The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War Read online

  “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 harbor?”

  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 cannon-balls, 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 traveled 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 southwest 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 which 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, which 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 center, 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 sidearms, 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 realized 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 overlarge 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 re
ceived 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-colored 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 nonexistent 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 Harbor 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 demeanor. 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 traveled 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 southwest 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.