Pistoleer: Roundway Down

by Smith, Skye

  "So where will you be making for today?" Crosse asked.

  "Bristol. I have been delayed in presenting myself to the new governor of Bermuda, and hopefully he is still in Bristol outfitting his ship."

  "Via Reading?"

  "That would be the safest way."

  "Then my troop will escort you as far as Chalgrove," Crosse offered and then smirked and shrugged. "I will tell Stapleton that I am taking my troop to re-enact yesterday's fight to show them what they did right."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

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

  Chapter 26 - The Clan arrives in Lyme, Dorset in June 1643

  "I said no interruptions," General William Waller growled at the guard at the door. The same Waller whom the London news sheets were still calling 'William the Conqueror' despite the recent string of defeats that had forced him to regroup his forces here in Bath. He and his core officers were in heavy discussions about what to do now that his old friend, the royalist general Ralph Hopton had broken out of Cornwall and Devon and was marching ever surely towards Bristol.

  "A messenger has just arrived carrying dispatches from Thame, sir," the guard said meekly with a bowed head. "I thought perhaps you would want to read them before you made any decisions."

  Waller walked to the window and looked out over the rooftops of modern Bath towards the crumbling building that gave the city its name. He turned and in a more pleasant voice told the doorman, "Thank you, please bring them to me."

  "I can bring you the dispatch pouch, sir, but there is also a personal letter which one of the messengers insists must be delivered into your hands."

  "Then bring him too."

  Saying that the letter must be placed in his hands was a ruse on Daniel's part so that he could speak with Waller immediately and then be on his way to Bristol. The alternative was to wait about for perhaps two days until Waller could spare him some time. He had attached himself to General Essex's dispatch riders as they left Reading and they were glad to have an experienced pistoleer along, and he was glad of their protection, for in these violent times the roads from London to Bristol were very dangerous. In truth, the letter that Colonel Stapleton had asked him to take to Waller was likely just a friend's writings that could have been delivered with the dispatches.

  The guard ushered Daniel into an ornate room that was grand enough for a palace, but when he was presented to the group of senior officers he did not salute, nor even stand to attention. He was a civilian, and he wanted to stay that way. Some of the officers made to object to his lack of respect towards a general, since he had been introduced as a captain, but Waller spoke over their objections. "He is a ship's captain, the master of a merchant ship," Waller explained, "although he has been known to accept the command of my irregulars for the occasional special mission."

  Daniel nodded a thank you to him and then handed him the letter. Waller looked at the address information and then inspected the seal. He threw it onto the table where the guard had put the dispatch pouch down. "So it has come to this?" the general said sarcastically. "Essex is using one of the best marksmen in the kingdom as a delivery boy. How are things in Thame? What is that damn fool Essex playing at? Why hasn't he laid siege to Oxford and bottled that devil Rupert up? Doesn't he know that the strength of the rest of us is slowly bleeding away while he waits?"

  "Those answers are likely in the official dispatches, sir," Daniel replied softly.

  "Don't you believe it," Waller grumbled. "Dispatches are only the official version of things, and rarely tell the full truth of it.” He picked up the letter again. "Ah, but this personal letter may tell me more." After impatiently ripping it open he began to read. After but a moment he begged his leave of his staff officers and led Daniel into a smaller attached room, his inner sanctum. As he closed the door he called out to the others, "Please open the dispatches and see what Essex has to say."

  Waller did not sit, nor invite Daniel to sit. "I don't have time to sit," he said as if to explain such rudeness. He did, however, offer Daniel a glass of Dutch genever to sip on to clear the road dust from his throat, and then continued to read the letter. "Is this all true?" he asked when finished his reading.

  "I have no idea what was in the letter, sir."

  "That Reading, Thame, and Oxford lack infantry because they are all ill with camp fever? That there is no action save raids and skirmishes by the flying squads on either side, and that those are just to keep everyone on their toes? That John Hampden has been horribly injured while rescuing the payroll?"

  "Mostly true, sir. It is not camp fever, but a sickness from the continent that has been allowed to become an epidemic. Learned men have told me that it is typhos and that it is spread by lice, fleas, and ticks. The first and longest lasting symptom is complete fatigue," Daniel was rolling the big words off his tongue like the physicians he had been speaking with. "The danger is the fever. The sickness itself will run its course and be gone in two months, so long as the victim does not die of the fever or the dehydration."

  Waller came closer to him and sniffed at him. "Smells like camp fever," he said and pulled his nose back. "I'd know those sulfur farts anywhere."

  "That is not my farts that you smell, but a physician's lotion. A mix of olive oil and sulfur spread on skin and hair to keep the vermin away. I covered myself with it while on the road because you can never be sure of the bedding you are offered."

  "Keep the vermin away?" Waller laughed. "You mean keep the women away. Phew, it gets stronger the longer we are in this small room."

  "You should try wearing it, sir," Daniel laughed with him. "Even after you wash it off you can still smell it."

  "So, Daniel, if the rest of this letter is true then so must be this last paragraph."

  The hair along the back of Daniel's neck went all prickly. Waller never called him Daniel unless he wanted something. What Waller usually wanted of other men was for them to risk their lives. "What does it say?"

  "That within two weeks you trained two hundred farm lads into become a force of dragoons that held off six hundred of Rupert's cavalryers. Colonel Stapleton was most impressed. He says that they stopped a full on cavalry charge as if the charge had hit a wall."

  The warning bells were chiming hard and loud in Daniel's mind. This was not the time to be boastful. "I helped a little with the training. Most of it was done by Hampden and his captains. It was Hampden who stood up to those cavalryers. That is how he was injured."

  "Still, that is the first time I have heard of any of our mounted forces standing up to one of Rupert's charges. I would like you to stay here in Bath for a while and set up the same kind of training for my dragoons."

  "That is not possible, sir. I have urgent business with Captain William Sayle in Bristol. He is to be the new Governor of Bermuda," Daniel explained. He reached into his side bag and pulled out his own agreements with the Earl of Warwick and handed them to Waller to read.

  After reading them, Waller said, "So you are to be our company's new Vice-Governor of Bermuda. I know Sayle. He's a good man, though a bit of a Bible thumper. Well it is not like your appointment was not unexpected." Waller was a business partner to Hampden and Warwick in most of their New World companies. "That doesn't look like Hampden's signature. What is all the smudging?"

  "His blood sir. He signed it with his injured hand. That is why General Essex witnessed it. I was expected in Bristol over a month ago to confer with Captain Sayle. I only stopped here to pass on that letter and to find out what the current situation is around the Dorset ports such as Lyme."

  "Dangerous. There is no better word for it. The truce on the Cornwall-Devon border is finished and General Hopton has put the run on our army. The only places in Devon that are still ours are Barnstable, Exeter and Plymouth. We have been retreating from every corner of Devon, and now Hopton is driving us back all across Somerset. I suppose he is trying to open a supply route from Cornwall to Oxford, and he may d
o it too, if he can join his forces to the flying armies of Prince Maurice and Carnarvon. Hopton has already garrisoned Taunton, Bridgwater, and Dunster Castle and now he is setting up a much larger garrison at Wells. That is but fifteen miles away on the other side of the Mendip Hills.

  The only garrisons we have left are at Bristol, Bath and Gloucester. We are being squeezed by Hopton from the south west, by Maurice and Carnarvon from the east, and from the north and Wales by the flying squads from Oxford. And this is all Essex's fault for not keeping the Oxford garrison blocked in. If Essex had attacked Oxford as he was meant to do, then I would have been free to crush the Cornish army like I did to the Welsh army.

  Two months ago our forces under Stamford and Popham had pushed Hopton deep into Cornwall, but I am now stretched so thin that I cannot help them, so Hopton has broken out. Popham has been in constant retreat across Devon and then Somerset."

  "So you are saying that all of our forces, including Popham's are now in Bath with you," Daniel summarized thoughtfully, "and all of the south's royalist forces, including Prince Maurice, may be in Wells and less than twenty miles away." He became lost in thought, worrying thoughts about how safe his clan would be waiting in Lyme when the royalists controlled all the roads between Bristol and Lyme. Worrying thoughts about how he himself would get through the royalists patrols to reach Lyme once his business in Bristol was finished. Someone somewhere stepped on his grave. Waller was talking to him again, and calling him - by name.

  "Daniel, you are sure that you don't have some days to spare to do some training with my dragoons?" Waller asked.

  "But if all of your forces have retreated across Somerset," Daniel answered, "and are now here, then shouldn't Robert Blake be here. Rob has forgotten more about dragoon tactics than I ever knew."

  "Ah, so that explains it."

  "Explains what."

  "I sent out some horse to cover Colonel Popham's retreat around Wells and through and the Mendip Hills at Chewton Mendip. It became a disaster of disorganization, as retreats often become. We would have been routed, severely routed if one of the dragoon companies had not taken advantage of a sudden heavy fog.

  They split their company in two, and while one half retreated through the fog leading the royalists on, the other half waited in ambush until they were behind the royalists. When they attacked, the royalists didn't know what hit them, for they couldn't see six paces through the fog. An entire royalist flying squad lost their horses to that ambush, and so their retreat was on foot. Some of the men swear that Prince Maurice was leading those royalists, and that he was also unsaddled so he had to use his own shanks to escape."

  "And who commanded that company of dragoons?" Daniel asked.

  "Robert Blake," they both said simultaneously. Waller continued speaking. "Come let us join the others and find out what was in the dispatches."

  There was no good news in the dispatches. The queen was moving south to Newark with her continental mercenaries because all of Yorkshire was now under royalist control except for Kingston-upon-Hull. In Oxfordshire, camp fever had humbled the infantries on both sides so Essex was pressing for a truce in hopes of eventual peace with the king. Waller looked out to his officers and commented, "Which explains why we have been denied the infantry we so desperately need. Well Essex won't be allowed to press for peace, not after those two plots were discovered. The Peace Party is as good as finished in parliament."

  "What plots?" Daniel asked.

  "You haven't heard?" Waller replied. "Captured dispatches from Ireland prove that the king was negotiating to have an Irish army invade Scotland to help the Scottish Royalists overthrow the Covenanters. In London a man named Edmund Waller, no relation, was caught in a plot to have the London Royalists rise up and take control of the walls and open the gates to the king's army. Both of these plots were in play during our last truce with the king. John Pym is livid at the king's duplicity."

  "Well I see that you gentlemen have much to discuss, so I will leave you," Daniel said, trying to bow out gracefully. He had learned what he had come to find out. so it was time to ride on to Bristol and his future. He took Waller’s smile and nod as a dismissal and turned towards the door. As he walked to the door he heard Waller ask Colonel Popham a question.

  "Where is Robert Blake? I want him to do some training with our companies of dragoons."

  Colonel Popham's voice replied, "You sent him to Bristol to fetch back some infantry. He hasn't returned yet."

  So Rob was in Bristol. Good. All the more reason to continue on to that port city without delay.

  * * * * *

  On reaching Bristol, Daniel rode directly to the grand old castle. Old and crumbling it may have been, but the castle grounds were huge and fortified and therefore served as a headquarters, main billet, and supply depot in one for Governor Fiennes and his garrison. If you had business in Bristol, then the castle was your first stop because anyone who was anyone would either be at the castle, or would soon be at the castle, or their current whereabouts would be known at the castle.

  Captain Sayle was at the castle and he accepted Daniel's Bermuda documents. How could he refuse documents signed by such rich and powerful men. They drew aside into a quiet place and talked in length about Sayle's coming mission to the Caribbean. Since Sayle's ship was leaving from Bristol, and Daniel's ships were leaving from Lyme, they agreed that it made sense for them to rendezvous at St. Mary's Bay in the Scilly Isles before setting out for Bermuda. In that way, if either party was delayed the other could wait in a place safe from storms. Neither of them were all that worried about the pirates that often frequented the Scilly Isles, not with such well armed and well manned ships.

  At the end of two hours, all that remained was for Daniel to confirm that his ships were in Lyme and ready to sail, but this he could not do. He had no idea where his ships were, or even if they had left the Fens yet. He did not say this to Sayle, of course. Instead he told Sayle that that his flotilla should be reaching Lyme any day now, and that he would ride there to meet them and then send word back.

  On leaving Sayle's company, Daniel asked at the officer's mess for word of Robert Blake, but his question was immediately made redundant by a hail to him from across the great dining hall. The reunion with Rob did not go as well as the meeting with Sayle. Yes they were overjoyed to see each other, but Daniel's bad news about Hampden's injury, and about the epidemic spreading through the army camps of Oxfordshire just worsened Robert's bad humour. Rob's news was equally bleak and ended with a his complaint about being caught in the middle of an argument between Governor Fiennes of Bristol and General Waller in Bath.

  "So there you have it," Blake said after a hushed ten minute rant to his old friend. "Waller needs infantry to man local garrisons and secure redoubts if his mounted army is expected to push Hopton and his royalists out of Somerset, but Lord General Essex in Thame has refused to supply them. At least now I understand Essex's refusal. Meanwhile Fiennes is reluctant to send his infantry to join Waller because that would leave Bristol's defenses too thinly manned in case the royalist army comes knocking.

  And I am expected to shuttle between the two to do their convincing for them. It is a dilemma because both of them are 'right' to think as they do. The royalists are massing in Wells, so Fiennes is right to keep his infantry against a likely attack, and Waller is right to claim the infantry so he can attack Wells, otherwise that threat will not go away. Worse, only a week ago I had Prince Maurice at my mercy in Chewton Mendip but did not know it. Had I not shown mercy and allowed those cavalryers to retreat on foot through the fog, then Maurice would be our prisoner and we could have bargained Hopton's withdrawal from Wells."

  "Don't blame yourself, Rob. This is all Essex's fault," Daniel told his friend in hopes of calming him. "Essex could have bypassed Reading or put it under quarantine but he was trying to let the epidemic do his work for him so that he would not be blamed for the king's demise by the other nobility."

  "Even Essex is not
wholly to blame," Rob growled. "The underlying fault lies with the Committee of Safety. It was they who selected Essex as Lord General, and they who have not yet replaced the oaf. That said, there is a rumour amongst the officers here that Essex has sent his resignation to London."

  "Great, wonderful," Daniel said with true joy.

  "It will be refused. Now that I know of Hampden's wound, I understand Essex's timing. With John Hampden injured and Lord Brooke dead, parliament must re-affirm his command for there is no one handy to take his place." A horrible thought crossed Rob's mind and he asked, "Hampden will recover, won't he? The wound was not life threatening?" He himself had almost died from an infected leg wound only six months ago. It had been Daniel and his women folk who had saved both his leg and his life.

  "In the filth of a battlefield any wound can be life threatening," Daniel replied, "but you know that better than anyone. John should recover, though I fear he will loose the use of most of his fingers. We cleaned the wound properly and he is being well nursed at the physician's house. The physician is a personal friend of his so his wound will be watched like a hawk. If it does not heal, I suppose he will lose the hand to the barber in order to save his life."

  "Mentioning barbers does little to lessen my fears for him," Rob said glumly. "We both well know how few men survive amputations."

  Daniel gave it some serious thought before he replied, "It must be more than half, perhaps seven in ten survive, but I take your meaning."