The Fort

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Coming for me?”

  “The commodore is, sir. He’s coming today, sir. They told us last night. And he’s making bulwarks on the Warren’s bow, sir.”

  “Bulwarks?”

  “They’re strengtherning the bows, sir, and putting three layers of logs across the fo’c’sle, sir, to protect the marines.”

  Mowat looked at the shivering man. He played with the idea that the rebels had sent Freeman with deliberately misleading information, but that made little sense. If Saltonstall wished to mislead Mowat he would surely pretend he was withdrawing, not attacking. So the rebels were coming at last? Mowat gazed westwards to where he could just see the anchored warships beyond Dyce’s Head. “How many ships will come?” he asked.

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  “I don’t suppose you do,” Mowat said. He walked to the main shrouds and propped a glass on one of the ratlines. Sure enough he could see men working on the bows of the Warren. They appeared to be roving new lines to the bowsprit, while others were hauling logs up from a longboat. So, at long last, they were coming? “It won’t be till the afternoon flood,” he said to his first lieutenant.

  “That gives us most of the day to get ready, sir.”

  “Aye, it does.” Mowt collapsed the glass and looked up at the sky. “The glass?” he asked.

  “Still falling, sir.”

  “So there’s dirty weather coming as well, then,” Mowat said. The sky was pellucid now, but he reckoned there would be clouds, fog, and rain before nightfall by when, he knew, he would either be dead or captured. He was under no illusions. His small flotilla could do grievous damage to the American ships, but he could not defeat them. Once the Warren turned her broadside onto the sloops she could pound them with guns that were twice as heavy as the British cannon, and defeat was inevitable. The Warren would be hurt, but the Albany would die. That was unavoidable, so the most Mowat could hope for was to hurt the Warren badly, then get his men safe on land where they could help McLean defend the fort. “All marines are to be brought back aboard,” he told his first lieutenant, “and all guns double-shotted. Sand the decks. Tell the surgeon to sharpen his damn knives. We’ll go down snarling, but by God, they’ll know they’ve been fighting against the Royal Navy.”

  Then he sent a message to McLean.

  The rebels are coming.

  Peleg Wadsworth asked for volunteers. The militia, in truth, had been disappointing and, except for the first day ashore when they had climbed the bluff to throw back the strong enemy picquet, they had not fought with spirit. But that did not mean there were no brave men among them, and Wadsworth only wanted the brave. He walked around the woods and talked to groups of men, he spoke to the picquets manning the earthworks that edged the woods, and he told all of them what he planned. “We’re going along the harbor shore,” he said, “and once we’re behind the enemy, between him and his ships, we shall make an assault. We won’t be alone. The commodore will enter the harbor and fight the enemy, and his ships will bombard the fort while we attack. I need men willing to make that attack, men willing to climb the hill with me and storm the enemy ramparts. I need brave men.”

  Four hundred and forty-four men volunteered. They assembled among the trees at the top of Dyce’s Head where Lieutenant Downs and fifty marines waited, and where Wadsworth divided the militia volunteers into four companies. The Indian braves formed their own small company. It was early afternoon. The day had dawned so bright, but now the sky clouded and a late fog drifted up the sea-reach.

  “The fog will help hide us,” Wadsworth remarked.

  “So God is an American,” Lieutenant Downs said, making Wadsworth smile, then the marine lieutenant looked past Wadsworth. “General Lovell coming, sir,” he said softly.

  Wadsworth turned to see Solomon Lovell and Major Todd approaching. Was this bad news? Had Commodore Saltonstall changed his mind? “Sir,” he greeted the general cautiously.

  Lovell looked pale and drawn. “I have decided,” he said slowly, “that I should go with you.”

  Wadsworth hesitated. He had thought to lead this attack and that Lovell would make a separate advance with the remaining men along the ridge’s spine, but something in Lovell’s face told him to accept the older man’s decision. Lovell wanted to be in this assault because he needed to prove to himself he had done all that he could. Or perhaps, Wadsworth thought less generously, Lovell had an eye to posterity and knew that fame would attend the man who led the successful assault on Fort George. “Of course, sir,” he said.

  Lovell looked heartbroken. “I just ordered the big guns off the heights,” he said, gesturing north towards the woods where Revere’s cannon had been emplaced.

  “You ordered’” Wadsworth began in puzzlement.

  “There’s no ammunition,” Lovell interrupted him bleakly.

  Wadsworth was about to point out that more ammunition could be supplied, if not from Boston then perhaps from the Warren’s magazine, then he understood why Lovell had given the apparently defeatist order to remove the guns. It was because the general at last understood that this was the rebels’ final chance. If this attack failed then nothing else would work, at least not till American reinforcements arrived, and until that day, there would be no more need of heavy guns. “Colonel McCobb and Colonel Mitchell will lead the attack along the ridge,” Lovell went on. Neither Lovell nor Wadsworth expected much from the second attack, which would be made by the men who had not volunteered, yet their visible presence on the ridge must keep some British defenders on the western side of their fort, and that was why the second attack was planned.

  “We’re honored you’re here, sir,” Wadsworth said generously.

  “I won’t interfere with your deployments,” Lovell promised.

  Wadsworth smiled. “We’re all at God’s mercy now, sir.”

  And if God was merciful the rebels would go down the long hill in full sight of the fort and under the fire of its cannons. They would pass the smoking remnants of the burned houses and barns, then make their way through cornfields and orchards, and through the small yards where vegetables grew. Once sheltered by the village they would make for a group of houses that lay between the fort and the British ships, and there Wadsworth would wait until the commodore’s attack diverted the fort’s defenders and filled the harbor with noise, smoke, and flame.

  With the marines and Indians added to his force Wadsworth now led five hundred men. The best men. Was it enough? McLean had at least seven hundred in the fort, but the troops led by Colonel McCobb and Colonel Mitchell would keep some of those defenders facing west, and once the British ships were taken or sunk the rest of the American marines would come ashore. The numbers would be about equal, Wadsworth thought, then decided that he could not win this battle by an exercise of mental arithmetic. He could plan his moves as far as the harbor’s edge, but after that the devil would roll his dice and it would be smoke and flame, screams and steel, the chaos of anger and terror, and what use was mathematics then? If Wadsworth’s grandchildren were to learn of this day and of this victory they must learn of courage and of men doing a great deed. And if the deed was not great it would not be memorable. So at some point he must let go of calculation and throw himself on anger and resolve. There was no easy way. Both Lovell and Saltonstall had shirked the fight because they sought a sure solution, and no such easy answer existed. The expedition would only succeed when it rose above prudence and challenged men to perform great deeds. So yes, he thought, five hundred men was enough, because that was all he had to do this thing, and this thing had to be done in the name of American liberty. “James?” he spoke to Fletcher. “Let’s go.”

  Forty of the volunteers were manning drag-ropes attached to two of the four-pounder cannons that, so far, had scarcely been used. They were too small to be effective at anything except close range, but on this day they might be battle-winners. Lieutenant Marett, one of Revere’s officers, commanded the two pieces, which had an ample supply of round shot, though Ca
ptain Carnes, before returning to the General Putnam, had insisted that the two small guns were also equipped with grape. He had made the missiles himself, collecting stones from the beach that the General Putnam’s sailors had sewn into rough bags of sail canvas. The bags could be rammed on top of a round shot so that when the guns were fired the stones would spread like lethal duckshot. Lieutenant Marett had nervously protested that the stones would ruin the guns’ barrels, but had fallen silent under Carnes’s baleful stare. “Damn the barrels,” Carnes had said, “it’s the ruin they’ll do to British guts that matters.”

  The first tendrils of fog curled over the slope as the men went down to the shore. They went in open order, hurrying across the meadows and through the scattered trees. A round shot fired from Fort George gouged a scar across grassland. A second gun fired, then a third, but all the balls ricocheted harmlessly from the ground. That was a good omen, Wadsworth thought, and was surprised that he sought omens. He had prayed in the dawn. He liked to think that faith and prayer were sufficient to themselves, and that he was now in God’s hands, but he found himself watching every phenomena for any sign that this attack would succeed. The British sloops, though their guns would bear on the harbor shore, did not fire and that was surely the hand of provi-dence. The smoke from the burning houses was blown towards Fort George and, though Wadsworth’s rational mind told him that was merely because the wind persisted from the southwest, he wanted to believe it was a sign that God desired to blind and choke the enemy. He saw six of the Indians crouching beside the cornfield where he had ordered the men to gather. They formed a circle, their dark heads close together, and he wondered what God they prayed to. He remembered a man named Eliphalet Jenkins who had founded a mission to the Wampanoag tribe and whose body, gutted empty by knives and blanched pale by the sea, had been washed ashore at Fairhaven. Why was he remembering that old tale? And then he thought of the story James Fletcher had told him about a man and boy, both English, who many years before had been gelded then burned alive by the Indians of Majabigwaduce. Was that another omen?

  The two guns arrived safely. Each was attached to a caisson that held their ammunition and on the nearer of those wagons was painted a slogan, “Liberty or Death.” That was easily said, Wadsworth thought, but death seemed more imminent now. Imminent and immanent. The words batted in his head. Why did the enemy sloops not fire? Were they asleep? A shell from the fort landed in the smoldering remnants of Jacob Dyce’s house and exploded harmlessly with a dull, impotent boom and an eruption of ash and smoldering timbers. Imminent, immanent, and impotent. For some reason Wadsworth thought of a text that had been the foundation of a sermon that the Reverend Jonathan Murray had preached on the first Sunday after the expedition had landed, “where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” The worm, Murray said, was the evil of British tyranny and the fire the righteous anger of men who fought for liberty. But why did we burn these houses, Wadsworth wondered, and how many men of Majabigwaduce had been enraged by that arson and, even now, manned the ramparts of the fort? “The worm will shrivel,” Murray had promised, “it will shrivel and hiss as it burns!” Yet the scripture, Wadsworth thought, did not promise that punishment, only that the worm dieth not. Was that an omen?

  “Do we go on, sir?” Fletcher asked.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “You look as if you’re dreaming, sir,” Fletcher said, grinning.

  “I was wondering how many civilians will be helping the garrison.”

  “Oh, some will,” Fletcher said dismissively. “Old Jacob for one, but he can’t shoot straight. Doctor Calef, of course.”

  “I knew Calef in Boston,” Wadsworth said.

  “He’s not a bad fellow. A bit pompous. But he’ll be doctoring, not soldiering.”

  “On we go,” Wadsworth said, and it seemed unreal now. The ships still did not fire and the bombardment from the fort fell silent because the Americans were on the low ground and protected from the guns on the fort’s southern wall by a shoulder of land that ran parallel to the ridge. They were concealed too by houses, cornfields, and trees. Lilies blossomed in yards. A woman hurriedly took in some drying washing because the sky was still darkening and promised rain. The marines, in a double file, advanced on the left ready to turn and oppose any sally by the fort’s garrison, but McLean sent none. A chained dog barked at the passing soldiers until a woman called for it to be silent. Wadsworth looked up to his left, but all he could see of the fort was the slow-stirring flag at the top of its pole. He crossed the newly made track which led from the beach to the fort’s gate. If I were McLean, Wadsworth thought, I would send men down to fight, but the Scotsman did no such thing, nor did Mowat fire from his sloops, though he must be seeing the rebels file through the settlement. “He’s not going to waste shot on us,” Lieutenant Downs suggested when Wadsworth expressed surprise that the British ships had been silent.

  “Because we can’t hurt him?”

  “Because he’s double-shotted his guns to welcome our ships. That’s all he’s worried about, sir, the ships.”

  “He can’t know they’re planning to attack him,” Wadsworth pointed out.

  “If they saw our fo’c’sle’s being strengthened,” Downs said, “they’ll have guessed.”

  And suppose the ships did not come? Saltonstall had very reluctantly agreed to make an attack, and suppose he changed his mind? Wadsworth’s men were now in line with the ships, meaning they were between Mowat and McLean, and Wadsworth could see the red uniforms of the Royal Marines on the deck of HMS North. The fog was thickening and a first slow spatter of rain fell.

  Then a fair-haired girl came running from a house to throw her arms round James Fletcher’s neck, and Wadsworth knew they had arrived. He ordered the two guns to face the harbor, their job to open fire if any Royal Marines came from the ships. The rest of his men crouched in yards and orchards. They were a quarter mile from the fort’s southeastern bastion and hidden from it by a large cornfield. They were in place. They were ready. If McLean could see them he took no apparent heed because none of the fort’s guns fired, while the sloops’ broadsides were now facing well away from the rebels. We go uphill from here, Wadsworth thought. Through the cornfield and across the open ground and over the ditch and up the wall and so to victory, and that sounded easy, but there would be round shot and grapeshot, screams and blood, smoke and volleys, death squirming in agony, men shrieking, steel slithering in guts, shit-soiled breeches, and the devil laughing as he rattled his dice.

  “They know we’re here,” Solomon Lovell had not spoken since they left the high ground, but now, looking up at the flag flying above the fort, he sounded nervous.

  “They know,” Wadsworth said. “Captain Burke!” William Burke, the skipper of the privateer Sky Rocket, had come with the soldiers and his duty now was to return and tell Commodore Saltonstall that the assault force was in position. Saltonstall had insisted that a seaman carry him that news, an insistence that amused Wadsworth because it suggested the naval officer did not trust the army. “Are you satisfied we’re in position, Mister Burke?” Wadsworth asked.

  “I’m well satisfied, General.”

  “Then pray tell the commodore we shall attack as soon as he opens fire.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Burke said, and set off westwards, escorted by four militiamen. A longboat waited for him beneath Dyce’s Head. It would take an hour, Wadsworth thought, for the message to be delivered. It began to rain harder. Fog and rain on Friday the thirteenth, but at least Wadsworth was confident that, at long last, the ships would come.

  And the fort, with God’s good help, would fall.

  “We do nothing, of course,” McLean said.

  “Nothing?” John Moore asked.

  “We could have a late luncheon, I suppose? I’m told there’s oxtail soup.”

  Moore gazed down from the fort’s southeastern bastion. The rebels, at least four hundred of them, were hidden somewhere close to the Fletcher house. “We could send two com
panies to rout them, sir,” the lieutenant suggested.

  “They have a company of marines,” McLean said, “you saw that.”

  “Then four companies, sir.”

  “Which is exactly what they want us to do,” McLean said. Rainwater dripped from the peaks of his cocked hat. “They want us to weaken the garrison.”

  “Because then they’ll attack from the heights?”

  “I must assume so,” McLean said. “I do like an oxtail soup, especially seasoned with a little sherry wine.” McLean went cautiously down the short flight of steps from the bastion, helping himself with the blackthorn stick. “You’ll serve with Captain Caffrae,” he told Moore, “but do remember your other duty if the rebels should break through.”

  “To destroy the oaths, sir?”

  “Exactly that,” McLean said, “but I assure you they won’t break through.”

  “No?” Moore asked with a smile.

  “Our enemies have made a mistake,” McLean said, “and divided their force, and I dare believe that neither of their contingents has the strength to break through our defense.” He shook his head. “I do like it when the enemy does my work. They’re not soldiers, John, they’re not soldiers, but that doesn’t mean the fight will be easy. They have a cause, and they’re ready to die for it. We’ll win, but it will be hard work.”

  The brigadier knew that the crisis had come and was just grateful that it had taken so long to arrive. Captain Mowat’s message had said that the rebel ships were at last determined to enter the harbor, and McLean now knew that the naval assault would be accompanied by a land attack. He expected the main body of the rebels to come from the heights, and so he had posted the majority of his men on the western side of the fort, while three companies of the 82nd were placed to defend against the attack by the men who had worked their way along the shore to conceal themselves in the low ground. Those three companies were reinforced by naval cannon already loaded with grapeshot that could turn the ditch beyond the low eastern wall into a trench slopping with blood. And it would be bloody. In another hour or two McLean knew that Majabigwaduce would be besieged by noise, by the smoke of cannon and by the spite of musket-fire. Mowat’s sloops would put up a stalwart defense, but they would surely be destroyed or taken, and that was sad, yet their loss would not mean defeat. The important thing was to hold the fort and that McLean was determined to do, and so, though his officers yearned to make a sally and attack the concealed rebels, he would keep his redcoats inside Fort George’s walls and let the rebels come to die on his guns and bayonets.