by Smith, Skye
When they reached the marshy hamlet of Barnes on the south bank, Daniel told the crew about Essex's brainy idea to build a floating bridge. The crew groaned at the stupidity of the man. Uve asked the obvious question, "Why sit around waiting for a bridge to be built when he could just march to Kingston and use theirs?"
"It's a make work project to pretend that he is doing something to defend London, when in reality he just doesn't want to chase after the king." Daniel replied.
"Stoopid bugger."
"Not so stupid. After today his troops are more likely to drift away from his army and go home, than follow him into another battle. Putting them to work building something will keep them together and organized."
"It's typical of Essex's incompetence," Britta chimed in. "He puts so much thought into doing the little things that don't matter, and so little thought into the big things that do."
Once to the south bank they straightened their course for an easy run with the current downstream to London. Near to the village of Putney they were again hailed by a group of clean looking officers, but this time from the south bank. Again they ignored it, that is, until both Daniel and Anso were called by name. This caused Daniel to pull out his looker so he could see who the officers were. One of them was Colonel Richard Onslow, the commander of the Kingston garrison who had supplied their launch and the barge load of cannons they were towing.
"I'll nose in so you can step ashore and find out what he wants, and then we'll stand off just in case he also wants our cannons," Anso told Daniel. Daniel nodded and waited until the gap narrowed before he leaped. There was a splash and a curse behind him, and as he turned to see what had happened he bumped into Britta who standing on one leg and shaking the mud from her boot on the other. He reached out and grabbed at her bodice to steady her.
"Watch the hands," she scolded as she brushed his grubby hand away from her breasts. "I just got the fabric all tucked in again."
In truth, as much as she had tried to tidy her clothes, and her hair, she still looked like a farm girl who had just had a good romp in the hay. "Why did you come ashore?" he asked her.
"Because I would rather borrow a horse and be home within the hour than stay damp and chilly on this slow poke boat," she replied, but Daniel had already turned away from her to great the Colonel and his other officers.
"I was told you had withdrawn from Kingston to Southwark. You're taking the long way about it, aren't you?" Daniel asked.
"I thought that you would have your cannons in London by now. Where are the rest of my barges?" the Colonel answered with another question. When Daniel began to tell him the whole story of the other barges, he held his hand up and told him to wait until the commander arrived.
"Commander?" Daniel wondered who he was speaking of. "The only man above the colonel was Assex.
Britta knew immediately for she had been ignoring the men and watching a fine coach-and-four bouncing over the ruts of the riverside road. She had just enough time to fluff her hair and stretch her neckline down before the coach drew up and stopped beside her. An older man in a uniform garish with gold braid opened the coach door without waiting for a footman, and she very gracefully curtseyed at just the right angle so that he could see both her face and down her cleavage at the same time. "Your grace's arrival is well timed," she said sweetly and gave him a wink and a smile that would have seduced a monk on the spot.
"Why, is that you Britta?" asked a somewhat amazed older man. "However did you come to be in this muddy god forsaken place, and dressed like a milk maid." It was the Earl of Warwick, Admiral Robert Rich ... her primary benefactor. "I was just on my way to Windsor. Please say that you will come with me. Oh please do come. We will stay in the Queen's apartments and you will have the pick of her abandoned wardrobe."
It crossed her mind that this was the third wealthy noble who had offered her the same thing on this day. The difference was that this man was not exaggerating or speculating. "Why of course I will come with you, Robert dear. May I wait for you in your coach? I was brought her by some of my rougher kinsmen and I fear my clothing has not fared well. I am quite undone and it would be so improper of me to tease your officers." She allowed him to help her into his carriage, and was slow to climb in so as to give him ample opportunity to squeeze and kiss bits of her.
"By rougher kinsmen do you mean ..."
"Yes Daniel. He is with Colonel Onslow. They are waiting for your ear over on the river bank."
Daniel saw her wave from the carriage window, and groaned. The world was falling apart and armies were on the march, but everything must stop and wait for a healthy young lass to be helped into a carriage. All sorts of polite bowing and scraping were waved away by the admiral as he urged his colonel to make a report. It was Daniel who did all the reporting, and in the way of the navy, all questions remained behind the tongues until this report was complete.
Warwick's face was a mask of fury by the end of the report. "You mean to say that not only did that ass Essex leave Kingston and its bridge unprotected, but he gave his permission for the king's army to withdraw towards Kingston? Where is the general now?"
"I would expect he is on his way to Fullham, just across the river, your grace," Daniel said with unaccustomed regard to the man's rank, because the man was in a fit of temper. "His plan is to build an earthwork fort at both Putney and Fullham and connect them with a floating bridge. Assex claims that his actions will keep London safe from any attack from the west along the Thames or along the highways on both sides of it." He bit his lip. The nickname Assex was a completely disrespectful thing to call one earl while speaking to another. Instead, the effect of the nickname was to bring a bit of a smile to the earl's grimace and take some of the florid color from his neck.
"Well the name fits," Warwick said softly. "For over five hundred years, whenever a king wanted to protect the western approaches to London he would always camp his army at Windsor Castle, and yet Assex wants to build earthenwork forts and a floating bridge. Unbelievable. In your report you mentioned that it was not Essex's army but my half trained militia who put the run on Rupert and Charlie. Where are they now?"
"On their way back to London and their homes and their trades," Daniel replied. "They'll be there by now, or close to it unless they stopped for ale and a chance to spread the news."
"Richard, please send your officers back to London at the gallop." Unlike Essex the ditherer, Warwick was a man of action, a trait he learned as a youth while commanding privateer ships in the Caribbean. "They are to stop my militia regiments from demobilizing. Instead those men are to turn around and march out again towards Windsor. In fact, rent as many carts as you need to carry them and their supplies. I want them on the road all night if necessary. If Essex is withdrawing to Fullham, then we will press on westwards beyond Brentford."
"That will be a lot of carts, sir," the colonel confirmed. "A lot of coin."
Warwick pointed to his own ornate carriage which itself was worth a few villages, "Do I look like I'm short of coin. Tell them Warwick is paying top shilling for the journey, but only if they leave London before sunset. Now get your captains mounted up. Time is against us."
Colonel Onslow strode away to speak to his captains, which left Warwick and Daniel alone together. Warwick's flush of anger had left his cheeks, and he asked calmly, "So Prince Rupert's chosen knights were no match for some Smithfields butchers still in their aprons, eh? Dead everyone of them? Good to here, good to here. To bad they didn't do the same to the prince."
"Actually, your grace, it was your cook, and Britta and a dozen other good women of London that did for those knights. Yes it was the butchers who tumbled their mounts, but it was the women who gave the knights no quarter. They did not die easily, and not by the sword or pike, but by carving knives. The sight of it must have shaken the prince to the groin, because he ran. He turned his horse and he ran away with the women chasing him. And no it was not a cavalry style tactical regrouping. He ran for his life... and in
front of tens of thousands of infantry on both sides. The prince will be the laughing stock of the kingdom once the scandal sheets pick up the story.
"My cook ... and Britta. No wonder she looks a bit tattered. But this is wonderful news. The news that the king had surrendered would have been the best of news, but failing that, this news about Rupert's cowardice is very good." Warwick could see that Daniel did not understand his point. "Danny, it means that the king will have a hard time holding on to all those second and third sons of nobility that had joined him to earn honors and a reputation. It means that his recruiters will have no choice but to press unwilling men. Put all together this means that he must find a hidey hole for the winter and hope for reinforcements from the continent."
"Which are coming," Daniel said. He turned and motion to Anso to pull closer and step ashore. "At least that is Anso's news from Rotterdam." They waited together ankle deep in the mud until Anso joined them.
"Hullo Rob," the big man greeted as he leaped ashore. Anso never did hold with formal titles and full names. He judged men by how much you wanted them standing at your side when things went wrong. When things went wrong there was no time for bowing and scraping. He was probably one of but a dozen men in the kingdom who got away with addressing the admiral as Rob to his face.
Warwick listened intently to the latest news from Rotterdam. News about how the price of munitions was soaring because Queen Henrietta was using the English crown jewels to buy weapons, and mercenaries, and to charter cargo ships. When Anso was finished his report, Warwick groaned, "So she not only has the help of Rome because she is Catholic, and Spain because Charlie is their dupe, and France because their king is her brother, and the Bohemians because Charlie's sister is their queen, but now she has the support of Holland's Stadtholder Frederick, because his son William has married her daughter Mary."
"So what," Anso said. "They are all on the other side of the sea, and you are the Lord Admiral of the Navy. Send out your ships to sink hers before they can land."
"What ships?" Warwick grumbled. "I have just disbanded the Summer Fleet. Why else would I be here picking up after Assex and his dithering. In the winter we don't have enough ships to watch every port, every landing place. And what if Frederick sends his navy to protect her fleet. What then? English ships are no match for Dutch ships. Their ships-of-the-line are purposefully built as fleet footed cannon platforms and nothing more. They will humble our warships just as they did to the Spanish and Portuguese Armadas."
"Nay, the Dutch navy would never attack one of your ships," Daniel argued. "I know their admiral, their hero Tromp. The very man who defeated those armadas. He is a republican. He hates Charlie for ordering English bottoms to ferry the Spanish army that he stranded on our south coast, over to Dunkirk. If not for Charlie, Dunkirk would be Dutch by now and the Dunkirker pirates would all be dancing the gallows jig."
"Well then I hope that Tromp has some sway with Frederick. Frederick is certainly no republican, though he is the warlord of a republic. He and his line are all princes who sorely want to be kings." Warwick turned and gave a wave to the beauty waiting for him in his carriage. "We must meet soon over some best genever and continue this discussion," he told the two filthy men. "But for now I must lead an army on to Kingston and then Windsor. An army that should never have left Kingston in the first place. I wish you good tides and fair winds."
Anso watched a footman help the ornate admiral into his ornate coach and asked, "So where is Britta off to?"
"To become the latest pretend queen of Windsor," Daniel replied as he turned and signaled the crew to come and pick them up. He watched as the crew expertly back oared and drifted up to the bank. He was about to leap aboard when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
"Robert asks that one of you travel with us to Windsor," Britta said matter of factly. "He needs to know more about some Dutch admiral and about where some queen's fleet is most likely to land."
"You go, Danny," Anso said as he stretched his back and made himself look even more impossibly huge. "I'm not comfortable in polite company, or perhaps they are not comfortable in mine."
Britta latched onto Daniel's arm as if she were afraid he were about to get away, but he shrugged her off and then called to the crew to toss his gear to him out of the launch. He caught it all and shouldered it before allowing her to pull him towards the waiting carriage. Since he had last seen the carriage it had been completely turned around. After handing his gear, all except for his best pistols, to a footman, he climbed into the carriage. Britta was already seated and snuggled under one of Warwick's gold braided arms. "Why the change in direction?" he asked.
"Because of your report," Warwick replied. "Onslow's regiment can't reach Kingston in time to hold the bridge against the king, so he may as well camp here at Putney until Assex chooses where to make his floating bridge. Apparently the Putney ferry is large enough for my carriage, so we will cross the Thames and wait in Fullham for my trainbands to catch up.
The carriage lurched to a start but Daniel hardly noticed because he was holding his head in his hands and groaning in dismay. By nightfall they would be across the river in Fullham, and he would be forced to attend Warwick in his inevitable meeting with Essex. How ever did he ever get talked into this. He looked up and saw Britta smirking at him. Her in her filthy, bloodstained, torn skirt, relaxing against an impossibly clean and pressed uniform. She looked all the world like a port doxy trying to seduce a navy officer out of a few coppers.
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The Pistoleer - Brentford by Skye Smith Copyright 2014
Chapter 21 - At Windsor Palace in November 1642
The spies would all have much to tell King Charles that day. There were many volunteer spies in the villages along the Thames valley on both banks. The land of the loops of the great river between Kingston and Windsor had thrived for hundreds of years by being favoured by kings and their courtiers and their palace staff, and so the merchants were all royalists. There were also many volunteer spies who sided with Parliament because over those hundreds of years many families had been abused by the kings and their courtiers and their palace staff.
Although Essex was the Lord General of the parliamentarian army, even he could not order Warwick about, and so his suggestions and pleading that Warwick not march his London trainbands to Windsor were ignored. More than ignored ... scorned ... because it was Essex's army that should be marching to Windsor and leave the defense of London to the trainbands. Nothing that Essex could say or threaten could stop Warwick from leading six thousand men through Brentford along the Great West Road. After his Londoners saw the stark ruins of Brentford, there was nothing that could have stopped the men anyway.
It was false courage on behalf of the men, of course, for they had all heard the story of how a few of their lads and a dozen women had put the run on the Devil Prince and his flying army. To a man they knew, or thought they knew, how to fight the mad prince. Just wound their horses and wait for the king's gentlemen to hit the ground hard, and then finish them while they were winded. It was not false courage on behalf of the Earl of Warwick. He knew full well from the many spies that the king's army had regrouped on Hounslow Heath, but had not made camp. The king had been expecting to be chased by Essex's superior army and was waiting patiently for Essex to play his hand so he could decide his next move.
In front of Warwick's army ran his criers, spies, or whatever you want to call them, with a message to all villagers to "Lock up your daughters and hide your silver for there was an army of twenty thousand marching along the great road." If anyone had given this message a second thought, they would have realized how silly it was. The daughters and silver had been locked up for a week now, ever since Prince Rupert had tried to take Windsor and on failing that had looted Staines.
Hours and hours later when the criers returned to Warwick to collect their pay, they all made similar reports. On hearing about the size of the army on the march, the king had left H
ounslow Heath and was marching for Kingston to put the bridge there between Essex's army and his own. This was exactly what Warwick had wanted the king to do to keep his army well away from the road to Windsor. Warwick used guile and misinformation to keep the king's flying army from ambushing half trained militia regiments. By nightfall of the day after the non-battle at Turnham Green, there was an army camped on the high ground around the great fortress at Windsor. The fortress which controlled both the river and the western approaches to London.
The spies from Kingston who came to Warwick in Windsor reported that the devil prince had been so enraged that it was the militia that had marched beyond Brentford and had made Windsor unattainable, that he had tortured his own spies to ensure they had not lied to him. They also reported that the folk of Kingston had welcomed the king and had proclaimed him their saviour from month's of brutal occupation by the traitorous rebel forces under Onslow. The king himself did not stay long in Kingston but continued on to his great fortified palace at Oatlands, on the south bank half way between the bridge at Staines and the bridge at Kingston.
"Perfect," was Warwick's only response to his own spies, other than for the clink of silver.
Warwick had been secretly meeting with the spies, one at a time, in one of the smaller dining rooms within Windsor’s great walls. The dining room had two entrances and the spies had been ushered in through one and out through the other to keep their identities from each other. Once all of the spies had reported, he gathered his officers around him and showed them his new map of southern England that he had commissioned to a Dutch master mapmaker, Joannes Janssonius. Daniel was tall enough to look over all of their shoulders at the map stretched out on the table. He had seen the like of it before in Rotterdam and it was drawn in the style of the surveyors and engineers who planned their drainage canals.