The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

by Bernard Cornwell

  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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 we
ight.”

  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 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.

  “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 offer 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.

  “If such an attack occurs,” Todd said, “we would want our artillery commanded by the best available man.”

  “I would assume,” Wadsworth said, “that we would desire that whether we march on Canada or not.”

  “We need a man of probity,” Todd said.

  “We need a man who can shoot straight,” Wadsworth said brusquely and wondered whether Todd aspired to command the artillery regiment himself, but he said nothing more. His wife was waiting beside the hitching post with a glass of water that Todd accepted gratefully before riding south towards Plymouth. Wadsworth went indoors and showed Elizabeth the letter. “I fear it is politics, my dear,” he said, “politics.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “It is awkward,” Wadsworth said. “Colonel Revere is a man of faction.”

  “Faction?”

  “Colonel Revere is zealous,” Wadsworth said carefully, “and his zeal makes enemies as well as friends. I suspect Major Todd laid the charge. It is a question of jealousy.”

  “So you think the allegation is untrue?”

  “I have no opinion,” Wadsworth said, “and would dearly like to continue in that ignorance.” He took the letter back and read it again.

  “It is still wrongdoing,” Elizabeth said sternly.

  “Or a false allegation? A clerk’s error? But it involves me in faction and I dislike faction. If I prove wrongdoing then I make enemies of half of Boston and earn the enmity of every freemason. Which is why I would prefer to remain in ignorance.”

  “So you will ignore it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I shall do my duty, my dear,” Wadsworth said. He had always done his duty, and done it well. As a student at Harvard, as a schoolteacher, as a captain in Lexington’s town troop, as an aide to General Washington in the Continental Army, and now as a brigadier in the militia. But there were times, he thought, when his own side was far more difficult than the British. He folded the letter and went for his dinner.

  Majabigwaduce was a hump of land, almost an island, shaped like an anvil. From east to west it was just under two miles long, and from north to south rarely more than half a mile wide, and the ridge of its rocky hump climbed from the east to the west where it ended in a blunt, high, wooded bluff that overlooked the wide Penobscot Bay. The settlement lay on the ridge’s southern side, where the British fleet lay in the harbor’s anchorage. It was a village of small houses, barns and storehouses. The smallest houses were simple log cabins, but some were more substantial dwellings of two stories, their frames clad in cedar shingles that looked silver in the day’s watery sunlight. There was no church yet.

  The ridge above the village was thick with spruce, though to the west, where the land was highest, there were fine maples, beech, and birch. Oaks grew by the water. Much of the land about the settlement had been cleared and planted with corn, and now axes bit into spruce trees as the redcoats set about clearing the ridge above the village.

  Seven hundred soldiers had come to Majabigwaduce. Four hundred and fifty were kilted highlanders of the 74th, another two hundred were lowlanders from the 82nd, while the remaining fifty were engineers and gunners. The fleet which had brought them had dispersed, the Blonde sailing on to New York and leaving behind only three empty transport ships and three small sloops-of-war whose masts now dominated Majabigwaduce’s harbor. The beach was heaped with landed supplies and a new track, beaten into the dirt, now ran straight up the long slope from the water’s edge to the ridge’s crest. Brigadier McLean climbed that track, walking with the aid of a twisted blackthorn stick and accompanied by a civilian. “We are a small force, Doctor Calef,” McLean said, “but you may rely on us to do our duty.”

  “Calf,” Calef said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My name, General, is pronounced calf.”

  “I do pray your pardon, Doctor,” McLean said, inclining his head.

  Doctor Calef was a thickset man a few years younger than McLean. He wore a low crowned hat over a wig that had not been powdered for weeks and which framed a blunt face distinguished by a determined jaw. He had introduced himself to McLean, offering advice, professional help and whatever other support he could give. “You’re here to stay, I trust?” the doctor demanded.

  “Decidedly, sir, decidedly,” McLean said, digging his stick into the thin soil, “oh, indeed we mean to stay.”

  “To do what?” Calef asked curtly.

  “Let me see now,” McLean paused, watching as two men stepped back from a half-felled tree that toppled, slowly at first, then crashed down in an explosion of splintering branches, pine needles, and dust. “My first duty, Doctor,” he said, “is to prevent the rebels from using the bay as a haven for their privateers. Those pirates have been a nuisance.” That was mild. The American rebels held all the coastline between Canada and New York except for the beleaguered British garrison in Newport, Rhode Island, and British merchant ships, making that long voyage, were ever at risk from the well-armed, fast-sailing rebel privateers. By occupying Majabigwaduce the British would dominate Penobscot Bay and so deny the rebels its fine anchorage, which would become a base for Britain’s Royal Navy. “At the same time,” McLean continued, “I am ordered to deter any rebel attack on Canada and thirdly, Doctor, I am to encourage trade here.”

  “Mast wood,” Calef growled.

  “Especially mast wood,” McLean agreed, “and fourthly we are to settle this region.”

  “Settle it?”

  “For the crown, Doctor, for the crown.” McLean smiled and waved his blackthorn stick at the landscape. “Behold, Doctor Calef, His Majesty’s province of New Ireland.”

  “New Ireland?” Calef asked.

  “From the border of Canada and eighty miles southwards,” McLean said, “all New Ireland.”

  “Let’s trust it�
�s not as papist as old Ireland,” Calef said sourly.

  “I’m sure it will be God-fearing,” McLean said tactfully. The general had served many years in Portugal and did not share his countrymen’s distaste for Roman Catholics, but he was a good enough soldier to know when not to fight. “So what brought you to New Ireland, Doctor?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “I was driven from Boston by damned rebels,” Calef said angrily.

  “And you chose to come here?” McLean asked, unable to hide his surprise that the doctor had fled Boston to this fog-ridden wilderness.

  “Where else could I take my family?” Calef demanded, still angry. “Dear God, General, but there’s no legitimate government between here and New York! In all but name the colonies are independent already! In Boston the wretches have an administration, a legislature, offices of state, a judiciary! Why? Why is it permitted?”

  “You could have moved to New York?” McLean suggested, ignoring Calef’s indignant question, “or to Halifax?”

  “I’m a Massachusetts man,” Calef said, “and I trust that one day I will return to Boston, but a Boston cleansed of rebellion.”

  “I pray so too,” McLean said. “Tell me, Doctor, did the woman give birth safely?”

  Doctor Calef blinked, as if the question surprised him. “The woman? Oh, you mean Joseph Perkins’s wife. Yes, she was delivered safely. A fine girl.”

  “Another girl, eh?” McLean said, and turned to gaze at the wide bay beyond the harbor entrance. “Big bay with big tides,” he said lightly, then saw the doctor’s incomprehension. “I was told that was the meaning of Majabigwaduce,” he explained.

  Calef frowned, then made a small gesture as if the question was irrelevant. “I’ve no idea what the name means, General. You must ask the savages. It’s their name for the place.”