Storm the Fortress

by Maxine Trottier

  For the Anderson boys: Jacob, Luke and Will

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: 1750

  Chapter 2: June 6, 1754

  Chapter 3: April 16, 1759

  Chapter 4: April 27, 1759

  Chapter 5: End of April, 1759

  Chapter 6: June 8, 1759

  Chapter 7: July 4, 1759

  Chapter 8: August 28, 1759

  Chapter 9: September 13, 1759

  Chapter 10: September 14, 1759

  Chapter 11: October 1, 1759

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Timeline

  Images and Documents

  Credits

  About the Author

  Other books in the I Am Canada series

  Copyright

  Prologue

  I raced around the deck with the other boys, pretending that we were sailors. We squinted into the sky, licking our fingers to test the direction of the wind. At six, I was as free as the fish that swam in the depths beneath the Alderney. It was the spring of 1750 and my family and I were sailing from our village of Brierly-by-the-Sea in England to the new settlement of Halifax in Nova Scotia. A good life awaited us. Things would be different than they had been in England. Father, who was paying for part of our passage by working as a seaman, would own land. He would be a farmer rather than a sailor, and Mother would have her own house. As for me, who could say what great deeds I would do?

  My mother would laugh at all of this. How my father smiled at her happiness and our good luck.

  Luck has a way of disappearing, though.

  Chapter 1

  1750

  Storms and huge breaking waves tossed the Alderney around violently. Water poured down through the poorly fitting hatches and creaking deck boards. At night, the ship groaned as powerful gusts of wind roared through the rigging. The smell of vomit never left my nostrils.

  When the fresh vegetables and fruit were gone, we had nothing to eat but salt beef and ship’s bread. Those rock-like biscuits were filled with weevils, but we still tried to get them down. Some of us began to suffer from scurvy. Teeth loosened. Sores and wounds that had been long healed began to open and run with pus. Death became a familiar event, as did the horrible burials at sea. Before long I could recite by heart the service the captain read as the remains of some poor soul were dropped into the cold water. At a land burial, people would be weeping and sighing, but here every eye was dry. No one had tears to spare for the dead.

  My mother died only a week before Alderney reached land. She too was buried at sea, of course. It was impossible to bring her remains to shore. I kept dreaming of the sound her canvas-wrapped body had made as the ocean received it. My father mourned her terribly. And yet, people still said how fortunate we were, that we had made the crossing in a fairly healthy ship. I wished they could have crossed with us, just to see the truth.

  Halifax, when we reached it, was a surprise. Its houses were built of simple planks. Some had several chimneys because Halifax winters were wickedly cold. My fingers and nose might fall off, I was warned. After our hardships at sea, a cold winter did not frighten me.

  The town was noisy, muddy, and rougher than any I had ever seen. After the tameness of Brierly, I loved it. Not everyone agreed, however. As soon as some men had a chance, they disappeared, probably slipping away to the New England colonies, where they believed life was easier.

  I could not say if it was easier, but I suspect it may have been safer compared to Halifax. There was a rough log palisade surrounding the town. In it, at the top of the hill, was Fort George, named after our king.

  There were also defences on Georges Island in the town’s harbour, complete with cannons. But none of that protected people from what was in the wilderness just beyond the town. There were Indians out there, tribes they called the Micmac and Maliseet. Both were allied to the French. It did not take long for stories of what happened to those caught by the French and Indians to reach my ears. What nightmares I had!

  My father seemed right at home in all this, though, and if he was discouraged he did not show it. A practical man, he began the business of providing for me without my mother. The idea of farming was set aside, and he went back to sea on one of Mr. Joshua Mauger’s merchant vessels. Merry Lot, she was called. We took cheap rooms at the widow Walker’s inn, and when Father sailed out I was left behind with the widow.

  It was there at Mrs. Walker’s inn that I learned many useful things. She taught me to wipe tables and carry cups of her spruce beer to the patrons without spilling a drop. Best of all, she taught me to read and write.

  And then there was the dog.

  It appeared suddenly one day. Small, brown, and spotted with white, it had very little tail at all. Mrs. Walker tried to shoo it away with her apron, but the dog growled at her. She waved the poker and banged pots, but it had no effect at all on the dog. Sometimes it wandered away on its own and Mrs. Walker sighed with relief. But then back in it would stroll when some unsuspecting sailor opened the door. They fed it bits of meat, being careful not to lose a finger. Mrs. Walker still grumbled, but even she could see that the dog was good for business.

  “It needs a name,” I said one day, stroking the dog’s head.

  “I can think of several choice things I might call it,” grumbled Mrs. Walker. “Mind your fingers, William. The creature can crack a bone with those wicked teeth.”

  “It’s a good ratter, though,” I said in the dog’s defence.

  “True enough,” Mrs. Walker admitted.

  “Name it, then,” said my father, who had arrived home that morning. “It is only fair, since the dog seems to like you as much as anyone. But name it well, as well as a captain christens a ship. A good ratter can do a house proud. It needs a name that it can be proud of.”

  Mrs. Walker shook her head. The dog was scratching itself like mad. “Fleas,” she muttered.

  “Well … I christen thee King Louis!”

  “The French king’s name?” laughed my father.

  “I cannot very well name him after own King George, can I?”

  And so King Louis he became. He continued to reign over Mrs. Walker’s tavern, and all of Halifax was his kingdom. Sometimes he could be seen riding along with a group of sailors who were going out to their ship. It made me wonder what such a free life would be like.

  Chapter 2

  June 6, 1754

  My father answered that question the year I turned ten, when he said that the Merry Lot’s captain had need of a small boy to help on the ship’s next voyage. I screamed with excitement.

  “Who is being murdered in here?” asked the widow. “Shall I call the soldiers to beat off the French and Indians?” But she was smiling because she already knew my father’s plan.

  “I am going to sea, Mrs. Walker!” I told her. “So is King Louis. I will be a sailor like my father.”

  I was not much more than a passenger, though, for the dozen or so times I was on Merry Lot. But it did not matter. During the day, unless I had chores assigned, I had the run of the decks. In the evenings I listened to my father and the other men talk their rough sailors’ talk. Such stories they told about ghost ships, and adventure and the monsters that lurked in the ocean’s depths! Often I fell asleep to the sound of whales calling to each other far down in the black waters.

  By this time, Mr. Mauger had built himself a rum distillery. His vessels carried rum to soldiers and settlers alike. Father’s ship always sailed up the coast to a place the French called Île Royale — the British called it Cape Breton Island. And it always stopped at their fortified town of Louisbourg there.

&
nbsp; Our ship would anchor in deep water. Then we went ashore in its smaller boats to bring in the casks. As the sailors rowed, the harbour walls drew closer. There was the archway they called the Dauphin Gate. Dauphin was what they also called the French king’s son, Father told me. There on the rise was the King’s Bastion.

  Once we were in, Father and the other men hauled the rum to Monsieur La Chance’s tavern. The captain did business with the tavern keeper while father and the sailors sat at his tables enjoying good French food and drink. Monsieur La Chance’s wife served them while her son Pierre and I made horrible faces at each other.

  I had the best of it, to be sure. Pierre was a small, rather wild boy, a few years older than I. Around his neck he wore a large cross that his father had carved for him from whale bone. He had a birthmark on his right cheek, one in the shape of a small fish. It was why they called him Vairon, which means minnow. Vairon spoke a little English, and I spoke a little French taught to me by Father. It was enough to make a good beginning.

  We would race around the streets and get into as much mischief as we could in an afternoon. There were goats to be teased and horses to be petted. We begged the bakers for heels of fresh, warm bread, and then wandered around laughing at people’s linen hanging to dry in the sun. If the day was warm, we went down to a nearby cove and hurled ourselves into the water. It was how I learned to swim. Vairon said that with all my splashing and struggling I looked more like I was drowning.

  Often we went up to the King’s Bastion where Louisbourg’s governor lived. We marched around like soldiers. Even better, we played at being pirates. Capitaine Rosbif, Vairon used to call me, since Englishmen, especially English pirates, were so fond of their roast beef. With King Louis at our heels, I believed I looked the perfect image of a pirate, rather than a boy with dog hair on his shirt.

  Hot and sweaty, we would sneak into the ice house for chunks of ice to cool our faces and mouths. The ice house belonged to the French king, Vairon told me. We would take some back to Vairon’s house and sit in his mother’s raised garden bed among the cabbages and carrots, letting it melt in our mouths. We felt like kings ourselves. “To friendship and adventure!” we would cry. It became our motto.

  To be honest, Louisbourg was a much finer place than Halifax. The houses were larger and grander, the King’s Bastion a thousand times more impressive than Halifax’s forts. I saw people of every colour there, even black-skinned men. English and French were spoken, but so were languages I had never heard before. It put me in mind of the Tower of Babel that I had heard about in church.

  But peace is like a full belly. It does not last. And war was as sure a thing as the sun rising and setting. So when fighting here began once more between England and France in 1754, my trips to Louisbourg came to an end. Father’s ship still sailed out, but to my great disappointment I no longer went with him.

  “I will never see Vairon again,” I grumbled.

  “People have an odd way of moving in and out of a man’s life,” Father told me mysteriously. “Wait and see what life brings.”

  Knowing how I felt, though, he gave me his spyglass on which were engraved his initials, W. J. Now I could watch Merry Lot as she disappeared over the horizon. Better still, I could scan the ocean for her safe return. I treasured that glass, and it was a great comfort as I wandered the town.

  When Father was home we often spoke in French. A man who speaks more than one language has an advantage in this world, he insisted. But once the Acadians were rounded up and shipped off into exile in 1755, it did not seem a wise thing to do. Those Acadians were loyal to France, after all. Now and again at Mrs. Walker’s, men would glance at Father and me and mumble something about smuggling — even treason — so we spoke French only when we were by ourselves, from that time on.

  “Never follow a mob,” Father advised me. “Remember your friends, make your own choices, and do not judge other men.” I would nod at him. “And practise your letters. That is the way to success.”

  I was not so sure about that, but I did practise all of it. And I tried to remember my friend Vairon, but over the next few years the memories of him slipped away as surely as water through my fingers. Then he was gone.

  Chapter 3

  April 16, 1759

  The evening began just as any evening at Walker’s Inn ever did. I was my own man now at the age of fourteen, with my own friends. There I sat with my companion Baldish Sykes at our usual table near the hearth. Cups of Mrs. Walker’s terrible spruce beer were in front of us.

  Like many British sailors, Baldish had spent the winter in town rather than on his ship. This would be his last night ashore, since the navy was getting ready to return to war with the French.

  I accepted that the French were our enemies. Surely their navy and army were. Only to myself, though, did I think that I had no argument with them. In fact, I had felt pity for the Acadians, poor miserable souls who had been deported from Nova Scotia. They had been farmers, not soldiers. Had Vairon and his parents been among those unfortunates?

  “No more going out in that miserable ferry to deliver newspapers to Mr. Cook. No more Halifax snow!” Baldish cried. “No more days of rest here on shore. Ah, well. It had to end. All good things do.” He winked and shouted, “To Mrs. Walker and her excellent tavern. And to the wretched French. May they sail like landlubbers and fight like parsons!” Then he whispered, “I cannot toast this beer, though. You realize what it tastes like? Piss!” He made a face.

  Someone was playing a fiddle, and King Louis began howling madly, probably as an accompaniment to the song. I might have howled myself, except I was trying to listen to Baldish. It seemed that he had news of great interest.

  “Did you hear about the schooner Apollo that came in this morning from Marblehead?” he began.

  “Yes — the one from the colony of Massachusetts.”

  “Those Yankee volunteers she carried up?” he went on. “Well, some went aboard Squirrel. And seventeen of them are now on my own Pembroke.”

  From the way he always spoke, it sounded as though Baldish owned Pembroke. He was that proud of her. But she was one of the navy vessels, and so she was King George’s.

  “Well, that is a good thing, is it not? You tell me the ships are short-handed,” I said, ducking to avoid an apple core someone had flung at the dog.

  “Maybe yes, and maybe no. I have not set eyes on them, but I will tomorrow. I hear that Yankees can be —”

  It was a cup that flew past my nose this time, hitting its mark. King Louis yelped and bolted from the room. I wiped beer suds from my cheek.

  “A man who will hurt a helpless animal is a coward,” I called out. I felt quite proud of myself until the thrower of the cup rose to his feet. He was a sour-faced man with bloodshot eyes. I felt certain that the days of having all my teeth in my head were over.

  The man staggered over to me. “Coward, says you!” he roared in my face. His breath was as foul smelling as his greasy shirt and breeches. “No one calls Boston Ben Fence a coward and lives to say it again.”

  “My mistake, Mr. Fence,” I apologized. The man grinned at his friends, quite pleased with himself. “I meant to call you a bully.”

  I barely saw his fist before it met my nose. Sprawled face down on the floor of the tavern, I noticed my blood mixing with the dirt. I was dragged to my feet. Clenching my fists, I prepared to defend myself, but it was not the bully who held me by my collar.

  “That would be enough, Ben.”

  The speaker was an enormous fellow. From his accent, he too was a Boston man and so a Yankee, but a very strange one. His hair was a coppery red and he had the whitest skin I have ever seen. His face and arms were marked with blue designs which clearly would never wash off. Tattoos. I knew that certain tribes marked themselves in this way. This man was no Indian, though.

  “He insulted my good name, Blue Sam,” Ben grumbled.

  “Save it for the French, shipmate.”

  “I will have no more fighting
in my tavern, you, you … Yankees! And abusing our valuable ratter, our sweet little dog! Have you no heart, man?” yelled Mrs. Walker. She gave Ben a great whack with her broom. “This is a civilized place. Behave in a gentlemanly fashion or leave!”

  “Come then, shipmate,” Blue Sam laughed. “This place is too grand for the likes of us … Yankees.”

  “Cross the street when you see me coming, you piece of Halifax dung,” Ben snarled at me. Then he snatched up his tricorne, clapped it on his head and followed Blue Sam out the door.

  “Sweet little dog?” I mumbled.

  “Yankee sailors!” groaned Baldish, ignoring me. “What have things come to? A Boston hothead and a blue giant. If there’s any justice in this world, those boys are on Squirrel and not on Pembroke.”

  “You’ll find out in the morning,” I said.

  “And I will be relieved to return to Pembroke, hotheads and blue men or not. Join me, William. You would make a good sailor. Consider it. Think of the jolly times we would have if you would only volunteer.”

  I had long ago given up any idea of being a sailor. My future was on dry, solid land. “War does not sound very appealing to me, Baldish.”

  “War is simple. Follow orders and kill the French. Take their strongholds, as we did at Louisbourg last year. And drive them out the way we did after Louisbourg was ours and we were raiding along the Gaspé. Simple, see? It is life ashore that is complicated. Besides, you have no love for the French, do you?”

  I thought about that as I walked back to my small room at Mr. Bushell’s printing office later that night. I had lived and worked there since my father’s death from smallpox the year before. King Louis padded ahead of me as I considered the idea of becoming a sailor.

  But what did I need with leaky boats? Here in Halifax I had work as an inker, food in my belly, and a warm place to sleep. Here I would not be shot or scalped or drowned. I might be punched now and then, but that was to be expected in rough inns and taverns. No. Life was better in Halifax — quiet, uneventful and safe.