The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War Part 1

THE FORT.

A Novel of the Revolutionary War.

by BERNARD CORNWELL.

A Note on Names and Terms

In 1779 there was no state of Maine, it was then the eastern province of Ma.s.sachusetts. 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 Pen.o.bscot 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 Const.i.tution Const.i.tution) or a ship of the line (like HMS Victory 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 p.o.o.p 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 center line of the vessel rather than across it. There were variations, such as brig-sloops, but at Pen.o.bscot Bay, in 1779, there were only ships, sloops, brigs, and schooners. With the exception of the Felicity Felicity all the names of the boats are taken from history. 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 noncommissioned officers (with the exception of Sergeant Lawrence, Royal Artillery).

Excerpt of letter from the Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Princ.i.p.al 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 healthand 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 Const.i.tution.

Letter from Captain Henry Mowat, Royal Navy, to Jonathan Buck, written aboard HMS Albany Albany, Pen.o.bscot River, 15th June 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.

Chapter 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, gray, and direful. Water dripped mono- tonously 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 sh.o.r.eline was intricate with creeks, headlands, wooded islands, and small, stony beaches. Here and there among the trees were cleared s.p.a.ces 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 Blonde, a devil in a blue coat and an oilskin-covered c.o.c.ked 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 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 surrept.i.tiously touched the wood of the rail. A burnt wreck lay on the eastern sh.o.r.e. It had once been a substantial ship capable of crossing an ocean, but now it was a rib cage of charred wood half inundated by the flooding tide that carried the Blonde Blonde upriver. "So how far are we now from the open sea?" he asked the blue-uniformed captain of the upriver. "So how far are we now from the open sea?" he asked the blue-uniformed captain of the Blonde 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 gla.s.s 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 gray clouds, dark land and sullen water, but he steadied himself to see that the Pen.o.bscot River widened to make the great lake that Captain Barkley called Pen.o.bscot 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 harbor opened from the bay's eastern sh.o.r.e. The mouth of the harbor 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 anch.o.r.ed in the harbor, along with one small brig that McLean a.s.sumed 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 Blonde's deck. The gunshot faded, then was echoed back from the sh.o.r.e before fading a second time.

"We shall discover something now, won't we?" Barkley said.

"What is that?" McLean inquired.

"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 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. 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 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 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 harbor 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 Blonde saw a small open boat was indeed tacking out from the harbor. The southwest breeze was so light that the tan-colored 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 saw a small open boat was indeed tacking out from the harbor. The southwest breeze was so light that the tan-colored 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 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" 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 Blonde's stern. "Any of you gentlemen have tobacco?" he asked as he climbed the companionway to the p.o.o.p 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 harbor entrance. "Rocks there. And more rocks off Cross Island on the other side. Hold her in the channel's center and you'll be safe as safe."

"Bagaduce?" General McLean asked.

"That's what we call it, your honor. Bagaduce. Easier on the tongue than Majabigwaduce." The pilot grinned, then spat tobacco juice that splattered across the Blonde 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 Blonde gathered way. "Take her in," Barkley told the helmsman, and so the gathered way. "Take her in," Barkley told the helmsman, and so the Blonde Blonde, the North North, the Albany Albany, the Nautilus Nautilus, the Hope Hope, and the five transports they escorted came to Majabigwaduce. They arrived safe in the harbor and anch.o.r.ed 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 Ma.s.sachusetts.

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 counterwheel. Alexander? You're the color party so you don't move."

"I want to kill a redcoat, Daddy," Alexander pleaded.

"You don't move, Alexander," the color party's father insisted, then repeated all he had said. Alexander was holding a long stick which, in the circ.u.mstances, subst.i.tuted 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 which 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 counterwheel 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 a.s.sured the man of G.o.d 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 maneuver 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 maneuver he was attempting was difficult. The battalion would march in column toward 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 counterwheel about the colors 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 maneuver 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. "Counterwheel, march!" Wadsworth shouted, and the children swiveled 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 todevelop 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 maneuver 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 Ma.s.sachusetts.

"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."

"G.o.d 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 b.u.t.toned 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 neighbors. 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 tailcoat pocket and strolled across the sunlit common. His uniform was pale brown with white facings. A saber 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 embarra.s.sed 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 Ma.s.sachusetts' Artillery Regiment, specifically that he had been drawing rations and pay for thirty nonexistent men, and General Ward now required Wadsworth to make inquiries into the substance of the allegation.

Wadsworth read the message a second time, then dismissed the children and beckoned Todd to walk with him toward the Burying Ground. "General Ward is well?" he asked politely. Artemas Ward commanded the Ma.s.sachusetts 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 pa.s.s unreproved. Todd had the reputation of being a thorough and diligent man, but Wadsworth also recalled a rumor 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.