The Fort. Bernard Cornwell
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to the Samuel. Then, at last, as the sun climbed to its height, the fleet was ready. The capstans turned again, the great anchors broke free and, with their sails bright in the summer sun, the might of Massachusetts sailed from Boston harbour.
To captivate, to kill and to destroy.
Lieutenant John Moore sat astride a camp stool, his legs either side of an empty powder barrel that served as a table. A tent sheltered him from a blustery west wind that brought spits of rain to patter hard on the yellowed canvas. Moore’s job as paymaster for the 82nd Regiment bored him, even though the detailed work was done by Corporal Brown who had been a clerk in a Leith counting-house before becoming drunk one morning and so volunteering for the army. Moore turned the pages of the black-bound ledger that recorded the regiment’s wages. ‘Why is Private Neill having fourpence a week deducted?’ Moore asked the corporal.
‘Lost his boot-blacking, sir.’
‘Boot-blacking cannot cost that much, surely?’
‘Expensive stuff, sir,’ Corporal Brown said.
‘Plainly. I should buy some and resell it to the regiment.’
‘Major Fraser wouldn’t like that, sir, on account that his brother already does.’
Moore sighed and turned another stiff page of the thick paybook. He was supposed to check the figures, but he knew Corporal Brown would have done a meticulous job, so instead he stared out of the tent’s open flaps to the western rampart of Fort George where some gunners were making a platform for one of their cannon. The rampart was still only waist high, though the ditch beyond was now lined with wooden spikes that were more formidable to look at than negotiate. Beyond the rampart was a long stretch of cleared ground studded with raw pine stumps. That land climbed gently to the peninsula’s bluff where trees still stood thick and where tendrils of fog drifted through dark branches. Corporal Brown saw where Moore was looking. ‘Can I ask you something, sir?’
‘Whatever enters your head, Brown.’
The corporal nodded towards the timbered bluff that was little more than half a mile from the fort. ‘Why didn’t the brigadier make the fort there, sir?’
‘You would have done so, Corporal, if you had command here?’
‘It’s the highest piece of land, sir. Isn’t that where you make a fort?’
Moore frowned, not because he disapproved of the question, which, he thought, was an eminently sensible enquiry, but because he did not know how to frame the answer. To Moore it was obvious why McLean had chosen the lower position. It was to do with the interlocking of the ships’ guns and the fort’s cannon, with making the best of a difficult job, but though he knew the answer, he did not quite know how to express it. ‘From here,’ he said, ‘our guns command both the harbour entrance and the harbour itself. Suppose we were all up on that high ground? The enemy could sail past us, take the harbour and village, and then starve us out at their leisure.’
‘But if the bastards take that high ground, sir … ’ Brown said dubiously, leaving the thought unfinished.
‘If the bastards seize that high ground, Corporal,’ Moore said, ‘then they will place cannon there and fire down into the fort.’ That was the risk McLean had taken. He had given the enemy the chance to take the high ground, but only so that he could do his job better, which was to defend the harbour. ‘We don’t have enough men,’ Moore went on, ‘to defend the bluff, but I can’t think they’ll land men there. It’s much too steep.’
Yet the rebels would land somewhere. By leaning forward on his makeshift stool Moore could just make out the three sloops of war anchored in line across the harbour mouth. General McLean had suggested the enemy might try to attack that line, break it, and then land men on the beach below the fort and Moore tried to imagine such a fight. He tried to turn the wisps of fog into powder smoke, but his imagination failed. The eighteen-year-old John Moore had never experienced battle, and every day he wondered how he would respond to the smell of powder and the screams of the wounded and the chaos.
‘Lady approaching, sir,’ Corporal Brown warned Moore.
‘Lady?’ Moore asked, startled from his reverie, then saw that Bethany Fletcher was approaching the tent. He stood and ducked under the tent flap to greet her, but the sight of her face tied his tongue, so he simply stood there, awkward, hat in hand, smiling.
‘Lieutenant Moore,’ Bethany said, stopping a pace away.
‘Miss Fletcher,’ Moore managed to speak, ‘as ever, a pleasure.’ He bowed.
‘I was told to give you this, sir.’ Bethany held out a slip of paper.
The paper was a receipt for corn and fish that James Fletcher had sold to the quartermaster. ‘Four shillings!’ Moore said.
‘The quartermaster said you’d pay me, sir,’ Bethany said.
‘If Mister Reidhead so orders, then I shall obey. And it will be my pleasure to pay you, Miss Fletcher,’ Moore said. He looked at the receipt again. ‘It must have been a rare quantity of corn and fish! Four shillings’ worth!’
Bethany bridled. ‘It was Mister Reidhead who decided the amount, sir.’
‘Oh, I am not suggesting that the amount is excessive,’ Moore said, reddening. If he lost his composure when faced by a girl, he thought, how would he ever face the enemy? ‘Corporal Brown!’
‘Sir?’
‘Four shillings for the lady!’
‘At once, sir,’ Brown said, coming from the tent, though instead of holding coins he brought a hammer and a chisel that he took to a nearby block of wood. He had one silver dollar that he laid on the timber, then he carefully placed the chisel’s blade to make a single radial cut in the coin. The hammer smacked down and the coin leaped up from the chisel’s bite. ‘It’s daft, sir, to slit a coin into five pieces,’ Brown grumbled, replacing the dollar. ‘Why can’t we make four pieces worth one shilling and threepence each?’
‘Because it’s easier to cut a coin into four parts rather than five?’ Moore asked.
‘Of course it is, sir. Cutting into four only needs a wide chisel blade and two cuts,’ Brown grumbled, then hammered another cut into the dollar, slicing away a wedge of silver that he pushed across the chopping block towards Bethany. ‘There, miss, one shilling.’
Bethany took the sharp-edged slice. ‘Is this how you pay the soldiers?’ she asked Moore.
‘Oh, we don’t get paid, miss,’ Corporal Brown answered, ‘except in promissory notes.’
‘Give Miss Fletcher the remainder of the coin,’ Moore suggested, ‘and she will have her four shillings and you need cut no more.’ There was a shortage of coinage so the brigadier had decreed that each silver dollar was worth five shillings. ‘Stop staring!’ Moore called sharply to the gunners who had paused in their work to admire Beth Fletcher. Moore picked up the ravaged dollar and held it out to Bethany. ‘There Miss Fletcher, your fee.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Bethany put the shilling slice back on the block. ‘So how many promissory notes do you have to write each week?’ she asked.
‘How many?’ Moore was momentarily puzzled by the question. ‘Oh, we don’t issue notes as such, Miss Fletcher, but we do record in the ledger what wages are owed. The specie is kept for more important duties, like paying you for corn and fish.’
‘And you must need a lot of corn and fish for two whole regiments,’ she said. ‘What is that? Two thousand men?’
‘If only we were so numerous,’ Moore said with a smile. ‘In truth, Miss Fletcher, the 74th musters just four hundred and forty men and we Hamiltons number scarce half that. And we hear now that the rebels are readying a fleet and an army to assail us!’
‘And you think that report is true?’ Bethany asked.
‘The