The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

had made three batteries to cover the harbor entrance. There was one on Cross Island, the large Half Moon Battery down on the shore, and a third, much smaller, on the high bluff above the harbor mouth, but none of those batteries was a fort. They were emplacements for cannon that were there to fire at the enemy ships, but not one of the earthworks could withstand an assault by a company of determined infantry. There had simply not been enough time, and now the enemy was here.

Many years before, while fighting for the Dutch, McLean had been captured by the French and held prisoner. That had not been unpleasant. The French were generous and had treated him with courtesy. He wondered how the Americans would behave and feared, as he ate the tough, undercooked beans, that he was about to find out.

Tomorrow.

Marine Lieutenant Downs of the Tyrannicide took men ashore on the northernmost of the Fox Islands. It was fully dark by the time their longboat grounded on a shingle beach beneath the black shapes of a half-dozen houses that stood on the higher ground. Small lights shone from behind shutters and around doorways and, as the marines dragged their boat higher up the beach, a voice hailed from the darkness. “Who are you?”

“His Majesty’s Royal Marines!” Downs called back. The Fox Islands were notorious for being loyalist and Downs did not want one of his men being killed or wounded by some malevolent Tory shooting out of the night. “A relief fleet for Majabigwaduce!”

“What do you want here?” the voice called, still suspicious.

“Fresh water, news, a couple of women would be welcome too!”

Boots sounded on the shingle and a tall man emerged from the shadows. He carried a musket that he slung on his shoulder when he saw the dozen men about the longboat. He had noticed the white crossbelts, but in the dark of night he could not see that their coats were green and not red. “Strange time to be looking for water,” he said.

“We’re after water and news,” Downs said cheerfully. “General McLean is still at Majabigwaduce?”

“No one’s kicked him out yet.”

“Have you seen him?”

“I was there yesterday.”

“Then, sir, you will do me the honor of accompanying me to my ship,” Downs said. His marines, like those of the Hazard, had been sent to find men who had seen McLean’s fortifications.

The islander took a pace backwards. “What ship are you from?” he asked, still thoroughly suspicious.

“Take him,” Downs ordered and two of his marines seized the man, confiscated his musket, and dragged him back to the longboat. “Don’t make a sound,” Lieutenant Downs warned the man, “or we’ll stove your skull in like an egg.”

“Bastards,” the man said, then grunted as a marine punched him in the belly.

“We are patriots,” Downs corrected him and, leaving two men to guard the prisoner, went to find more loyalists who could tell the expedition just what waited for them upriver.

Dawn brought a thick fog into which Lieutenant John Moore went with twenty men to the small battery that McLean had placed high on Majabigwaduce’s bluff. The battery possessed three six-pounder cannons mounted on naval carriages and served by sailors from HMS North, commanded by a midshipman who, to the eighteen-year-old Moore, looked no older than twelve or thirteen. “I’m fifteen, sir,” the midshipman responded to Moore’s inquiry, “and three years in the Navy, sir.”

“I’m John Moore,” Moore introduced himself.

“Pearce Fenistone, sir, and honored to make your acquaintance.” Fenistone’s battery was no fortress, merely an emplacement for the guns. A space had been cleared in the trees, a patch of ground leveled, and a platform of split logs laid for the carriages. Four trees had been deliberately left unfelled and the gunners used their trunks as anchors for the cannons’ breeching ropes and train-tackle. A ship’s cannon was restrained by its breeching ropes, which were seized to the hull and stopped a gun recoiling across a deck, while the train-tackle was used to run the gun back into position, and Fenistone’s men were using the tree trunks to tame their beasts. “It does check the recoil, sir,” Fenistone said when Moore admired the ingenious arrangement, “though we do get showered with pine needles every time we fire.” The battery had no parapet and its ready magazine was merely a shallow pit dug at the rear of the makeshift decking. Two gratings were piled with round shot beside which were piles of what looked like children’s rope quoits. “Ring-wadding, sir,” Fenistone explained.

“Ring-wadding?”

“The guns point downwards, sir, and the ring-wads hold the balls in the barrel. We’d look a little foolish if we loaded and the balls rolled out before we fired. It’s most embarrassing when that happens.”

The battery had been placed above the harbor’s mouth rather than at the western edge of the bluff. The six- pounders, which had been taken from the North’s portside broadside, were too light to have much effect at long range, but if the enemy ships attempted to enter the harbor they would be forced to sail beneath the three cannon that could fire down onto their decks. “I’d wish for heavier metal, sir,” Fenistone said wistfully.

“And a proper fort to defend your guns?”

“In case their infantry attacks?” Fenistone asked. “Well, fighting infantry isn’t our job, sir, it’s yours.” The midshipman smiled. For a fifteen-year-old, Moore thought, Fenistone was wonderfully confident. “Captain Mowat gave us strict instructions what to do if we are attacked by land, sir,” he went on.

“Which is?”

“Spike the guns and run like buggery, sir,” Fenistone answered with a grin, “and get the gunners back to the North, sir.” He slapped at a mosquito.

Moore looked down at Mowat’s ships, which were wreathed in mist. The three sloops looked formidable enough in their line, though he knew they were lightly armed compared to most warships. Behind them, in a parallel line, were the three transport ships, which looked far larger and more threatening, but in truth were defenseless hulls, merely there to act as an obstacles in the event the enemy managed to pierce Mowat’s first line.

“Are they coming today, sir?” Fenistone asked anxiously.

“So we believe,” Moore said.

“We’ll give them a warm British welcome, sir.”

“I’m sure you will,” Moore said with a smile, then beckoned at his men to stop gawping at the ships’ guns and to follow him westwards through the trees.

He stopped at the brink of the bluff. Ahead of him was the wide Penobscot River beneath its thinning pall of fog. Moore stared southwards, but could see nothing stirring in the distant whiteness. “So they are coming today, sir?” Sergeant McClure asked.

“We must assume so.”

“And our job, sir?”

“Is to take post here, Sergeant, in case the rascals attempt a landing.” Moore looked down the steep slope and thought the rebels would be foolish to attempt a landing on the narrow stony beach at the bluff’s foot. He supposed they would land farther north, perhaps beyond the neck, and he wished he had been posted on the isthmus. There would be fighting and he had never fought; part of him feared that baptism and another part yearned to experience it.

“They’d be daft buggers to land here, sir,” McClure said, standing beside Moore and gazing down the precipitous slope.

“Let us hope they are daft buggers.”

“We’ll shoot the bastards easy, sir.”

“If there are enough of us.”

“That’s true, sir.”

The fog thinned as the wind freshened. Lieutenant Moore had posted himself at the peninsula’s southwestern corner, at Dyce’s Head, and as the sun climbed higher more and more men made their way to that vantage point to watch for the enemy. Brigadier McLean came, stumping with his stick along the narrow path between the pines, leading seven other red-coated officers who all stood gazing southwards down the river that sparkled so prettily under the summer sun. Still more officers arrived, and with them came civilians like Doctor Calef who stood close to the brigadier and tried to make small-talk. Captain Mowat was there with two other naval officers, all of them