The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

The fog was gone and Majabigwaduce’s water sparkled beneath a summer sun. She stayed silent. “Miss Fletcher’” Moore began.

“No!” she interrupted him. “No, I can’t accept.”

“It is a gift,” Moore said, “nothing more, nothing less.”

Beth bit her lower lip, then turned defiantly back to the red-coated lieutenant. “I wanted James to join the rebels,” she said, “I encouraged him! I carried news of your guns and men to Captain Brewer! I betrayed you! Do you think the general would offer me a gift if he knew I’d done all that? Do you?”

“Yes,” Moore said.

That answer startled her. She seemed to crumple and crossed to the log pile where she sat and absentmindedly stroked the cat. “I didn’t know what to think when you all came here,” she said. “It was exciting at first.” She paused, thinking. “It was new and different, but then there were just too many uniforms here. This is our home, not yours. You took our home away from us.” She looked at him for the first time since she had sat down. “You took our home away from us,” she said again.

“I’m sorry,” Moore said, not knowing what else to say.

She nodded.

“Take the gift,” Moore said, “please.”

“Why?”

“Because the general is a decent man, Miss Fletcher. Because he offers it as a token of friendship. Because he wants you to know that you can depend on his protection whatever your opinion. Because I don’t want to carry the basket back to the fort.” Beth smiled at that last reason and Moore stood, waiting. He could have added that the gift had been given because McLean was as vulnerable as any other man to a fair-haired girl with an enchanting smile, but instead he just shrugged. “Because,” he finished.

“Because?”

“Please accept it,” Moore said.

Beth nodded again, then wiped her eyes with a corner of the apron. “Thank the general from me.”

“I will.”

She stood and crossed to the door where she turned. “Goodbye, Lieutenant,” she said, then picked up the basket and was gone inside.

“Goodbye, Miss Fletcher,” Moore said to the closed door.

He walked slowly back to the fort and felt defeated.

The three ships dipped to the wind, they swooped on the long waves, the seas broke white at their cutwaters, their sails were taut and the wind was brisk at their sterns. Away to port was Cape Anne where the breakers fretted at the rocks. “We must stay inshore,” Captain Abraham Burroughs told Colonel Henry Jackson.

“Why?”

“Because the bastards are out there somewhere,” the captain said, nodding to starboard where the fog bank had retreated southeastwards to lie like a long dun cloud over the endless ocean. “We run into a British frigate, Colonel, and you can say goodbye to your regiment. If I see a frigate out there I run for port.” He waved a hand at the other two ships. “We ain’t men-of-war, we’re three transports.”

But the three transport ships carried Henry Jackson’s regiment, as fine a regiment as any in the world, and it was on its way to Majabigwaduce.

And in the distant fog, out to sea, in a place where there were no marks, a fishing boat from Cape Cod watched other ships loom from the whiteness. The fishermen feared the big vessels would capture them, or at least steal their catch, but not one of the British ships bothered with the small gaff-rigged fishing boat. One by one the great ships slid past, the bright paint on their figureheads and the gilding on their sterns dulled by the fog. They all flew blue ensigns.

The vast Raisonable led, followed by five frigates; the Virginia, the Blonde, the Grayhound, the Galatea, and the Camille. The last of the relief fleet, the diminutive Otter, had lost touch and was somewhere to the south and east, but her absence scarcely diminished the raw power of Sir George Collier’s warships. The fishermen watched in silence as the blunt-bowed battleship and her five frigates ghosted past. They could smell the stench of the fleet and the stink of hundreds of men crammed into the cannon-freighted hulls. One hundred and ninety-six cannon, some of them ship-slaughtering thirty-two-pounders, were on their way to Majabigwaduce.

“Sons of goddamned bastard bitches,” the fishing boat’s captain spat when the Camille’s gilded stern gallery had been swallowed by the fog.

And the ocean was empty again.

The rebels had been in Penobscot Bay for nineteen days, and in possession of the high ground for sixteen of those days. There had been more than twenty councils of war, some just for the naval captains, some for the senior army officers, and a few for both. Votes had been taken, motions had been passed, and still the enemy was neither captivated nor killed.

The resurrection and return of the commodore had dampened Lovell’s spirits. Of late he and Saltonstall had only communicated by letter, but Lovell thought it incumbent on him to visit the Warren and congratulate Saltonstall on his survival, though the commodore, whose long face was blotched red with mosquito bites, did not appear grateful for the general’s concern. “It is a providence of God that you were spared capture or worse,” Lovell said awkwardly.

Saltonstall grunted.

Lovell nervously broached the subject of entering the harbor. “Captain Hacker was hopeful’” he began.

“I am aware of Hacker’s sentiments,” Saltonstall interrupted.

“He thought the maneuver feasible,” Lovell said.

“He may think what he damn well likes,” Saltonstall said hotly, “but I’m not taking my ships into that damned hole.”

“And unless the ships are taken,” Lovell forged on anyway, “I do not think the fort can be attacked with any hope of success.”

“You may depend upon one thing, General,” Saltonstall said, “which is that my ships cannot be risked in the harbor while the fort remains in enemy hands.”

The two men stared at each other. The guns were at work again, though the rebel rate of fire was much slower now because of the shortage of ammunition. There was powder smoke at Cross Island, and on the heights of Majabigwaduce and across the inlet north of the peninsula. Even more smoke rose from the low ground close to the Half Moon Battery. Lovell, angered that Banks’s house and barn had provided cover for the Scottish troops that had driven his men away so ignominiously, had ordered that the buildings should be burned as a punishment. “And the Dutchman’s house too,” he had insisted, and so forty men had gone downhill at first light and set fire to the houses and barns. They had not lingered on the low ground, fearing a counterattack by McLean’s men, but had just set the fires and retreated again.

“I shall present the circumstances to my officers,” Lovell now said stiffly, “and we shall discuss the feasibility of an attack on the fort. You may depend upon it that I shall convey their decision to you promptly.”

Saltonstall nodded. “My compliments, General.”

That afternoon Lovell went to the Hazard, one of the ships belonging to the Massachusetts Navy and from where he summoned his brigade majors, the commanders of the militia, Colonel Revere, and General Wadsworth. The council of war would be held in the comfort of the brig’s stern cabin where gawking soldiers could not linger nearby to overhear the discussions. Captain John Williams, the Hazard’s commanding officer, had been invited to attend as a courtesy and Lovell asked him to explain the navy’s reluctance to enter the harbor. “Not everyone’s reluctant,” Williams said, thinking of his own first lieutenant, George Little, who was ready to mutiny if that meant he could sail the diminutive brig into Majabigwaduce’s harbor and take on the British. “But the commodore is being prudent.”

“In what way?” Wadsworth asked.

“You can get a ship in easy enough,” Williams said, “but it would be a devilish business to get her out again.”

“The object,” Wadsworth pointed out quietly, “is to stay in the harbor. To occupy it.”