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!”
“I never doubted it, Mowat, never doubted it,” McLean said, “not for a moment.” He touched his hat to Doctor Calef, then turned back to Mowat. “And how are your fine fellows this morning, Mowat?”
“Working, McLean, working!”
McLean gestured at his two companions. “Doctor, allow me to present Lieutenant Campbell of the 74th,” McLean paused to allow the dark-kilted Campbell to offer the doctor a small bow, “and Paymaster Moore of the 82nd.” John Moore offered a more elegant bow, Calef raised his hat in response and McLean turned to gaze at the three sloops with the longboats nuzzling their flanks. “Your longboats are all busy, Mowat?”
“They’re busy, and so they damn well should be. Idleness encourages the devil.”
“So it does,” Calef agreed.
“And there was I seeking an idle moment,” McLean said happily.
“You need a boat?” Mowat asked.
“I’d not take your matelots from their duties,” the brigadier said, then looked past Mowat to where a young man and woman were hauling a heavy wooden rowboat down to the incoming tide. “Isn’t that the young fellow who piloted us into the harbor?”
Doctor Calef turned. “James Fletcher,” he said grimly.
“Is he loyal?” McLean asked.
“He’s a damned light-headed fool,” Calef said, and then, grudgingly, “but his father was a loyal man.”
“Then like father, like son, I trust,” McLean said and turned to Moore. “John? Ask Mister Fletcher if he can spare us an hour?” It was evident that Fletcher and his sister were planning to row to their fishing boat, the
Moore went on his errand and McLean watched as another cannon barrel was hoisted aloft from the
“Phoebe Perkins’s child contracted a fever last night,” Calef said brutally.
“I trust she will live?” McLean said.
“God’s will be done,” Calef said in a tone which suggested God might not care very much. “They’ve named her Temperance.”
“Temperance! Oh dear, poor girl, poor girl. I shall pray for her,” McLean said, and pray for ourselves too, he thought, but did not say.
Because the rebels were coming.
* * *
Peleg Wadsworth felt awkward as he led Lieutenant-Colonel Revere into the shadowed vastness of one of the armory’s stores where sparrows bickered in the high beams above boxes of muskets and bales of cloth and stacks of iron-hooped barrels. It was true that Wadsworth outranked Revere, but he was almost fifteen years younger than the colonel and he felt a vague inadequacy in the presence of a man of such obvious competence. Revere had a reputation as an engraver, as a silversmith, and as a metal-worker, and it showed in his hands, which were strong and fire-scarred, the hands of a man who could make and mend, the hands of a practical man. Peleg Wadsworth had been a teacher, and a good one, but he had known the scorn of his pupils’ parents who reckoned their children’s futures lay not with grammar or in fractions, but in the command of tools and the working of metal, wood, or stone. Wadsworth could construe Latin and Greek, he was intimate with the works of Shakespeare and Montaigne, but faced with a broken chair he felt helpless. Revere, he knew, was the opposite. Give Revere a broken chair and he would mend it competently so that, like the man himself, it was strong, sturdy, and dependable.
Or was he dependable? That was the question that had brought Wadsworth to this armory, and he wished that the errand had never been given him. He felt tongue-tied when Revere stopped and turned to him at the storeroom’s center, but then a scuffling sound from behind a pile of broken muskets gave Wadsworth a welcome distraction. “We’re not alone?” he asked.
“Those are rats, General,” Revere said with amusement, “rats. They do like the grease on cartridges, they do.”
“I thought cartridges were stored in the Public Magazine?”
“They keep enough here for proofing, General, and the rats do like them. We call them redcoats on account they’re the enemy.”
“Cats will surely defeat them?”
“We have cats, General, but it’s a hard-fought contest. Good American cats and patriot terriers against dirty British rats,” Revere said. “I assume you want reassurance on the artillery train, General?”
“I’m sure all is in order.”
“Oh, it is, you can rely on that. As of now, General, we have two eighteen-pounders, three nine-pounders, one howitzer, and four little ones.”
“Small howitzers?”
“Four-pounder cannons, General, and I wouldn’t use them to shoot rats. You need something heavier-built like the French four-pounders. And if you have influence, General, which I’m sure you do, ask the Board of War to release more eighteen-pounders.”
Wadsworth nodded. “I’ll make a note of that,” he promised.
“You have your guns, General, I assure you,” Revere said, “with all their sidearms, powder, and shot. I’ve hardly seen Castle Island these last few days on account of readying the train.”
“Yes, indeed, Castle Island,” Wadsworth said. He towered a head over Revere, which gave him an excuse not to meet the colonel’s eyes, though he was aware that Revere was staring at him intently as if daring Wadsworth to give him bad news. “You command at Castle Island?” Wadsworth asked, not because he needed confirmation, but out of desperation to say anything.
“You didn’t need to come here to find that out,” Revere said with amusement, “but yes, General, I command the Massachusetts Artillery Regiment and, because most of our guns are mounted on the island, I command there too. And you, General, will command at Majajuce?”
“Majajuce?” Wadsworth said, then realized Revere meant Majabigwaduce. “I am second in command,” he
