as well,” Wadsworth said.

The Reverend Jonathan Murray took the horse’s reins and led it towards his house. “They may not look impressive, General, but they’re good men!”

“Who needed pressing?” Wadsworth inquired drily.

“Only a few,” Murray answered. “They worry about their families, their crops. Get them to Majabigwaduce and they’ll serve willingly enough.”

“The blind, the halt, and the lame?”

“Such men were good enough for our Lord,” Murray said, evidently seriously. “And what if a few are half-blind? A man needs only one eye to aim a musket.”

General Lovell had quartered himself in the parson’s ample house and, that evening, he convened all the senior officers of the expedition. Murray possessed a fine round table, made of maple wood, about which he normally led studies of the scripture, but which that night served to accommodate the naval and land commanders. Those who could not find a chair stood at the edges of the room, which was lit by eight candles in pewter sticks, grouped in the table’s center. Moths beat about the flames. General Lovell had taken the parson’s high-backed chair and he gently rapped the table for silence. “This is the first time,” Lovell said, “that we’ve all gathered together. You probably all know each other, but permit me to make introductions.” He went around the table, naming Wadsworth first, then Commodore Saltonstall and the three colonels of the militia regiments. Major Jeremiah Hill, the expedition’s adjutant-general, nodded solemnly as his name was pronounced, as did the two brigade majors, William Todd and Gawen Brown. The quartermaster, Colonel Tyler, sat next to Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the Surgeon General. “I trust we won’t require Doctor Downer’s services,” Lovell said with a smile, then indicated the men who stood at the room’s edges. Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines glowered next to Captain Hoysteed Hacker of the Continental Navy who commanded the
Providence
while Captain Philip Brown commanded the brig
Diligent
. Six privateer captains had come to the house and Lovell named them all, then smiled at Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who stood beside the door. “And last, but by no means least, our commander of the artillery train, Colonel Revere.”

“Whose services,” Revere said, “I trust you will require!”

A murmur of laughter sounded in the room, though Wadsworth noticed the look of grim distaste on Todd’s bespectacled face. The major glanced once at Revere, then studiously avoided looking at his enemy.

“I also requested the Reverend Murray to attend this council,” Lovell went on when the small laughter had subsided, “and I now ask him to open our proceedings with a word of prayer.”

Men clasped their hands and bowed their heads as Murray entreated Almighty God to pour His blessings on the men and ships now assembled in Townsend. Wadsworth had his head bowed, but sneaked a sidelong look at Revere who, he noticed, had not lowered his head, but was staring balefully towards Todd. Wadsworth closed his eyes again. “Give these men of Thy strength, Lord,” the Reverend Murray prayed, “and bring these warriors safe home, victorious, to their wives, and to their children and to their families. We ask all this in Thy holy name, O Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” the assembled officers echoed.

“Thank you, Reverend,” Lovell said, smiling happily. He took a breath and looked about the room, then stated the reason they were gathered together. “The British have landed at Majabigwaduce, as you know, and our orders are to captivate, kill, or destroy them. Major Todd, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what we know of the enemy’s dispositions?”

William Todd, his spectacles reflecting the candlelight, shuffled papers. “We have received intelligence,” he said in his dry voice, “from patriots in the Penobscot region. Notably from Colonel Buck, but from others too. We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops-of-war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.” Todd studied the earnest faces around the table. “McLean,” he went on, “is an experienced soldier. Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment.”

“A mercenary?” Commodore Saltonstall asked in a voice that reeked of scorn.

“I understand he was seconded to Portuguese service by the King of England,” Todd said, “so no, not a mercenary. Of late he has been Governor of Halifax and is now entrusted with the forces at Majabigwaduce. My apprehension of him,” Todd leaned back as if to suggest that he was speculating now, “is that he is an old man who was put out to pasture at Halifax and whose best days are, perhaps, behind him.” He shrugged as if to express uncertainty. “He leads two regiments, neither of which has seen recent service. Indeed, his own regiment is newly raised and is therefore entirely inexperienced. The notional complement of a British regiment is one thousand men, but rarely do the real numbers exceed eight hundred, so a reasonable calculation suggests that our enemy comprises fifteen or sixteen hundred infantry with artillery support and, of course, the Royal Marines and the crews of the three ships.” Todd unrolled a large sheet of paper on which was drawn a crude map of Majabigwaduce and, as the men craned forward to see the plan, he showed where the defenses were situated. He began with the fort, marked as a square. “As of Wednesday,” he said, “the walls were still low enough for a man to jump. The work goes slowly, we hear.” He tapped the three sloops that formed a barrier just inside the harbor entrance. “Their broadsides face Penobscot Bay,” he said, “and are supported by land batteries. There is one such battery here,” he pointed to Cross Island, “and another on the peninsula here. Those two batteries will enfilade the harbor entrance.”