sir,’ Moore said, then gave a start as he belatedly realized the brigadier was teasing him. He had the grace to look abashed. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
James Fletcher laughed. ‘No dragons here, General.’
McLean smiled. He looked at the distant fog. ‘You have much fog here, Mister Fletcher?’
‘We gets fog in the spring, General, and fog in the summer, and then comes the fog in the fall and after that the snow, which we usually can’t see because it’s hidden by fog,’ Fletcher said with a smile as wide as his sister’s, ‘fog and more fog.’
‘Yet you like living here?’ McLean asked gently.
‘God’s own country, General,’ Fletcher answered enthusiastically, ‘and God hides it from the heathen by wrapping it in fog.’
‘And you, Miss Fletcher?’ McLean enquired of Bethany. ‘Do you like living in Majabigwaduce?’
‘I like it fine, sir,’ she said with a smile.
‘Don’t steer too close to the shore, Miss Fletcher,’ McLean said sternly. ‘I would never forgive myself if some disaffected person was to take a shot at our uniforms 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
