The ridge above the village was thick with spruce, though to the west, where the land was highest, there were fine maples, beech, and birch. Oaks grew by the water. Much of the land about the settlement had been cleared and planted with corn, and now axes bit into spruce trees as the redcoats set about clearing the ridge above the village.
Seven hundred soldiers had come to Majabigwaduce. Four hundred and fifty were kilted highlanders of the 74th, another two hundred were lowlanders from the 82nd, while the remaining fifty were engineers and gunners. The fleet which had brought them had dispersed, the Blonde sailing on to New York and leaving behind only three empty transport ships and three small sloops-of-war whose masts now dominated Majabigwaduce’s harbor. The beach was heaped with landed supplies and a new track, beaten into the dirt, now ran straight up the long slope from the water’s edge to the ridge’s crest. Brigadier McLean climbed that track, walking with the aid of a twisted blackthorn stick and accompanied by a civilian. “We are a small force, Doctor Calef,” McLean said, “but you may rely on us to do our duty.”
“Calf,” Calef said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name, General, is pronounced calf.”
“I do pray your pardon, Doctor,” McLean said, inclining his head.
Doctor Calef was a thickset man a few years younger than McLean. He wore a low crowned hat over a wig that had not been powdered for weeks and which framed a blunt face distinguished by a determined jaw. He had introduced himself to McLean, offering advice, professional help and whatever other support he could give. “You’re here to stay, I trust?” the doctor demanded.
“Decidedly, sir, decidedly,” McLean said, digging his stick into the thin soil, “oh, indeed we mean to stay.”
“To do what?” Calef asked curtly.
“Let me see now,” McLean paused, watching as two men stepped back from a half-felled tree that toppled, slowly at first, then crashed down in an explosion of splintering branches, pine needles, and dust. “My first duty, Doctor,” he said, “is to prevent the rebels from using the bay as a haven for their privateers. Those pirates have been a nuisance.” That was mild. The American rebels held all the coastline between Canada and New York except for the beleaguered British garrison in Newport, Rhode Island, and British merchant ships, making that long voyage, were ever at risk from the well-armed, fast-sailing rebel privateers. By occupying Majabigwaduce the British would dominate Penobscot Bay and so deny the rebels its fine anchorage, which would become a base for Britain’s Royal Navy. “At the same time,” McLean continued, “I am ordered to deter any rebel attack on Canada and thirdly, Doctor, I am to encourage trade here.”
“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 harbor 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 harbor islands, and a humid southwest 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.