“What the devil are you doing, Kennedy?” Lindsay had arrived with the remainder of the Rangers. “I gave you a direct order not to attack the fort.”
“Sir!” Kennedy said. “You must be mistaken, sir. I am sure you said to take the fort.”
MacKim stepped back, remaining at attention. It was not a corporal’s place to interfere when two officers disagreed.
“I distinctly ordered you to halt, Lieutenant,” Lindsay said.
“My apologies, sir. The cold must have affected my hearing. May I offer my congratulations on achieving your objective, sir? By capturing the fort, as I believed you ordered, we managed to fire on the column of French and tip their cannon and stores into the river.”
MacKim saw Lindsay’s expression alter as he digested this information. “I see. Give me your spyglass, Lieutenant.”
Lindsay focussed the telescope on the island, now bereft of any sign of life, and then scanned the ice, on which a few items of stores lay. “I can’t see any bodies.”
“Some of the French drowned, sir,” Kennedy said.
“Only some?”
“Most escaped.” Kennedy hesitated for a moment. “We estimate there were about three hundred French, sir, including Canadians and Indians. We could cross the river and pursue them if you wish.”
MacKim saw Lindsay’s face pale when he heard the number of Frenchmen.
“No,” Lindsay said at last. “Our orders were to damage the convoy, and we’ve done that. I think it best that we report to General Murray.”
“As you wish, sir,” Kennedy said. “We have some French artillerymen as prisoners.”
“They might give valuable intelligence,” Lindsay said. “We’ve done very well, and now we’ll head back to Quebec.”
The Rangers marched with a swagger as they passed through the gate at Quebec’s St Louis Bastion. Each man knew they had achieved something few other British units could even try. Claudette Leclerc was standing amongst the crowd of onlookers. She looked up, caught MacKim’s eye and lifted a hand in acknowledgement.
“That woman’s waving to you,” Sergeant Speakman said.
MacKim nodded. “She probably thinks I am somebody else,” he said.
“That must be it,” Speakman agreed. “Why would any woman want to wave to an ugly dog like you?”
“That’s what I thought, too,” MacKim found he had straightened his shoulders. “Especially when there is such a handsome sergeant as you.” He gave Speakman a twisted smile. “Are you sure she was not waving to you?”
Speakman mused for a second, turned to look over his shoulder and smiled. “Do you know, MacKim, I think you might be right.”
They marched on, with Captain Lindsay immediately entering Fort Louis to report to General Murray and Lieutenant Kennedy ensuring the men returned to barracks.
“Eat and sleep, boys,” Kennedy said. “Back to routine tomorrow.” He leaned against the door, with his uniform as tattered and faded as any of his men. “I have no idea what the official account of our mission will be, but I’d say we did well.”
MacKim glanced over the room. It was as tidy as when they left, except for his bed. “Somebody’s been in here,” he said. “Check your belongings, Rangers.”
In common with any British infantry unit, the Rangers had few possessions, and what they owned, they tended to carry with them. However, the men looked for the odds-and-ends they had secreted around the room.
“Nothing missing, Corporal,” Parnell reported. “You must be mistaken.”
“No,” MacKim said as he lifted his thin straw mattress. “Somebody has undoubtedly been here.” The square of beadwork lay on the unyielding boards of the bed, a splash of colour against the dull brown. MacKim lifted it with suddenly trembling hands, remembering Tayanita’s eyes as she handed it to him, remembering her smile and scent.
“Are you all right, Corporal?” Ramsay asked.
“Yes.” MacKim tried to hide his pleasure. Either Claudette Leclerc or her little son had been in the barracks, for nobody else would have returned this precious object. Holding the beadwork in his hand, he lay on his side and closed his eyes.
“I hear that General Murray is very pleased with Captain Lindsay,” Butler said, when they returned from guard duty the following day. “He wrote a glowing report of Lindsay’s successes, ready to send to William Pitt in London, once the frost lifts.”
“How about Kennedy?” MacKim asked. “Did Captain Lindsay mention the part Kennedy played?”
“I don’t know,” Butler said. “I was talking to the general’s clerk, and Murray seems to believe that Lindsay is another Major Roberts.”
“God save us all,” Waite said. “Lieutenant Kennedy may be, but Lindsay?” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Did the clerk say anything else?” MacKim asked.
Butler nodded. “These French artillerymen we brought as prisoners were so pleased that we didn’t leave them for the Indians that they were happy to talk.”
“What did they say?”
Butler shook his head. “That’s all I heard. The clerk thinks he’s above mere soldiers such as us.”
Lieutenant Kennedy was more forthcoming when he called his Rangers together a few days later.
“The French are building floating gun batteries somewhere between here and Montreal,” he said, looking at the circle of hungry, tired faces. “They know that the Royal Navy will sail up to Quebec as soon as the ice releases its grip, and they want to challenge them.”
MacKim nodded. He remembered the French floating fire ships down the St Lawrence during the previous year’s campaign. The battles on the river were an extension of the great naval encounters at sea, with fleet actions deciding the fate of colonies as much as any actions on land.
“General Murray wants us to find and destroy the building yard and capture or kill the boat builders," Kennedy said.
The Rangers looked at each other and said nothing. They had barely been back a week, and most were still recovering from their endeavours.
“This will be our longest and most vital mission yet,” Kennedy said. “The French artillerymen have given us a rough idea where the yard is, but it’s sure to be well guarded, so I only want volunteers.”
“How many Rangers do you want, sir?” Speakman asked.
“We’re hoping for a hundred, with as many of you lads as wish to come, plus others from the garrison, mainly from the Royal Americans.”
The Rangers glanced at each other; they had grown used to each other’s company and knew that an influx of new blood would alter the dynamics of the unit.
“Will you be in charge, sir?” MacKim asked the question he knew others were thinking.
“Captain Lindsay will again be in command,” Kennedy said. “I will be second in command, with Sergeant Speakman and, he glanced at MacKim, “newly promoted Sergeant MacKim next.”
MacKim shook his head as half the Rangers turned to look at him. “I don’t wish to be a sergeant, sir.”
“You already are, Sergeant. Captain Lindsay confirmed my recommendation this morning. Congratulations, and please begin your duties immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” MacKim said, as men pounded his back and shoulders. He had no desire for the extra responsibilities of a sergeant. He just wished to be left alone with his thoughts and his search for revenge. His hand sought the square of Tayanita’s beadwork.
“I also want you to learn to fire the long rifle, Sergeant,” Kennedy said. “Our frontiersmen use it, but the British Army does not. Some of the Royal Americans have them as hunting pieces, and I have requisitioned four for the Rangers.”
“Yes, sir,” MacKim said.
Kennedy continued. “You’ll remember how our muskets were out of range when the French crossed the St Lawrence. This time, we will have a few weapons that can carry further.”
“I have no doubt they’ll prove useful, sir,” MacKim said.
“Good. Have Sergeant Speakman instruct you in your new duties, MacKim, and then get used to the new rifles. Oh, and congratulations again.”
“Thank you, sir,” MacKim said.
MacKim had seen some of the civilian backwoodsmen carrying very long firearms but had never had the opportunity to see the rifles in action. Now, Jack Dickert, a blond-haired man who had joined the Rangers from the Royal Americans, brought one to him.
“My father made this one, Sergeant,” Dickert said, with the German of his ancestors still apparent through his Colonial twang.
The first thing MacKim noticed was the extreme length of the weapon, at nearly seventy inches long, yet it was beautifully balanced and weighed only ten pounds. As the Brown Bess weighed a fraction more and was over fifty-eight inches long, the Long Rifle was light for its length.
“How was it made?” MacKim held the piece, sighting along the barrel.
Dickert gave a slow smile. “We start with a flat bar of soft iron,” he said, holding his arms wide to demonstrate the length, “and forge it by hand into a gun barrel.”
MacKim nodded, appreciating the labour involved in this initial process.
“We have to bore it through and create the rifling, because it’s the rifling that makes the ball spin and increases the accuracy.”
“What sort of tools do you use?”
“Hand tools,” Dickert said proudly. “Everything is done by hand.”
MacKim nodded again. “It’s a work of art,” he said.
Dickert continued, smiling. “Then we carve a maple wood stock from the forest and fit it onto the barrel.”
MacKim lifted the rifle. “Where do you buy the locks? The nearest town?”
Dickert shook his head. “We make our own on the anvil.” His smile broadened. “We are pleased with the result.”
“It’s a masterpiece,” MacKim agreed, “light and graceful. How much powder does it use?”
“Less than the Brown Bess,” Dickert said, “and it fires a smaller ball with more accuracy up to two hundred yards.”
MacKim checked the piece was not loaded and then squinted down the barrel to see the rifling. “It will take longer to load,” he said.
“That’s the drawback,” Dickert agreed. “That and the length of the barrel.” He gave a slow smile. “But it’s a hunting rifle; hunters don’t load in haste. A Brown Bess will take maybe twenty seconds to load. This one,” he screwed up his face in his effort to think, “maybe forty to forty-five seconds.”
“Twice as long, then, with twice the range.”
“Yes, Sergeant, and three times the accuracy,” Dickert said.
“Could you show me how to fire it?” MacKim asked.
“With pleasure.” Dickert seemed genuinely pleased at the thought of teaching, so that evening, MacKim listened as Dickert explained how to aim and fire the long rifle. After two hours, MacKim thought he had mastered the basics.
“It’s very accurate,” he said.
“A good man can shoot the eye out of a pigeon at two hundred paces,” Dickert said.
“A few of these, in the hands of skilled marksmen, could turn the tide in any battle,” MacKim said. “Why, a marksman could target the enemy’s commander and principal officers and leave them leaderless.”
Dickert gave his characteristic slow smile. “That’s right, Sergeant. Maybe the British Army could have whole regiments of riflemen someday.”
“Maybe they will at that,” MacKim said. “We did that with fusiliers and grenadiers, so why not with riflemen? We could shoot the enemy to pieces even before he gets his muskets in range.”
As the days wore on and the officers made their plans for the proposed raid on the French shipbuilding yard, recruits and hopeful recruits dribbled into the Rangers’ ranks. Kennedy or Lindsay rejected most right away, for the various regiments were attempting to pass their incorrigible characters onto the Rangers, where discipline was notoriously lax. Eventually, the officers accepted less than thirty men, all with experience of forest fighting.
While the officers made their decisions, MacKim sought out Claudette in the ruined building where the homeless Quebecers congregated. He held up the square of beadwork. “Thank you,” he said.
Claudette looked up from her place beside the fire. “I did not make that,” she said.
“No, but you found it for me.”
When Claudette smiled, MacKim could see the beauty beneath the hardship lines. “Hugo found it, not me.”
“Please thank him for me.” MacKim handed over a larger-than-usual share of army bread with a hunk of hard cheese. “It’s not much, but it’s from the heart.”
Claudette accepted the bread and cheese with a small hand. “Thank you, Sergeant MacKim,” she said and returned her attention to the fire.
“Good God, they’ve made him a sergeant!” Chisholm’s voice sounded around the Ranger’s barrack room.
“So they have,” Ranald MacDonald said. “They can’t know him very well.”
MacKim looked up from the duty roster on which he was working. “What the devil are you reprobates doing here? Don’t you know this is the Rangers’ barracks? Real soldiers, not parade ground pretty-boys.”
Chisholm grinned. “Real soldiers? Ha! You’ve never seen a real battle, Hughie! That affair on the Plains of Abraham was hardly even a skirmish. Now, if you had been at Fontenoy like me… ”
“If I had been at Fontenoy,” MacKim interrupted, “I’d talk everybody to death about it, just like you do.” He held out his hand. “Have you lads joined the Rangers?”
“Only for this one expedition,” Chisholm said. “Married life is all very well for a while, but it is very restricting.”
Ranald MacDonald looked around the room. “Harriette told him that somebody had to look after you,” he said. “She’s got her eye on you for her husband number three, remember. Or is it number four?”
MacKim shook both their hands. “She’ll have a long wait,” he said. “Chisholm is indestructible. Anybody that can survive Fontenoy deserves to live forever. Why did you come, Ranald?”
“I heard the food and accommodation was better,” he said. “Although the NCOs are said to be right bastards.”
“Aye, that bit’s correct.” MacKim stepped back. “It’s good to see you both, although you might regret your decision. We’re destined for a perilous operation.”
Chisholm shrugged. “We can die out in the forest or perish of cold and scurvy behind the city walls. What difference does it make? We’re all going to die out here in New France, anyway.”
Ramsay looked up. “No, we’re not. Lieutenant Kennedy leads us, Chisholm, and he is a good man.”
“Kennedy? I thought that we were Lindsay’s Rangers.”
MacKim nodded. “Aye, we are, but as Ramsay said, Kennedy’s a good man. He knows the ways of the forest as well as any Canadian or Indian.”
MacDonald stamped his boots on the floor. “Well then, we’ll see what must be done. When are we leaving?”
“Not until we train up you green men, God help us,” MacKim said.
While Kennedy and Sergeant Speakman trained the new Rangers in forest fighting, MacKim found the best four shots and asked them to volunteer to carry the long rifles.
“You mean as well as our muskets?” Parnell asked.
“No, instead of,” MacKim said.
Parnell nodded. “All right then.” He was one of the four chosen, along with Dickert, Waite and Duncan MacRae.
“You four are different from the others,” MacKim told them. “You are the best shots in the company, so possibly the best in the garrison.”
The four men looked at him without speaking. All had been in the army long enough not to trust a sergeant’s praise.
“You will not take part in any mad bayonet charge, nor endanger your lives unless expressly ordered to,” MacKim said. “You are the marksmen; you will fire at picked targets that our muskets cannot reach and care for your rifles as if they were your wives. Dickert will teach you how to do that. Now, go and practise shooting.”
The marksmen glanced at each other, pleased that they had chosen an easier life than their companions.
“I will inspect your rifles from time to time,” MacKim brought them back down to earth, “and if I find even a speck of rust or dirt, you’ll wish the Indians had got you.”
The riflemen looked at him, unsure if he was joking or not. MacKim allowed them to wonder as he sought Lieutenant Kennedy.
“When do we leave, sir?” MacKim asked.
“Friday night,” Kennedy said. “It’s a full moon, and we’ll leave as soon as it rises. The French artillerymen have kindly drawn us a map. I have a copy, and Captain Lindsay has another.”
“Yes, sir,” MacKim said.
“If anything happens to us, you and Sergeant Speakman will fall heir to the maps. Once we have destroyed the boatyard, we will head back to Quebec, for I suspect the Frenchies will be hard on our tails.” Kennedy smiled. “We hoped for a hundred men; we have seventy-five volunteers. In my mind, seventy-five volunteers are better than five hundred pressed men.”
“Yes, sir,” MacKim agreed.
MacKim paid Claudette a final visit, fully aware he may never see her again.
“So, you Rangers are off again,” Claudette said.
“We are.” MacKim was no longer surprised that a Canadian civilian knew the army’s supposedly secret movements.
“Come back safe, MacKim,” Claudette said.
“Stay safe, Madame Leclerc.” MacKim gave another stiff bow.
When he turned at the doorway, Claudette was still watching him, with Hugo at her side.
Quebec was tense that night as if the city knew that its trials were not yet over. MacKim ensured his men had eighty cartridges apiece, with their water bottles full of water, not rum, and a supply of bread. Three men had already dropped out, as the ever-prevalent scurvy prevented them from marching any distance at all.
“Well, Hugh,” Chisholm was sharpening his flints, “what’s to do?”
“Just the war, James,” MacKim said. “It’s all that matters now.”
“A sergeant, eh? It’s a long step from the Johnny Raw you were when I first met you.”
MacKim shrugged, a habit he had acquired since mixing with the inhabitants of New France. “Aye; Louisbourg seems a very long time ago. We were all Johnny Raws to the colonial way of warfare.”
“Once we’ve captured Montreal,” Chisholm said, “the Frenchies will give up, this bloody campaign will be over, and all our colonies in the Americas will have peace from the Canadian and Indian raids. We’ll have brought them security, Hugh, and we can go home.”
“Home?” MacKim thought of the glen where he had grown up and the mother he had left only a few years ago. Only a few years, yet it seemed like a lifetime, and MacKim knew he was a different man to the raw young soldier who had landed in New France in 1758. “I don’t know, James. Where is your home?”
“Here, in the army.” Chisholm touched his face, so ravaged by fire that civilians turned away from him. “The army doesn’t care how I look, as long as I can march and shoot. No civilian would employ me. You can go home though, Hugh, back to Scotland. A wig will disguise your head, and nobody will see the scar on your chest. Your wounds are hidden.”
MacKim nodded. “Aye, my wounds are hidden.” Nobody knows how deep they are, he thought. Nobody knows how hard I have to hold on to prevent my sanity from slipping away. Unless it has already done so.
“You have your wife,” MacKim said. “Harriette will support you. You could open a tavern somewhere; Inverness maybe, or Edinburgh, maybe even London. Nobody will care about your scars as long as you sell good ale.”
Chisholm smiled. “If only that were true, Hugh. Harriette belongs in the army as much as I do, perhaps more. She was born in the ranks and knows nothing about civilian life.”
MacKim nodded. After his years in uniform, he understood the attractions as well as the dangers of military life. The Army gave men food and usually shelter, with companionship and a sense of belonging. In civilian life, there were no guarantees; life was work or starve, and work for the unskilled, men or women, was poorly paid, with accommodation worse. For many, army life provided a sanctuary from the desperate poverty of the streets.
“Are you ready, boys?” Kennedy asked softly.
MacKim nodded. “My lads are ready, sir.”
“Then let’s go and find the French,” Kennedy said.
The Rangers filed out of Quebec onto the Plains of Abraham, where General Wolfe had fought his epic battle the previous autumn. With the moon high and full, they had no difficulty finding their route and marched across the undulating plain, with Lindsay at their head and Kennedy halfway down the column. MacKim provided the rearguard with a handful of veterans.
“May God be with us, boys,” MacKim said.
“God and good marksmanship.” Dickert tapped the lock of his rifle.
The Rangers moved fast, using the light to cover as much ground as possible before the moonlight faded.
“We know the dispositions of the French outposts,” Kennedy explained at their first stop, “so we’ll get around them without difficulty.” He grinned. “We’re the predators,” he said. “We’re the point of King George’s sword, the hard-hitting dogs of war.”
“Yes, sir,” MacKim said, watching the shadows on the plains as clouds flitted across the moon. He preferred a still night, for shadows disrupted the lie of the land and fooled men into seeing things that were not there.
“We’re crossing the St Lawrence on the ice,” Kennedy reminded, “and moving down the opposite side of the river, where the French will never expect to see us.”
They halted at the St Lawrence, checking along the banks in case of a waiting Canadian or Indian picket. To MacKim, the flat ice plain invited danger, for a column of men in the open was easily seen.
“Kennedy,” Lindsay ordered. “You take the van. Sergeant Speakman and I will take the centre and MacKim the rear.”
“Sir,” Kennedy said. He organised the dozen men of the van, gave them quiet orders and stepped onto the iced river.
MacKim watched as Kennedy’s party eased over the ice, muskets held ready, green uniforms like dark shadows, snowshoes making them ungainly. They seemed to take an age, and then they were in the trees, forming a bridgehead to protect the remainder.
Lindsay gave Kennedy five minutes before he led the main body of fifty men, including MacKim’s marksmen, onto the ice. When they were halfway, a cloud eased across the moon, and then the shooting began.