The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

“He’s fainted, sir,” an assistant said.

“Sensible fellow. Here is comes.” The ball’s extraction provoked a spurt of blood which the assistant staunched with a linen pad as Downer moved to the next patient. “Bone saw and knife,” Downer ordered after a glance at the man’s shattered leg. “Good morning, Colonel!” This last was to Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who had just appeared on the crowded beach with three of his artillerymen. “I hear you’re moving guns to the heights?” Downer asked cheerfully as he knelt beside the injured man.

Revere looked startled at the question, perhaps because he thought it was none of Downer’s business, but he nodded. “The general wants batteries established, Doctor, yes.”

“I hope that means no more work for us today,” Downer said, “not if your guns keep the wretches well away.”

“They will, Doctor, never you fret,” Revere said, then walked towards his white-painted barge, which waited a few paces down the shingle. “Wait here,” he called back to his men, “I’ll be back after breakfast.”

Carnes was not certain he had heard the last words correctly. “Sir?” He had to repeat the word to get Revere’s attention. “Sir? If you need help taking the guns up the slope, my marines are good and ready.”

Revere paused at the barge to give Carnes a suspicious look. “We don’t need help,” he said brusquely, “we’ve got men enough.” He had not met Cames and had no idea that this was the marine officer who had been an artilleryman in General Washington’s army. He stepped over the barge’s gunwale. “Back to the Samuel,” he ordered the crew.

The general wanted artillery at the top of the bluff, but Colonel Revere wanted a hot breakfast. So the general had to wait.

Lieutenant John Moore accompanied his two wounded men to Doctor Calef’s barn, which now served as the garrison’s hospital. He tried to comfort the two men, but felt his words were inadequate, and afterwards he went into the small vegetable garden outside where, overcome with remorse, he sat on the log pile. He was shaking. He held out his left hand and saw it quivering, and he bit his lip because he sensed he was about to shed tears and he did not want to do that, not where people could see him, and to distract himself he stared across the harbor to where Mowat’s ships were cannonading the rebel battery on Cross Island.

Someone came from the house and wordlessly offered him a mug of tea. He looked up and saw it was Bethany Fletcher and the sight of her provoked the tears he had been trying so hard to suppress. They rolled down his cheeks. He attempted to stand in welcome, but he was shaking too much and the gesture failed. He sniffed and took the tea. “Thank you,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The rebels beat us,” Moore said bleakly.

“They haven’t taken the fort,” Beth said.

“No. Not yet.” Moore gripped the mug with both hands. The cannon smoke lay like fog on the harbor and more smoke drifted slowly from the fort where Captain Fielding’s cannons shot into the distant trees. The rebels, despite their capture of the high ground, were showing no sign of wanting to attack the fort, though Moore supposed they were organizing that attack from within the cover of the woods. “I failed,” he said bitterly.

“Failed?”

“I should have retreated, but I stayed. I killed six of my men.” Moore drank some of the tea, which was very sweet. “I wanted to win,” he said, “and so I stayed.” Beth said nothing. She was wearing a linen apron smeared with blood and Moore flinched at the memory of Sergeant McClure’s death, then he remembered the tall American in his green coat charging across the clearing. He could still see the man’s upraised cutlass blade reflecting the day’s new light, the bared teeth, the intensity of hatred on the rebel’s face, the determination to kill, and Moore remembered his own panic and the sheer luck that had saved his life. He made himself drink more tea. “Why do they wear white crossbelts?” he asked.

“White crossbelts?” Beth was puzzled.

“You could hardly see them in the trees, except they wore white belts and that made them visible,” Moore said. “Black crossbelts,” he said, “they should be black,” and he had a sudden vision of the spray of blood from Sergeant McClure’s mouth. “I killed them,” he said, “by being selfish.”

“It was your first fight,” Beth said sympathetically.

And it had been so different from anything Moore had expected. In his mind, for years, there had been a vision of redcoats drawn up in three ranks, their flags bright above them, the enemy similarly arrayed and the bands playing as the muskets volleyed. Cavalry was always resplendent in their finery, decorating the dream-fields of glory, but instead Moore’s first battle had been a chaotic defeat in dark woods. The enemy had been in the trees and his men, ranked in their red line, had been easy targets for those men in green coats. “But why white crossbelts?” he asked again.

“Were there many dead?” Beth asked.

“Six of my men,” Moore answered bleakly. He remembered the stench of shit from McPhail’s corpse and closed his eyes as if he could blot that memory away.

“Among the rebels?” Beth asked anxiously.

“Some, yes, I don’t know.” Moore was too distracted by guilt to hear the anxiety in Bethany’s voice. “The rest of the picquet ran away, but they must have killed some.”

“And now?”

Moore finished the tea. He was not looking at Beth, but gazing at the ships in the harbor, noting how HMS Albany seemed to shiver when her guns fired. “We did it all wrong,” he said, frowning. “We should have moved most of the picquet to the beach and shot at them as they rowed towards the shore, then put more men halfway up the slope. We could have beaten them!” He put the mug on the logs and saw that his hand was no longer shaking. He stood. “I’m sorry, Miss Fletcher, I never thanked you for the tea.”

“You did, Lieutenant,” Beth said. “Doctor Calef told me to give it to you,” she added.

“That was kind of him. Are you helping him?”

“We all are,” Beth said, meaning the women of Majabigwaduce. She watched Moore, noting the blood on his finely tailored clothes. He looked so young, she thought, just a boy with a long sword.

“I must get back to the fort,” Moore said. “Thank you for the tea.” His job, he remembered, was to burn the oaths before the rebels discovered them. And the rebels would come now, he was sure, and all he was good for was burning papers because he had failed. He had killed six of his men by making the wrong decision and John Moore was certain that General McLean would not let him lead any more men to their deaths.

He walked back to the fort, where the flag still flew. The harbor was a sudden cauldron of noise as more guns filled the shallow basin with smoke and, as Moore reached the fort’s entrance, he saw why. Three enemy ships were under foresails and topsails, and they were sailing straight for the harbor.

They were coming to finish the job.

Commodore Saltonstall had promised to engage the enemy shipping with gunfire and so had cleared the Warren for action. Fog had prevented an engagement at first light and once that fog lifted there was a further delay because the Charming Sally, one of the privateers that would support the Warren, had a fouled anchor, but at last Captain Holmes solved the problem by buoying the anchor cable and casting it overboard, and so the three ships sailed slowly eastwards on the light wind. The commodore planned to sail into the harbor mouth and there use the frigate’s powerful broadside to batter the three enemy sloops. The heaviest British guns on those sloops were nine-pounders, while the Warren had twelve- and eighteen-pounders, guns that would mangle British timber and British flesh. The commodore would have liked nothing more than to have used those big guns on the thirty-two impudent men who had dared send him a letter which, though expressed in the politest words, implicitly accused him of cowardice. How dare they! He shook with suppressed anger as he recalled the letter. There were times, the commodore thought, when the notion that all men were created equal led to nothing but insolence.

He turned to see that the Black Prince and Charming Sally were following his frigate. The battery on Cross Island was already firing at the three British sloops which now barricaded the harbor’s center. There was water at either end of the British line, but the larger transport ships had been moored to block those shallow channels. Not that Saltonstall had any intention of piercing or flanking Mowat’s ships; he simply wanted to keep the Royal Marines on board the enemy sloops while Lovell assaulted the fort.

The wind was slight. Saltonstall had ordered battle-sails, which meant his two big courses, the mainsail and