James said. He left the axe embedded in a stump and sat beside his sister on the bench that overlooked the harbour. The sky was purple and black, the water glinted with little ripples of fading silver about the anchored boats; glimmers of lamplight reflected on the small waves. A bugle sounded from the ridge where two tented encampments housed the redcoats. A picquet of six men guarded the guns and ammunition that had been parked on the beach above the tideline. ‘That young officer liked you, Beth,’ James said. Bethany just smiled, but said nothing. ‘They’re nice enough fellows,’ James said.
‘I like the general,’ Bethany said.
‘A decent man, he seems,’ James said.
‘I wonder what happened to his arm?’
‘Soldiers, Beth. Soldiers get wounded.’
‘And killed.’
‘Yes.’
They sat in companionable silence for a while as the darkness closed slow on the river and on the harbour and on the bluff. ‘So will you sign the oath?’ Bethany asked after a while.
‘Not sure I have much choice,’ James said bleakly.
‘But will you?’
James picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. ‘Father would have wanted me to sign.’
‘I’m not sure Father thought about it much,’ Bethany said. ‘We never had government here, neither royal nor rebel.’
‘He loved the king,’ James said. ‘He hated the French and loved the king.’ He sighed. ‘We have to make a living, Beth. If I don’t take the oath then they’ll take the Felicity away from us, and then what do we do? I can’t have that.’ A dog howled somewhere in the village and James waited till the sound died away. ‘I like McLean well enough,’ he said, ‘but …’ He let the thought fade away into the darkness.
‘But?’ Bethany asked. Her brother shrugged and made no answer. Beth slapped at a mosquito. ‘“Choose you this day whom you will serve,”’ she quoted, ‘“whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or …”’ She left the Bible verse unfinished.
‘There’s too much bitterness,’ James said.
‘You thought it would pass us by?’
‘I hoped it would. What does anyone want with Bagaduce anyway?’
Bethany smiled. ‘The Dutch were here, the French made a fort here, it seems the whole world wants us.’
‘But it’s our home, Beth. We made this place, it’s ours.’ James paused. He was not sure he could articulate what was in his mind. ‘You know Colonel Buck left?’
Buck was the local commander of the Massachusetts Militia and he had fled north up the Penobscot River when the British arrived. ‘I heard,’ Bethany said.
‘And John Lymburner and his friends are saying what a coward Buck is, and that’s just nonsense! It’s all just bitterness, Beth.’
‘So you’ll ignore it?’ she asked. ‘Just sign the oath and pretend it isn’t happening?’
James stared down at his hands. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘You know what I think,’ Bethany said firmly.
‘Just ’cos your fellow was a damned rebel,’ James said, smiling. He gazed at the shivering reflections cast from the lanterns on board the three sloops. ‘What I want, Beth, is for them all to leave us alone.’
‘They won’t do that now,’ she said.
James nodded. ‘They won’t, so I’ll write a letter, Beth,’ he said, ‘and you can take it over the river to John Brewer. He’ll know how to get it to Boston.’
Bethany was silent for a while, then frowned. ‘And the oath? Will you sign it?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, Beth, I honestly don’t know.’
James wrote the letter on a blank page torn from the back of the family Bible. He wrote simply, saying what he had seen in Majabigwaduce and its harbour. He told how many guns were mounted on the sloops and where the British were making earthworks, how many soldiers he believed had come to the village and how many guns had been shipped to the beach. He used the other side of the paper to make a rough map of the peninsula on which he drew the position of the fort and the place where the three sloops of war were anchored. He marked the battery on Cross Island, then turned the page over and signed the letter with his name, biting his lower lip as he formed the clumsy letters.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t put your name to it,’ Bethany said.
James sealed the folded paper with candle-wax. ‘The soldiers probably won’t trouble you, Beth, which is why you should carry the letter, but if they do, and if they find the letter, then I don’t want you blamed. Say you didn’t know what was in it and let me be punished.’
‘So you’re a rebel now?’
James hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Good,’ Bethany said.
The sound of a flute came from a house higher up the hill. The lights still shimmered on the harbour water and dark night came to Majabigwaduce.
Excerpts of a letter from the Selectmen of Newburyport, Massachusetts, to the General Court of Massachusetts, July 12th, 1779:
Last Friday one James Collins an Inhabitant of Penobscot on his way home from Boston went through this Town … upon Examination (we) find that he has been an Enemy to the united States of America … and that immediately after the British Fleet arrived at Penobscot this Collins … took Passage from Kennebeck to Boston … where he arrived last Tuesday, and as we apprehend got all the Intelligence he Possibly cou’d Relative to the movements of our Fleet and Army … (we) are suspicious of his being a Spy and have accordingly Secured him in the Gaol in this Town.
Order addressed to the Massachusetts Board of War, July 3rd, 1779:
Ordered that the Board of War be and hereby are directed to procure three hundred and fifty Barrels of Flour, One hundred and sixteen Barrels of Pork, One hundred and Sixty five Barrels of Beef, Eleven Tierces of Rice, Three hundred and Fifty bushels of Pease, five hundred and fifty two Gallons of Molasses, Two Thousand, One hundred and Seventy Six pound of Soap and Seven hundred and Sixty Eight pound of Candles being a deficient Quantity … on board the Transports for the intended Expedition to Penobscot.
THREE
On Sunday, 18th July, 1779, Peleg Wadsworth worshipped at Christ Church on Salem Street where the rector was the Reverend Stephen Lewis who, until two years before, had been a British army chaplain. The rector had been captured with the rest of the defeated British army at Saratoga, yet in captivity he had changed his allegiance and sworn an oath of loyalty to the United States of America, which meant his congregation this summer Sunday was swollen by towns-folk curious about how he would preach when his adopted country
