The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

by Bernard Cornwell

“Present!” Moore ordered. “Fire!”

  Seven muskets coughed, blasting evil-smelling powder smoke that was far thicker than the swirling fog. The smoke lingered as birds fled through the thick trees and gulls called from the water. Through the echo of the shots McClure heard the balls ripping through leaves and clattering on the stones of the small beach. The men were tearing open their next cartridges with their teeth, but Lieutenant Moore was already ahead. He had primed the musket, closed the frizzen, and now dropped the heavy stock to the ground and poured in the powder. He pushed the cartridge paper and ball into the muzzle, whipped the ramrod up, slid it down hard, pulled it free with the ringing sound of metal on metal, then jammed the ramrod into the turf, tossed the gun up to his shoulder, cocked, and fired.

  No one had yet beaten Lieutenant John Moore. Major Dunlop had timed Moore once and, with disbelief, had announced that the lieutenant had fired five shots inside sixty seconds. Most men could manage three shots a minute with a clean musket, a few could shoot four rounds, but the doctor’s son, friend of a duke, could fire five. Moore had been trained in musketry by a Prussian, and as a boy he had practiced and practiced, perfecting the essential soldier’s skill, and so certain was he of his ability that, as he loaded the last two shots, he did not even bother to look at his borrowed weapon, but instead smiled wryly at Sergeant McClure. “Five!” Moore announced, his ears ringing with the explosions. “Did any man defeat me, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir. Private Neill managed three shots, sir, the rest did two.”

  “Then my guinea is safe,” Moore said, scooping it up.

  “But are we?” McClure muttered.

  “You spoke, Sergeant?”

  McClure stared down the bluff. The smoke was clearing and he could see that the canted tree, just thirty paces away, was unscarred by any musket-ball. “There’s precious few of us, sir,” he said, “and we’re all alone here and there’s a lot of rebels.”

  “All the more to kill,” Moore said. “We shall take post here till the fog lifts, Sergeant, then look for a better vantage point.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The picquet was posted; their task to watch for the coming of an enemy. That enemy, the brigadier had assured his officers, would come. Of that McLean was sure. So he cut down trees and plotted where the fort must be.

  To defend the king’s land from the king’s enemies.

  Excerpt of letter from the Massachusetts Council, to the Continental Navy Board in Boston, June 30th, 1779:

  Gentlemen: The General Assembly of this State have determined on an Expedition to Penobscot to Dislodge the Enemy of the United States lately enter’d There who are said to be committing Hostilities on the Good People of this State . . . fortifying themselves at Baggobagadoos, and as They are supported by a Considerable Naval Force, to Effect our Design, it will be expedient to send there, to aid our Land Operations a Superior Naval Force. Therefore . . . we write you . . . requesting you to aid our Designs, by adding to the Naval Force of this State, now, with all Possible Speed preparing, for an expedition to Penobscot; the Continental Frigate now in this Harbor, and the other armed Continental vessells here.

  Excerpts from the Warrant of Impressment issued to Masschusetts sheriffs, July 3rd, 1779:

  You are hereby authorized and Commanded taking with you such Assistance as you judge proper, forthwith to take seize and impress any able-bodied Seamen, or Mariner which you shall find in your Precinct . . . to serve on board any of the Vessels entered into the Service of this State to be employed in the proposed expedition to Penobscot. . . . You are hereby Authorized to enter on board and search any Ship or Vessel or to break open and search any Dwelling house or other building in which you shall suspect any such Seamen or Mariners to be concealed.

  Excerpt from a letter sent by Brigadier-General Charles Cushing to the Council of the State of Massachusetts, June 19th, 1779:

  I have Issued orders to the officers of my Brigade requiring them to inlist men agreeable thereto. I would inform your Honors that at present there seems no prospect of getting one man as the Bounty offered is in the Esteem of the people inadequate.

  Chapter Two

  Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere stood square in the Boston Armory yard. He wore a light blue uniform coat faced in brown, white deerskin breeches, knee boots, and had a naval cutlass hanging from a thick brown belt. His wide-brimmed hat was made of felt, and it shadowed a broad, stubborn face that was creased in thought. “You making that list, boy?” he demanded brusquely.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy answered. He was twelve, the son of Josiah Flint who ruled the armory from his high-backed, well-padded chair that had been dragged from the office and set beside the trestle table where the boy made his list. Flint liked to sit in the yard when the weather allowed so he could keep an eye on the comings and goings in his domain.

  “Drag chains,” Revere said, “sponges, searchers, relievers, am I going too fast?”

  “Relievers,” the boy muttered, dipping his pen into the inkwell.

  “Hot today,” Josiah Flint grumbled from the depths of his chair.

  “It’s summer,” Revere said, “and it should be hot. Rammers, boy, and wad hooks. Spikes, tompions, linstocks, vent-covers. What have I forgotten, Mister Flint?”

  “Priming wires, Colonel.”

  “Priming wires, boy.”

  “Priming wires,” the boy said, finishing the list.

  “And there’s something else in the back of my mind,” Flint said, frowning, then thought for a moment before shaking his head. “Maybe nothing,” he said.

  “You hunt through your pa’s supplies, boy,” Revere said, “and you make piles of all those things. We need to know how many we’ve got. You note down how many and then you tell me. Off you go.”

  “And buckets,” Josiah Flint added hurriedly.

  “And buckets!” Revere called after the boy. “And not leaking buckets either!” He took the boy’s vacated chair and watched as Josiah Flint bit into a chicken leg. Flint was an enormous man, his belly spilling over his belt, and he seemed intent on becoming even fatter because whenever Revere visited the arsenal he found his friend eating. He had a plate of cornbread, radishes, and chicken that he vaguely gestured towards, as if inviting Colonel Revere to share the dish.

  “You haven’t been given orders yet, Colonel?” Flint asked. His nose had been shattered by a bullet at Saratoga just minutes before a cannon ball took away his right leg. He could no longer breathe through his nose and so his breath had to be drawn past the half-masticated food filling his mouth. It made a snuffling sound. “They should have given you orders, Colonel.”

  “They don’t know whether they’re pissing or puking, Mister Flint,” Revere said, “but I can’t wait while they make up their minds. The guns have to be ready!”

  “No man better than you, Colonel,” Josiah Flint said, picking a shred of radish from his front teeth.

  “But I didn’t go to Harvard, did I?” Revere asked with a forced laugh. “If I spoke Latin, Mister Flint, I’d be a general by now.”

  “Hic, haec, hoc,” Flint said through a mouthful of bread.

  “I expect so,” Revere said. He pulled a folded copy of the Boston Intelligencer from his pocket and spread it on the table, then took out his reading glasses. He disliked wearing them for he suspected they gave him an unmilitary appearance, but he needed the spectacles to read the account of the British incursion into eastern Massachusetts. “Who would have believed it,” he said, “the bastard redcoats back in New England!”

  “Not for long, Colonel.”

  “I hope not,” Revere said. The Massachusetts government, learning that the British had landed men at Majabigwaduce, had determined to send an expedition to the Penobscot River, to which end a fleet was being gathered, orders being sent to the militia, and officers being appointed. “Well, well,” Revere said, peering at the newspaper. “It seems the Spanish have declared war on the British now!”

  “Spain as well as Franc
e,” Flint said. “The bloodybacks can’t last long now.”

  “Let’s pray they last long enough to give us a chance to fight them at Maja.” Revere paused, “Majabigwaduce,” he said. “I wonder what that name means?”

  “Just some Indian nonsense,” Flint said. “Place Where the Muskrat Pissed Down Its Legs, probably.”

  “Probably,” Revere said distantly. He took off his glasses and stared at a pair of sheer-legs that waited to lift a cannon barrel from a carriage rotted by damp. “Have they given you a requisition for cannon, Mister Flint?”

  “Just for five hundred muskets, Colonel, to be rented for a dollar each to the militia.”

  “Rented!”

  “Rented,” Flint confirmed.

  “If they’re to kill the British,” Revere said, “then money shouldn’t come into it.”

  “Money always comes into it,” Flint said. “There are six new British nine-pounders in Appleby’s yard, but we can’t touch them. They’re to be auctioned.”

  “The Council should buy them,” Revere said.

  “The Council don’t have the money,” Flint said, stripping a leg-bone of its flesh, “not enough coinage to pay the wages, rent the privateers, purchase supplies, and buy cannon. You’ll have to make do with the guns we’ve got.”

  “They’ll do, they’ll do,” Revere said grudgingly.

  “And I hope the Council has the sense to appoint you to command those guns, Colonel!”

  Revere said nothing to that, merely stared at the sheer-legs. He had an engaging smile that warmed men’s hearts, but he was not smiling now. He was seething.

  He was seething because the Council had appointed the commanders of the expedition to rout the British from Majabigwaduce, but so far no man had been named to lead the artillery and Revere knew that cannons would be needed. He knew too that he was the best man to command those cannon, he was indeed the commanding officer of the Bay of Massachusetts State Artillery Regiment, yet the Council had pointedly refrained from sending him any orders.

  “They will appoint you, Colonel,” Flint said loyally, “they have to!”

  “Not if Major Todd has his way,” Revere said bitterly.

  “I expect he went to Harvard,” Flint said, “hic, haec, hoc.”

  “Harvard or Yale, probably,” Revere agreed, “and he wanted to run the artillery like a countinghouse! Lists and regulations! I told him, make the men gunners first, then kill the British, and after that make the lists, but he didn’t listen. He was forever saying I was disorganized, but I know my guns, Mister Flint, I know my guns. There’s a skill in gunnery, an art, and not everyone has the touch. It doesn’t come from book-learning, not artillery. It’s an art.”

  “That’s very true,” Flint wheezed through a full mouth.

  “But I’ll ready their cannon,” Revere said, “so whoever commands them has things done properly. There may not be enough lists, Mister Flint,” he chuckled at that, “but they’ll have good and ready guns. Eighteen-pounders and more! Bloodyback-killers! Guns to slaughter the English, they will have guns. I’ll see to that.”

  Flint paused to release a belch, then frowned. “Are you sure you want to go to Maja, whatever it is?”

  “Of course I’m sure!”

  Flint patted his belly, then put two radishes into his mouth. “It ain’t comfortable, Colonel.”

  “What does that mean, Josiah?”

  “Down east?” Flint asked. “You’ll get nothing but mosquitoes, rain, and sleeping under a tree down east.” He feared that his friend would not be given command of the expedition’s artillery and, in his clumsy way, was trying to provide some consolation. “And you’re not as young as you were, Colonel!”

  “Forty-five’s not old!” Revere protested.

  “Old enough to know sense,” Flint said, “and to appreciate a proper bed with a woman inside it.”

  “A proper bed, Mister Flint, is beside my guns. Beside my guns that point towards the English! That’s all I ask, a chance to serve my country.” Revere had tried to join the fighting ever since the rebellion had begun, but his applications to the Continental Army had been refused for reasons that Revere could only suspect and never confirm. General Washington, it was said, wanted men of birth and honor, and that rumor had only made Revere more resentful. The Massachusetts Militia was not so particular, yet Revere’s service so far had been uneventful. True, he had gone to Newport to help evict the British, but that campaign had ended in failure before Revere and his guns arrived, and so he had been forced to command the garrison on Castle Island and his prayers that a British fleet would come to be battered by his cannon had gone unanswered. Paul Revere, who hated the British with a passion that could shake his body with its pure vehemence, had yet to kill a single redcoat.

  “You’ve heard the trumpet call, Colonel,” Flint said respectfully.

  “I’ve heard the trumpet call,” Revere agreed.

  A sentry opened the armory gate and a man in the faded blue uniform of the Continental Army entered the yard from the street. He was tall, good-looking, and some years younger than Revere, who stood in wary greeting. “Colonel Revere?” the newcomer asked.

  “At your service, General.”

  “I am Peleg Wadsworth.”

  “I know who you are, General,” Revere said, smiling and taking the offered hand. He noted that Wadsworth did not return the smile. “I hope you bring me good news from the Council, General?”

  “I would like a word, Colonel,” Wadsworth said, “a brief word.” The brigadier glanced at the monstrous Josiah Flint in his padded chair. “A word in private,” he added grimly.

  So the trumpet call would have to wait.

  Captain Henry Mowat stood on Majabigwaduce’s beach. He was a stocky man with a ruddy face now shadowed by the long peak of his cocked hat. His naval coat was dark blue with lighter blue facings, all stained white by salt. He was in his forties, a lifelong sailor, and he stood with his feet planted apart as though balancing on a quarterdeck. His dark hair was powdered and a slight trail of the powder had sifted down the spine of his uniform coat. He was glaring at the longboats which lay alongside his ship, the Albany. “What the devil takes all this time?” he growled.

  His companion, Doctor John Calef, had no idea what was causing the delay on board the Albany and so offered no answer. “You’ve received no intelligence from Boston?” he asked Mowat instead.

  “We don’t need intelligence,” Mowat said brusquely. He was the senior naval officer at Majabigwaduce and, like Brigadier McLean, a Scotsman, but where the brigadier was emollient and soft-spoken, Mowat was famed for his bluntness. He fidgeted with the cord-bound hilt of his sword. “The bastards will come, Doctor, mark my word, the bastards will come. Like flies to dung, Doctor, they’ll come.”

  Calef thought that likening the British presence at Majabigwaduce to dung was an unfortunate choice, but he made no comment on that. “In force?” he asked.

  “They may be damned rebels, but they’re not damned fools. Of course they’ll come in force.” Mowat still gazed at the anchored ship, then cupped his hands. “Mister Farraby,” he bellowed across the water, “what the devil is happening?”

  “Roving a new sling, sir!” the call came back.

  “How many guns will you bring ashore?” the doctor inquired.

  “As many as McLean wants,” Mowat said. His three sloops of war were anchored fore and aft to make a line across the harbor’s mouth, their starboard broadsides facing the entrance to greet any rebel ship that dared intrude. Those broadsides were puny. HMS North, which lay closest to Majabigwaduce’s beach, carried twenty guns, ten on each side, while the Albany, at the center, and the Nautilus, each carried nine cannons in their broadsides. An enemy ship would thus be greeted by twenty-eight guns, none throwing a ball larger than nine pounds, and the last intelligence Mowat had received from Boston indicated that a rebel frigate was in that harbor, a frigate that mounted thirty-two guns, most of which would be much larger than his sma
ll cannon. And the rebel frigate Warren would be supported by the privateers of Massachusetts, most of whose craft were just as heavily gunned as his own sloops of war. “It’ll be a fight,” he said sourly, “a rare good fight.”

  The new sling had evidently been roved because a nine-pounder gun barrel was being hoisted from the Albany’s deck and gently lowered into one of the waiting longboats. Over a ton of metal hung from the yardarm, poised above the heads of the pigtailed sailors waiting in the small boat below. Mowat was bringing his port broadsides ashore so the guns could protect the fort McLean was building on Majabigwaduce’s crest. “If you abandon your portside guns,” Calef inquired in a puzzled tone, “what happens if the enemy passes you?”

  “Then, sir, we are dead men,” Mowat said curtly. He watched the longboat settle precariously low in the choppy water as it took the weight of the cannon’s barrel. The carriage would be brought ashore in another boat and, like the barrel, be hauled uphill to the site of the fort by one of the two teams of oxen that had been commandeered from the Hutchings farm. “Dead men!” Mowat said, almost cheerfully, “but to kill us, Doctor, they must first pass us, and I do not intend to be passed.”

  Calef felt relief at Mowat’s belligerence. The Scottish naval captain was famous in Massachusetts, or perhaps infamous was a better word, but to all loyalists, like Calef, Mowat was a hero who inspired confidence. He had been captured by rebel civilians, the self-styled Sons of Liberty, while walking ashore in Falmouth. His release had been negotiated by the leading citizens of that proud harbor town, and the condition of Mowat’s release had been that he surrender himself next day so that the legality of his arrest could be established by lawyers, but instead Mowat had returned with a flotilla that had bombarded the town from dawn to dusk and, when most of the houses lay shattered, he had sent shore parties to set fire to the wreckage. Two thirds of Falmouth had been destroyed to send the message that Captain Mowat was not a man to be trifled with.

  Calef frowned slightly as Brigadier McLean and two junior officers strolled along the stony beach towards Mowat. Calef still had doubts about the Scottish brigadier, fearing that he was too gentle in his demeanor, but Captain Mowat evidently had no such misgivings because he smiled broadly as McLean approached. “You’ve not come to pester me, McLean,” he said with mock severity, “your precious guns are coming!”