The Fort

‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven, Mister Moore,’ McLean said, ‘and they do want the harbour and they will come for it, but let us hope they do not come soon.’

‘The sooner they come, sir,’ Moore said, ‘the sooner we can kill them.’

‘I would wish to finish the fort first,’ McLean said. The fort, which he had decided to name Fort George, was hardly begun. The soil was thin, rocky and hard to work, and the ridge so thick with trees that a week’s toil had scarcely cleared a sufficient killing ground. If the enemy came soon, McLean knew, he would have small choice but to fire a few defiant guns and then haul down the flag. ‘Are you a prayerful man, Mister Moore?’ McLean asked.

‘Indeed I am, sir.’

‘Then pray the enemy delays,’ McLean said fervently, then looked to James Fletcher. ‘Mister Fletcher, you would land us back on the beach?’

‘That I will, General,’ James said cheerfully.

‘And pray for us, Mister Fletcher.’

‘Not sure the good Lord listens to me, sir.’

‘James!’ Bethany reproved her brother.

James grinned. ‘You need prayers to protect yourself here, General?’

McLean paused for a moment, then shrugged. ‘It depends, Mister Fletcher, on the enemy’s strength, but I would wish for twice as many men and twice our number of ships to feel secure.’

‘Maybe they won’t come, sir,’ Fletcher said. ‘Those folks in Boston never took much note of what happens here.’ Wisps of fog were drifting with the wind as the Felicity ran past the three sloops of war that guarded the harbour entrance. James Fletcher noted how the three ships were anchored fore and aft so that they could not swing with the tide or wind, thus allowing each sloop to keep its broadside pointed at the harbour entrance. The ship nearest the beach, the North, had two intermittent jets of water pulsing from its portside, and James could hear the clank of the elmwood pumps as men thrust at the long handles. Those pumps rarely stopped, suggesting the North was an ill-found ship, though her guns were doubtless efficient enough to help protect the harbour mouth and, to protect that entrance even further, red-coated Royal Marines were hacking at the thin soil and rocks of Cross Island, which edged the southern side of the channel. Fletcher reckoned the marines were making a battery there. Behind the three sloops and making a second line across the harbour, were three of the transport ships that had carried the redcoats to Majabigwaduce. Those transports were not armed, but their size alone made them a formidable obstacle to any ship that might attempt to pass the smaller sloops.

McLean handed Fletcher an oilcloth-wrapped parcel of tobacco and one of the Spanish silver dollars that were common currency, as payment for the use of his boat. ‘Come, Mister Moore,’ he called sharply as the paymaster offered Bethany an arm to help her over the uneven beach. ‘We have work to do!’

James Fletcher also had work to do. It was still high summer, but the log pile had to be made for the winter and, that evening, he split wood outside their house. He worked deep into the twilight, slashing the axe down hard to splinter logs into usable firewood.

‘You’re thinking, James.’ Bethany had come from the house and was watching him. She wore an apron over her grey dress.

‘Is that bad?’

‘You always work too hard when you’re thinking,’ she said. She sat on a bench fronting the house. ‘Mother’s sleeping.’

‘Good,’ James said. He left the axe embedded in a stump and sat beside his sister on the bench that overlooked the harbour. The sky was purple and black, the water glinted with little ripples of fading silver about the anchored boats; glimmers of lamplight reflected on the small waves. A bugle sounded from the ridge where two tented encampments housed the redcoats. A picquet of six men guarded the guns and ammunition that had been parked on the beach above the tideline. ‘That young officer liked you, Beth,’ James said. Bethany just smiled, but said nothing. ‘They’re nice enough fellows,’ James said.

‘I like the general,’ Bethany said.

‘A decent man, he seems,’ James said.

‘I wonder what happened to his arm?’

‘Soldiers, Beth. Soldiers get wounded.’

‘And killed.’

‘Yes.’

They sat in companionable silence for a while as the darkness closed slow on the river and on the harbour and on the bluff. ‘So will you sign the oath?’ Bethany asked after a while.

‘Not sure I have much choice,’ James said bleakly.

‘But will you?’

James picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. ‘Father would have wanted me to sign.’

‘I’m not sure Father thought about it much,’ Bethany said. ‘We never had government here, neither royal nor rebel.’

‘He loved the king,’ James said. ‘He hated the French and loved the king.’ He sighed. ‘We have to make a living, Beth. If I don’t take the oath then they’ll take the Felicity away from us, and then what do we do? I can’t have that.’ A dog howled somewhere in the village and James waited till the sound died away. ‘I like McLean well enough,’ he said, ‘but …’ He let the thought fade away into the darkness.

‘But?’ Bethany asked. Her brother shrugged and made no answer. Beth slapped at a mosquito. ‘“Choose you this day whom you will serve,”’ she quoted, ‘“whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or …”’ She left the Bible verse unfinished.

‘There’s too much bitterness,’ James said.

‘You thought it would pass us by?’

‘I hoped it would. What does anyone want with Bagaduce anyway?’

Bethany smiled. ‘The Dutch were here, the French made a fort here, it seems the whole world wants us.’

‘But it’s our home, Beth. We made this place, it’s ours.’ James paused. He was not sure he could articulate what was in his mind. ‘You know Colonel Buck left?’

Buck was the local commander of the Massachusetts Militia and he had fled north up the Penobscot River when the British arrived. ‘I heard,’ Bethany said.

‘And John Lymburner and his friends are saying what a coward Buck is, and that’s just nonsense! It’s all just bitterness, Beth.’

‘So you’ll ignore it?’ she asked. ‘Just sign the oath and pretend it isn’t happening?’

James stared down at his hands. ‘What do you think I should do?’

‘You know what I think,’ Bethany said firmly.

‘Just ’cos your fellow was a damned rebel,’ James said, smiling. He gazed at the shivering reflections cast from the lanterns on board the three sloops. ‘What I want, Beth, is for them all to leave us alone.’

‘They won’t do that now,’ she said.

James nodded. ‘They won’t, so I’ll write a letter, Beth,’ he said, ‘and you can take it over the river to John Brewer. He’ll know how to get it to Boston.’

Bethany was silent for a while, then frowned. ‘And the oath? Will you sign it?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, Beth, I honestly don’t know.’

James wrote the letter on a blank page torn from the back of the family Bible. He wrote simply, saying what he had seen in Majabigwaduce and its harbour. He told how many guns were mounted on the sloops and where the British were making earthworks, how many soldiers he believed had come to the village and how many guns had been shipped to the beach. He used the other side of the paper to make a rough map of the peninsula on which he drew the position of the fort and the place where the three sloops of war were anchored. He marked the battery on Cross Island, then turned the page over and signed the letter with his name, biting his lower lip as he formed the clumsy letters.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t put your name to it,’ Bethany said.

James sealed the folded paper with candle-wax. ‘The soldiers probably won’t trouble you, Beth, which is why you should carry the letter, but if they do, and if they find the letter, then I don’t want you blamed. Say you didn’t know what was in it and let me be punished.’

‘So you’re a rebel now?’