The Fort (8 page)

Two drummer boys would do the whipping while a third beat the strokes on his drum. Private Macintosh had been caught trying to sneak across the low, marshy neck that joined Majabigwaduce to the mainland. That was the only route off the peninsula, unless a man stole a boat or, at a pinch, swam across the harbor, and McLean had placed a picquet in the trees close to the neck. They had brought Macintosh back and he had been sentenced to two hundred lashes, the severest punishment McLean had ever ordered, but he had few enough men as it was and he needed to deter others from desertion.

Desertion was a problem. Most men were content enough, but there were always a few who saw the promise of a better existence in the vastness of North America. Life here was a great deal easier than in the Highlands of Scotland, and Macintosh had made his run and now he would be punished.

“One!” the sergeant called.

“Lay it on hard,” McLean told the two drummer boys, “you’re not here to tickle him.”

“Two!”

McLean let his mind wander as the leather whips criss-crossed the man’s back. He had seen many floggings in his years of service, and had ordered executions too, because floggings and executions were the enforcers of duty. He saw many of the soldiers staring aghast at the sight, so the punishment was probably working. McLean did not enjoy punishment parades, no one in his right mind would, but they were unavoidable and, with luck, Macintosh would reform into a decent soldier.

And what Leviathan, McLean wondered, would Macintosh have to fight? A schooner captained by a loyalist had put into Majabigwaduce a week before with a report that the rebels in Boston were assembling a fleet and an army. “We were told there were forty or more ships coming your way, sir,” the schooner’s captain had told him, “and they’re gathering upwards of three thousand men.”

Maybe that was true and maybe not. The schooner’s captain had not visited Boston, just heard a rumor in Nantucket, and rumor, McLean knew, could inflate a company into a battalion and a battalion into an army. Nevertheless he had taken the information seriously enough to send the schooner back southwards with a despatch to Sir Henry Clinton in New York. The despatch merely said that McLean expected to be attacked soon and could not hold out without reinforcements. Why, he wondered, had he been given so few men and ships? If the crown wanted this piece of country, then why not send an adequate force? “Thirty-eight!” the sergeant shouted. There was blood on Macintosh’s back now, blood diluted by rain, but still enough blood to trickle down and darken the waistband of his kilt. “Thirty-nine,” the sergeant bellowed, “and lay it on hard!”

McLean resented the time this punishment parade stole from his preparations. He knew time was short and the fort was nowhere near completed. The trench about the four walls was scarcely two feet deep, the ramparts themselves not much higher. It was an excuse for a fort, a pathetic little earthwork, and he needed both men and time. He had offered wages to any civilian who was willing to work and, when insufficient men came forward, he sent patrols to impress labor.

“Sixty-one!” the sergeant shouted. Macintosh was whimpering now, the sound stifled by the leather gag. He shifted his weight and blood squelched in one shoe, then spilled over the shoe’s edge.

“He’ll not take much more,” Calef growled. Calef was replacing the battalion surgeon who was sick with a fever.

“Keep going!” McLean said.

“You want to kill him?”

“I want the battalion,” McLean said, “to be more frightened of the lash than of the enemy.”

“Sixty-two!” the sergeant shouted.

“Tell me,” McLean suddenly turned on the doctor, “why is the rumor being spread that I plan to hang any civilian who supports the rebellion?”

Calef looked uncomfortable. He flinched as the whipped man whimpered again, then looked defiantly at the general. “To persuade such disaffected people to leave the region, of course. You don’t want rebels lurking in the woods hereabouts.”

“Nor do I want a reputation as a hangman! We did not come here to persecute folk, but to persuade them to return to their proper allegiance. I would be grateful, Doctor, if a counterrumor was propagated. That I have no intentions of hanging any man, rebel or not.”

“God’s blood, man, I can see bone!” the doctor protested, ignoring McLean’s strictures. The whimpers had become moans. McLean saw that the drummer boys were using less strength now, not because their arms were weakening, but out of pity, and neither he nor the sergeant corrected them.

McLean stopped the punishment at a hundred lashes. “Cut him down, Sergeant,” he ordered, “and carry him to the doctor’s house.” He turned away from the bloody mess on the cross. “Any of you who follow Macintosh’s example will follow him here! Now dismiss the men to their duties.”

The civilians who had volunteered or been conscripted for labor trudged up the hill. One man, tall and gaunt, with wild dark hair and angry eyes pushed his way past McLean’s aides to confront the general. “You will be punished for this!” the man snarled.

“For what?” McLean inquired.

“For working on the Sabbath!” the man said. He towered over McLean. “In all my days I have never worked on the Sabbath, never! You make me a sinner!”

McLean held his temper. A dozen or so other men had paused and were watching the gaunt man, and McLean suspected they would join the protest and refuse to desecrate a Sunday by working if he yielded. “So why will you not work on a Sunday, sir?” McLean asked.

“It is the Lord’s day, and we are commanded to keep it holy.” The man jabbed a finger at the brigadier, stopping just short of striking McLean’s chest. “It is God’s commandment!”

“And Christ commanded that you render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” McLean retorted, “and today Caesar demands you make a rampart. But I will accommodate you, sir, I will accommodate you by not paying you. Work is paid labor, but today you will freely offer me your assistance which, sir, is a Christian act.”

“I will not’” the man began.

“Lieutenant Moore!” McLean raised his blackthorn stick to summon the lieutenant, though the gesture looked threatening and the gaunt man took a backwards step. “Call back the drummer boys!” McLean called, “I need another man whipped!” He turned his gaze back to the man. “You either assist me, sir,” he said quietly, “or I shall scourge you.”

The tall man glanced at the empty Saint Andrew’s cross. “I shall pray for your destruction,” he promised, but the fire had gone from his voice. He gave McLean a last defiant look, then turned away.

The civilians worked. They raised the wall of the fort another foot by laying logs along the low earthen berm. Some men cut down more trees, opening fields of fire for the fort, while others used picks and shovels to sink a well in the fort’s northeastern bastion. McLean ordered one long spruce trunk to be trimmed and stripped of its bark, then a sailor from the
Albany
attached a small pulley to the narrow end of the trunk and a long line was rove through the pulley’s block. A deep hole was hacked in the southwestern bastion and the spruce trunk was raised as a flagpole. Soldiers packed the hole with stones and, when the pole was reckoned to be stable, McLean ordered the union flag to be hauled into the damp sky. “We shall call this place . . .” he paused as the wind caught the flag and stretched it into the cloud-shrouded daylight. “Fort George,” McLean said tentatively, as if testing the name. He liked it. “Fort George,” he announced firmly and took off his hat. “God save the King!”

Highlanders of the 74th started on a smaller earthwork, a gun emplacement, which they made close to the shore and facing the harbor mouth. The soil was easier near the beach and they swiftly threw up a crescent of earth that they reinforced with stones and logs. Other logs were split to make platforms for the cannon that would face the harbor mouth. A similar battery was being constructed on Cross Island so that an enemy ship, daring the harbor mouth, would face Captain Mowat’s three broadsides and artillery fire from the bastions on either side of the entrance.

The rain lifted and fog drifted over the wide river reach. The new flag flew bright above Majabigwaduce, but for how long, McLean wondered, for how long?

Monday dawned fine in Boston. The wind came from the southwest and the sky was clear. “The glass rises,” Commodore Saltonstall announced to General Solomon Lovell on board the Continental frigate
Warren
. “We shall sail, General.”

“And God grant us a fair voyage and a triumphant return,” Lovell answered.

“Amen,” Saltonstall said grudgingly, then snapped out orders that signals should be made ordering the fleet to raise anchor and follow the flagship out of the harbor.

Solomon Lovell, almost fifty years old, towered over the Commodore. Lovell was a farmer, a legislator, and a patriot, and it was reckoned in Massachusetts that Solomon Lovell had been well named, for he enjoyed a reputation as a wise, judicious, and sensible man. His neighbors in Weymouth had elected him to the Assembly in Boston where he was well-liked because, in a fractious legislature, Lovell was a peacemaker. He possessed an unquenchable optimism that fairness and the willingness to see another man’s point of view would bring mutual prosperity, while his height and strong build, the latter earned by years of hard labor on his farm, added to the impression of utter dependability. His face was long and firm-jawed, while his eyes crinkled with easy amusement. His thick dark hair grayed at the temples, giving him a most distinguished appearance, and so it was no wonder that his fellow lawmakers had seen fit to give Solomon Lovell high rank in the Massachusetts Militia. Lovell, they reckoned, could be trusted. A few malcontents grumbled that his military experience was next to nothing, but Lovell’s supporters, and they were many, believed Solomon Lovell was just the man for the task. He got things done. And his lack of experience was offset by his deputy, Peleg Wadsworth, who had fought under General Washington’s command, and by Commodore Saltonstall, the naval commander, who was an even more experienced officer. Lovell would never be short of expert advice to hone his solid judgment.

The great anchor cable inched on board. The sailors at the capstan were chanting as they tramped round and round. “Here’s a rope!” a bosun shouted.

“To hang the Pope!” the men responded.

“And a chunk of cheese!”

“To choke him!”

Lovell smiled approvingly, then strolled to the stern rail where he stared at the fleet, marveling that Massachusetts had assembled so many ships so quickly. Lying closest to the
Warren
was a brig, the
Diligent
, that had been captured from Britain’s Royal Navy, and beyond her was a sloop, the
Providence
, which had captured her, both vessels with twelve guns and both belonging to the Continental Navy. Anchored behind them, and flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy, were two brigs, the
Tyrannicide
and
Hazard
, and a brigantine, the
Active
. All were armed with fourteen cannon and, like the
Warren
, were now fully manned because the General Court and the Board of War had given permission for press-gangs to take sailors from Boston’s taverns and from merchant vessels in the harbor.

The
Warren
, with its eighteen-pounder and twelve-pounder cannon, was the most powerful ship in the fleet, but a further seven ships could all match or outgun any one of the three British sloops that were reported to be waiting at Majabigwaduce. Those seven ships were all privateers. The
Hector
and the
Hunter
carried eighteen guns apiece, while
Charming Sally, General Putnam, Black Prince, Monmouth
, and
Vengeance
carried twenty guns each. There were smaller privateers too, like the
Sky Rocket
with her sixteen guns. In all, eighteen warships would sail to Majabigwaduce and those vessels mounted more than three hundred cannon, while the twenty-one transport ships would carry the men, the supplies, the guns, and the fervent hopes of Massachusetts. Lovell was proud of his state. It had made up the deficiencies in the supplies, and the ships now carried enough food to feed sixteen hundred men for two months. Why, there were six tons of flour alone! Six tons!

Lovell, thinking of the extraordinary efforts that had been made to provision the expedition, slowly became aware that men were shouting at the
Warren
from other ships. The anchor was still not raised, but the bosun ordered the seamen to stop their chant and their work. It seemed the fleet would not leave after all. Commodore Saltonstall, who had been standing by the frigate’s wheel, turned and paced back to Lovell. “It appears,” the commodore said sourly, “that the commander of your artillery is not aboard his ship.”

“He must be,” Lovell said.

“Must?”

“The orders were plain. Officers were to be aboard last night.”

“The
Samuel
reports that Colonel Revere is not on board. So what shall we do, General?”

Lovell was startled by the question. He had thought he was being given information, not being asked to make a decision. He stared across the sun-sparkling water as though the distant
Samuel
, a brig that was carrying the expedition’s cannon, might suggest an answer.

“Well?” Saltonstall pressed, “do we sail without him and his officers?”

“His officers?” Lovell asked.

“It transpires,” Saltonstall appeared to relish delivering the bad news, “that Colonel Revere allowed his officers to spend a last night ashore.”

“Ashore?” Lovell asked, astonished, then stared again at the distant brig. “We need Colonel Revere,” he said.

“We do?” Saltonstall asked sarcastically.

“Oh, a good officer!” Lovell said enthusiastically. “He was one of the men who rode to warn Concord and Lexington. Doctor Warren, God rest his soul, sent them, and this ship is named for Doctor Warren, is it not?”

“Is it?” Saltonstall asked carelessly.

“A very great patriot, Doctor Warren,” Lovell said feelingly.