Pistoleer: Roundway Down

by Smith, Skye

"Then speak it as you disrobe," the wife said kindly. She was double his age, so was not flustered. In truth, she was eager to see him disrobe. Naked men were not as sexy as men undressing, especially a man half her age and very well formed.

  "I rode directly to Spalding and to the dock hoping to find Teesa on her ship. She was not, so I rode into the market place and some of our women led me to her. I gave her your orders, that she was to evacuate as many women as she could from Spalding and bring them back here." At this point he whipped down his drawers and immediately covered his privates with his hands because the wife was staring at them. "Er, where was I, um, Teesa went with me to find the Mayor of Spalding, but he refused to close the market and send everyone home. He made the point that the folk were safer in Spalding if there were mounted raiders on the roads, but since he is a wealthy merchant, I doubt that was his only reason."

  "Be fair to the man," the Mayor of Fishtoft said. "I would have likely decided the same. It's usually best to keep on with what you are doing until you have proof enough to change your mind."

  "So is Teesa on her way here?" Daniel asked.

  "Er, no. She felt the same. That all of the women at the market were safer if they stayed off the roads and were in a town rather than in their cottages out in the Fens."

  "But she and our women had The Five, so they needn't use the roads."

  "Aye, that is what Teesa said, so that is why she and The Five are on their way to Crowland to carry those folk safely back to Spalding."

  "But she had an all woman crew," the mayor's wife said as she suddenly realized the seriousness of the situation and leaned forward on the bench so she could see the faces of the men sitting around her.

  "Aye, but she took a squad of the Spalding clubmen with her."

  "How good are the Spalding clubmen?" Daniel asked the mayor.

  "Novices compared to our men," Tom interrupted before the mayor could answer, "and they carry old matchlock muskets."

  Daniel opened his mouth to give an order, but then said nothing. As one of the elected warlords of Wellenhay, he had been about to give the order that would mobilize ships and men, but then had thought better of it. He had business elsewhere. In a few months he would be gone from here to Bermuda. These other men were staying. Such orders were theirs to give, not his.

  Tom looked at Daniel expectantly. Daniel simply nodded to him, as if giving him the floor at a council meeting. "Right," Tom said, which earned him another encouraging nod from Daniel, so he continued. "We've two ships in the Haven. I want at least a dozen men on each, with their pistols and pikes, and with any hunting muskets they can muster." By hunting muskets he meant those with full length barrels, rather than the shorter kind that were popular with soldiers because they were faster to load and easier to keep clean.

  Everyone stood as he spoke, as if glad to follow someone else's orders. "Grenados," Daniel whispered into Tom's ear.

  "And a case of Grenados for each ship, and two launchers," Tom called out to the bodies moving ahead of him out of the sweat lodge to find their clothes. He turned to Daniel and asked, "Are you coming?"

  "Aye, but I'll not take charge. I'll come as a gunner, nothing more," Daniel replied. Each ship carried a light cannon in front of the mast, and two swivel guns, one on each side of the aft crew well. Since these ships were under charter to the Eastern Association, they were well armed, as were their crews.

  Knowing that Daniel was coming gave a boost to Tom's confidence and he actually cracked a smile, but then turned and yelled after the mayor, "Send a runner to Freiston to roust the men. Those not coming on the ships should set up a watch and prepare to defend our villages in case the Campdeners come this way."

  Tom and Daniel were the last ones dressed and out the door. Tom asked him, "Have I done right, ordering the village men into what could turn out to be a killing battle?"

  "You did right," Daniel said while patting him on the back. "Whatever else happens we must first go in force to Spalding to support their clubmen and to find out what has happened to our womenfolk on The Five. The more risky decisions must wait until you find out what is really going in Spalding. When there are flying squads involved, things tend to change quickly."

  * * * * *

  What was really going on in Spalding was a dawning panic. Dawning because it was sun-up before the ships from the Haven were manned and rowed and poled the twelve miles up the River Welland to Spalding. Market women who had not been allowed to leave the town were worried for their families out in the Fens who still would not know that flying squads of the king's gentlemen were on the prowl. The men of the town were hastily putting up barricades, and making makeshift armour out of basket weave and leather, and gathering up anything that could be used as a weapon against rampaging cavalryers.

  That said, their weapons and armour were pitiful, as was true in most out-of-the-way places. The muskets were old matchlocks, pistols were almost non-existent, and the only weapons they had that would put the fear of their makers into a flying squad were a few old bows, their grandfather's long bows, which had been carefully oiled and preserved since the time of King Henry the Cock. Whether any of the grandsons had the shoulders to draw them and aim them, however, was another matter.

  There was panic in so many bosoms that the two shiploads of well armed men were actually cheered as they came ashore at Spalding Embankment, just downstream from the chain bridge that spanned the river. The chain bridge was a Dutch style draw bridge which when raised allowed masted ships such as the Friesburns to pass through. Tom was quick to call to the bridge master to keep the span raised as it was the best protection the town had. The bridge master gave him a glare - as if he of all people wouldn't know that. The road that crossed the bridge was the riverside tow path that ran along a low dyke all the way to Crowland.

  "You can't take them ships past Crowland 'cause 'o the bridge," the bridge master called to them, and now it was Tom's turn to return a glare. Everyone in the Fens knew the story of Crowland's trinity bridge. How the abbey had built a three tiered stone arched bridge across the join of their two rivers in order to stop North Sea raiding ships from rowing further upstream to the great Abbey of Peterborough. The bridge master eventually left his bridge and walked to the ships to discuss the news with the ships' masters.

  "We got word that one of our ships needed help," Tom told him. "Do you know where she is and how she fares?"

  "Now which ship could you possibly be meaning?" the bridge master said with a twinkle in his eye. "Would it be a ship rigged like your'n with a blonde angel at the wheel? Be that the one?"

  "Any word of her?" Tom repeated.

  "Aye, we had word an hour ago. Yer ship arrived in Crowland too late to take the folk to safety. The king's gents had already rounded them up and locked them in the old abbey knave. The knave is about all that King Henry left standing. The king's gents were willing to ransom them but the price was high, so yer ship spent the night guarding the Spalding road with her cannon. At least that is what I was told by the runner who came back for more men and to ask the mayor about the ransom."

  "So no harm has come to the ship or to her crew?" Tom confirmed.

  "If by crew ya mean that bevy of beauties that was a heavin' the oars, then all I have to say is that you men must live like monks to have them crewin' yer ship rather than yer beds.” The bridge master made some very rude gestures, and a lewd smile, but then he told them, "The runner didn't mention any fightin' or injuries, though I'm sure I heard some cannon fire. Near dawn it was."

  They sent the bridge master to fetch the mayor and any clubmen who wanted passage the five miles to Crowland. Only the mayor answered their call. "Our men are needed here," the portly mayor told them. "In truth, I came to ask that when you find your other ship that you order the clubmen that went with it to report back to me."

  "Enjoy yer market," Tom told the mayor with his disgust not hidden by his tone.

  "Don't judge me so harshly," the mayor replied defensively. "The f
olk here abouts need this market, especially this year. The winter was hard here and many ate their seed to survive. They are here to trade what they crafted over the winter for more seed so that they can plant.” Tom ordered the two ships to cast off and as they rowed south up the Welland the Mayor called a blessing out over them. "Curse the king and his gentlemen for holding back the plantings, and may the good Lord smite them through your musket balls."

  As the ships swept along, every weapon was loaded, especially the swivel guns. Swivel guns were like giant blunderbusses designed to fire handfuls of pistol balls at boarding parties. They were heavy enough that they needed to be mounted, and thus were mounted on a swivel that could swing around or up and down.

  Some of the men not on the oars began launching stones to practice using the Grenado launchers. These were just stout staves with a basket weave pocket at one end. The leverage of the stave could toss a four pound Grenado a hundred feet by man keeping his head down behind a wall. Even the strongest of arms was lucky to throw one fifty feet and the man had to stand up to do that.

  The Grenado was a Spanish invention and was either named after a town in Spain or after a round fruit filled with seeds that was not found in England, or at least that was what Daniel had been told in Holland where he had first used them. A grenado looked like nothing more than a candle holder in the form of a small round pot of fired clay, however it was not a candle stub pushed into it but a fuse cord stuck through the wax stopper which sealed the pot. Inside were shards of trash like small nails and broken glass and spent lead shot. To load them you pried out the wax stopper, filled them with gun powder, and then replaced the stopper.

  To use them you lit the fuse and lobbed them. If they smashed on landing, they flashed with a lot of light and smoke but did little damage. If they did not smash on landing, then they exploded with a deafening bang and sent their shards out in all directions as far as twelve feet or more. Daniel had learned the hard way not to count on them for anything other than scaring men and horses, but they were excellent at doing that. The only man he had ever seen killed by one was a Dutch infantryman who had dropped a lit one out of his own launcher and had blown himself up.

  Thinking of that poor Dutchman, he said "No, no, no," to one of the lads practicing with stones. "You swing it from the ground to over your head as fast as you can, but just before it is directly above you, you must stop the swing of the stave completely so that it leaps out of the basket and continues on in a great arch." He watched the lad try again and then groaned. "Do us a favour lad. Have a friend stand beside you and block the stave once it reaches the right place. Otherwise you'll likely kill us all. Better yet, just launch them stones and forget the pot. A four pound stone will kill a man just as dead as a Grenado."

  They saw the tower and the roof of what was left of the abbey for some time before they reached Crowland. Most of the abbey was in ruins but the knave had been spared by Henry the Cock for use as a church. Not so the acres of monastery buildings. Their roofs had been pulled down, and now the walls were half gone to a hundred years of being used as the local stone quarry. Even as ruined as it was, the place was still impressive. For hundreds and hundreds of years it had grown ever larger, until it had been the largest abbey in Lincolnshire. That had all ended when the remaining monks had been pensioned off, and its great tracts of land and widespread manors were auctioned off to friends of the king.

  Their awe of the height of the vaulted roof above the flat marshland was interrupted by a call from the bow watch, "That must be Teesa's ship ahead. The crew have their blonde tresses tied in French braids," followed by rude guffaws. The men of Freiston and Fishtoft had never gotten used to seeing the Wellenhay women crew a ship. The oarsmen shipped their oars at the last minute to allow the two ships to glide up alongside The Five and then drift together. It was grace made to look easy by years of practice.

  Daniel ducked out of sight otherwise Teesa would immediately defer to him instead of the two ship's masters. Tom took the lead and leaped aboard her ship and then questioned her about what was going on.

  Teesa was petite for a woman of Frisian blood, and did look quite angelic, but an angel she was not. In her teens she had been a tomboy and Wellenhay's best hunter-tracker. A year ago she had killed her first man, and that was after scaling the chalk cliffs up to Dover Castle. Since then she had given up hunting to become a seer and healer, but that still did not make her an angel. Any man who gave her a reason to curse found that out quickly enough. Her reply began with some choice curses and finished with, "They can not ride onward towards Spalding, but they can keep us out of the abbey grounds. That is what is going on. A standoff."

  Tom looked to where she was pointing. Four men were hung by their arms, stretched out against the abbey wall - living shields. "Bastards," he hissed.

  "The one hung on the gate is the pastor," she pointed out. "He is in agony. He keeps calling to us to shoot him and put him out of his misery." She had just got the last word out of her mouth when another woman yelled 'smoke', and she grabbed Tom by the arm and dragged him down behind the gunnels just as the crack of musket fire reached them. "They have musketeers in the bell tower. They haven't hit anyone yet, but they keep trying."

  Tom looked over his shoulder at his own ship and barked out, "Them with hunting muskets, do us a favour and clear that tower." He then looked back at Teesa and asked, "Why not just blow a hole in another section of the abbey wall?"

  "Every time we change the aim of our canon, they move the shields, and they ain't gentle about it. We thought a standoff is better than nowt, because at least they aren't out raiding."

  "For how long?"

  "We sent some locals who knew the short cuts, across the Fens to Cambridge. We only have to hold them here until the garrison sends some dragoons."

  "Don't hold your breath," Tom told her. "These are Campdeners, part of Viscount Campden's regiment, and they have split up into flying squads and are ranging everywhere from here to Stamford. The Cambridge garrison will already have their hands full.” He raised his head and had a good look about. There was another call of 'smoke' so he ducked down again. "What if we send men by punt under the Trinity Bridge and around to the other side of the abbey and attack them from two sides at the same time."

  "We tried that," she replied. "They have men with carbines on the top of the bridge. We haven't been able to dislodge them because they can hide behind the stonework. We tried storming the bridge, but they sallied out on horseback. We tried drawing the riders towards our cannon so we could use grape on them, but they saw through our trap and retreated."

  Mick, the master of the other ship had been listening and now interrupted, "I'll clear the bridge while you two figure out how to flush them out of the abbey.” Without another word he made his way back to his own ship and had the crew push off so they could run their oars out. Again the 'smoke' warning sounded, but this time a half dozen muskets fired from Tom's ship and a few seconds later there was a scream of agony from the tower. Mick steered his ship towards the bridge until his gunner, Daniel, told him to stop and hold the position.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15

  Chapter 19 - Campdeners seize Crowland in April 1643

  The Trinity bridge was built where the river split like a 'Y' into two and the bridge had one leg on each of the three banks. Thus from the top of the bridge you could walk down an arch to any of the three banks. Folk thought they called it the Trinity because it had three spans, but they were wrong. It had three legs but only two spans. If it didn't stop masted ships from trading further up the Welland, Daniel would have been impressed by the functional design of it. As it was, he aimed the ships six pounder at the side wall at the top of the arched stone spans.

  The cannon was mounted just in front of the mast to keep its great weight as far as possible from the lesser floatation of the pointed bow. It was mounted on the starboard side of the
mast so that it could fire straight ahead without hitting the forestays that ran between the bow and the top of the mast. He had the gun at its steepest incline, which wasn't very steep, and that was why he had asked that the ship move no closer to the bridge.

  He was now loaded, primed, and ready to fire so he checked over each shoulder and got the nod from two of his helpers, the two manning the swivel guns. "Ready to fire, captain," he called out.

  "Prepare to fire," Mick called out and then waited a moment so all of his crew could ready themselves for the effect of the blast, and then he covered his ears and called "Fire.” The foul smoke clouded his vision and lingered, so he did not see the ball hit the bridge, although from the 'thud' he knew that the ball had hit and hit hard. At this range it would have been hard to miss. Despite covering his ears and closing his eyes during the blast he was still a bit dazed, but someone, likely Daniel, was now calling out, "There they go. They're making a run for it."

  There was another blast, this one not so loud and without as much smoke, as the port swivel gun sent a hail of pistol balls at the men fleeing down the bridge arch towards the abbey's bridge gate. From behind him he could hear the hunting muskets from the other ship. Two of the bridge watch were down, but four made it to the bridge gate through the abbey wall. While he watched, his crew were already busy reloading

  "Ready to fire," came the call from the foredeck.

  "Do you think there is anyone left on the bridge?" Mick asked.

  "I doubt it," Daniel's voice called back.

  "Then turn the gun on that gate in the wall," Mick told him. The easiest way of turning the gun was to turn the ship, and the sculling of the oars took longer than it had taken to reload it. Once Mick got the nod from Daniel, he yelled out, "Prepare to fire.” This time the men took good care to brace their oars in the mud, for this time the recoil could send the ship backwards towards the bank and do damage to the rudder. "Fire!" This time he did a better job of covering ears and eyes. When he opened them, the heavy wooden gate had been splintered.