“and they’re gathering upwards of three thousand men.”
Maybe that was true and maybe not. The schooner’s captain had not visited Boston, just heard a rumor in Nantucket, and rumor, McLean knew, could inflate a company into a battalion and a battalion into an army. Nevertheless he had taken the information seriously enough to send the schooner back southwards with a despatch to Sir Henry Clinton in New York. The despatch merely said that McLean expected to be attacked soon and could not hold out without reinforcements. Why, he wondered, had he been given so few men and ships? If the crown wanted this piece of country, then why not send an adequate force? “Thirty-eight!” the sergeant shouted. There was blood on Macintosh’s back now, blood diluted by rain, but still enough blood to trickle down and darken the waistband of his kilt. “Thirty-nine,” the sergeant bellowed, “and lay it on hard!”
McLean resented the time this punishment parade stole from his preparations. He knew time was short and the fort was nowhere near completed. The trench about the four walls was scarcely two feet deep, the ramparts themselves not much higher. It was an excuse for a fort, a pathetic little earthwork, and he needed both men and time. He had offered wages to any civilian who was willing to work and, when insufficient men came forward, he sent patrols to impress labor.
“Sixty-one!” the sergeant shouted. Macintosh was whimpering now, the sound stifled by the leather gag. He shifted his weight and blood squelched in one shoe, then spilled over the shoe’s edge.
“He’ll not take much more,” Calef growled. Calef was replacing the battalion surgeon who was sick with a fever.
“Keep going!” McLean said.
“You want to kill him?”
“I want the battalion,” McLean said, “to be more frightened of the lash than of the enemy.”
“Sixty-two!” the sergeant shouted.
“Tell me,” McLean suddenly turned on the doctor, “why is the rumor being spread that I plan to hang any civilian who supports the rebellion?”
Calef looked uncomfortable. He flinched as the whipped man whimpered again, then looked defiantly at the general. “To persuade such disaffected people to leave the region, of course. You don’t want rebels lurking in the woods hereabouts.”
“Nor do I want a reputation as a hangman! We did not come here to persecute folk, but to persuade them to return to their proper allegiance. I would be grateful, Doctor, if a counterrumor was propagated. That I have no intentions of hanging any man, rebel or not.”
“God’s blood, man, I can see bone!” the doctor protested, ignoring McLean’s strictures. The whimpers had become moans. McLean saw that the drummer boys were using less strength now, not because their arms were weakening, but out of pity, and neither he nor the sergeant corrected them.
McLean stopped the punishment at a hundred lashes. “Cut him down, Sergeant,” he ordered, “and carry him to the doctor’s house.” He turned away from the bloody mess on the cross. “Any of you who follow Macintosh’s example will follow him here! Now dismiss the men to their duties.”
The civilians who had volunteered or been conscripted for labor trudged up the hill. One man, tall and gaunt, with wild dark hair and angry eyes pushed his way past McLean’s aides to confront the general. “You will be punished for this!” the man snarled.
“For what?” McLean inquired.
“For working on the Sabbath!” the man said. He towered over McLean. “In all my days I have never worked on the Sabbath, never! You make me a sinner!”
McLean held his temper. A dozen or so other men had paused and were watching the gaunt man, and McLean suspected they would join the protest and refuse to desecrate a Sunday by working if he yielded. “So why will you not work on a Sunday, sir?” McLean asked.
“It is the Lord’s day, and we are commanded to keep it holy.” The man jabbed a finger at the brigadier, stopping just short of striking McLean’s chest. “It is God’s commandment!”
“And Christ commanded that you render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” McLean retorted, “and today Caesar demands you make a rampart. But I will accommodate you, sir, I will accommodate you by not paying you. Work is paid labor, but today you will freely offer me your assistance which, sir, is a Christian act.”
“I will not’” the man began.
“Lieutenant Moore!” McLean raised his blackthorn stick to summon the lieutenant, though the gesture looked threatening and the gaunt man took a backwards step. “Call back the drummer boys!” McLean called, “I need another man whipped!” He turned his gaze back to the man. “You either assist me, sir,” he said quietly, “or I shall scourge you.”
The tall man glanced at the empty Saint Andrew’s cross. “I shall pray for your destruction,” he promised, but the fire had gone from his voice. He gave McLean a last defiant look, then turned away.
The civilians worked. They raised the wall of the fort another foot by laying logs along the low earthen berm. Some men cut down more trees, opening fields of fire for the fort, while others used picks and shovels to sink a well in the fort’s northeastern bastion. McLean ordered one long spruce trunk to be trimmed and stripped of its bark, then a sailor from the
Highlanders of the 74th started on a smaller earthwork, a gun emplacement, which they made close to the shore and facing the harbor mouth. The soil was easier near the beach and they swiftly threw up a crescent of earth that they reinforced with stones and logs. Other logs were split to make platforms for the cannon that would face the harbor mouth. A similar battery was being constructed on Cross Island so that an enemy ship, daring the harbor mouth, would face Captain Mowat’s three broadsides and artillery fire from the bastions on either side of the entrance.
The rain lifted and fog drifted over the wide river reach. The new flag flew bright above Majabigwaduce, but for how long, McLean wondered, for how long?
Monday dawned fine in Boston. The wind came from the southwest and the sky was clear. “The glass rises,” Commodore Saltonstall announced to General Solomon Lovell on board the Continental frigate
“And God grant us a fair voyage and a triumphant return,” Lovell answered.
“Amen,” Saltonstall said grudgingly, then snapped out orders that signals should be made ordering the fleet to raise anchor and follow the flagship out of the harbor.
Solomon Lovell, almost fifty years old, towered over the Commodore. Lovell was a farmer, a legislator, and a patriot, and it was reckoned in Massachusetts that Solomon Lovell had been well named, for he enjoyed a reputation as a wise, judicious, and sensible man. His neighbors in Weymouth had elected him to the Assembly in Boston where he was well-liked because, in a fractious legislature, Lovell was a peacemaker. He possessed an unquenchable optimism that fairness and the willingness to see another man’s point of view would bring mutual prosperity, while his height and strong build, the latter earned by years of hard labor on his farm, added to the impression of utter dependability. His face was long and firm-jawed, while his eyes crinkled with easy amusement. His thick dark hair grayed at the temples, giving him a most distinguished appearance, and so it was no wonder that his fellow lawmakers had seen fit to give Solomon Lovell high rank in the Massachusetts Militia. Lovell, they reckoned, could be trusted. A few malcontents grumbled that his military experience was next to nothing, but Lovell’s supporters, and they were many, believed Solomon Lovell was just the man for the task. He got things done. And his lack of experience was offset by his deputy, Peleg Wadsworth, who had fought under General Washington’s command, and by Commodore Saltonstall, the naval commander, who was an even more experienced officer. Lovell would never be short of expert advice to hone his solid judgment.
The great anchor cable inched on board. The sailors at the capstan were chanting as they tramped round and round. “Here’s a rope!” a bosun shouted.
“To hang the Pope!” the men responded.
“And a chunk of cheese!”
“To choke him!”
