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‘You would have done so, Corporal, if you had command here?’
‘It’s the highest piece of land, sir. Isn’t that where you make a fort?’
Moore frowned, not because he disapproved of the question, which, he thought, was an eminently sensible enquiry, but because he did not know how to frame the answer. To Moore it was obvious why McLean had chosen the lower position. It was to do with the interlocking of the ships’ guns and the fort’s cannon, with making the best of a difficult job, but though he knew the answer, he did not quite know how to express it. ‘From here,’ he said, ‘our guns command both the harbour entrance and the harbour itself. Suppose we were all up on that high ground? The enemy could sail past us, take the harbour and village, and then starve us out at their leisure.’
‘But if the bastards take that high ground, sir … ’ Brown said dubiously, leaving the thought unfinished.
‘If the bastards seize that high ground, Corporal,’ Moore said, ‘then they will place cannon there and fire down into the fort.’ That was the risk McLean had taken. He had given the enemy the chance to take the high ground, but only so that he could do his job better, which was to defend the harbour. ‘We don’t have enough men,’ Moore went on, ‘to defend the bluff, but I can’t think they’ll land men there. It’s much too steep.’
Yet the rebels would land somewhere. By leaning forward on his makeshift stool Moore could just make out the three sloops of war anchored in line across the harbour mouth. General McLean had suggested the enemy might try to attack that line, break it, and then land men on the beach below the fort and Moore tried to imagine such a fight. He tried to turn the wisps of fog into powder smoke, but his imagination failed. The eighteen-year-old John Moore had never experienced battle, and every day he wondered how he would respond to the smell of powder and the screams of the wounded and the chaos.
‘Lady approaching, sir,’ Corporal Brown warned Moore.
‘Lady?’ Moore asked, startled from his reverie, then saw that Bethany Fletcher was approaching the tent. He stood and ducked under the tent flap to greet her, but the sight of her face tied his tongue, so he simply stood there, awkward, hat in hand, smiling.
‘Lieutenant Moore,’ Bethany said, stopping a pace away.
‘Miss Fletcher,’ Moore managed to speak, ‘as ever, a pleasure.’ He bowed.
‘I was told to give you this, sir.’ Bethany held out a slip of paper.
The paper was a receipt for corn and fish that James Fletcher had sold to the quartermaster. ‘Four shillings!’ Moore said.
‘The quartermaster said you’d pay me, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘If Mister Reidhead so orders, then I shall obey. And it will be my pleasure to pay you, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said. He looked at the receipt again. ‘It must have been a rare quantity of corn and fish! Four shillings’ worth!’
Bethany bridled. ‘It was Mister Reidhead who decided the amount, sir.’
‘Oh, I am not suggesting that the amount is excessive,’ Moore said, reddening. If he lost his composure when faced by a girl, he thought, how would he ever face the enemy? ‘Corporal Brown!’
‘Sir?’
‘Four shillings for the lady!’
‘At once, sir,’ Brown said, coming from the tent, though instead of holding coins he brought a hammer and a chisel that he took to a nearby block of wood. He had one silver dollar that he laid on the timber, then he carefully placed the chisel’s blade to make a single radial cut in the coin. The hammer smacked down and the coin leaped up from the chisel’s bite. ‘It’s daft, sir, to slit a coin into five pieces,’ Brown grumbled, replacing the dollar. ‘Why can’t we make four pieces worth one shilling and threepence each?’
‘Because it’s easier to cut a coin into four parts rather than five?’ Moore asked.
‘Of course it is, sir. Cutting into four only needs a wide chisel blade and two cuts,’ Brown grumbled, then hammered another cut into the dollar, slicing away a wedge of silver that he pushed across the chopping block towards Bethany. ‘There, miss, one shilling.’
Bethany took the sharp-edged slice. ‘Is this how you pay the soldiers?’ she asked Moore.
‘Oh, we don’t get paid, miss,’ Corporal Brown answered, ‘except in promissory notes.’
‘Give Miss Fletcher the remainder of the coin,’ Moore suggested, ‘and she will have her four shillings and you need cut no more.’ There was a shortage of coinage so the brigadier had decreed that each silver dollar was worth five shillings. ‘Stop staring!’ Moore called sharply to the gunners who had paused in their work to admire Beth Fletcher. Moore picked up the ravaged dollar and held it out to Bethany. ‘There Miss Fletcher, your fee.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Bethany put the shilling slice back on the block. ‘So how many promissory notes do you have to write each week?’ she asked.
‘How many?’ Moore was momentarily puzzled by the question. ‘Oh, we don’t issue notes as such, Miss Fletcher, but we do record in the ledger what wages are owed. The specie is kept for more important duties, like paying you for corn and fish.’
‘And you must need a lot of corn and fish for two whole regiments,’ she said. ‘What is that? Two thousand men?’
‘If only we were so numerous,’ Moore said with a smile. ‘In truth, Miss Fletcher, the 74th musters just four hundred and forty men and we Hamiltons number scarce half that. And we hear now that the rebels are readying a fleet and an army to assail us!’
‘And you think that report is true?’ Bethany asked.
‘The fleet, perhaps, is already on its way.’
Bethany stared past the three sloops to where wisps of mist drifted across the wide Penobscot River. ‘I pray, sir,’ she said, ‘that there will be no fighting.’
‘And I pray otherwise,’ Moore said.
‘Really?’ Bethany sounded surprised. She turned to look at the young lieutenant as if she had never really noticed him before. ‘You want there to be a battle?’
‘Soldiering is my chosen profession, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said, and felt very fraudulent as he said it, ‘and battle is the fire in which soldiers are tempered.’
‘The world would be better without such fire,’ Bethany said.
‘True, no doubt,’ Moore said, ‘but we did not strike the flint on the iron, Miss Fletcher. The rebels did that, they set the fire and our task is to extinguish the flame.’ Bethany said nothing, and Moore decided he had sounded pompous. ‘You and your brother should come to Doctor Calef’s house in the evening,’ he said.
‘We should, sir?’ Bethany asked, looking again at Moore.
‘There is music in the garden when the weather permits, and dancing.’
‘I don’t dance, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘Oh, it is the officers who dance,’ Moore said hastily, ‘the sword dance.’ He suppressed an urge to demonstrate a capering step. ‘You would be most welcome,’ he said instead.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Bethany said, then pocketed the ravaged dollar and turned away.
‘Miss Fletcher!’ Moore called after her.
She turned back. ‘Sir?’
But Moore had no idea what to say, indeed he had surprised himself by calling after her in the first place. She was gazing at him, waiting. ‘Thank you for the supplies,’ he managed to say.
‘It is business, Lieutenant,’ Beth said evenly.
‘Even so, thank you,’ Moore said, confused.
‘Does that mean you’d sell to the Yankees too, miss?’ Corporal Brown asked cheerfully.
‘We might give to them,’ Beth said, and Moore could not tell whether she was teasing or not. She looked at him, gave a half-smile and walked away.
‘A rare good-looking lassie,’ Corporal Brown said.
‘Is she?’ Moore asked most unconvincingly. He was gazing down the slope to where the settlement’s houses were spread along the harbour shore. He tried to imagine men fighting there, ranks of men blasting musket fire, the cannons thundering the sky with noise, the harbour filled with half-sunken ships, and he thought how sad it would be to die amidst that chaos without ever having held a girl like Bethany in his arms.
‘Are we finished with the ledgers, sir?’ Brown asked.
‘We are finished with the ledgers,’ Moore said.
He wondered if he really was a soldier. He wondered if he would have the courage to face battle. He stared after Bethany and felt lost.
‘Reluctance, sir, reluctance. Gross reluctance,’ Colonel Jonathan Mitchell, who commanded the Cumberland County militia, glared at Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth as though it was all Wadsworth’s fault. ‘Culpable reluctance.’
‘You conscripted?’ Wadsworth asked.
‘Of course we goddamn conscripted. We had to conscript! Half the reluctant bastards are conscripted. We didn’t get volunteers, just whining excuses, so we declared martial law, sir, and I sent troops to every township and rounded the bastards up, but too many ran and skulked, sir. They are reluctant, I tell you, reluctant!’
It had taken the fleet two days to sail to Townsend where the militia had been ordered to muster. General Lovell and Brigadier-General Wadsworth had been hoping for fifteen hundred men, but fewer than nine hundred waited for embarkation. ‘Eight hundred and ninety-four, sir, to be precise,’ Marston, Lovell’s secretary, informed his master.
‘Dear God,’ Lovell said.
‘It surely isn’t too late to request a Continental battalion?’ Wadsworth suggested.
‘Unthinkable,’ Lovell said instantly. The State of Massachusetts had declared itself capable of ejecting the British on its own, and the General Court would not look happily on a request for help from General Washington’s troops. The Court, indeed, had been reluctant to accept Commodore Saltonstall’s aid, except that the Warren was so obviously a formidable warship and to ignore its presence in Massachusetts waters would have been perverse. ‘We do have the commodore’s marines,’ Lovell pointed out, ‘and I’m assured the commodore will willingly release them to land service at Majabigwaduce.’
‘We shall need them,’ Wadsworth said. He had inspected the three militia battalions and had been appalled by what he found. Some men looked fit, young and eager, but far too many were either too old, too young or too sick. One man had even paraded on crutches. ‘You can’t fight,’ Wadsworth had told the man.
‘Which is what I told the soldiers when they came to get us,’ the man said. He was grey-bearded, gaunt and wild-haired.
‘Then go home,’ Wadsworth said.
‘How?’
‘Same way you got here,’ Wadsworth had said, despair making him irritable. A few paces down the line he found a curly-haired boy with cheeks that had never felt a razor. ‘What’s your name, son?’ Wadsworth asked.
‘Israel, sir.’
‘Israel what?’
‘Trask, sir.’
‘How old are you, Israel Trask?’
‘Fifteen, sir,’ the boy said, trying to stand straighter. His voice had not broken and Wadsworth guessed he was scarcely fourteen. ‘Three years in the army, sir,’ Trask said.
‘Three years?’ Wadsworth asked in disbelief.
‘Fifer with the infantry, sir,’ Trask said. He had a sackcloth bag hanging at his back and a slender wooden pipe protruded from the bag’s neck.
‘You resigned from the infantry?’ Wadsworth asked, amused.
‘I was taken prisoner, sir,’ Trask said, evidently offended by the question, ‘and exchanged. And here I am, sir, ready to fight the syphilitic bastards again.’
If a boy had used that language in Wadsworth’s classroom it would have provoked a caning, but these were strange times and so Wadsworth just patted the boy’s shoulder before walking on down the long line. Some men looked at him resentfully and he supposed they were the men who had been pressed by the militia. Maybe two thirds looked healthy and young enough for soldiering, but the rest were miserable specimens. ‘I thought you had a thousand men enrolled in Cumberland County alone?’ Wadsworth remarked to Colonel Mitchell.
‘Ha,’ Mitchell said.
‘Ha?’ Wadsworth responded coldly.
‘The Continental Army takes our best. We find a dozen decent recruits and the Continentals take six away and the other six run off to join the privateers.’ Mitchell put a plug of tobacco in his mouth. ‘I wish to God we had a thousand, but Boston doesn’t send their wages and we don’t have rations. And there are some places we can’t recruit.’
‘Loyalist places?’
‘Loyalist places,’ Mitchell had agreed grimly.
Wadsworth had walked on down the line, noting a one-eyed man who had some kind of nervous affliction that made his facial muscles quiver. The man grinned, and Wadsworth shuddered. ‘Does he have his senses?’ he asked Colonel Mitchell.
‘Enough to shoot straight,’ Mitchell said dourly.
‘Half don’t even have muskets!’
The fleet had brought five hundred muskets from the Boston Armory that would be rented to the militia. Most men at least knew how to use them because in these eastern counties folk expected to kill their own food and to skin the prey for clothing. They wore deerskin jerkins and trousers, deerskin shoes and carried deerskin pouches and packs. Wadsworth inspected them all and reckoned he would be lucky if five hundred would prove useful men, then he borrowed a horse from the parson and gave them a speech from the saddle.
‘The British,’ he called, ‘have invaded Massachusetts! They must despise us, because they have sent few men and few ships! They believe we are powerless to evict them, but we are going to show them that Massachusetts men will defend their land! We will embark on our fleet!’ He waved towards the masts showing above the southern rooftops. ‘And we shall fight them, we shall defeat them and we shall evict them! You will return home with laurels on your brows!’ It was not the most inspiring speech, Wadsworth thought, but he was encouraged when men cheered it. The cheer was late in starting, and it was feeble at first, but then the paraded ranks became enthusiastic.
The parson, a genial man about ten years older than Wadsworth, helped the brigadier down from the saddle. ‘I trust they will have laurels on their brows,’ the parson said, ‘but most would prefer beefsteak in their stomachs.’
‘I trust they find that as well,’ Wadsworth said.
The Reverend Jonathan Murray took the horse’s reins and led it towards his house. ‘They may not look impressive, General, but they’re good men!’
‘Who needed pressing?’ Wadsworth enquired drily.
‘Only a few,’ Murray answered. ‘They worry about their families, their crops. Get them to Majabigwaduce and they’ll serve willingly enough.’
‘The blind, the halt and the lame?’
‘Such men were good enough for our Lord,’ Murray said, evidently seriously. ‘And what if a few are half-blind? A man needs only one eye to aim a musket.’
General Lovell had quartered himself in the parson’s ample house and, that evening, he convened all the senior officers of the expedition. Murray possessed a fine round table, made of maple wood, about which he normally led studies of the scripture, but which that night served to accommodate the naval and land commanders. Those who could not find a chair stood at the edges of the room, which was lit by eight candles in pewter sticks, grouped in the table’s centre. Moths beat about the flames. General Lovell had taken the parson’s high-backed chair and he gently rapped the table for silence. ‘This is the first time,’ Lovell said, ‘that we’ve all gathered together. You probably all know each other, but permit me to make introductions.’ He went around the table, naming Wadsworth first, then Commodore Saltonstall and the three colonels of the militia regiments. Major Jeremiah Hill, the expedition’s adjutant -general, nodded solemnly as his name was pronounced, as did the two brigade majors, William Todd and Gawen Brown. The quartermaster, Colonel Tyler, sat next to Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the Surgeon General. ‘I trust we won’t require Doctor Downer’s services,’ Lovell said with a smile, then indicated the men who stood at the room’s edges. Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines glowered next to Captain Hoysteed Hacker of the Continental Navy who commanded the Providence while Captain Philip Brown commanded the brig Diligent. Six privateer captains had come to the house and Lovell named them all, then smiled at Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who stood beside the door. ‘And last, but by no means least, our commander of the artillery train, Colonel Revere.’
‘Whose services,’ Revere said, ‘I trust you will require!’
A murmur of laughter sounded in the room, though Wadsworth noticed the look of grim distaste on Todd’s bespectacled face. The major glanced once at Revere, then studiously avoided looking at his enemy.
‘I also requested the Reverend Murray to attend this council,’ Lovell went on when the small laughter had subsided, ‘and I now ask him to open our proceedings with a word of prayer.’
Men clasped their hands and bowed their heads as Murray entreated Almighty God to pour His blessings on the men and ships now assembled in Townsend. Wadsworth had his head bowed, but sneaked a sidelong look at Revere who, he noticed, had not lowered his head, but was staring balefully towards Todd. Wadsworth closed his eyes again. ‘Give these men of Thy strength, Lord,’ the Reverend Murray prayed, ‘and bring these warriors safe home, victorious, to their wives, and to their children and to their families. We ask all this in Thy holy name, O Lord. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ the assembled officers echoed.
‘Thank you, Reverend,’ Lovell said, smiling happily. He took a breath and looked about the room, then stated the reason they were gathered together. ‘The British have landed at Majabigwaduce, as you know, and our orders are to captivate, kill or destroy them. Major Todd, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what we know of the enemy’s dispositions?’
William Todd, his spectacles reflecting the candlelight, shuffled papers. ‘We have received intelligence,’ he said in his dry voice, ‘from patriots in the Penobscot region. Notably from Colonel Buck, but from others too. We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops of war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.’ Todd studied the earnest faces around the table. ‘McLean,’ he went on, ‘is an experienced soldier. Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment.’
