The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

“I hope so,” Wadsworth said, “but make sure you’re all aboard by nightfall.”

“Can I bring her?” the man asked. He had his arm round one of the tavern’s whores, a pretty young red- haired girl who already looked drunk.

Wadsworth ignored the question, instead leading Dennis to an empty table at the back of the room, which was alive with conversation, hope, and optimism. A burly man in a salt-stained sailor’s coat stood and thumped a table with his fist. He raised a tankard when the room had fallen silent. “Here’s to victory at Bagaduce!” he shouted. “Death to the Tories, and to the day when we carry fat George’s head through Boston on the point of a bayonet!”

“Much is expected of us,” Wadsworth said when the cheers had ended.

“King George might not oblige us with his head,” Dennis said, amused, “but I’m sure we shall not disappoint the other expectations.” He waited as Wadsworth ordered oyster stew and ale. “Did you know that folk are buying shares in the expedition?”

“Shares?”

“The privateer owners, sir, are selling the plunder they expect to take. I assume you haven’t invested?”

“I was never a speculator,” Wadsworth said. “How does it work?”

“Well, Captain Thomas of the Vengeance, sir, expects to capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of plunder, and he’s offering a hundred shares in that expectation for fifteen pounds apiece.”

“Good Lord! And what if he doesn’t capture fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of material?”

“Then the speculators lose, sir.”

“I suppose they must, yes. And people are buying?”

“Many! I believe the Vengeance’s shares are trading upwards of twenty-two pounds each now.”

“What a world we live in,” Wadsworth said, amused. “Tell me,” he pushed the jug of ale towards Dennis, “what you were doing before you joined the marines?”

“I was studying, sir.”

“Harvard?”

“Yale.”

“Then I didn’t beat you nearly often enough or hard enough,” Wadsworth said.

Dennis laughed. “My ambition is the law.”

“A noble ambition.”

“I hope so, sir. When the British are defeated I shall go back to my studies.”

“I see you carry them with you,” Wadsworth said, nodding towards a book-shaped lump in the tail of the lieutenant’s coat, “or is that the scriptures?”

“Beccaria, sir,” Dennis said, pulling the book out of his tail pocket. “I’m reading him for pleasure, or should I say enlightenment?”

“Both, I hope. I’ve heard of him,” Wadsworth said, “and very much want to read him.”

“You’ll permit me to lend you the book when I’ve finished it?”

“That would be kind,” Wadsworth said. He opened the book, On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria, newly translated from the Italian, and he saw the minutely written penciled notes on the margins of almost every page, and he thought how sad it was that a sterling young man like Dennis should need to go to war. Then he thought that though the rain might indeed fall on the just and unjust alike, it was unthinkable that God would allow decent men who fought in a noble cause to lose. That was a comforting reflection. “Doesn’t Beccaria have strange ideas?” he asked.

“He believes judicial execution is both wrong and ineffective, sir.”

“Really?”

“He argues the case cogently, sir.”

“He’ll need to!”

They ate, and afterwards walked the few paces to the harbor, where the ships’ masts made a forest. Wadsworth looked for the sloop that would carry him to battle, but he could not make the Sally out amongst the tangle of hulls and masts and rigging. A gull cried overhead, a dog ran along the wharf with a cod’s head in its mouth, and a legless beggar shuffled towards him. “Wounded at Saratoga, sir,” the beggar said and Wadsworth handed the man a shilling.

“Can I hail you a boat, sir?” Dennis asked.

“That would be kind.”

Peleg Wadsworth gazed at the fleet and remembered his morning prayers. There was so much confidence in Boston, so much hope and so many expectations, but war, he knew from experience, truly was the devil’s business.

And it was time to go to war.

“This is not seemly,” Doctor Calef said.

Brigadier McLean, standing beside the doctor, ignored the protest.

“It is not seemly!” Calef said louder.

“It is necessary,” Brigadier McLean retorted in a tone harsh enough to startle the doctor. The troops had worshipped in the open air that Sunday morning, the Scottish voices singing strongly in the blustery wind that fetched slaps of rain to dapple the harbor. The Reverend Campbell, the 82nd’s chaplain, had preached from a text in Isaiah: “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan,” a text that McLean accepted was relevant, but he wondered whether he had a sword strong and great and sore enough to punish the troops he knew would surely come to dislodge him. The rain was falling more steadily now, drenching the ridgetop where the fort was being made and where the two regiments paraded in a hollow square. “These men are new to war,” McLean explained to Calef, “and most have never seen a battle, so they need to learn the consequences of disobedience.” He walked towards the square’s center where a Saint Andrew’s cross had been erected. A young man, stripped to the waist, was tied to the cross with his back exposed to the wind and rain.

A sergeant pushed a folded strip of leather between the young man’s teeth. “Bite on that, boy, and take your punishment like a man.”

McLean raised his voice so that every soldier could hear him. “Private Macintosh attempted to desert. In so doing he broke his oath to his king, to his country, and to God. For that he will be punished, as will any man here who tries to follow his example.”

“I don’t care if he’s punished,” Calef said when the brigadier rejoined him, “but must it be done on the Lord’s day? Can it not wait till tomorrow?”

“No,” McLean said, “it cannot.” He nodded to the sergeant. “Do your duty.”

Two drummer boys would do the whipping while a third beat the strokes on his drum. Private Macintosh had been caught trying to sneak across the low, marshy neck that joined Majabigwaduce to the mainland. That was the only route off the peninsula, unless a man stole a boat or, at a pinch, swam across the harbor, and McLean had placed a picquet in the trees close to the neck. They had brought Macintosh back and he had been sentenced to two hundred lashes, the severest punishment McLean had ever ordered, but he had few enough men as it was and he needed to deter others from desertion.

Desertion was a problem. Most men were content enough, but there were always a few who saw the promise of a better existence in the vastness of North America. Life here was a great deal easier than in the Highlands of Scotland, and Macintosh had made his run and now he would be punished.

“One!” the sergeant called.

“Lay it on hard,” McLean told the two drummer boys, “you’re not here to tickle him.”

“Two!”

McLean let his mind wander as the leather whips criss-crossed the man’s back. He had seen many floggings in his years of service, and had ordered executions too, because floggings and executions were the enforcers of duty. He saw many of the soldiers staring aghast at the sight, so the punishment was probably working. McLean did not enjoy punishment parades, no one in his right mind would, but they were unavoidable and, with luck, Macintosh would reform into a decent soldier.

And what Leviathan, McLean wondered, would Macintosh have to fight? A schooner captained by a loyalist had put into Majabigwaduce a week before with a report that the rebels in Boston were assembling a fleet and an army. “We were told there were forty or more ships coming your way, sir,” the schooner’s captain had told him,