‘Mast wood,’ Calef growled.
‘Especially mast wood,’ McLean agreed, ‘and fourthly we are to settle this region.’
‘Settle it?’
‘For the crown, Doctor, for the crown.’ McLean smiled and waved his blackthorn stick at the landscape. ‘Behold, Doctor Calef, His Majesty’s province of New Ireland.’
‘New Ireland?’ Calef asked.
‘From the border of Canada and eighty miles southwards,’ McLean said, ‘all New Ireland.’
‘Let’s trust it’s not as papist as old Ireland,’ Calef said sourly.
‘I’m sure it will be God-fearing,’ McLean said tactfully. The general had served many years in Portugal and did not share his countrymen’s distaste for Roman Catholics, but he was a good enough soldier to know when not to fight. ‘So what brought you to New Ireland, Doctor?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘I was driven from Boston by damned rebels,’ Calef said angrily.
‘And you chose to come here?’ McLean asked, unable to hide his surprise that the doctor had fled Boston to this fog-ridden wilderness.
‘Where else could I take my family?’ Calef demanded, still angry. ‘Dear God, General, but there’s no legitimate government between here and New York! In all but name the colonies are independent already! In Boston the wretches have an administration, a legislature, offices of state, a judiciary! Why? Why is it permitted?’
‘You could have moved to New York?’ McLean suggested, ignoring Calef’s indignant question, ‘or to Halifax?’
‘I’m a Massachusetts man,’ Calef said, ‘and I trust that one day I will return to Boston, but a Boston cleansed of rebellion.’
‘I pray so too,’ McLean said. ‘Tell me, Doctor, did the woman give birth safely?’
Doctor Calef blinked, as if the question surprised him. ‘The woman? Oh, you mean Joseph Perkins’s wife. Yes, she was delivered safely. A fine girl.’
‘Another girl, eh?’ McLean said, and turned to gaze at the wide bay beyond the harbour entrance. ‘Big bay with big tides,’ he said lightly, then saw the doctor’s incomprehension. ‘I was told that was the meaning of Majabigwaduce,’ he explained.
Calef frowned, then made a small gesture as if the question was irrelevant. ‘I’ve no idea what the name means, General. You must ask the savages. It’s their name for the place.’
‘Well, it’s all New Ireland now,’ McLean said, then touched his hat. ‘Good day, Doctor, I’m sure we shall talk further. I’m grateful for your support, grateful indeed, but if you’ll excuse me, duty calls.’
Calef watched the general limp uphill, then called to him. ‘General McLean!’
‘Sir?’ McLean turned.
‘You don’t imagine the rebels are going to let you stay here, do you?’
McLean appeared to consider the question for a few seconds, almost as though he had never thought about it before. ‘I would think not,’ he said mildly.
‘They’ll come for you,’ Calef warned him. ‘Soon as they know you’re here, General, they’ll come for you.’
‘Do you know?’ McLean said, ‘I rather think they will.’ He touched his hat again. ‘Good day, Doctor. I’m glad about Mrs Perkins.’
‘Damn Mrs Perkins,’ the doctor said, but too softly for the general to hear, then he turned and stared southwards down the long bay, past Long Island, to where the river disappeared on its way to the far off sea, and he wondered how long before a rebel fleet appeared in that channel.
That fleet would appear, he was sure. Boston would learn of McLean’s presence, and Boston would want to scour this place free of redcoats. And Calef knew Boston. He had been a member of the General Assembly there, a Massachusetts legislator, but he was also a stubborn loyalist who had been driven from his home after the British left Boston. Now he lived here, at Majabigwaduce, and the rebels were coming for him again. He knew it, he feared their coming, and he feared that a general who cared about a woman and her baby was a man too soft to do the necessary job. ‘Just kill them all,’ he growled to himself, ‘just kill them all.’
Six days after Brigadier-General Wadsworth had paraded the children, and after Brigadier-General McLean had sailed into Majabigwaduce’s snug haven, a captain paced the quarter-deck of his ship, the Continental Navy frigate Warren. It was a warm Boston morning. There was fog over the harbour islands, and a humid south-west wind bringing a promise of afternoon thunder.
‘The glass?’ the captain asked brusquely.
‘Dropping, sir,’ a midshipman answered.
‘As I thought,’ Captain Dudley Saltonstall said, ‘as I thought.’ He paced larboard to starboard and starboard to larboard beneath the mizzen’s neatly furled spanker on its long boom. His long-chinned face was shadowed by the forrard peak of his cocked hat, beneath which his dark eyes looked sharply from the multitude of ships anchored in the roads to his crew who, though short-handed, were swarming over the frigate’s deck, sides and rigging to give the ship her morning scrub. Saltonstall was newly appointed to the Warren and he was determined she should be a neat ship.
‘As I thought,’ Saltonstall said again. The midshipman, standing respectfully beside the larboard aft gun, braced his leg against the gun’s carriage and said nothing. The wind was fresh enough to jerk the Warren on her anchor cables and make her shudder to the small waves that flickered white across the harbour. The Warren, like the two nearby vessels that also belonged to the Continental Navy, flew the red-and white-striped flag on which a snake surmounted the words ‘Don’t Tread on Me’. Many of the other ships in the crowded harbour flew the bold new flag of the United States, striped and starred, but two smart brigs, both armed with fourteen six-pounder cannons and both anchored close to the Warren, flew the Massachusetts Navy flag that showed a green pine tree on a white field and bore the words ‘An Appeal to Heaven’.
‘An appeal to nonsense,’ Saltonstall growled.
‘Sir?’ the midshipman asked nervously.
‘If our cause is just, Mister Coningsby, why need we appeal to heaven? Let us rather appeal to force, to justice, to reason.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ the midshipman said, unsettled by the captain’s habit of looking past the man he spoke to.
‘Appeal to heaven!’ Saltonstall sneered, still gazing past the midshipman’s ear towards the offending flag. ‘In war, Mister Coningsby, one might do better to appeal to hell.’
The ensigns of other vessels were more picaresque. One low-slung ship, her masts raked sharply aft and her gun ports painted black, had a coiled rattlesnake emblazoned on her ensign, while a second flew the skull and crossbones, and a third showed King George of England losing his crown to a cheerful looking Yankee wielding a spiked club. Captain Saltonstall disapproved of all such home-made flags. They made for untidiness. A dozen other ships had British flags, but all those flags were being flown beneath American colours to show they had been captured, and Captain
