The Fort

‘It,’ Lovell began and realized he had no idea what he could answer, and so he straightened and squared his shoulders. ‘We shall wait,’ he announced firmly.

‘We shall wait!’ Saltonstall called to his officers. He began pacing his quarter-deck again, starboard to larboard and larboard to starboard, occasionally shooting a malevolent look at Lovell as though the general were personally responsible for the missing officer. Lovell found the commodore’s hostility uncomfortable and so turned to stare at the fleet again. Many ships had loosed their topsails and men now scrambled along the yards to furl the canvas.

‘General Lovell?’ a new voice disturbed him and Lovell turned to see a tall marine officer whose sudden presence made the general take an involuntary step backwards. There was an intensity in the marine’s face, and a ferocity, that made the face formidable. Just to see this man was to be impressed. He was even taller than Lovell, who was not a short man, and he had broad shoulders that strained the green cloth of his uniform jacket. He was holding his hat respectfully, revealing black hair that was cropped short over most of his scalp, but that he had allowed to grow long at the back so he could wear a short pigtail that was hardened with tar. ‘My name is Welch, sir,’ the marine said in a voice deep enough to match his hard face, ‘Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines.’

‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Welch,’ Lovell said, and that was true. If a man must sail into battle then he would pray to have a man like Welch at his side. The hilt of Welch’s sabre was worn down by use and, like its owner, seemed made for the efficient use of pure violence.

‘I’ve spoken to the commodore, sir,’ Welch said very formally, ‘and he gave his consent that my men should be at your disposal when not required for naval duties.’

‘That’s most encouraging,’ Lovell said.

‘Two hundred and twenty-seven marines, sir, fit for duty. Good men, sir.’

‘I’ve no doubt.’

‘Well-trained,’ Welch went on, his unblinking gaze fixed on Lovell’s eyes, ‘and well-disciplined.’

‘A most valuable addition to our force,’ Lovell said, unsure what else he could say.

‘I want to fight, sir,’ Welch said, as if he suspected Lovell might not use his marines.

‘I am confident the opportunity will come,’ Lovell said uneasily.

‘I hope so, sir,’ Welch said, then at last turned his gaze away from the general and nodded towards a fine-looking ship, the General Putnam, one of four privateers that had been commandeered by the Massachusetts Navy because their owners had baulked at volunteering their craft. The General Putnam carried twenty cannons, all of them nine-pounders, and she was reckoned one of the finest ships on the New England coast. ‘We put a score of marines on the Putnam, sir,’ Welch said, ‘and they’re led by Captain Carnes. You know him, sir?’

‘I know John Carnes,’ Lovell said, ‘he captains the Hector.’

‘This is his brother, sir, and a fine officer. He served under General Washington as a captain of artillery.’

‘A fine posting,’ Lovell said, ‘yet he left it for the marines?’

‘Captain Carnes prefers to see men up close as he kills them, sir,’ Welch said evenly, ‘but he knows his artillery, sir. He’s a very competent gunner.’

Lovell understood immediately that Saltonstall had despatched Welch with the news, implicitly suggesting that Colonel Revere could be left behind and replaced by Captain Carnes, and Lovell bristled at the suggestion. ‘We need Colonel Revere and his officers,’ he said.

‘I never suggested otherwise, sir,’ Welch said, ‘merely that Captain Carnes has an expertise that might be useful to you.’

Lovell felt acutely uncomfortable. He sensed that Welch had little faith in the militia and was trying to stiffen Lovell’s force with the professionalism of his marines, but Lovell was determined that Massachusetts should reap the credit for the expulsion of the British. ‘I’m sure Colonel Revere knows his business,’ Lovell said stoutly. Welch did not reply to that, but stared at Lovell who again felt disconcerted by the intensity of the gaze. ‘Of course, any advice Captain Carnes has … ’ Lovell said, and let his voice tail away.

‘I just wanted you to know we have an artilleryman in the marines, sir,’ Welch said, then stepped a pace back and offered Lovell a salute.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ Lovell said, and felt relieved when the huge marine strode away.

The minutes passed. The church clocks in Boston struck the hour, the quarters and then the hour again. Major William Todd, one of the expedition’s two brigade majors, brought the general a mug of tea. ‘Newly made in the galley, sir.’

‘Thank you.’

‘The leaves captured by the brig King-Killer, sir,’ Todd said, sipping his own tea.

‘It’s kind of the enemy to supply us with tea,’ Lovell said lightly.

‘Indeed it is, sir,’ Todd said and then, after a pause, ‘So Mister Revere is delaying us?’

Lovell knew of the antipathy between Todd and Revere and did his best to defuse whatever was in the major’s mind. Todd was a good man, meticulous and hard-working, but somewhat unbending. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant-Colonel Revere has very good cause to be absent,’ he said firmly.

‘He always does,’ Todd said. ‘In all the time he commanded Castle Island I doubt he spent a single night there. Mister Revere, sir, likes the comfort of his wife’s bed.’

‘Don’t we all?’

Todd brushed a speck of lint from his blue uniform coat. ‘He told General Wadsworth that he supplied rations for Major Fellows’ men.’

‘I’m certain he had cause for that.’

‘Fellows died of the fever last August,’ Todd then stepped a pace back in deference to the approach of the commodore.

Saltonstall glowered again at Lovell from beneath the peak of his cocked hat. ‘If your damned fellow isn’t coming,’ Saltonstall said, ‘then perhaps we might be allowed to get on with this damned war without him?’

‘I’m sure Colonel Revere will be here very soon,’ Lovell said emolliently, ‘or we shall receive news of him. A messenger has been sent ashore, Commodore.’

Saltonstall grunted and walked away. Major Todd frowned at the retreating commodore. ‘He takes after his mother’s side of the family, I think. The Saltonstalls are usually most agreeable folk.’

Lovell was saved from responding by a hail from the brig Diligent. Colonel Revere, it seemed, had been sighted. He and three other officers were being rowed in the smart white-painted barge that served Castle Island, and the sternsheets of the barge, which was being rowed by a dozen blue-shirted men, were heaped high with baggage. Colonel Revere sat just forrard of the baggage and, as the barge came close to the Warren on its way to the brig Samuel, Revere waved up at Lovell. ‘God speed us, General!’ he shouted.

‘Where have you been?’ Lovell called sharply.

‘A last night with the family, General!’ Revere shouted happily, and then was out of earshot.

‘A last night with the family?’ Todd asked in wonderment.

‘He must have misunderstood my orders,’ Lovell said uncomfortably.

‘I think you will discover, sir,’ Todd said, ‘that Colonel Revere misunderstands all orders that are not to his liking.’

‘He’s a patriot, Major,’ Lovell reproved, ‘a fine patriot!’

It took more time for the fine patriot’s baggage to be hoisted aboard the brig, then the barge itself had to be readied for the voyage. It seemed Colonel Revere wished the Castle Island barge to be part of his equipment, for her oars were lashed to the thwarts and then she was attached by a towline to the Samuel. Then, at last, as the sun climbed to its height, the fleet was ready. The capstans turned again, the great anchors broke free and, with their sails bright in the summer sun, the might of Massachusetts sailed from Boston harbour.

To captivate, to kill and to destroy.

Lieutenant John Moore sat astride a camp stool, his legs either side of an empty powder barrel that served as a table. A tent sheltered him from a blustery west wind that brought spits of rain to patter hard on the yellowed canvas. Moore’s job as paymaster for the 82nd Regiment bored him, even though the detailed work was done by Corporal Brown who had been a clerk in a Leith counting-house before becoming drunk one morning and so volunteering for the army. Moore turned the pages of the black-bound ledger that recorded the regiment’s wages. ‘Why is Private Neill having fourpence a week deducted?’ Moore asked the corporal.

‘Lost his boot-blacking, sir.’

‘Boot-blacking cannot cost that much, surely?’

‘Expensive stuff, sir,’ Corporal Brown said.

‘Plainly. I should buy some and resell it to the regiment.’

‘Major Fraser wouldn’t like that, sir, on account that his brother already does.’

Moore sighed and turned another stiff page of the thick paybook. He was supposed to check the figures, but he knew Corporal Brown would have done a meticulous job, so instead he stared out of the tent’s open flaps to the western rampart of Fort George where some gunners were making a platform for one of their cannon. The rampart was still only waist high, though the ditch beyond was now lined with wooden spikes that were more formidable to look at than negotiate. Beyond the rampart was a long stretch of cleared ground studded with raw pine stumps. That land climbed gently to the peninsula’s bluff where trees still stood thick and where tendrils of fog drifted through dark branches. Corporal Brown saw where Moore was looking. ‘Can I ask you something, sir?’

‘Whatever enters your head, Brown.’

The corporal nodded towards the timbered bluff that was little more than half a mile from the fort. ‘Why didn’t the brigadier make the fort there, sir?’

‘You would have done so, Corporal, if you had command here?’

‘It’s the highest piece of land, sir. Isn’t that where you make a fort?’

Moore frowned, not because he disapproved of the question, which, he thought, was an eminently sensible enquiry, but because he did not know how to frame the answer. To Moore it was obvious why McLean had chosen the lower position. It was to do with the interlocking of the ships’ guns and the fort’s cannon, with making the best of a difficult job, but though he knew the answer, he did not quite know how to express it. ‘From here,’ he said, ‘our guns command both the harbour entrance and the harbour itself. Suppose we were all up on that high ground? The enemy could sail past us, take the harbour and village, and then starve us out at their leisure.’

‘But if the bastards take that high ground, sir … ’ Brown said dubiously, leaving the thought unfinished.

‘If the bastards seize that high ground, Corporal,’ Moore said, ‘then they will place cannon there and fire down into the fort.’ That was the risk McLean had taken. He had given the enemy the chance to take the high ground, but only so that he could do his job better, which was to defend the harbour. ‘We don’t have enough men,’ Moore went on, ‘to defend the bluff, but I can’t think they’ll land men there. It’s much too steep.’

Yet the rebels would land somewhere. By leaning forward on his makeshift stool Moore could just make out the three sloops of war anchored in line across the harbour mouth. General McLean had suggested the enemy might try to attack that line, break it, and then land men on the beach below the fort and Moore tried to imagine such a fight. He tried to turn the wisps of fog into powder smoke, but his imagination failed. The eighteen-year-old John Moore had never experienced battle, and every day he wondered how he would respond to the smell of powder and the screams of the wounded and the chaos.

‘Lady approaching, sir,’ Corporal Brown warned Moore.

‘Lady?’ Moore asked, startled from his reverie, then saw that Bethany Fletcher was approaching the tent. He stood and ducked under the tent flap to greet her, but the sight of her face tied his tongue, so he simply stood there, awkward, hat in hand, smiling.

‘Lieutenant Moore,’ Bethany said, stopping a pace away.

‘Miss Fletcher,’ Moore managed to speak, ‘as ever, a pleasure.’ He bowed.

‘I was told to give you this, sir.’ Bethany held out a slip of paper.

The paper was a receipt for corn and fish that James Fletcher had sold to the quartermaster. ‘Four shillings!’ Moore said.

‘The quartermaster said you’d pay me, sir,’ Bethany said.

‘If Mister Reidhead so orders, then I shall obey. And it will be my pleasure to pay you, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said. He looked at the receipt again. ‘It must have been a rare quantity of corn and fish! Four shillings’ worth!’

Bethany bridled. ‘It was Mister Reidhead who decided the amount, sir.’

‘Oh, I am not suggesting that the amount is excessive,’ Moore said, reddening. If he lost his composure when faced by a girl, he thought, how would he ever face the enemy? ‘Corporal Brown!’

‘Sir?’

‘Four shillings for the lady!’

‘At once, sir,’ Brown said, coming from the tent, though instead of holding coins he brought a hammer and a chisel that he took to a nearby block of wood. He had one silver dollar that he laid on the timber, then he carefully placed the chisel’s blade to make a single radial cut in the coin. The hammer smacked down and the coin leaped up from the chisel’s bite. ‘It’s daft, sir, to slit a coin into five pieces,’ Brown grumbled, replacing the dollar. ‘Why can’t we make four pieces worth one shilling and threepence each?’

‘Because it’s easier to cut a coin into four parts rather than five?’ Moore asked.

‘Of course it is, sir. Cutting into four only needs a wide chisel blade and two cuts,’ Brown grumbled, then hammered another cut into the dollar, slicing away a wedge of silver that he pushed across the chopping block towards Bethany. ‘There, miss, one shilling.’

Bethany took the sharp-edged slice. ‘Is this how you pay the soldiers?’ she asked Moore.

‘Oh, we don’t get paid, miss,’ Corporal Brown answered, ‘except in promissory notes.’

‘Give Miss Fletcher the remainder of the coin,’ Moore suggested, ‘and she will have her four shillings and you need cut no more.’ There was a shortage of coinage so the brigadier had decreed that each silver dollar was worth five shillings. ‘Stop staring!’ Moore called sharply to the gunners who had paused in their work to admire Beth Fletcher. Moore picked up the ravaged dollar and held it out to Bethany. ‘There Miss Fletcher, your fee.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Bethany put the shilling slice back on the block. ‘So how many promissory notes do you have to write each week?’ she asked.

‘How many?’ Moore was momentarily puzzled by the question. ‘Oh, we don’t issue notes as such, Miss Fletcher, but we do record in the ledger what wages are owed. The specie is kept for more important duties, like paying you for corn and fish.’

‘And you must need a lot of corn and fish for two whole regiments,’ she said. ‘What is that? Two thousand men?’

‘If only we were so numerous,’ Moore said with a smile. ‘In truth, Miss Fletcher, the 74th musters just four hundred and forty men and we Hamiltons number scarce half that. And we hear now that the rebels are readying a fleet and an army to assail us!’

‘And you think that report is true?’ Bethany asked.

‘The fleet, perhaps, is already on its way.’

Bethany stared past the three sloops to where wisps of mist drifted across the wide Penobscot River. ‘I pray, sir,’ she said, ‘that there will be no fighting.’

‘And I pray otherwise,’ Moore said.

‘Really?’ Bethany sounded surprised. She turned to look at the young lieutenant as if she had never really noticed him before. ‘You want there to be a battle?’

‘Soldiering is my chosen profession, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said, and felt very fraudulent as he said it, ‘and battle is the fire in which soldiers are tempered.’

‘The world would be better without such fire,’ Bethany said.

‘True, no doubt,’ Moore said, ‘but we did not strike the flint on the iron, Miss Fletcher. The rebels did that, they set the fire and our task is to extinguish the flame.’ Bethany said nothing, and Moore decided he had sounded pompous. ‘You and your brother should come to Doctor Calef’s house in the evening,’ he said.

‘We should, sir?’ Bethany asked, looking again at Moore.

‘There is music in the garden when the weather permits, and dancing.’

‘I don’t dance, sir,’ Bethany said.

‘Oh, it is the officers who dance,’ Moore said hastily, ‘the sword dance.’ He suppressed an urge to demonstrate a capering step. ‘You would be most welcome,’ he said instead.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Bethany said, then pocketed the ravaged dollar and turned away.

‘Miss Fletcher!’ Moore called after her.

She turned back. ‘Sir?’

But Moore had no idea what to say, indeed he had surprised himself by calling after her in the first place. She was gazing at him, waiting. ‘Thank you for the supplies,’ he managed to say.

‘It is business, Lieutenant,’ Beth said evenly.

‘Even so, thank you,’ Moore said, confused.

‘Does that mean you’d sell to the Yankees too, miss?’ Corporal Brown asked cheerfully.

‘We might give to them,’ Beth said, and Moore could not tell whether she was teasing or not. She looked at him, gave a half-smile and walked away.

‘A rare good-looking lassie,’ Corporal Brown said.

‘Is she?’ Moore asked most unconvincingly. He was gazing down the slope to where the settlement’s houses were spread along the harbour shore. He tried to imagine men fighting there, ranks of men blasting musket fire, the cannons thundering the sky with noise, the harbour filled with half-sunken ships, and he thought how sad it would be to die amidst that chaos without ever having held a girl like Bethany in his arms.

‘Are we finished with the ledgers, sir?’ Brown asked.

‘We are finished with the ledgers,’ Moore said.

He wondered if he really was a soldier. He wondered if he would have the courage to face battle. He stared after Bethany and felt lost.

‘Reluctance, sir, reluctance. Gross reluctance,’ Colonel Jonathan Mitchell, who commanded the Cumberland County militia, glared at Brigadier-General Peleg Wadsworth as though it was all Wadsworth’s fault. ‘Culpable reluctance.’

‘You conscripted?’ Wadsworth asked.

‘Of course we goddamn conscripted. We had to conscript! Half the reluctant bastards are conscripted. We didn’t get volunteers, just whining excuses, so we declared martial law, sir, and I sent troops to every township and rounded the bastards up, but too many ran and skulked, sir. They are reluctant, I tell you, reluctant!’

It had taken the fleet two days to sail to Townsend where the militia had been ordered to muster. General Lovell and Brigadier-General Wadsworth had been hoping for fifteen hundred men, but fewer than nine hundred waited for embarkation. ‘Eight hundred and ninety-four, sir, to be precise,’ Marston, Lovell’s secretary, informed his master.

‘Dear God,’ Lovell said.

‘It surely isn’t too late to request a Continental battalion?’ Wadsworth suggested.

‘Unthinkable,’ Lovell said instantly. The State of Massachusetts had declared itself capable of ejecting the British on its own, and the General Court would not look happily on a request for help from General Washington’s troops. The Court, indeed, had been reluctant to accept Commodore Saltonstall’s aid, except that the Warren was so obviously a formidable warship and to ignore its presence in Massachusetts waters would have been perverse. ‘We do have the commodore’s marines,’ Lovell pointed out, ‘and I’m assured the commodore will willingly release them to land service at Majabigwaduce.’

‘We shall need them,’ Wadsworth said. He had inspected the three militia battalions and had been appalled by what he found. Some men looked fit, young and eager, but far too many were either too old, too young or too sick. One man had even paraded on crutches. ‘You can’t fight,’ Wadsworth had told the man.

‘Which is what I told the soldiers when they came to get us,’ the man said. He was grey-bearded, gaunt and wild-haired.

‘Then go home,’ Wadsworth said.

‘How?’

‘Same way you got here,’ Wadsworth had said, despair making him irritable. A few paces down the line he found a curly-haired boy with cheeks that had never felt a razor. ‘What’s your name, son?’ Wadsworth asked.

‘Israel, sir.’

‘Israel what?’

‘Trask, sir.’

‘How old are you, Israel Trask?’

‘Fifteen, sir,’ the boy said, trying to stand straighter. His voice had not broken and Wadsworth guessed he was scarcely fourteen. ‘Three years in the army, sir,’ Trask said.

‘Three years?’ Wadsworth asked in disbelief.

‘Fifer with the infantry, sir,’ Trask said. He had a sackcloth bag hanging at his back and a slender wooden pipe protruded from the bag’s neck.

‘You resigned from the infantry?’ Wadsworth asked, amused.

‘I was taken prisoner, sir,’ Trask said, evidently offended by the question, ‘and exchanged. And here I am, sir, ready to fight the syphilitic bastards again.’

If a boy had used that language in Wadsworth’s classroom it would have provoked a caning, but these were strange times and so Wadsworth just patted the boy’s shoulder before walking on down the long line. Some men looked at him resentfully and he supposed they were the men who had been pressed by the militia. Maybe two thirds looked healthy and young enough for soldiering, but the rest were miserable specimens. ‘I thought you had a thousand men enrolled in Cumberland County alone?’ Wadsworth remarked to Colonel Mitchell.

‘Ha,’ Mitchell said.

‘Ha?’ Wadsworth responded coldly.

‘The Continental Army takes our best. We find a dozen decent recruits and the Continentals take six away and the other six run off to join the privateers.’ Mitchell put a plug of tobacco in his mouth. ‘I wish to God we had a thousand, but Boston doesn’t send their wages and we don’t have rations. And there are some places we can’t recruit.’

‘Loyalist places?’

‘Loyalist places,’ Mitchell had agreed grimly.

Wadsworth had walked on down the line, noting a one-eyed man who had some kind of nervous affliction that made his facial muscles quiver. The man grinned, and Wadsworth shuddered. ‘Does he have his senses?’ he asked Colonel Mitchell.

‘Enough to shoot straight,’ Mitchell said dourly.

‘Half don’t even have muskets!’

The fleet had brought five hundred muskets from the Boston Armory that would be rented to the militia. Most men at least knew how to use them because in these eastern counties folk expected to kill their own food and to skin the prey for clothing. They wore deerskin jerkins and trousers, deerskin shoes and carried deerskin pouches and packs. Wadsworth inspected them all and reckoned he would be lucky if five hundred would prove useful men, then he borrowed a horse from the parson and gave them a speech from the saddle.

‘The British,’ he called, ‘have invaded Massachusetts! They must despise us, because they have sent few men and few ships! They believe we are powerless to evict them, but we are going to show them that Massachusetts men will defend their land! We will embark on our fleet!’ He waved towards the masts showing above the southern rooftops. ‘And we shall fight them, we shall defeat them and we shall evict them! You will return home with laurels on your brows!’ It was not the most inspiring speech, Wadsworth thought, but he was encouraged when men cheered it. The cheer was late in starting, and it was feeble at first, but then the paraded ranks became enthusiastic.

The parson, a genial man about ten years older than Wadsworth, helped the brigadier down from the saddle. ‘I trust they will have laurels on their brows,’ the parson said, ‘but most would prefer beefsteak in their stomachs.’

‘I trust they find that as well,’ Wadsworth said.

The Reverend Jonathan Murray took the horse’s reins and led it towards his house. ‘They may not look impressive, General, but they’re good men!’

‘Who needed pressing?’ Wadsworth enquired drily.

‘Only a few,’ Murray answered. ‘They worry about their families, their crops. Get them to Majabigwaduce and they’ll serve willingly enough.’

‘The blind, the halt and the lame?’

‘Such men were good enough for our Lord,’ Murray said, evidently seriously. ‘And what if a few are half-blind? A man needs only one eye to aim a musket.’

General Lovell had quartered himself in the parson’s ample house and, that evening, he convened all the senior officers of the expedition. Murray possessed a fine round table, made of maple wood, about which he normally led studies of the scripture, but which that night served to accommodate the naval and land commanders. Those who could not find a chair stood at the edges of the room, which was lit by eight candles in pewter sticks, grouped in the table’s centre. Moths beat about the flames. General Lovell had taken the parson’s high-backed chair and he gently rapped the table for silence. ‘This is the first time,’ Lovell said, ‘that we’ve all gathered together. You probably all know each other, but permit me to make introductions.’ He went around the table, naming Wadsworth first, then Commodore Saltonstall and the three colonels of the militia regiments. Major Jeremiah Hill, the expedition’s adjutant -general, nodded solemnly as his name was pronounced, as did the two brigade majors, William Todd and Gawen Brown. The quartermaster, Colonel Tyler, sat next to Doctor Eliphalet Downer, the Surgeon General. ‘I trust we won’t require Doctor Downer’s services,’ Lovell said with a smile, then indicated the men who stood at the room’s edges. Captain John Welch of the Continental Marines glowered next to Captain Hoysteed Hacker of the Continental Navy who commanded the Providence while Captain Philip Brown commanded the brig Diligent. Six privateer captains had come to the house and Lovell named them all, then smiled at Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who stood beside the door. ‘And last, but by no means least, our commander of the artillery train, Colonel Revere.’

‘Whose services,’ Revere said, ‘I trust you will require!’

A murmur of laughter sounded in the room, though Wadsworth noticed the look of grim distaste on Todd’s bespectacled face. The major glanced once at Revere, then studiously avoided looking at his enemy.

‘I also requested the Reverend Murray to attend this council,’ Lovell went on when the small laughter had subsided, ‘and I now ask him to open our proceedings with a word of prayer.’

Men clasped their hands and bowed their heads as Murray entreated Almighty God to pour His blessings on the men and ships now assembled in Townsend. Wadsworth had his head bowed, but sneaked a sidelong look at Revere who, he noticed, had not lowered his head, but was staring balefully towards Todd. Wadsworth closed his eyes again. ‘Give these men of Thy strength, Lord,’ the Reverend Murray prayed, ‘and bring these warriors safe home, victorious, to their wives, and to their children and to their families. We ask all this in Thy holy name, O Lord. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ the assembled officers echoed.

‘Thank you, Reverend,’ Lovell said, smiling happily. He took a breath and looked about the room, then stated the reason they were gathered together. ‘The British have landed at Majabigwaduce, as you know, and our orders are to captivate, kill or destroy them. Major Todd, perhaps you will be good enough to tell us what we know of the enemy’s dispositions?’

William Todd, his spectacles reflecting the candlelight, shuffled papers. ‘We have received intelligence,’ he said in his dry voice, ‘from patriots in the Penobscot region. Notably from Colonel Buck, but from others too. We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops of war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.’ Todd studied the earnest faces around the table. ‘McLean,’ he went on, ‘is an experienced soldier. Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment.’

‘A mercenary?’ Commodore Saltonstall asked in a voice that reeked of scorn.

‘I understand he was seconded to Portuguese service by the King of England,’ Todd said, ‘so no, not a mercenary. Of late he has been Governor of Halifax and is now entrusted with the forces at Majabigwaduce. My apprehension of him,’ Todd leaned back as if to suggest that he was speculating now, ‘is that he is an old man who was put out to pasture at Halifax and whose best days are, perhaps, behind him.’ He shrugged as if to express uncertainty. ‘He leads two regiments, neither of which has seen recent service. Indeed, his own regiment is newly raised and is therefore entirely inexperienced. The notional complement of a British regiment is one thousand men, but rarely do the real numbers exceed eight hundred, so a reasonable calculation suggests that our enemy comprises fifteen or sixteen hundred infantry with artillery support and, of course, the Royal Marines and the crews of the three ships.’ Todd unrolled a large sheet of paper on which was drawn a crude map of Majabigwaduce and, as the men craned forward to see the plan, he showed where the defences were situated. He began with the fort, marked as a square. ‘As of Wednesday,’ he said, ‘the walls were still low enough for a man to jump. The work goes slowly, we hear.’ He tapped the three sloops that formed a barrier just inside the harbour entrance. ‘Their broadsides face Penobscot Bay,’ he said, ‘and are supported by land batteries. There is one such battery here,’ he pointed to Cross Island, ‘and another on the peninsula here. Those two batteries will enfilade the harbour entrance.’

‘None on Dyce’s Head?’ Hoysteed Hacker asked.

‘Dyce’s Head?’ Lovell asked, and Hacker, who knew the coast well, pointed to the harbour’s southern side and explained that the entrance was dominated by a high bluff that bore the name Dyce’s Head. ‘If I recall rightly,’ Hacker went on, ‘that ground is the highest on the whole peninsula.’