The Fort. Bernard Cornwell
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man better than you, Colonel,’ Josiah Flint said, picking a shred of radish from his front teeth.
‘But I didn’t go to Harvard, did I?’ Revere asked with a forced laugh. ‘If I spoke Latin, Mister Flint, I’d be a general by now.’
‘Hic, haec, hoc,’ Flint said through a mouthful of bread.
‘I expect so,’ Revere said. He pulled a folded copy of the Boston Intelligencer from his pocket and spread it on the table, then took out his reading glasses. He disliked wearing them for he suspected they gave him an unmilitary appearance, but he needed the spectacles to read the account of the British incursion into eastern Massachusetts. ‘Who would have believed it,’ he said, ‘the bastard redcoats back in New England!’
‘Not for long, Colonel.’
‘I hope not,’ Revere said. The Massachusetts government, learning that the British had landed men at Majabigwaduce, had determined to send an expedition to the Penobscot River, to which end a fleet was being gathered, orders being sent to the militia and officers being appointed. ‘Well, well,’ Revere said, peering at the newspaper. ‘It seems the Spanish have declared war on the British now!’
‘Spain as well as France,’ Flint said. ‘The bloodybacks can’t last long now.’
‘Let’s pray they last long enough to give us a chance to fight them at Maja.’ Revere paused, ‘Majabigwaduce,’ he said. ‘I wonder what that name means?’
‘Just some Indian nonsense,’ Flint said. ‘Place Where the Muskrat Pissed Down its Legs, probably.’
‘Probably,’ Revere said distantly. He took off his glasses and stared at a pair of sheerlegs that waited to lift a cannon barrel from a carriage rotted by damp. ‘Have they given you a requisition for cannon, Mister Flint?’
‘Just for five hundred muskets, Colonel, to be rented for a dollar each to the militia.’
‘Rented!’
‘Rented,’ Flint confirmed.
‘If they’re to kill the British,’ Revere said, ‘then money shouldn’t come into it.’
‘Money always comes into it,’ Flint said. ‘There are six new British nine-pounders in Appleby’s yard, but we can’t touch them. They’re to be auctioned.’
‘The Council should buy them,’ Revere said.
‘The Council don’t have the money,’ Flint said, stripping a leg-bone of its flesh, ‘not enough coinage to pay the wages, rent the privateers, purchase supplies and buy cannon. You’ll have to make do with the guns we’ve got.’
‘They’ll do, they’ll do,’ Revere said grudgingly.
‘And I hope the Council has the sense to appoint you to command those guns, Colonel!’
Revere said nothing to that, merely stared at the sheerlegs. He had an engaging smile that warmed men’s hearts, but he was not smiling now. He was seething.
He was seething because the Council had appointed the commanders of the expedition to rout the British from Majabigwaduce, but so far no man had been named to lead the artillery and Revere knew that cannons would be needed. He knew too that he was the best man to command those cannon, he was indeed the commanding officer of the Bay of Massachusetts State Artillery Regiment, yet the Council had pointedly refrained from sending him any orders.
‘They will appoint you, Colonel,’ Flint said loyally, ‘they have to!’
‘Not if Major Todd has his way,’ Revere said bitterly.
‘I expect he went to Harvard,’ Flint said, ‘hic, haec, hoc.’
‘Harvard or Yale, probably,’ Revere agreed, ‘and he wanted to run the artillery like a counting-house! Lists and regulations! I told him, make the men gunners first, then kill the British, and after that make the lists, but he didn’t listen. He was forever saying I was disorganized, but I know my guns, Mister Flint, I know my guns. There’s a skill in gunnery, an art, and not everyone has the touch. It doesn’t come from book-learning, not artillery. It’s an art.’
‘That’s very true,’ Flint wheezed through a full mouth.
‘But I’ll ready their cannon,’ Revere said, ‘so whoever commands them has things done properly. There may not be enough lists, Mister Flint,’ he chuckled at that, ‘but they’ll have good and ready guns. Eighteen-pounders and more! Bloodyback-killers! Guns to slaughter the English, they will have guns. I’ll see to that.’
Flint paused to release a belch, then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want to go to Maja, whatever it is?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
Flint patted his belly, then put two radishes into his mouth. ‘It ain’t comfortable, Colonel.’
‘What does that mean, Josiah?’
‘Down east?’ Flint asked. ‘You’ll get nothing but mosquitoes, rain and sleeping under a tree down east.’ He feared that his friend would not be given command of the expedition’s artillery and, in his clumsy way, was trying to provide some consolation. ‘And you’re not as young as you were, Colonel!’
‘Forty-five’s not old!’ Revere protested.
‘Old enough to know sense,’ Flint said, ‘and to appreciate a proper bed with a woman inside it.’
‘A proper bed, Mister Flint, is beside my guns. Beside my guns that point towards the English! That’s all I ask, a chance to serve my country.’ Revere had tried to join the fighting ever since the rebellion had begun, but his applications to the Continental Army had been refused for reasons that Revere could only suspect and never confirm. General Washington, it was said, wanted men of birth and honour, and that rumour had only made Revere more resentful. The Massachusetts Militia was not so particular, yet Revere’s service so far had been uneventful. True, he had gone to Newport to help evict the British, but that campaign had ended in failure before Revere and his guns arrived, and so he had been forced to command the garrison on Castle Island and his prayers that a British fleet would come to be battered by his cannon had gone unanswered. Paul Revere, who hated the British with a passion that could shake his body with its pure vehemence, had yet to kill a single redcoat.
‘You’ve heard the trumpet call, Colonel,’ Flint said respectfully.
‘I’ve heard the trumpet call,’ Revere agreed.
A sentry opened the armory gate and a man in the faded blue uniform of the Continental Army entered the yard from the street. He was tall, good-looking and some years younger than Revere who stood in wary greeting. ‘Colonel Revere?’ the newcomer asked.
‘At your service, General.’
‘I am Peleg Wadsworth.’
‘I know who you are, General,’ Revere said, smiling and taking the offered hand. He noted that Wadsworth did not return the smile. ‘I hope you bring me good news from the Council, General?’
‘I would like a word, Colonel,’ Wadsworth said, ‘a brief word.’ The brigadier glanced at the monstrous Josiah Flint in his padded chair. ‘A word in private,’ he added grimly.
So the trumpet call would have to wait.
Captain Henry Mowat stood on Majabigwaduce’s beach. He was a stocky man with a ruddy face now shadowed by the long peak of his cocked hat. His naval coat was dark blue with lighter blue facings, all stained white by salt. He was in his forties, a lifelong sailor, and he stood with his feet planted apart as though balancing on a quarterdeck. His dark hair was powdered and a slight trail of the powder had sifted down the spine of his uniform coat. He was glaring at the longboats that lay alongside his ship, the Albany. ‘What the devil takes all this time?’ he growled.
His companion, Doctor John Calef, had no idea what