by Smith, Skye
"Inside the Eastern shires," a major reminded him. "Only within the Eastern shires."
Oliver looked up to the ceiling, and his voice went very solemn, "The communes are doing God's work, so by protecting them from savagery we are also doing God's work. Do you think God cares where we draw the boundaries of our shires. May I remind you that we have been supporting Boston's garrison for almost six months, so why not all of South Lincolnshire?"
Many officers were shaking their heads, but no-one spoke. None of them owned great estates personally, but most had been commissioned by lords with great estates. The news that they were assisting communes to squat on great estates and work the fields would not sit well with those lords. Still, no one spoke against Oliver's divine logic.
"In the absence of any orders to the contrary, and since our forces are already massed close to the border with South Lincolnshire, I, Oliver Cromwell, Acting Governor of Ely, hereby officially make the request that the Eastern Association make haste to secure the northern borders of the Fens by chasing the Campdeners out of South Lincolnshire."
A wave of low grumbling ran through the officers, but not one of them made an objection. Oliver was well pleased at not having to argue with them, and he smiled at them as he walked through them shaking hands.
"Er, if I may add," Daniel said as he tried to make his way towards the door to go and find the privies, "Feel free to lend a hand and your horse to the ploughing if you happen to see any woman hitched in front of a plough."
Oliver turned and saw him making for the door and asked, "Are you not coming with us Daniel?"
"The Wellenhay ships are yours to command," Daniel replied. It was the simple truth due to their ongoing charter with the Eastern Association. "But I came here en route to London and then the South. I must find the Earl of Warwick and confirm my appointment as the Vice-Governor of Bermuda."
"Bermuda?" the major cut in, "that is in the New World, yes?"
"Yes. The closest Coco island to England," Daniel replied.
"Coco?"
"The palm tree that grows nuts as big as a child's head."
"Ah yes, I ate some of it once in a market. Sweet but tough. I almost broke a tooth. I did break a knife blade while levering the meat away from the shell."
"If you live where they grow, you can pick them young," Daniel explained with his legs crossed. "When young they are filled with pure sweet water and the flesh is soft enough to eat with a spoon."
"Hah, seamen and their tales," the major said with a disbelieving snort. "Still, I used to say that about the tales of how big the nuts were, until I saw them in the market."
* * * * *
There were no idle hands in London, not any more, and paying work for all. No longer did so many need to pervert themselves to the whims of any gentleman with ready cash. Even the thieves, the beggars and the tu'penny whores had found honest paid labour building up the defenses of the city. Daniel had never seen the streets so quiet and civil. Everyone on the streets seemed to be walking with a purpose. No longer were there groups of ragged folk just hanging about. The streets were even swept free of the awfuls of horses and slop buckets.
London was the center of this rebellion against the king, and so it contained all of the official offices which controlled the movement of fleets, armies, reinforcements, and supplies, as well as the diplomatic and trading missions from every trading port on the continent. Daniel needed to speak to Lord Admiral Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, but first he must find him. He had come to this great city because someone here would know his current whereabouts. But who, and where were they to be found?
Over the last four years Daniel had met many of the leading politicians of the Reform Party, and a few of them owed him favours, but those men were now all very busy and had squads of bureaucrats working long hours to keep the general public from ever actually meeting with them. Rather than spend hours and hours being given lame excuses by plumped up office servants, Daniel decided to first ask the Londoners who knew the comings and goings of every wealthy man. The courtesans. And one in particular, Robert Rich's favourite courtesan.
With that in mind he rode through the city, ignoring all the grand public buildings and palaces, and made for a comfortable house just north of Smithfield’s stock pens. A house just outside the wall of Robert Rich's great estate of Warwick House. He knew that if he reached that house by mid afternoon, that some of the most knowledgeable women in the city would be sitting about gossiping, gambling, sipping kofe, and nibbling on aromatic sweets. He knew all this because the hostess was Teesa's older sister, Britta. Britta who oft times escorted the men of the fabulously wealthy Rich family.
First though, he had to drop some personal letters from Oliver off at the Cromwell house. Oliver's house was next door-but-one from Britta's house, so he tied his knobby kneed nag Femke to the hitching post outside the house and climbed the front steps to knock on the Cromwell's door. He kept one eye on the road and the other on his saddle because even on this respectable street there were usually thieves of opportunity on the lookout. The door opened on the third knock and he was swept into an older woman's hug and dragged inside, out of the soaking drizzle.
"Phew, you don't half pong, Danny," Betty Cromwell said as she released him and then sniffed again and pushed him away. Oliver's wife's apron was damp, as were her hands, and she told him, "I've just finished bathing the mud off the kiddies so you can use their bath water. It should still be warmish."
"Oliver asked me to drop off these letters," he said while holding up a handful of papers. "Actually I was on my way to speak to Britta."
"Dressed like that, and smelling like a horse that's been rolling in something. Never. Her fancy Frenchie maid wouldn't let you in the door. Come on in and get dry and warm and cleaned up. That will give me time to catch up on what is happening in the Fens.” Though a London lass, Betty had spent most of her life living in and around the Fens with Oliver.
"But my horse, my kit ..."
"Henry," Betty called to her youngest son in a voice that would have rattled the windows of every room of the house. "You come and take care of our guest's horse.” A teen lad leaped down the stairs three at a time and she told him, "There's plenty of room in the stable at your grandfather's house.” Her father, old man Bourchier, was a power amongst Smithfield's many butchers and lived in the big house at the end of the street. While Betty tugged Daniel along by his arm she told him, "Henry will bring in your kit. The tub is in the kitchen shed at the back of the house. Oy, take off them boots afore yee traipse about on my clean floors."
As in most fire-fearing London houses, the kitchen was under a separate roof behind the house. In the kitchen her two youngest daughters, now five or six, were already out of the bath and being dried off by Bridget, Betty's eldest daughter.
Back when the Cromwell's had lived in Ely, Bridget had been Teesa's best friend. After Oliver became a Member of Parliament, Betty's father had bought them this house and had moved them from Ely to London, so the two lasses rarely saw each other anymore. This was probably for the best, for even though they were both the same age, about twenty, they would have little in common any more other than fond memories of growing up wild in the Fens.
While living in Ely, Bridget had taught Teesa girly things, and how to read and write, while Teesa had taught Bridget tomboy things like spending long days outside fishing and birding. Once in London Bridget had been forced to learn all of the skills expected of a respectable Christian wife. Meanwhile Teesa had become a skilled huntress, and then gave that up to become a village healer, and meanwhile kept herself amused by learning about ships.
Just days ago Teesa had been firing cannons at royalist raiders and sticking pistols into men's ribs. Daniel glanced at Bridget, all prim and innocent looking, and shook his head. The poor girl was (oh no!) still unmarried, and quickly approaching the age of Christian Spinsterhood. While Teesa was still trim and fit, Bridget was getting pudgy and her face was taking on that smug horsy
look of young women who ate out of boredom and sat about too much.
The bath water was still fairly clean, so Daniel stripped off his filthy clothing and walked naked out into the kitchen yard to wash the worst of the filth from his skin using buckets of water. Bridget eagerly volunteered to fetch and carry those buckets of water, but all the while she tried not to stare at his manhood. He was such a comely man, so big, er, tall. One of her great regrets from her childhood running wild with Teesa, was that she had never been brave enough to go with Teesa into Wellenhay's communal sweat lodge. Especially regretful after she was told separately by all four of her brothers that they had used the sweat lodge and that it was fabulous. She had always wondered if Teesa had taken them, er, showed them how it worked.
"Do you know if Britta is home?" Daniel asked her as he shook himself off and then walked back into the kitchen to soak in the tub.
She dropped her eyes to the ground. Oh God, did he notice her staring. "I really don't know. I don't visit her much anymore because I must be careful of my reputation if I am to find a husband." Realizing that she had just insulted the man's step daughter, she decided it best to say no more. The pregnant silence that followed was thankfully interrupted by Betty's return.
"It's Wednesday so she is home today," Betty said cheerfully as she brought in some linens for him to dry off with. She stared down at the bathing man unabashedly. My he was well formed. "Henry has put your kit down over there by the oven to help it dry. Will this drizzle never stop. On Wednesdays other ladies visit Britta to play whist, sip kofe, and exchange stories about their men."
"They put brandy in their kofe," Bridget said as if that alone was scandalous enough, "and they wager shillings on every hand, and they talked about how to get men to do things for them. I know. I used to help serve the kofe."
Daniel nodded his thanks to the lass. To a young virgin waiting to be matched to a husband and spending her time stitching her trousseau, Britta's courtesan lifestyle would seem scandalous in the extreme. Obviously that had not stopped Bridget from listening to the courtesan's stories about how comely women could control men.
Betty shook her head in disbelief as she watched her eldest daughter pretend not to stare at the lanky body and tanned skin of this comely man. She herself had grown up in a family of Smithfield butchers, or rather, the managers of butchers. Nothing pertaining to flesh, or the sins of flesh, were forbidden subjects to those in the business of flesh. How did she ever end up with such a prudish, bookish daughter? "So tell us the news from the Fens. How are things there?"
By the time Daniel finished telling of the goings on at Crowland, he had dressed and moved to the dining room where the entire household had come to sit and lean and stand to listen. "Those poor women," Betty moaned sorrowfully at one point. "What is my Oliver going to do about it?"
"That's a military secret for now, love," Daniel told her. "But needless to say, he is taking measures to ensure that other women do not suffer the same." By this time , his hair was clean and combed and tied neatly behind his neck, and he was dressed in his best, so he hurried to the end his news so that he could go and visit his step-daughter next door.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15
Chapter 21 - With Courtesans in London in April 1643
What a difference there was between two houses that were only two doors apart on the same street and which looked like twins from the outside. Betty's was cluttered by the needs of a large family, who all ate at the same table and all slept in the upstairs rooms. Britta's was elegantly sparse, with nothing out of place, and no clutter on any surface.
Daniel suffered through the introductions to some very comely, and quite vain, painted ladies, and then suffered through the wait for them to finish the latest card game. Hand after hand those painted ladies stared at him as if they were stripping him of his clothes with their eyes. It was fortunate that he was a poor country cousin else they would have been using their hands and not just their eyes.
Bored and impatient, he took the opportunity of a fresh deal to ask, "I am looking for Admiral Robert Rich. Does anyone know his current whereabouts?" No one spoke but every ear was cocked in case someone did. The question earned him a kick in the ankle from Britta. It was injury to insult because his step-daughter had not even given him a hug when he arrived - just the offer of her hand to kiss as if she were a great lady and he but a lowly farmhand.
After watching a few more hands, he dared mention to Britta that if she had played her ace of trumps first, that she would not have lost a sizable stack of coins to a painted lady who would have otherwise been out of the game. At the comment, Britta strongly hinted that he should go to the kitchen and find something to fill his mouth. As he stood and turned to leave the room his ears wilted with the naughty suggestions from the other ladies about what he could fill it with. He could feel their eyes on his bum as he walked out of the room.
After the painted ladies had all said their goodbyes and had fluttered away to their waiting coaches like a colorful cloud of spring butterflies, Britta joined him in the kitchen. Finally he got his big hug, and then a kiss full on the lips and long enough to be slightly naughty. She tasted sweetly of anise and cinnamon. The Wyred Sisters who wove irony into men's fates were having big fun with him today. The most intoxicating woman in London was throwing herself at him, and he was the only man in London who could not allow it. His body was craving more of the naughty, so he pushed her away and tried to replace her kisses with his words, any words. "You used to be a far better card player," he told her, lamely.
"Robert pays for my little kofe parties so that I can keep him informed of the comings and goings of the other Earls and Generals." She meant her paramour Admiral Robert Rich, who owned the Warwick House estate on the other side of her back garden wall. "If losing a few shillings brings me that information, then the shillings are well spent. And by the way, every one of those hussies would have been well paid for finding out exactly where Robert is right now, which is why I did not tell you in front of them."
He should have remembered that courtesans often served as spies, and suddenly felt foolish. The lavish comfort of this house, her costly gowns, all of it was paid for by the Rich family. Well perhaps not the jewels, for she had many wealthy admirers. "So where is he?"
She almost spoke, but then looked around and seemed to be listening for something. She decided to keep quiet and instead pecked him on the cheek, took him by the hand and led him upstairs to her suite. He resisted her tug, both on his hand and on his heart. Only last year she had told him that when she was a teen she had been madly in love with him and had dreamed of becoming his wife.
It had been the Wyred sisters who had crushed her dream with their irony. The clan's main ship had been lost at sea with all hands, and with it Daniel had lost his elder brother, who was also her mother Venka's latest husband. In the traditional way, Daniel inherited responsibility for his brother's family, and so Venka became his second wife, and Britta and Teesa therefore his step daughters.
Yes, his second wife, even though as yet he had no first "chosen" wife. It was an ancient tradition that protected the clan's widows and their children from the poverty and misery that Christian widows oft endured. Thus the irony of being forced into a position of parental trust with Britta, who wanted all the world to be his mate. Such traditions were almost impossible to explain to monogamous Christians, and bedding Britta would complicate his family relationships in the extreme. Life was not yet so boring that he needed such complications.
"Come on, come on," she said tugging at his hand. "Anyone would think I was taking you upstairs to eat you." Her bright eyes smirked at him "Londoner's ears are shaped like keyholes. Come with me upstairs where we can speak in private. Robert paid good coin to have my bedroom sound proofed." When they got to her room, which was lavish in its fabrics and its comforts, she closed the door behind him and then pulled him towar
ds her bed. Once they were both sitting on the bed, she pushed her face close to his as if to kiss him, but this time it was not their lips that met, but their eyes.
Now alone with her, and this close to her, he felt completely overwhelmed by her natural beauty. The other courtesans all had painted faces, but Britta did not need such contrivances. Not at all. The skin of her face and neck glowed with health, and was bare and smooth and fresh. Well perhaps there was a touch of rouge on her lips. The goddess was strong in her and his body was reacting. Not the papist goddess Mary, but the North Sea goddess Freyja. The goddess of the moon cycles and tides and therefore of love and of birth and of life. He kept telling himself over and over that she was forbidden fruit, but her eyes bewitched him, and he lost himself in them and he was drawn towards her until their chests touched.
She broke eye contact and leaned back a bit so that she could breath without rubbing her breasts against him, "So will you accept the position in Bermuda and set up a colony in the Warwick Tribe?" A tribe was what Bermudan's called a tract of land that in England would be called a hundred or a township.
His mouth was dry and his breath was short so it took him a moment before he could gather his wits and reply. "Yes, that is why I am searching for Robert. I must confirm it with him and sign some oaths and agreements."
This reply started her off on sequence of short, fast questions such as: How is the clan dividing? What is my mother doing? What about Teesa? And the questions and answers went on and on until they touched on what her Aunt Sarah was doing. His answer sparked a disgusted response.