Kitabı oxu: «The Fort»

Bernard Cornwell
The Fort

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2011

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

THE FORT. Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2010. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Maps © Garry Gates 2010

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 0 00 733174 1

While some of the events and characters are based on historical incidents and figures, this novel is entirely a work of fiction.

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007331765

Version: 2017-05-09

Dedication

THE FORT

is dedicated, with great admiration, to

Colonel John Wessmiller, US Army (Retired)

who would have known just what to do.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

A Note on Names and Terms

One

There was not much wind so the ships headed sluggishly…

Two

Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard.

Three

On Sunday, 18th July, 1779, Peleg Wadsworth worshipped at Christ…

Four

The fleet sailed eastwards, driven by a brisk south-westerly, though…

Five

The Tyrannicide, flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy,…

Six

The daylight was fading. The western sky glowed red and…

Seven

The first shots crashed into the trees, exploding twigs, pine…

Eight

Marine Captain Thomas Carnes and thirty men had been on…

Nine

‘Where the devil is Revere?’ Lovell asked. He had asked…

Ten

The sun had not risen when Peleg Wadsworth roused Lieutenant-Colonel…

Eleven

Wednesday, August 11th, started with a thick fog and still…

Twelve

And, suddenly, there was hope.

Thirteen

A Royal Marine at the taffrail of HMS North fired…

Fourteen

Peleg Wadsworth slept ashore, or rather he lay awake on…

Historical Note

Heroic Myths

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna by Charles Wolfe 1791-1823

About the Author

Other Books by Bernard Cornwell

Credits

About the Publisher

Map

A NOTE ON NAMES AND TERMS

In 1779 there was no state of Maine, it was then the eastern province of Massachusetts. Some place names have also changed. Majabigwaduce is now called Castine, Townsend is Bucks Harbor, and Falmouth is Portland, Maine. Buck’s plantation (properly Plantation Number One) is Bucksport, Orphan Island is Verona Island, Long Island (in the Penobscot River) is now Islesboro Island, Wasaumkeag Point is now Cape Jellison and Cross Island is today called Nautilus Island.

The novel frequently refers to ‘ships’, ‘sloops’, ‘brigs’, and ‘schooners’. They are all, of course, ships in the same way that they are all boats, but properly a ship was a large, square-rigged, three-masted vessel like a frigate (think of the USS Constitution) or a ship of the line (like HMS Victory). Nowadays we think of a sloop as a single-masted sailboat, but in 1779 it denoted a three-masted vessel that was usually smaller than a ship and distinguished by having a flush main deck (thus no raised poop deck). Sloops, like ships, were square rigged (meaning they carried rectangular sails hung from crosswise yards). A brig, or brigantine, was also a large square-rigged sailing vessel, but with only two masts. Schooners, like brigs, carried two masts, but were rigged with fore-and-aft sails which, when hoisted, lie along the centre line of the vessel rather than across it. There were variations, such as brig-sloops, but at Penobscot Bay, in 1779, there were only ships, sloops, brigs and schooners. With the exception of the Felicity all the names of the boats are taken from history.

Most of the characters in the novel existed. The only fictional names are those of any character whose surname begins with F (with the exception of Captain Thomas Farnham, RN), and the names of British privates and non-commissioned officers (with the exception of Sergeant Lawrence, Royal Artillery).

Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, July 2nd, 1779:

You will in all your operations consult with the Commander of the fleet that the Naval Force may cooperate with the troops under your command in Endeavoring to Captivate Kill or Destroy the whole force of the Enemy there both by sea & land. And as there is good reason to believe that some of the Principal men at Majorbagaduce requested the enemy to come there and take possession you will be peculiarly careful not to let any of them escape, but to secure them for their evil doings … We now commend you to the Supream being Sincerely praying him to preserve you and the Forces under your Command in health and safety, & Return you Crowned with Victory and Laurels.

From a postscript to Doctor John Calef’s Journal, 1780, concerning Majabigwaduce:

To this new country, the Loyalists resort with their families … and find asylum from the tyranny of Congress, and their taxgatherers … and there they continue in full hope, and pleasant expectation, that they may soon re-enjoy the liberties and privileges which would be best secured to them by the … British Constitution.

Letter from Captain Henry Mowat, Royal Navy, to Jonathan Buck, written aboard HMS Albany, Penobscot River, June 15th, 1779:

Sir, Understanding that you are at the head of a Regiment of the King’s deluded Subjects on this River and parts adjacent and that you hold a Colonel’s Commission under the influence of a body of men termed the General Congress of the United States of America, it therefore becomes my duty to require you to appear without loss of time before General McLean and the commanding Officer of the King’s Ships now on board the Blonde off of Majorbigwaduce with a Muster Roll of the People under your direction.

ONE

There was not much wind so the ships headed sluggishly upriver. There were ten of them, five warships escorting five transports, and the flooding tide did more to carry them northwards than the fitful breeze. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low, grey and direful. Water dripped monotonously from sails and rigging.

There was little to see from the ships, though all their gunwales were crowded with men staring at the river’s banks that widened into a great inland lake. The hills about the lake were low and covered with trees, while the shoreline was intricate with creeks, headlands, wooded islands and small, stony beaches. Here and there among the trees were cleared spaces where logs were piled or perhaps a wooden cabin stood beside a small cornfield. Smoke rose from those clearings and some men aboard the ships wondered if the distant fires were signals to warn the country of the fleet’s arrival. The only people they saw were a man and a boy fishing from a small open boat. The boy, who was named William Hutchings, waved excitedly at the ships, but his uncle spat. ‘There come the devils,’ he said.

The devils were mostly silent. On board the largest warship, a 32-gun frigate named Blonde, a devil in a blue coat and an oilskin-covered cocked hat lowered his telescope. He frowned thoughtfully at the dark, silent woods past which his ship slid. ‘To my mind,’ he said, ‘it looks like Scotland.’

‘Aye, it does,’ his companion, a red-coated devil, answered cautiously, ‘a resemblance, certainly.’

‘More wooded than Scotland, though?’

‘A deal more wooded,’ the second man said.

‘But like the west coast of Scotland, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not unlike,’ the second devil agreed. He was sixty-two years old, quite short, and had a shrewd, weathered face. It was a kindly face with small, bright blue eyes. He had been a soldier for over forty years and in that time had endured a score of hard-fought battles that had left him with a near-useless right arm, a slight limp, and a tolerant view of sinful mankind. His name was Francis McLean and he was a Brigadier-General, a Scotsman, commanding officer of His Majesty’s 82nd regiment of foot, Governor of Halifax, and now, at least according to the dictates of the King of England, the ruler of everything he surveyed from the Blonde’s quarterdeck. He had been aboard the frigate for thirteen days, the time it had taken to sail from Halifax in Nova Scotia, and he felt a twinge of worry that the length of the voyage might prove unlucky. He wondered if it might have been better to have made it in fourteen days and surreptitiously touched the wood of the rail. A burnt wreck lay on the eastern shore. It had once been a substantial ship capable of crossing an ocean, but now it was a ribcage of charred wood half inundated by the flooding tide that carried the Blonde upriver. ‘So how far are we now from the open sea?’ he asked the blue-uniformed captain of the Blonde.

‘Twenty-six nautical miles,’ Captain Andrew Barkley answered briskly, ‘and there,’ he pointed over the starboard bow and past the lion-crested cathead from which one of the frigate’s anchors was suspended, ‘is your new home.’

McLean borrowed the captain’s glass and, using his awkward right arm as a rest for the tubes, trained the telescope forrard. For a moment the small motions of the ship defeated him so that all he glimpsed was a blur of grey clouds, dark land and sullen water, but he steadied himself to see that the Penobscot River widened to make the great lake that Captain Barkley called Penobscot Bay. The bay, McLean thought, was really a great sea loch, which he knew from his study of Barkley’s charts was some eight miles from east to west and three miles from north to south. A harbour opened from the bay’s eastern shore. The mouth of the harbour was edged by rocks, while on its northern side was a hill crowned thick with trees. A settlement stood on the southern slope of that hill; over a score of wooden homes and barns were set among patches of corn, plots of vegetables and piles of timber. A handful of fishing boats was anchored in the harbour, along with one small brig that McLean assumed was a trading vessel. ‘So that’s Majabigwaduce,’ he said softly.

‘Back topsails!’ the captain called, ‘order the fleet to heave to. I shall trouble you to signal for a pilot, Mister Fennel!’

‘Aye aye, sir!’

The frigate suddenly seethed with men running to release sheets. ‘That’s Majabigwaduce,’ Barkley said in a tone that suggested the name was as risible as the place.

‘Number one gun!’ Lieutenant Fennel shouted, provoking another rush of men who ran to the forward starboard cannon.

‘Do you have any idea,’ McLean asked the captain, ‘what Majabigwaduce signifies?’

‘Signifies?’

‘Does the name mean anything?’

‘No idea, no idea,’ Barkley said, apparently irritated by the question. ‘Now, Mister Fennel!’

The gun, charged and wadded, but without any shot, was fired. The recoil was slight, but the sound of the gun seemed hugely loud and the cloud of smoke enveloped half the Blonde’s deck. The gunshot faded, then was echoed back from the shore before fading a second time.

‘We shall discover something now, won’t we?’ Barkley said.

‘What is that?’ McLean enquired.

‘Whether they’re loyal, General, whether they’re loyal. If they’ve been infected by rebellion then they’ll hardly supply a pilot, will they?’

‘I suppose not,’ McLean said, though he suspected a disloyal pilot could well serve his rebellious cause by guiding HMS Blonde onto a rock. There were plenty of those breaking the bay’s surface. On one, not fifty paces from the frigate’s port gunwales, a cormorant spread its dark wings to dry.

They waited. The gun had been fired, the customary signal requesting a pilot, but the smoke prevented anyone aboard from seeing whether the settlement of Majabigwaduce would respond. The five transport ships, four sloops and frigate drifted upriver on the tide. The loudest noise was the groan, wheeze and splashing from the pump aboard one of the sloops, HMS North. The water spurted and gushed rhythmically from an elm spigot set into her hull as sailors pumped her bilge. ‘She should have been broken up for firewood,’ Captain Barkley said sourly.

‘There’s no patching her?’ McLean asked.

‘Her timbers are rotten. She’s a sieve,’ Barkley said dismissively. Small waves slapped the Blonde’s hull, and the blue ensign at her stern stirred slow in the fitful wind. Still no boat appeared and so Barkley ordered the signal gun fired a second time. The sound echoed and faded again and, just when Barkley was considering taking the flotilla into the harbour without the benefit of a pilot, a seaman hailed from the foremast top. ‘Boat coming, sir!’

When the powder smoke cleared, the men on Blonde saw a small open boat was indeed tacking out from the harbour. The south-west breeze was so light that the tan-coloured sails hardly gave the boat any headway against the tide, and so a young man was pulling on two long oars. Once in the wide bay he shipped the oars and sheeted his sails hard so that the small boat beat slowly up to the flotilla. A girl sat at the tiller and she steered the little craft against the Blonde’s starboard flank where the young man leaped nimbly onto the boarding steps that climbed the tumblehome. He was tall, fair-haired, with hands calloused and blackened from handling tarred rigging and fishing nets. He wore homespun breeches and a canvas jacket, had clumsy boots and a knitted hat. He climbed to the deck, then called down to the girl. ‘You take good care of her, Beth!’

‘Stop gawping, you puddin’-headed bastards!’ the bosun roared at the seamen staring at the fair-haired girl who was using an oar to push her small craft away from the frigate’s hull. ‘You’re the pilot?’ the bosun asked the young man.

‘James Fletcher,’ the young man said, ‘and I guess I am, but you don’t need no pilot anyways.’ He grinned as he walked towards the officers at the Blonde’s stern. ‘Any of you gentlemen have tobacco?’ he asked as he climbed the companionway to the poop deck. He was rewarded with silence until General McLean reached into a pocket and extracted a short clay pipe, its bowl already stuffed with tobacco.

‘Will that do?’ the general asked.

‘That’ll do just perfect,’ Fletcher said appreciatively, then prised the plug from the bowl and crammed it into his mouth. He handed the empty pipe back to the general. ‘Haven’t had tobacco in two months,’ he said in explanation, then nodded familiarly to Barkley. ‘Ain’t no real dangers in Bagaduce, Captain, just so long as you stand off Dyce’s Head, see?’ He pointed to the tree-crowned bluff on the northern side of the harbour entrance. ‘Rocks there. And more rocks off Cross Island on the other side. Hold her in the channel’s centre and you’ll be safe as safe.’

‘Bagaduce?’ General McLean asked.

‘That’s what we call it, your honour. Bagaduce. Easier on the tongue than Majabigwaduce.’ The pilot grinned, then spat tobacco juice that splattered across the Blonde’s holy-stoned planking. There was silence on the quarterdeck as the officers regarded the dark stain.

‘Majabigwaduce,’ McLean broke the silence, ‘does it mean anything?’

‘Big bay with big tides,’ Fletcher said, ‘or so my father always said. ’Course it’s an Indian name so it could mean anything.’ The young man looked around the frigate’s deck with an evident appreciation. ‘Day of excitement, this,’ he remarked genially.

‘Excitement?’ General McLean asked.

‘Phoebe Perkins is expecting. We all thought the baby would have dropped from her by now, but it ain’t. And it’ll be a girl!’

‘You know that?’ General McLean asked, amused.

‘Phoebe’s had six babes already and every last one of them a girl. You should fire another gun, Captain, startle this new one out of her!’

‘Mister Fennel!’ Captain Barkley called through a speaking trumpet, ‘sheet in, if you please.’

The Blonde gathered way. ‘Take her in,’ Barkley told the helmsman, and so the Blonde, the North, the Albany, the Nautilus, the Hope, and the five transports they escorted came to Majabigwaduce. They arrived safe in the harbour and anchored there. It was June 17th, 1779 and, for the first time since they had been driven from Boston in March, 1776, the British were back in Massachusetts.

Some two hundred miles west and a little south of where the devils arrived, Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth paraded his battalion on the town common. Only seventeen were present, not one of whom could be described as correct. The youngest, Alexander, was five, while the oldest were the twelve-year-old Fowler twins, Rebecca and Dorcas, and they all gazed earnestly at the brigadier, who was thirty-one. ‘What I want you to do,’ the general said, ‘is march forward in single file. On the word of command you stop. What is the word of command, Jared?’

Jared, who was nine, thought for a second. ‘Halt?’

‘Very good, Jared. The next command after that will be “prepare to form line”, and you will do nothing!’ The brigadier peered sternly at his diminutive troops who were in a column of march facing northwards. ‘Understand? You do nothing! Then I’m going to shout that companies one, two, three and four will face left. Those companies,’ and here the general walked down the line indicating which children comprised the leading four companies, ‘are the left wing. What are you, Jared?’

‘The left wing,’ Jared said, flapping his arms.

‘Excellent! And you,’ the general paced on down the rest of the line, ‘are companies five, six, seven and eight, the right wing, and you will face right. I shall then give the order to face front and you turn. Then we counter-wheel. Alexander? You’re the colour party so you don’t move.’

‘I want to kill a redcoat, Daddy,’ Alexander pleaded.

‘You don’t move, Alexander,’ the colour party’s father insisted, then repeated all he had said. Alexander was holding a long stick that, in the circumstances, substituted for the American flag. He now aimed this at the church and pretended to shoot redcoats and so had to be chivvied back into the column that singly and generally agreed that they understood what their erstwhile schoolmaster wanted them to do. ‘Now remember,’ Peleg Wadsworth encouraged them, ‘that when I order counter-wheel you march in the direction you’re facing, but you swing around like the arm of a clock! I want to see you turn smoothly. Are we all ready?’

A small crowd had gathered to watch and advise. One man, a visiting minister, had been appalled to see children so young being taught the rudiments of soldiery and had chided General Wadsworth on the matter, but the brigadier had assured the man of God that it was not the children who were being trained, but himself. He wished to understand precisely how a column of companies deployed into a regimental line that could blast an enemy with musket fire. It was hard to advance troops in line because a long row of men inevitably straggled and lost its cohesion, to avoid which men must advance in companies, one behind the other, but such a column was fatally vulnerable to cannon-fire and quite unable to use most of its muskets, and so the art of the manoeuvre was to advance in column and then deploy swiftly into line. Wadsworth wanted to master the drill, but because he was a general of the Massachusetts Militia, and because the militia were mostly on their farms or in their workshops, Wadsworth was using children. The leading company, which would normally hold three ranks of thirty or more men each, was today comprised of Rebecca Fowler, aged twelve, and her nine-year-old cousin, Jared, both of whom were bright children and, Wadsworth hoped, capable of setting an example that the remaining children would copy. The manoeuvre he was attempting was difficult. The battalion would march in column towards the enemy and then halt. The leading companies would turn to face one way, the rearward companies turn to face the opposite direction and then the whole line would counter-wheel about the colours in a smooth pivot until commanded to halt. That would leave the first four companies facing away from the enemy and Wadsworth would need to order those eight children to about turn, at which point the whole formidable battalion would be ready to open fire against the enemy. Wadsworth had watched British regiments perform a similar manoeuvre on Long Island and he had reluctantly admired their precision and seen for himself the swiftness with which they had been transformed from a column into a long line that had unleashed a torrent of musketry on the American forces.

‘Are we ready?’ Wadsworth asked again. If he could explain the system to children, he had decided, then teaching the state militia should be easy enough. ‘Forward march!’

The children marched creditably well, though Alexander kept skipping to try and match steps with his companions. ‘Battalion!’ Wadsworth called, ‘Halt!’

They halted. So far so good. ‘Battalion! Prepare to form line! Don’t move yet!’ He paused a moment. ‘The left wing will face left! The right wing will face right, on my word of command. Battalion! Face front!’

Rebecca turned right instead of left and the battalion milled about in a moment of confusion before someone’s hair was pulled and Alexander began shouting bang as he shot imaginary redcoats coming from the Common Burying Ground. ‘Counter-wheel, march!’ Wadsworth shouted, and the children swivelled in different directions and by now, the general thought despairingly, the British troops would have hammered two slaughterous volleys into his regiment. Perhaps, Wadsworth thought, using the children from the school where he had taught before becoming a soldier was not the best way to develop his mastery of infantry tactics. ‘Form line,’ he shouted.

‘The way to do it,’ a man on crutches offered from the crowd, ‘is company by company. It’s slower, General, but slow and steady wins the day.’

‘No, no, no!’ someone else chimed in. ‘First company front right marker to step one pace left and one pace forward, and he becomes left marker, raises his hand, and the rest fall in on him. Or her, in your regiment, General.’

‘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.

Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to the Continental Navy Board in Boston, June 30th, 1779:

Gentlemen: The General Assembly of this State have determined on an Expedition to Penobscot to Dislodge the Enemy of the United States lately enter’d There who are said to be committing Hostilities on the Good People of this State … fortifying themselves at Baggobagadoos, and as They are supported by a Considerable Naval Force, to Effect our Design, it will be expedient to send there, to aid our Land Operations a Superior Naval Force. Therefore … we write you … requesting you to aid our Designs, by adding to the Naval Force of this State, now, with all Possible Speed preparing, for an expedition to Penobscot; the Continental Frigate now in this Harbour, and the other armed Continental vessells here.

Excerpts from the Warrant of Impressment issued to Masschusetts Sheriffs, July 3rd, 1779:

You are hereby authorized and Commanded taking with you such Assistance as you judge proper, forthwith to take seize and impress any able-bodied Seamen, or Mariner which you shall find in your Precinct … to serve on board any of the Vessels entered into the Service of this State to be employed in the proposed expedition to Penobscot … You are hereby Authorized to enter on board and search any Ship or Vessel or to break open and search any Dwelling house or other building in which you shall suspect any such Seamen or Mariners to be concealed.

Excerpt from a letter sent by Brigadier-General Charles Cushing to the Council of the State of Massachusetts, June 19th, 1779

I have Issued orders to the officers of my Brigade requiring them to inlist men agreeable thereto. I would inform your Honors that at present there seems no prospect of getting one man as the Bounty offered is in the Esteem of the people inadequate.

TWO

Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard. He wore a light blue uniform coat faced in brown, white deerskin breeches, knee boots, and had a naval cutlass hanging from a thick brown belt. His wide-brimmed hat was made of felt, and it shadowed a broad, stubborn face that was creased in thought. ‘You making that list, boy?’ he demanded brusquely.

‘Yes, sir,’ the boy answered. He was twelve, the son of Josiah Flint who ruled the armory from his high-backed, well-padded chair that had been dragged from the office and set beside the trestle table where the boy made his list. Flint liked to sit in the yard when the weather allowed so he could keep an eye on the comings and goings in his domain.

‘Drag chains,’ Revere said, ‘sponges, searchers, relievers, am I going too fast?’

‘Relievers,’ the boy muttered, dipping his pen into the inkwell.

‘Hot today,’ Josiah Flint grumbled from the depths of his chair.

‘It’s summer,’ Revere said, ‘and it should be hot. Rammers, boy, and wad hooks. Spikes, tompions, linstocks, vent-covers. What have I forgotten, Mister Flint?’

‘Priming wires, Colonel.’

‘Priming wires, boy.’

‘Priming wires,’ the boy said, finishing the list.

‘And there’s something else in the back of my mind,’ Flint said, frowning, then thought for a moment before shaking his head. ‘Maybe nothing,’ he said.

‘You hunt through your pa’s supplies, boy,’ Revere said, ‘and you make piles of all those things. We need to know how many we’ve got. You note down how many and then you tell me. Off you go.’

‘And buckets,’ Josiah Flint added hurriedly.

‘And buckets!’ Revere called after the boy. ‘And not leaking buckets either!’ He took the boy’s vacated chair and watched as Josiah Flint bit into a chicken leg. Flint was an enormous man, his belly spilling over his belt, and he seemed intent on becoming even fatter because whenever Revere visited the arsenal he found his friend eating. He had a plate of cornbread, radishes and chicken that he vaguely gestured towards, as if inviting Colonel Revere to share the dish.

‘You haven’t been given orders yet, Colonel?’ Flint asked. His nose had been shattered by a bullet at Saratoga just minutes before a cannonball took away his right leg. He could no longer breathe through his nose and so his breath had to be drawn past the half-masticated food filling his mouth. It made a snuffling sound. ‘They should have given you orders, Colonel.’

‘They don’t know whether they’re pissing or puking, Mister Flint,’ Revere said, ‘but I can’t wait while they make up their minds. The guns have to be ready!’

‘No man better than you, Colonel,’ Josiah Flint said, picking a shred of radish from his front teeth.

‘But I didn’t go to Harvard, did I?’ Revere asked with a forced laugh. ‘If I spoke Latin, Mister Flint, I’d be a general by now.’

‘Hic, haec, hoc,’ Flint said through a mouthful of bread.

‘I expect so,’ Revere said. He pulled a folded copy of the Boston Intelligencer from his pocket and spread it on the table, then took out his reading glasses. He disliked wearing them for he suspected they gave him an unmilitary appearance, but he needed the spectacles to read the account of the British incursion into eastern Massachusetts. ‘Who would have believed it,’ he said, ‘the bastard redcoats back in New England!’

‘Not for long, Colonel.’

‘I hope not,’ Revere said. The Massachusetts government, learning that the British had landed men at Majabigwaduce, had determined to send an expedition to the Penobscot River, to which end a fleet was being gathered, orders being sent to the militia and officers being appointed. ‘Well, well,’ Revere said, peering at the newspaper. ‘It seems the Spanish have declared war on the British now!’

‘Spain as well as France,’ Flint said. ‘The bloodybacks can’t last long now.’

‘Let’s pray they last long enough to give us a chance to fight them at Maja.’ Revere paused, ‘Majabigwaduce,’ he said. ‘I wonder what that name means?’

‘Just some Indian nonsense,’ Flint said. ‘Place Where the Muskrat Pissed Down its Legs, probably.’

‘Probably,’ Revere said distantly. He took off his glasses and stared at a pair of sheerlegs that waited to lift a cannon barrel from a carriage rotted by damp. ‘Have they given you a requisition for cannon, Mister Flint?’

‘Just for five hundred muskets, Colonel, to be rented for a dollar each to the militia.’

‘Rented!’

‘Rented,’ Flint confirmed.

‘If they’re to kill the British,’ Revere said, ‘then money shouldn’t come into it.’

‘Money always comes into it,’ Flint said. ‘There are six new British nine-pounders in Appleby’s yard, but we can’t touch them. They’re to be auctioned.’

‘The Council should buy them,’ Revere said.

‘The Council don’t have the money,’ Flint said, stripping a leg-bone of its flesh, ‘not enough coinage to pay the wages, rent the privateers, purchase supplies and buy cannon. You’ll have to make do with the guns we’ve got.’

‘They’ll do, they’ll do,’ Revere said grudgingly.

‘And I hope the Council has the sense to appoint you to command those guns, Colonel!’

Revere said nothing to that, merely stared at the sheerlegs. He had an engaging smile that warmed men’s hearts, but he was not smiling now. He was seething.

He was seething because the Council had appointed the commanders of the expedition to rout the British from Majabigwaduce, but so far no man had been named to lead the artillery and Revere knew that cannons would be needed. He knew too that he was the best man to command those cannon, he was indeed the commanding officer of the Bay of Massachusetts State Artillery Regiment, yet the Council had pointedly refrained from sending him any orders.

‘They will appoint you, Colonel,’ Flint said loyally, ‘they have to!’

‘Not if Major Todd has his way,’ Revere said bitterly.

‘I expect he went to Harvard,’ Flint said, ‘hic, haec, hoc.’

‘Harvard or Yale, probably,’ Revere agreed, ‘and he wanted to run the artillery like a counting-house! Lists and regulations! I told him, make the men gunners first, then kill the British, and after that make the lists, but he didn’t listen. He was forever saying I was disorganized, but I know my guns, Mister Flint, I know my guns. There’s a skill in gunnery, an art, and not everyone has the touch. It doesn’t come from book-learning, not artillery. It’s an art.’

‘That’s very true,’ Flint wheezed through a full mouth.

‘But I’ll ready their cannon,’ Revere said, ‘so whoever commands them has things done properly. There may not be enough lists, Mister Flint,’ he chuckled at that, ‘but they’ll have good and ready guns. Eighteen-pounders and more! Bloodyback-killers! Guns to slaughter the English, they will have guns. I’ll see to that.’

Flint paused to release a belch, then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want to go to Maja, whatever it is?’

‘Of course I’m sure!’

Flint patted his belly, then put two radishes into his mouth. ‘It ain’t comfortable, Colonel.’

‘What does that mean, Josiah?’

‘Down east?’ Flint asked. ‘You’ll get nothing but mosquitoes, rain and sleeping under a tree down east.’ He feared that his friend would not be given command of the expedition’s artillery and, in his clumsy way, was trying to provide some consolation. ‘And you’re not as young as you were, Colonel!’

‘Forty-five’s not old!’ Revere protested.

‘Old enough to know sense,’ Flint said, ‘and to appreciate a proper bed with a woman inside it.’

‘A proper bed, Mister Flint, is beside my guns. Beside my guns that point towards the English! That’s all I ask, a chance to serve my country.’ Revere had tried to join the fighting ever since the rebellion had begun, but his applications to the Continental Army had been refused for reasons that Revere could only suspect and never confirm. General Washington, it was said, wanted men of birth and honour, and that rumour had only made Revere more resentful. The Massachusetts Militia was not so particular, yet Revere’s service so far had been uneventful. True, he had gone to Newport to help evict the British, but that campaign had ended in failure before Revere and his guns arrived, and so he had been forced to command the garrison on Castle Island and his prayers that a British fleet would come to be battered by his cannon had gone unanswered. Paul Revere, who hated the British with a passion that could shake his body with its pure vehemence, had yet to kill a single redcoat.

‘You’ve heard the trumpet call, Colonel,’ Flint said respectfully.

‘I’ve heard the trumpet call,’ Revere agreed.

A sentry opened the armory gate and a man in the faded blue uniform of the Continental Army entered the yard from the street. He was tall, good-looking and some years younger than Revere who stood in wary greeting. ‘Colonel Revere?’ the newcomer asked.

‘At your service, General.’

‘I am Peleg Wadsworth.’

‘I know who you are, General,’ Revere said, smiling and taking the offered hand. He noted that Wadsworth did not return the smile. ‘I hope you bring me good news from the Council, General?’

‘I would like a word, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said, ‘a brief word.’ The brigadier glanced at the monstrous Josiah Flint in his padded chair. ‘A word in private,’ he added grimly.

So the trumpet call would have to wait.

Captain Henry Mowat stood on Majabigwaduce’s beach. He was a stocky man with a ruddy face now shadowed by the long peak of his cocked hat. His naval coat was dark blue with lighter blue facings, all stained white by salt. He was in his forties, a lifelong sailor, and he stood with his feet planted apart as though balancing on a quarterdeck. His dark hair was powdered and a slight trail of the powder had sifted down the spine of his uniform coat. He was glaring at the longboats that lay alongside his ship, the Albany. ‘What the devil takes all this time?’ he growled.

His companion, Doctor John Calef, had no idea what was causing the delay on board the Albany and so offered no answer. ‘You’ve received no intelligence from Boston?’ he asked Mowat instead.

‘We don’t need intelligence,’ Mowat said brusquely. He was the senior naval officer at Majabigwaduce and, like Brigadier McLean, a Scotsman, but where the brigadier was emollient and soft-spoken, Mowat was famed for his bluntness. He fidgeted with the cord-bound hilt of his sword. ‘The bastards will come, Doctor, mark my word, the bastards will come. Like flies to dung, Doctor, they’ll come.’

Calef thought that likening the British presence at Majabigwaduce to dung was an unfortunate choice, but he made no comment on that. ‘In force?’ he asked.

‘They may be damned rebels, but they’re not damned fools. Of course they’ll come in force.’ Mowat still gazed at the anchored ship, then cupped his hands. ‘Mister Farraby,’ he bellowed across the water, ‘what the devil is happening?’

‘Roving a new sling, sir!’ the call came back.

‘How many guns will you bring ashore?’ the doctor enquired.

‘As many as McLean wants,’ Mowat said. His three sloops of war were anchored fore and aft to make a line across the harbour’s mouth, their starboard broadsides facing the entrance to greet any rebel ship that dared intrude. Those broadsides were puny. HMS North, which lay closest to Majabigwaduce’s beach, carried twenty guns, ten on each side, while the Albany, at the centre, and the Nautilus, each carried nine cannons in their broadsides. An enemy ship would thus be greeted by twenty-eight guns, none throwing a ball larger than nine pounds, and the last intelligence Mowat had received from Boston indicated that a rebel frigate was in that harbour, a frigate that mounted thirty-two guns, most of which would be much larger than his small cannon. And the rebel frigate Warren would be supported by the privateers of Massachusetts, most of whose craft were just as heavily gunned as his own sloops of war. ‘It’ll be a fight,’ he said sourly, ‘a rare good fight.’

The new sling had evidently been roved because a nine-pounder gun barrel was being hoisted from the Albany’s deck and gently lowered into one of the waiting longboats. Over a ton of metal hung from the yardarm, poised above the heads of the pigtailed sailors waiting in the small boat below. Mowat was bringing his port broadsides ashore so the guns could protect the fort McLean was building on Majabigwaduce’s crest. ‘If you abandon your portside guns,’ Calef enquired in a puzzled tone, ‘what happens if the enemy passes you?’

‘Then, sir, we are dead men,’ Mowat said curtly. He watched the longboat settle precariously low in the choppy water as it took the weight of the cannon’s barrel. The carriage would be brought ashore in another boat and, like the barrel, be hauled uphill to the site of the fort by one of the two teams of oxen that had been commandeered from the Hutchings farm. ‘Dead men!’ Mowat said, almost cheerfully, ‘but to kill us, Doctor, they must first pass us, and I do not intend to be passed.’

Calef felt relief at Mowat’s belligerence. The Scottish naval captain was famous in Massachusetts, or perhaps infamous was a better word, but to all loyalists, like Calef, Mowat was a hero who inspired confidence. He had been captured by rebel civilians, the self-styled Sons of Liberty, while walking ashore in Falmouth. His release had been negotiated by the leading citizens of that proud harbour town, and the condition of Mowat’s release had been that he surrender himself next day so that the legality of his arrest could be established by lawyers, but instead Mowat had returned with a flotilla that had bombarded the town from dawn to dusk and, when most of the houses lay shattered, he had sent shore parties to set fire to the wreckage. Two thirds of Falmouth had been destroyed to send the message that Captain Mowat was not a man to be trifled with.

Calef frowned slightly as Brigadier McLean and two junior officers strolled along the stony beach towards Mowat. Calef still had doubts about the Scottish brigadier, fearing that he was too gentle in his demeanour, but Captain Mowat evidently had no such misgivings because he smiled broadly as McLean approached. ‘You’ve not come to pester me, McLean,’ he said with mock severity, ‘your precious guns are coming!’

‘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 harbour?’

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 cannonballs, 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 travelled 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 south-west 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 that 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 that 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 centre, 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 side arms, 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 realised 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 over-large 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 received 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-coloured 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 non-existent 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 Harbour 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 demeanour. 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.

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.

‘But necessary?’

‘Oh, indeed.’

‘Their conversation was constantly interrupted by men who wished to shake their hands and wish them success against the British. ‘Give them hell, General,’ one man said, a sentiment echoed by everyone who accosted the pair. Wadsworth smiled, shook offered hands and finally escaped the well-wishers by entering the Bunch of Grapes, a tavern close to Long Wharf. ‘I think God will forgive us for crossing a tavern threshold on the Sabbath day,’ he said.

‘It’s more like the army’s headquarters these days,’ Dennis said, amused. The tavern was crowded with men in uniforms, many of whom were gathered by a wall where notices had been tacked, so many notices that they overlapped each other. Some offered bounties to men willing to serve on privateers, others had been put there by Solomon Lovell’s staff.

‘We’re to sleep aboard the ships tonight!’ a man shouted, then saw Wadsworth. ‘Is that because we’re sailing tomorrow, General?’

‘I hope so,’ Wadsworth said, ‘but make sure you’re all aboard by nightfall.’

‘Can I bring her?’ the man asked. He had his arm around one of the tavern’s whores, a pretty young red-haired girl who already looked drunk.

Wadsworth ignored the question, instead leading Dennis to an empty table at the back of the room, which was alive with conversation, hope and optimism. A burly man in a salt-stained sailor’s coat stood and thumped a table with his fist. He raised a tankard when the room had fallen silent. ‘Here’s to victory at Bagaduce!’ he shouted. ‘Death to the Tories, and to the day when we carry fat George’s head through Boston on the point of a bayonet!’

‘Much is expected of us,’ Wadsworth said when the cheers had ended.

‘King George might not oblige us with his head,’ Dennis said, amused, ‘but I’m sure we shall not disappoint the other expectations.’ He waited as Wadsworth ordered oyster stew and ale. ‘Did you know that folk are buying shares in the expedition?’

‘Shares?’

‘The privateer owners, sir, are selling the plunder they expect to take. I assume you haven’t invested?’

‘I was never a speculator,’ Wadsworth said. ‘How does it work?’

‘Well, Captain Thomas of the Vengeance, sir, expects to capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of plunder, and he’s offering a hundred shares in that expectation for fifteen pounds apiece.’

‘Good Lord! And what if he doesn’t capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of material?’

‘Then the speculators lose, sir.’

‘I suppose they must, yes. And people are buying?’

‘Many! I believe the Vengeance’s shares are trading upwards of twenty-two pounds each now.’

‘What a world we live in,’ Wadsworth said, amused. ‘Tell me,’ he pushed the jug of ale towards Dennis, ‘what you were doing before you joined the marines?’

‘I was studying, sir.’

‘Harvard?’

‘Yale.’

‘Then I didn’t beat you nearly often enough or hard enough,’ Wadsworth said.

Dennis laughed. ‘My ambition is the law.’

‘A noble ambition.’

‘I hope so, sir. When the British are defeated I shall go back to my studies.’

‘I see you carry them with you,’ Wadsworth said, nodding towards a book-shaped lump in the tail of the lieutenant’s coat, ‘or is that the scriptures?’

‘Beccaria, sir,’ Dennis said, pulling the book out of his tail pocket. ‘I’m reading him for pleasure, or should I say enlightenment?’

‘Both, I hope. I’ve heard of him,’ Wadsworth said, ‘and very much want to read him.’

‘You’ll permit me to lend you the book when I’ve finished it?’

‘That would be kind,’ Wadsworth said. He opened the book, On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria, newly translated from the Italian, and he saw the minutely written pencilled notes on the margins of almost every page, and he thought how sad it was that a sterling young man like Dennis should need to go to war. Then he thought that though the rain might indeed fall on the just and unjust alike, it was unthinkable that God would allow decent men who fought in a noble cause to lose. That was a comforting reflection. ‘Doesn’t Beccaria have strange ideas?’ he asked.

‘He believes judicial execution is both wrong and ineffective, sir.’

‘Really?’

‘He argues the case cogently, sir.’

‘He’ll need to!’

They ate, and afterwards walked the few paces to the harbour where the ships’ masts made a forest. Wadsworth looked for the sloop that would carry him to battle, but he could not make the Sally out amongst the tangle of hulls and masts and rigging. A gull cried overhead, a dog ran along the wharf with a cod’s head in its mouth and a legless beggar shuffled towards him. ‘Wounded at Saratoga, sir,’ the beggar said and Wadsworth handed the man a shilling.

‘Can I hail you a boat, sir?’ Dennis asked.

‘That would be kind.’

Peleg Wadsworth gazed at the fleet and remembered his morning prayers. There was so much confidence in Boston, so much hope and so many expectations, but war, he knew from experience, truly was the devil’s business.

And it was time to go to war.

‘This is not seemly,’ Doctor Calef said.

Brigadier McLean, standing beside the doctor, ignored the protest.

‘It is not seemly!’ Calef said louder.

‘It is necessary,’ Brigadier McLean retorted in a tone harsh enough to startle the doctor. The troops had worshipped in the open air that Sunday morning, the Scottish voices singing strongly in the blustery wind that fetched slaps of rain to dapple the harbour. The Reverend Campbell, the 82nd’s chaplain, had preached from a text in Isaiah: ‘In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan,’ a text that McLean accepted was relevant, but he wondered whether he had a sword strong and great and sore enough to punish the troops he knew would surely come to dislodge him. The rain was falling more steadily now, drenching the ridgetop where the fort was being made and where the two regiments paraded in a hollow square. ‘These men are new to war,’ McLean explained to Calef, ‘and most have never seen a battle, so they need to learn the consequences of disobedience.’ He walked towards the square’s centre where a Saint Andrew’s cross had been erected. A young man, stripped to the waist, was tied to the cross with his back exposed to the wind and rain.

A sergeant pushed a folded strip of leather between the young man’s teeth. ‘Bite on that, boy, and take your punishment like a man.’

McLean raised his voice so that every soldier could hear him. ‘Private Macintosh attempted to desert. In so doing he broke his oath to his king, to his country and to God. For that he will be punished, as will any man here who tries to follow his example.’

‘I don’t care if he’s punished,’ Calef said when the brigadier rejoined him, ‘but must it be done on the Lord’s day? Can it not wait till tomorrow?’

‘No,’ McLean said, ‘it cannot.’ He nodded to the sergeant. ‘Do your duty.’

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 harbour, 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 rumour in Nantucket, and rumour, 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 labour.

‘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 spilt 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 rumour 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 counter-rumour 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 labour 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 enquired.

‘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 labour, 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 north-eastern 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 south-western 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 harbour mouth. The soil was easier near the beach and they swiftly threw up a crescent of earth that they re inforced with stones and logs. Other logs were split to make platforms for the cannon that would face the harbour mouth. A similar battery was being constructed on Cross Island so that an enemy ship, daring the harbour 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 south west 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 harbour.

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 neighbours in Weymouth had elected him to the Assembly in Boston where he was well-liked because, in a fractious legislature, Lovell was a peace-maker. 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 labour 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 greyed 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 judgement.

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, marvelling 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 harbour.

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.

‘And how does that affect Colonel Revere’s absence?’ Saltonstall asked bluntly.