The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

edge, but after that the devil would roll his dice and it would be smoke and flame, screams and steel, the chaos of anger and terror, and what use was mathematics then? If Wadsworth’s grandchildren were to learn of this day and of this victory they must learn of courage and of men doing a great deed. And if the deed was not great it would not be memorable. So at some point he must let go of calculation and throw himself on anger and resolve. There was no easy way. Both Lovell and Saltonstall had shirked the fight because they sought a sure solution, and no such easy answer existed. The expedition would only succeed when it rose above prudence and challenged men to perform great deeds. So yes, he thought, five hundred men was enough, because that was all he had to do this thing, and this thing had to be done in the name of American liberty. “James?” he spoke to Fletcher. “Let’s go.”

Forty of the volunteers were manning drag-ropes attached to two of the four-pounder cannons that, so far, had scarcely been used. They were too small to be effective at anything except close range, but on this day they might be battle-winners. Lieutenant Marett, one of Revere’s officers, commanded the two pieces, which had an ample supply of round shot, though Captain Carnes, before returning to the General Putnam, had insisted that the two small guns were also equipped with grape. He had made the missiles himself, collecting stones from the beach that the General Putnam’s sailors had sewn into rough bags of sail canvas. The bags could be rammed on top of a round shot so that when the guns were fired the stones would spread like lethal duckshot. Lieutenant Marett had nervously protested that the stones would ruin the guns’ barrels, but had fallen silent under Carnes’s baleful stare. “Damn the barrels,” Carnes had said, “it’s the ruin they’ll do to British guts that matters.”

The first tendrils of fog curled over the slope as the men went down to the shore. They went in open order, hurrying across the meadows and through the scattered trees. A round shot fired from Fort George gouged a scar across grassland. A second gun fired, then a third, but all the balls ricocheted harmlessly from the ground. That was a good omen, Wadsworth thought, and was surprised that he sought omens. He had prayed in the dawn. He liked to think that faith and prayer were sufficient to themselves, and that he was now in God’s hands, but he found himself watching every phenomena for any sign that this attack would succeed. The British sloops, though their guns would bear on the harbor shore, did not fire and that was surely the hand of provi-dence. The smoke from the burning houses was blown towards Fort George and, though Wadsworth’s rational mind told him that was merely because the wind persisted from the southwest, he wanted to believe it was a sign that God desired to blind and choke the enemy. He saw six of the Indians crouching beside the cornfield where he had ordered the men to gather. They formed a circle, their dark heads close together, and he wondered what God they prayed to. He remembered a man named Eliphalet Jenkins who had founded a mission to the Wampanoag tribe and whose body, gutted empty by knives and blanched pale by the sea, had been washed ashore at Fairhaven. Why was he remembering that old tale? And then he thought of the story James Fletcher had told him about a man and boy, both English, who many years before had been gelded then burned alive by the Indians of Majabigwaduce. Was that another omen?

The two guns arrived safely. Each was attached to a caisson that held their ammunition and on the nearer of those wagons was painted a slogan, “Liberty or Death.” That was easily said, Wadsworth thought, but death seemed more imminent now. Imminent and immanent. The words batted in his head. Why did the enemy sloops not fire? Were they asleep? A shell from the fort landed in the smoldering remnants of Jacob Dyce’s house and exploded harmlessly with a dull, impotent boom and an eruption of ash and smoldering timbers. Imminent, immanent, and impotent. For some reason Wadsworth thought of a text that had been the foundation of a sermon that the Reverend Jonathan Murray had preached on the first Sunday after the expedition had landed, “where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” The worm, Murray said, was the evil of British tyranny and the fire the righteous anger of men who fought for liberty. But why did we burn these houses, Wadsworth wondered, and how many men of Majabigwaduce had been enraged by that arson and, even now, manned the ramparts of the fort? “The worm will shrivel,” Murray had promised, “it will shrivel and hiss as it burns!” Yet the scripture, Wadsworth thought, did not promise that punishment, only that the worm dieth not. Was that an omen?

“Do we go on, sir?” Fletcher asked.

“Yes, yes.”

“You look as if you’re dreaming, sir,” Fletcher said, grinning.

“I was wondering how many civilians will be helping the garrison.”

“Oh, some will,” Fletcher said dismissively. “Old Jacob for one, but he can’t shoot straight. Doctor Calef, of course.”

“I knew Calef in Boston,” Wadsworth said.

“He’s not a bad fellow. A bit pompous. But he’ll be doctoring, not soldiering.”

“On we go,” Wadsworth said, and it seemed unreal now. The ships still did not fire and the bombardment from the fort fell silent because the Americans were on the low ground and protected from the guns on the fort’s southern wall by a shoulder of land that ran parallel to the ridge. They were concealed too by houses, cornfields, and trees. Lilies blossomed in yards. A woman hurriedly took in some drying washing because the sky was still darkening and promised rain. The marines, in a double file, advanced on the left ready to turn and oppose any sally by the fort’s garrison, but McLean sent none. A chained dog barked at the passing soldiers until a woman called for it to be silent. Wadsworth looked up to his left, but all he could see of the fort was the slow-stirring flag at the top of its pole. He crossed the newly made track which led from the beach to the fort’s gate. If I were McLean, Wadsworth thought, I would send men down to fight, but the Scotsman did no such thing, nor did Mowat fire from his sloops, though he must be seeing the rebels file through the settlement. “He’s not going to waste shot on us,” Lieutenant Downs suggested when Wadsworth expressed surprise that the British ships had been silent.

“Because we can’t hurt him?”

“Because he’s double-shotted his guns to welcome our ships. That’s all he’s worried about, sir, the ships.”

“He can’t know they’re planning to attack him,” Wadsworth pointed out.

“If they saw our fo’c’sle’s being strengthened,” Downs said, “they’ll have guessed.”

And suppose the ships did not come? Saltonstall had very reluctantly agreed to make an attack, and suppose he changed his mind? Wadsworth’s men were now in line with the ships, meaning they were between Mowat and McLean, and Wadsworth could see the red uniforms of the Royal Marines on the deck of HMS North. The fog was thickening and a first slow spatter of rain fell.

Then a fair-haired girl came running from a house to throw her arms round James Fletcher’s neck, and Wadsworth knew they had arrived. He ordered the two guns to face the harbor, their job to open fire if any Royal Marines came from the ships. The rest of his men crouched in yards and orchards. They were a quarter mile from the fort’s southeastern bastion and hidden from it by a large cornfield. They were in place. They were ready. If McLean could see them he took no apparent heed because none of the fort’s guns fired, while the sloops’ broadsides were now facing well away from the rebels. We go uphill from here, Wadsworth thought. Through the cornfield and across the open ground and over the ditch and up the wall and so to victory, and that sounded easy, but there would be round shot and grapeshot, screams and blood, smoke and volleys, death squirming in agony, men shrieking, steel slithering in guts, shit-soiled breeches, and the devil laughing as he rattled his dice.

“They know we’re here,” Solomon Lovell had not spoken since they left the high ground, but now, looking up at the flag flying above the fort, he sounded nervous.

“They know,” Wadsworth said. “Captain Burke!” William Burke, the skipper of the privateer Sky Rocket, had come with the soldiers and his duty now was to return and tell Commodore Saltonstall that the assault force was in position. Saltonstall had insisted that a seaman carry him that news, an insistence that amused Wadsworth because it suggested the naval officer did not trust the army. “Are you satisfied we’re in position, Mister Burke?” Wadsworth asked.

“I’m well satisfied, General.”

“Then pray tell the commodore we shall attack as soon as he opens fire.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Burke said, and set off westwards, escorted by four militiamen. A longboat waited for him beneath Dyce’s Head. It would take an hour, Wadsworth thought, for the message to be delivered. It began to rain harder. Fog and rain on Friday the thirteenth, but at least Wadsworth was confident that, at long last, the ships would come.

And the fort, with God’s good help, would fall.

“We do nothing, of course,” McLean said.

“Nothing?” John Moore asked.