by Smith, Skye
He had the lodge to himself. Everyone else was off and busy working, but at sunset this lodge would be crowded with folk warming themselves after bathing away the dirt of the day in cold water. He lay on one of the long benches and stretched out his muscles. What Teesa had just told him had explained his worry about Hampden.
A black fighting falcon was the insignia of a prince of the Rhineland. Rupert was such a prince. Mere skirmishers would not wear such an insignia, so it had not been a standard skirmisher attack to get rid of the enemy leaders. The group of cavalryers who had attacked Hampden had been men of the prince's lifeguard. They had been sent to get rid of Hampden, personally.
If Hampden and Rupert ever met in battle again, Hampden would be targeted, again. If Rupert was targeting him, then so would every general in the king's army. Hampden was too important to the cause of the Reform Party to be lost to a battlefield skirmish, and obviously the royalists had realized this even if the rebels had not. Unfortunately, although Hampden looked and spoke like a school master, he was the kind of man who bravely led his men from the front. The fool. The brave hearted fool.
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The Pistoleer - Brentford by Skye Smith Copyright 2014
Chapter 7 - A Pact with Fishtoft in November 1642
The ninth of the coastal hulls that the Wellenhay clan had bought had now been refitted with a Bermudan rig, and so the Freisburn 9 was on its proving sail. It was more than just a test sail, however, because the crew expected no problems. And why should they, as it was their ninth conversion. Venka had been called to a meeting of elders in Freiston, the village inland from the port of Fishtoft. Earlier this year Wellenhay and Freiston, both being populated by ancient Frisian clans folk, had entered into a mutual aid pact. Now Fishtoft wanted to join that pact.
Wellenhay, which had a third more women than men, had pushed for the original pact because it would help them to migrate to Bermuda. In celebration of the pact, six Freiston men had married six Wellenhay women, and it was those couples who would stay behind in Wellenhay and work the village commons just in case the Bermuda venture failed. At the time no one could foresee that Earl Lindsey would press the men of both Fishtoft and Freiston into the king's service. No one could foresee that Lindsey would have his army destroy the villages and 'use' the women.
So it was that the mutual aid pact that had been originally set up to help Wellenhay, had first benefited Freiston. Due to the pact, Wellenhay had helped them to rebuild the village, nurse the women, and had sent Daniel to Earl Lindsey to buy the release of their men. In the first week of Daniel's quest he had found and released the men of Fishtoft by using force against a press gang. Last week he had released the men of Freiston by shooting the Earl of Lindsey and then leading the men out of the massive battle near Kineton.
The Freisburn was carrying not just Venka and Daniel, but also Cleff, the eldest man, Oudje the eldest man, Teesa the novice seer, and four other women as crew. Wellenhay was so chronically short of men due to a disaster at sea that the women often crewed on the smaller ships. Today Teesa assumed command. She loved to sail these sleek converted coastal traders.
For the first hour Cleff had been below decks with Daniel showing him all of the improvements in the ship. Not just the obvious conversion of open hull to enclosed cabin, and square rigged to triangle rigged fore-and-aft, for all of the Freisburns had that in common. This one was the latest conversion and it had benefited from the knowledge gained form the eight conversions before it.
"So why all the bunks?" Daniel asked as he looked along the length of the one great cabin that ran from the steering-and-oarsman well all the way to the bow.
"Because of our charter with the Norfolk trainbands. We carry more men than cargo these days, and sometimes we serve as a floating camp for them," Cleff replied. "This is the first ship with bunks, you know, in preparation for winter weather."
"I thought the contract was to patrol the Wash."
"Aye, patrol, but when there is trouble we become a troop transport like we did when we ferried the Lynn trainband over to relieve Boston when Lindsey attacked it."
"But there is no room for cargo," Daniel complained, "unless you stack the cargo on the bunks."
"Twit, the bunks fold up. I just had them all down so you could see how many men we could sleep at a time. Twenty and four."
"Well at least it is not as cramped as a Moroccan slaver."
Cleff looked disheartened. "Is that the best you have to say? This took a lot of thought and work."
"Sorry mate. Forgive me. I'm not myself. This ship is wonderful. Sleek and fast and beds for twenty four." He meant it. The hull may have been laid forty years ago, but she was still sound. The triangle sails meant you didn't need oarsmen except to dock. Under sail the water hissed passed the hull. "Has Montagu paid anything yet?" He meant Edward Montagu, the new Earl of Manchester and parliament's paymaster for the Norfolk and Suffolk trainbands.
"Aye, and he made a special trip to Lynn to see the ships for himself. Unfortunately once he saw these beauties, he decided to expand our patrols well beyond the Wash. He has heard that Charlie's queen is gathering an invasion fleet to carry mercenaries over from the continent."
"Expanded the patrols? How far?"
"To Mablesford in the north and to Lowestoft in the south."
"Bloody hell. Winter is almost upon us. Now I understand the bunks. Now tell me about Fishtoft wanting to join our alliance."
Cleff's face reddened. "Er, well, it was sort of my suggestion."
"What do you mean? Freiston made sense for they have many folk with Frisian blood so we share many cousins and many traditions ... and many speak the old tongue. But Fishtoft, a bunch of clam diggers?"
"Don't be so fast to judge them," Cleff replied. "The men of Freiston are flatlanders ... farmers. The men of Fishtoft are fishermen and seamen. This year and last most of them have been idled ashore because the old coastal traders aren't paying for themselves anymore. I offered them berths on our patrol ships so we wouldn't need to use our women as crew. That got them all talking and thinking." Cleff let that arguement sink in, and then continued. "We could do worse than to let them join. Their village is on the mouth of Boston's Haven. They watch our ships when we are in that port. They have the same distrust of all nobles as we do."
"They are Christians."
"They are weak Christians. All seamen's wives pray to the moon goddess to keep their men safe, not matter which church they attend."
Daniel nodded. This was true everywhere on the North Sea. When you prayed to keep your men safe from weather and waves and tides, or prayed for a bountiful catch in the nets, only a fool would pray to the god of a desert land. "So do we make it easy for Fishtoft to join us, or hard?"
"We leave the bargaining to the elders of Freiston and Fishtoft," Venka called from the door to the great cabin. "All we must do is say yay or nay to what they decide."
Daniel smiled at his wife. She was ten years his senior but did not look her age. His brother had loved and lived her for fifteen years before he was lost at sea, and he had been a good father to her two infant daughters from her first widowhood. When his brother was lost, she had become his second wife by default, even though he did not have a first. Today she had the most powerful voice in Wellenhay, though officially Cleff could veto her decisions. Something he would never do without good cause. "So when my opinion is asked, what do you want me to say?" he asked her.
"You. You will be far too busy to attend a meeting of elders. You sent the pressed Fishtoft men back to their women, and then rescued the pressed Freiston men from a battlefield. You, my love, will be mobbed by well-wishers. I already know of five women who mean to name their next born child Daniel or Danielle. You just be careful that none of them drag you into bed to create it."
The three of them went back outside to see how Teesa and the ship were doing. Daniel had been a bit worried that Teesa was still under the spell of the mushrooms. You cou
ld see it in the color of her eyes and in her glassy stare. He needn't have worried. Mushrooms tended to make you one with nature, and what was more natural that sailing a nimble small ship between the waves.
"I like her. I like her a lot," Teesa called to them from where she was standing right in the stern beside the tiller. "She is the best so far Cleff. Very easy to steer, and solid when she hits a wave."
"That's the extra bracing of the bunks," Cleff called back. He was grinning.
The four crew were coiling lines and looking bored. These four women had come along not so much because they were needed as crew, but because they had decided to be next to find husbands in Freiston, or perhaps in Fishtoft if things went smoothly. Such was the shortage of men in Wellenhay.
Marriage in Wellenhay was a very traditional thing. All houses and kitchen gardens were passed from mother to daughter so any children always stayed with the house, and therefore the mother. The seafaring husbands would come and go. After a year together under the initial vows, a couple could enter into a stronger, longer marital vow. One for life.
The less traditional wives were known to juggle two husbands at a time, which worked well for them so long as the men worked different ships on different schedules. You could usually tell which woman had more than one husband by the wider grin on her face and the heft of her purse.
With the shortage of men in Wellenhay these days, there were few women with more than one husband anymore, but many men with more than one wife. Just as Daniel had inherited two second wives due to his brother's death, other men had inherited the wives of close family. It was a tradition that saved good women from the poverty and loneliness of widowhood that was all too common in Christian villages.
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The folk of Freiston were waiting for them when they stepped ashore in Fishtoft. Apparently the bargaining had been going on for days between the two sets of elders, but now it had all been agreed on and they were waiting for Venka and Cleff's approval. They were so assured of that approval that a fete had already begun. While the others were guided up to the church where the meeting was being held, Daniel was swarmed.
It takes a long time to shake a hundred hands, and receive a hundred hugs, and speak a few words to each person in turn. Despite this Daniel would have still made it to the meeting if an ale tent had not been set up in the square before the church, and if the children were not dancing with their mothers while their fathers drank. Teesa was a damn fine dancer. Someone in this village made damn fine ale. He was on his third pot, and still shaking hands and being hugged when Cleff came and found him, and found his jug of ale and helped himself to a pot.
"It is done," Cleff told Daniel between hugs. "We have agreed to Fishtoft joining our mutual aid pact. These folk are all now the next closest thing to clansmen." His words were carried through the men supping ale while watching the dancers, and then a hoot went up and the men joined in the dancing. Daniel grabbed Cleff's arm and pulled him towards the dancers, but Cleff shook his arm free and shook his head and poured himself some more of this excellent ale.
"Now the real work of the elders begins inside," Cleff said. "How to organize three villages, the ships, and the men so that none of us will suffer an attack again."
Daniel looked into his half filled pot, and then looked at the swirling skirts of the dancers, and then he sighed, and put the pot down. Such a discussion he must attend. He followed Cleff through the singing, hand clapping men and into the church. Cleff walked steadily forward and sat down at a large table at the front where the alter would have been a decade ago. There was a place for Daniel beside Cleff, but Daniel instead chose to sit on a bench nearer the door with some local men his own age. This time the handshakes were swift and firm.
This temple building had been built as a Papist church, had become an English church under King Henry the Cock, but more recently had been used to house folk and animals while the roofs of the village were being re-thatched. Re-thatched because the Earl of Lindsey's men who had occupied the village while laying siege to Boston had burned the roofs when they were pushed out of the village by the upswell of outraged men from all around the Wash.
"As I was saying," a glum looking man, not a local, called out to regain everyone's attention after the disturbance of Daniel's arrival. "The best way for you to defend your villages is to form trainbands like Boston has, and to join in the association that Lord Brooke is forming to consolidate all of the trainbands of the midlands."
"Whose the gent with the gob stopper words?" Daniel whispered to the man beside him. A man he last saw in a pike square that was escaping the carnage in front of Edgehill.
"Captain John Lilburne, Lord Brooke's man," came the whispered reply. "Lord Brooke sent some officers to Boston to raise more men to fight against the king's army. John came with them. I can't believe he is a captain. The man speaks more like a cleric. His men say that in London he is called Freeborn John."
Daniel and the men on the bench with him listened politely for a few more minutes to what Lilburne had to say, but though his words rang true and were convincing, they did not convince Daniel. As well meaning as the glum captain was, he was wasting the time of this meeting, so eventually Daniel stood up. When a local hero stands up to speak, no one calls him 'out of order'.
"Captain Lilburne. I thank you for your words and for your offer to join an association of trainbands, but you are speaking your words in the wrong village. This village was occupied by the forces of the Earl of Lindsey while the men of this village were heeding a call for help from the trainband of Boston. When Lindsey's men arrived there were not men enough left to protect the women and homes. Boston's roofs were not burned, but this village's roofs were burned. Boston's men were not pressed, but this village's men were pressed. Boston's women were not defiled, but this village's women were defiled."
Lilburne made to speak, to argue, but then he looked around at the faces of the men sitting on the benches listening. To a man they were with the tall man who had interrupted him. It was clear that he would raise no men for Lord Brooke in this village.
"Yes we need to form a trainband," Daniel said to the men in the hall, rather than to Lilburne, "but we cannot call it a trainband for then it can be called up by outlanders and drylanders and the nobles of the king or of parliament. We must call ourselves clubmen. As clubmen our first duty is to protect our homes and our families, and this from anyone, and any side in this war between nobles. And..." The roar of agreement drowned him out, so Daniel waited until it died and then finished with, "And not be dragged away to lose our lives in a battle organized by lords to decide who will be the most powerful group of lords in this kingdom."
Lilburne did not sit down. He still had the floor and he was thumping his hand on the table trying to regain order. Luckily for him Daniel sat down so the men of the hall again turned to him to listen. "There are many in parliament who think like I do that there must be more equality between men in this kingdom. That the gulf between the one in a hundred that rule us, and those of us who are ruled, is far too great. That is what this rebellion is all about. If you want more equality and more say, then you must support Lord Brooke." He stopped talking because the good looking middle aged woman at the end of the table had stood. "Madam, I am still speaking, and speaking of manly things, so please sit down."
Venka gave Lilburne a hard stare and then said, "So with all of this equality you speak of, can I expect to be elected to parliament for it's next sitting?"
"Don't be absurd."
"So much for your promises of equality then. In my village we elect women to our council. I am what you would call the Mayor of my village. I think you have had your answer Captain Lilburne." She turned to the rest of the men at the table. "I move that our villages form a joint band of clubmen whose primary duty is to protect our villages against all comers. Do you wish to discuss it further or should we take a vote?"
"Madam, this is unseemly," Lilburne told her. "I still have the floor." He
raised the red baton that indicated that he was the current speaker and not her. The woman simply shook her head at him and wagged a finger to signal some men on a bench to one side of the table. Two very large men leaped up off that bench and took the baton from Lilburne's hands and rolled it down the table towards Venka. As for Lilburne, they physically lifted him off his feet and carried him backwards to sit on the bench with them.
"Captain Lilburne, you are welcome to stay and listen," Venka told him, "or to go and make your report to Lord Brooke, but we are finished listening to you." She turned and rolled the baton to the mayor of Fishtoft and then sat down.
"A vote then," the mayor said. "All in favour of creating a joint band of clubmen, say aye." The immediate cheer of aye echoed around the unadorned ex-church.
The mayor made a note on a piece of paper and then continued. "We are three villages who are joining our strengths for our mutual benefit, but we are three very dissimilar villages in the way that we are organized and ruled. Wellenhay is a traditional clan village where anything of importance such as productive land and ships are owned communally and are used co-operatively. Fishtoft is a modern Christian village where land and ships are owned by individuals, mostly by wealthy men and lords who live nowhere near this village. Freiston is halfway between the two, but tending towards more and more private ownership."
"Aye, thanks to the Earl of Lindsey and his damnable drainage enclosures," the mayor of Freiston pointed out. "Interesting, ain't it, that is the most traditional or our villages that is prospering."
"Yes, quite so. I believe that in these unsettled times when the rule of law has been weakened by the kingdom having two rulers, that for our own protection we must revert to more traditional ways. I move that our villages take immediate action to place all of our critical assets under communal control and that we adopt the traditional laws and customs that have served Wellenhay so well. It is a motion that needs much thought, so I open the floor for discussion."