The Fort. Bernard Cornwell

and struck you instead.’ McLean had tried to dissuade Bethany from accompanying the reconnaissance, but he had not tried over-enthusiastically, acknowledging to himself that the company of a pretty girl was a rare delight.

      James Fletcher dismissed the fear. ‘No one will shoot at the Felicity,’ he said confidently, ‘and besides, most folks round here are loyal to his majesty.’

      ‘As you are, Mister Fletcher?’ Lieutenant John Moore asked pointedly.

      James paused, and the brigadier saw the flicker of his eyes towards his sister. Then James grinned. ‘I’ve no quarrel with the king,’ he said. ‘He leaves me alone and I leave him alone, and so the two of us rub along fair enough.’

      ‘So you will take the oath?’ McLean asked, and saw how solemnly Beth gazed at her brother.

      ‘Don’t have much choice, sir, do I? Not if I want to fish and scratch a living.’

      Brigadier McLean had issued a proclamation to the country about Majabigwaduce, assuring the inhabitants that if they were loyal to his majesty and took the oath swearing to that loyalty, then they would have nothing to fear from his forces, but if any man refused the oath, then the proclamation promised hard times to him and his family. ‘You do indeed have a choice,’ McLean said.

      ‘We were raised to love the king, sir,’ James said.

      ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ McLean said. He gazed at the dark woods. ‘I understood,’ the brigadier went on, ‘that the authorities in Boston have been conscripting men?’

      ‘That they have,’ James agreed.

      ‘Yet you have not been conscripted?’

      ‘Oh, they tried,’ James said dismissively, ‘but they’re leery of this part of Massachusetts.’

      ‘Leery?’

      ‘Not much sympathy for the rebellion here, General.’

      ‘But some folk here are disaffected?’ McLean asked.

      ‘A few,’ James said, ‘but some folk are never happy.’

      ‘A lot of folks here fled from Boston,’ Bethany said, ‘and they’re all loyalists.’

      ‘When the British left, Miss Fletcher? Is that what you mean?’

      ‘Yes, sir. Like Doctor Calef. He had no wish to stay in a city ruled by rebellion, sir.’

      ‘Was that your fate?’ John Moore asked.

      ‘Oh no,’ James said, ‘our family’s been here since God made the world.’

      ‘Your parents live in Majabigwaduce?’ the brigadier asked.

      ‘Father’s in the burying ground, God rest him,’ James said.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ McLean said.

      ‘And Mother’s good as dead,’ James went on.

      ‘James!’ Bethany said reprovingly.

      ‘Crippled, bedridden and speechless,’ James said. Six years before, he explained, when Bethany was twelve and James fourteen, their widowed mother had been gored by a bull she had been leading to pasture. Then, two years later, she had suffered a stroke that had left her stammering and confused.

      ‘Life is hard on us,’ McLean said. He stared at a log house built close to the river’s bank and noted the huge heap of firewood stacked against one outer wall. ‘And it must be hard,’ he went on, ‘to make a new life in a wilderness if you are accustomed to a city like Boston.’

      ‘Wilderness, General?’ James asked, amused.

      ‘It is hard for the Boston folk who came here, sir,’ Bethany said more usefully.

      ‘They have to learn to fish, General,’ James said, ‘or grow crops, or cut wood.’

      ‘You grow many crops?’ McLean asked.

      ‘Rye, oats and potatoes,’ Bethany answered, ‘and corn, sir.’

      ‘They can trap, General,’ James put in. ‘Our dad made a fine living from trapping! Beaver, marten, weasels.’

      ‘He caught an ermine once,’ Bethany said proudly.

      ‘And doubtless that scrap of fur is around some fine lady’s neck in London, General,’ James said. ‘Then there’s mast timber,’ he went on. ‘Not so much in Majabigwaduce, but plenty upriver and any man can learn to cut and trim a tree. And there are sawmills aplenty! Why there must be thirty sawmills between here and the river’s head. A man can make scantlings or staves, boards or posts, anything he pleases!’

      ‘You trade in timber?’ McLean asked.

      ‘I fish, General, and it’s a poor man who can’t keep his family alive by fishing.’

      ‘What do you catch?’

      ‘Cod, General, and cunners, haddock, hake, eel, flounder, pollock, skate, mackerel, salmon, alewives. We have more fish than we know what to do with! And all good eating! It’s what gives our Beth her pretty complexion, all that fish!’

      Bethany gave her brother a fond glance. ‘You’re silly, James,’ she said.

      ‘You are not married, Miss Fletcher?’ the general asked.

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘Our Beth was betrothed, General,’ James explained, ‘to a rare good man. Captain of a schooner. She was to be married this spring.’

      McLean looked gently at the girl. ‘Was to be?’

      ‘He was lost at sea, sir,’ Bethany said.

      ‘Fishing on the banks,’ James explained. ‘He got caught by a nor’easter, General, and the nor’easters have blown many a good man out of this world to the next.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘She’ll find another,’ James said carelessly. ‘She’s not the ugliest girl in the world,’ he grinned, ‘are you?’

      The brigadier turned his gaze back to the shore. He sometimes allowed himself the small luxury of imagining that no enemy would come to attack him, but he knew that was unlikely. McLean’s small force was now the only British presence between the Canadian border and Rhode Island and the rebels would surely want that presence destroyed. They would come. He pointed south. ‘We might return now?’ he suggested, and Bethany obliged by turning the Felicity into the wind. Her brother hardened the jib, staysail and main so that the small boat tipped as she beat into the brisk breeze and sharp dashes of spray slapped against the three officers’ red coats. McLean looked again at Majabigwaduce’s high western bluff that faced onto the wide river. ‘If you were in command here,’ he asked his two lieutenants, ‘how would you defend the place?’ Lieutenant Campbell, a lank youth with a prominent nose and an equally prominent Adam’s apple, swallowed nervously and said nothing, while young Moore just leaned back on the heaped nets as though contemplating an afternoon’s sleep. ‘Come, come,’ the brigadier chided the pair, ‘tell me what you would do.’

      ‘Does that not depend on what the enemy does, sir?’ Moore asked idly.

      ‘Then assume with me that they arrive with a dozen or more ships and, say, fifteen hundred men?’

      Moore closed his eyes, while Lieutenant Campbell tried to look enthusiastic. ‘We put our guns on the bluff, sir,’ he offered, gesturing towards the high ground that dominated the river and harbour entrance.

      ‘But the bay is wide,’ McLean pointed out, ‘so the enemy can pass us on the farther bank and land upstream of us. Then they cross the neck,’ he pointed to the narrow isthmus of low ground that connected Majabigwaduce to the mainland, ‘and attack us from the landward side.’

      Campbell frowned and bit his lip as he pondered that suggestion. ‘So we put guns there