Charlestown
“Do you have teeth?” he asked. “Good. You can tear a cartridge. Can you take two deep breaths? Are you a papist?”
He leaned closer. “Do you like beer?”
That was his pitch to join the grenadiers, the most elite unit in the British Army, a fearsome group of men who stood 6 feet tall and donned peaked caps to effect an even more intimidating stature.
Organizers at the fort, a living museum and replica of what was once the northernmost colonial outpost along the Connecticut River, had scheduled a mock engagement for 1:30 Saturday afternoon. With the fighting only minutes away, the re-enactors, in jest, were pressing every passerby to join them.
“You’re in!” another soldier, a sergeant, told a second prospect, an elderly man wearing jeans and a baseball cap. “We’ll only keep you for about five to 25 years.”
Hundreds of period enthusiasts from all over the U.S. and Canada descended on The Fort at No. 4 this weekend to re-create events during the French and Indian War, the 1754-63 conflict that saw settlers and European troops fight side by side for control of Britain and France’s North American colonies.
They surrounded the fortified village with an impromptu encampment, where men, women and children in breeches, tricorn hats and petticoat dresses stood around fires, spit-roasting chickens and nursing beer in pewter mugs.
It was a convincing illusion, punctured only by the presence of outside visitors in street clothes, as well as the occasional sight of a colonial gentleman straightening his braided coat and re-donning leather gloves as he exited a modern portable toilet.
Just inside a door near the fort’s entrance was a man sewing parchment pages together with a needle and thread — a bookbinder whose presence would, in fact, have been an anachronism in a small outpost such as this one, he soon would explain.
But first, the bookbinder, who wore an apron and a workman’s skullcap, called over a passing family and addressed a young girl standing with them.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Did you ever believe in unicorns?”
“Yes,” the girl, who looked to be about 10, said warily.
“Oh,” he said. “Then I have something to show you.”
The bookbinder, whose name is Lyle Cubberly, reached down to something beside his work table.
Then he stopped, and looked behind him. He raised a finger and said, quietly, “I have to be careful. There’s only three people in the world that have any unicorn leather.”
Cubberly held out the leather, and as she touched it, he asked, “Can you feel the magic there?”
The girl nodded, grinning. Then Cubberly explained his trade: how he notches the pages on a wooden block and brings thread through the holes, how he boils down animal gristle to glue the spine together, how he connects the paper to the covers using a piece of cheesecloth.
More than hobbyists, re-enactors consider themselves educators, amateur historians who take pride in reviving the period for the present-day public. And Cubberly clearly found pleasure in describing the details of his profession — especially as he outlined, with a grin, the reasons why he was obligated to give frequent beatings to his apprentices.
“Being a kind Christian soul,” he said, the laugh lines deepening on his weathered face, “I promise I’ll only beat you once a day. And I’ll never use anything thicker than my thumb.”
Cubberly was only one of many artisans at work on Saturday. Around the corner, a row of tents had been set up, and at the end, a group of children perched on their knees and stared, rapt, as Bob Brinck, a flint knapper from Hinsdale, N.H., explained the workings of a flintlock musket: where the powder goes, how the stone ignites it with a spark, how the weapon is loaded.
Although Brinck was familiar enough with a musket to demonstrate its mechanism, he likely wouldn’t be joining the afternoon’s hostilities. He had come on his own, whereas most re-enactors fight in groups that train together and, importantly, go in together on insurance.
“I hope I get invited,” he said. If not, he added, “it’s OK. If you don’t shoot it, you don’t have to clean it.”
Cubberly would participate, however. A re-enactor since 1975, he travels with the Pequawket Alliance, a group of history buffs from all over North America whom he described as “family.”
A retired Air Force major, Cubberly lives in Clinton, Conn., and serves as a Methodist lay minister. But given that his allegiance as a re-enactor is to Catholic France, he soon would change into the robes of a Jesuit priest.
With an apologetic air, Cubberly moved the sleeve of his period shirt to look at a wristwatch. He was needed to bless the troops. It was time to go.
“You’ll see me out there,” he said. “I’m the only one wearing black.”
The battle took place by the river, just outside the stockade.
It was more of a general demonstration than a re-enactment of a particular engagement: one by one, a new unit entered the field as an announcer described their tactics and composition, attempting to conjure for more than a hundred civilian onlookers the look and feel of a real 18th-century conflict.
First came British skirmishers and their French counterparts, a mix of brown-coated settlers and whooping Natives known as coureurs de bois. They dodged and wove and took cover, firing intermittently from one knee.
Then there were light infantry, who stood in straighter lines and issued slightly less ragged volleys. Then Cubberly’s unit, whom the announcer introduced as the “troupes de terre” — French regulars in white uniforms and red caps.
Sure enough, the bookbinder-turned-priest was there, now dressed in a black cassock and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He stood behind the front lines, watching the battle and holding hands with his grandson, Nathan.
The troupes de terre and their Anglo opponents came closer and closer, always in line, always firing in strict unison, never moving faster than a walk. Re-enactors began to drop to the ground. Gunsmoke and the smell of sulfur filled the air.
“It was this close,” the announcer said as the two sides drew within 30 feet. “You got to see bullets flying around you. You got to see your friends lying dead or wounded. Imagine the courage it took.”
As the British grenadiers entered the field, the announcer hailed them as the “shock troops of the 18th century.” Soon, the British began to push the French back. With the grenadiers in the lead, they fixed bayonets — wicked detachable spikes — to their muskets, and came forward at a brisk march.
That was enough for the French, who withdrew from the field. The announcer, his voice traveling across the hazy field through a loudspeaker in the fort’s wooden tower, declared it over.
Then he called on those actors who had fallen — and lain there, with remarkable dedication, for the rest of the battle — to stand up.
“The dead may rise,” the announcer said. “The dead may rise.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.