men must advance in companies, one behind the other, but such a column was fatally vulnerable to cannon-fire and quite unable to use most of its muskets, and so the art of the manoeuvre was to advance in column and then deploy swiftly into line. Wadsworth wanted to master the drill, but because he was a general of the Massachusetts Militia, and because the militia were mostly on their farms or in their workshops, Wadsworth was using children. The leading company, which would normally hold three ranks of thirty or more men each, was today comprised of Rebecca Fowler, aged twelve, and her nine-year-old cousin, Jared, both of whom were bright children and, Wadsworth hoped, capable of setting an example that the remaining children would copy. The manoeuvre he was attempting was difficult. The battalion would march in column towards the enemy and then halt. The leading companies would turn to face one way, the rearward companies turn to face the opposite direction and then the whole line would counter-wheel about the colours in a smooth pivot until commanded to halt. That would leave the first four companies facing away from the enemy and Wadsworth would need to order those eight children to about turn, at which point the whole formidable battalion would be ready to open fire against the enemy. Wadsworth had watched British regiments perform a similar manoeuvre on Long Island and he had reluctantly admired their precision and seen for himself the swiftness with which they had been transformed from a column into a long line that had unleashed a torrent of musketry on the American forces.
‘Are we ready?’ Wadsworth asked again. If he could explain the system to children, he had decided, then teaching the state militia should be easy enough. ‘Forward march!’
The children marched creditably well, though Alexander kept skipping to try and match steps with his companions. ‘Battalion!’ Wadsworth called, ‘Halt!’
They halted. So far so good. ‘Battalion! Prepare to form line! Don’t move yet!’ He paused a moment. ‘The left wing will face left! The right wing will face right, on my word of command. Battalion! Face front!’
Rebecca turned right instead of left and the battalion milled about in a moment of confusion before someone’s hair was pulled and Alexander began shouting bang as he shot imaginary redcoats coming from the Common Burying Ground. ‘Counter-wheel, march!’ Wadsworth shouted, and the children swivelled in different directions and by now, the general thought despairingly, the British troops would have hammered two slaughterous volleys into his regiment. Perhaps, Wadsworth thought, using the children from the school where he had taught before becoming a soldier was not the best way to develop his mastery of infantry tactics. ‘Form line,’ he shouted.
‘The way to do it,’ a man on crutches offered from the crowd, ‘is company by company. It’s slower, General, but slow and steady wins the day.’
‘No, no, no!’ someone else chimed in. ‘First company front right marker to step one pace left and one pace forward, and he becomes left marker, raises his hand, and the rest fall in on him. Or her, in your regiment, General.’
‘Better company by company,’ the crippled man insisted, ‘that’s how we did it at Germantown.’
‘But you lost at Germantown,’ the second man pointed out.
Johnny Fiske pretended to be shot, staggered dramatically and fell down, and Peleg Wadsworth, he found it hard to think of himself as a general, decided he had failed to explain the manoeuvre properly. He wondered whether he would ever need to master the intricacies of infantry drill. The French had joined America’s struggle for freedom and had sent an army across the Atlantic and the war was now being fought in the southern states very far from Massachusetts.
‘Is the war won?’ a voice interrupted his thoughts and he turned to see his wife, Elizabeth, carrying their one-year-old daughter, Zilpha, in her arms.
‘I do believe,’ Peleg Wadsworth said, ‘that the children have killed every last redcoat in America.’
‘God be praised for that,’ Elizabeth said lightly. She was twenty-six, five years younger than her husband, and pregnant again. Alexander was her oldest, then came three-year-old Charles and the infant Zilpha, who stared wide-eyed and solemn at her father. Elizabeth was almost as tall as her husband who was putting notebook and pencil back into a uniform pocket. He looked good in uniform, she thought, though the white-faced blue coat with its elegant buttoned tail was in desperate need of patching, but there was no blue cloth available, not even in Boston, at least not at a price that Peleg and Elizabeth Wadsworth could afford. Elizabeth was secretly amused by her husband’s intense, worried expression. He was a good man, she thought fondly, as honest as the day was long and trusted by all his neighbours. He needed a haircut, though the slightly ragged dark locks gave his lean face an attractively rakish look. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt the war,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but you have a visitor.’ She nodded back towards their house where a man in uniform was tethering his horse to the hitching post.
The visitor was thin with a round, bespectacled face that was familiar to Wadsworth, but he could not place the man who, his horse safely tied, took a paper from his tail-coat pocket and strolled across the sunlit common. His uniform was pale brown with white facings. A sabre hung by leather straps from his sword belt. ‘General Wadsworth,’ he said as he came close, ‘it is good to see you in health, sir,’ he added, and for a second Wadsworth flailed desperately as he tried to match a name to the face, then, blessedly, the name came.
‘Captain Todd,’ he said, hiding his relief.
‘Major Todd now, sir.’
‘I congratulate you, Major.’
‘I’m appointed an aide to General Ward,’ Todd said, ‘who sends you this.’ He handed the paper to Wadsworth. It was a single sheet, folded and sealed, with General Artemas Ward’s name inscribed in spidery writing beneath the seal.
Major Todd looked sternly at the children. Still in a ragged line, they stared back at him, intrigued by the curved blade at his waist. ‘Stand at ease,’ Todd ordered them, then smiled at Wadsworth. ‘You recruit them young, General?’
Wadsworth, somewhat embarrassed to have been discovered drilling children, did not answer. He had unsealed the paper and now read the brief message. General Artemas Ward presented his compliments to Brigadier-General Wadsworth and regretted to inform him that a charge had been laid against Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere, commanding officer of the Massachusetts’ Artillery Regiment, specifically that he had been drawing rations and pay for thirty non-existent men, and General Ward now required Wadsworth to make enquiries into the substance of the allegation.
Wadsworth read the message a second time, then dismissed the children and beckoned Todd to walk with him towards the Burying Ground. ‘General Ward is well?’ he asked politely. Artemas Ward commanded the Massachusetts Militia.
‘He’s well enough,’ Todd answered, ‘other than some pains in the legs.’
‘He grows old,’ Wadsworth said, and for a dutiful moment the two men exchanged news of births, marriages, illnesses and deaths, the small change of a community. They had paused in the shade of an elm and after a while Wadsworth gestured with the letter. ‘It seems strange to me,’ he said carefully, ‘that a major should bring such a trivial message.’
‘Trivial?’ Todd asked sternly, ‘we are talking of peculation, General.’
‘Which, if true, will have been recorded in the muster returns. Does it require a general to inspect the books? A clerk could do that.’
‘A clerk has done that,’ Todd said grimly, ‘but a clerk’s name on the official report bears no weight.’
Wadsworth heard the
