Pistoleer: Roundway Down

by Smith, Skye

  Daniel had Millie back away from the edge before he turned her and then nodded thankfully to Henry and said. "You'd better warn the lads. You seem to know a lot about these bluffs for someone who claims he is not a local."

  "When I was a boy my folks lived for a while over in Bishops Cannings. That's the village to the east in yon great hollow. You can just see the top of the bell tower of their church," Henry told as he rode along beside his captain. "I lived there back when the church got its bell. I remember when we rang our new bell, and sang a special song for the queen. Her coach was on the Marlborough coach road and she was taking a rest at the Shepherds Shore Inn."

  "Charlie's wife?"

  "Charlie's mother," Henry corrected. "And a right bitch she was. We expected her, bein' queen an' all, to throw us some coins. Instead she just waved. Just held one hand up and wagged it just a bit at us. Bitch. It's a mile steep walk up from Canning to reach the scaerd."

  "Scaerd? What's a scaerd?"

  "Sorry. The shore. Scaerd is a local word for a shore or a gap. Shepherds Shore is where the coach road cuts through the great dyke. The dyke I told you about that runs all the way to Marlborough."

  "Wansdyke?" Daniel confirmed. Henry nodded. Daniel shaded his eyes and looked along the ridge. "And there is an inn there. Why didn't you say so." He turned around and called to the lads, "Pick up the pace lads. Tonight we sleep in an inn."

  As they rode, Henry called out what he knew about the lay of the land to all the troop. As they crested a hillock that was a local high point to the north east of the Devil's Leap hill fort, he told them. "This is Roundway Hill. That big hill to the north is Saint Maggie’s and the smaller hill this side of Maggie’s is Bagnall Hill. The Bath Coach Road goes through the vale between them. The meadows between this hill and those is called Roundway Down."

  Henry now turned in his saddle and pointed the opposite way. "Below this hill to the east is the Devizes Coach Road. It climbs up the side of Roundway Hill, which is a bloody lug for the coach horses. You can just see the road where it tops out and crosses the down to join up with the main coach road between Marlborough and Bath. The fork where all roads join is just before you get to the Shepherds Shore Inn at the cut through Wansdyke."

  They rode to the fork in the coach roads and stopped there to have a good look around. This fork was what Daniel had been told to control by setting up ambushes, but it was in open land with no cover of any kind around it, no walls, no hedges, no trees. In other words, the sorriest of places for an ambush. The fork was where a valley began that ran south and dropped down steeply and stretched wider to create the hollow where Henry's village of Bishops Canning was. There were bushes in that valley for cover, but since they were at a lower level than the fork, they were useless for purposes of ambush.

  Since the Bath road was the main road, it kept its height along the edge of Maggie's Hill to keep it level with the saddle between Maggie’s and Bagnall hills, which meant that the Devizes road had to climb up a bit from the Down to connect with it. From the fork they could clearly see an inn at a ridge ahead. It was hard to believe that the ridge which stretched each way until it was out of sight was actually a man made dyke.

  It was even harder to believe it was man made when they reached the gap in the dyke where the inn stood. The dyke was three or four man heights high on this side, but on the other side, the north side, there was also a ditch that was at least two man heights deep. So from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the dyke was perhaps six heights. Since it was now ancient, when first dug the dyke would have been higher with a steeper wall, and the ditch deeper, especially the ditch.

  "I never did believe it was built by men," Henry told them all. "Wansdyke is just short for Woden's Dyke, and as we all know, Woden is just another name for Satan. It makes more sense that Satan's giants built it. The same giants what brought all the great standing' stones to these downs. They built it to keep men out o' the south. You see, men could ride horses, but giants were too big for horses and had to walk, so they dug this ditch to block the horses."

  "Henry, you said that it stretches from the other side of Maggie’s Hill all the way to Marlborough. You would need thousands, no, tens of thousands of, er, giants to hold this dyke against attack just because of its length." Daniel was already thinking about how long he could hold this dyke against, say, Prince Maurice's flying army, say three hundred cavalryers. "Let's see what the inn has to offer us."

  The inn and its stables were empty and deserted. "The folk what run it," Henry told them, "will be staying down in Bishop's Cannings. Not much good running a coach house when there ain't no post coaches. Folk used to ride up from Devizes and wait here for the Bath or the London coaches. It was a good business because sometimes they took a meal, sometimes a bed, and sometimes rented a horse. Now look at it. Nothing left but empty buildings." He looked over at the tap room and licked his lips. "Not even a pot of ale."

  "I doubt the keeper is in your old village," Daniel told Henry. "Every village around here will be as empty as this inn. That's the problem when big armies march about. You said it yourself. They've already thieved everything so there is nothing left. Oh well, at least the roof still sheds the rain so we won't be camping rough tonight.” He decided not to point out that since Devizes was a royalist garrison, then the folk of Bishop's Canning would like as not have been pressed into the service of the garrison as slave labour. Work-or-starve slave labour. What an insult to every cottager, for they would be fed from the stores that the garrison had thieved from them."

  While Daniel rode along the dyke up Maggie's Hill to have a look around, Henry organized the men in the inn and the horses in the stables. If there were scouts about, they wanted the place to still seem deserted despite the thirty men now billeted there. The stable wasn't large enough to hide all of the horses, so some of them were put in the inn. A watch was placed in the upper story windows and told not to show themselves. For most of the men this was the first roof they had slept under for almost a month, so as barren and sparse as the place was, it felt luxurious.

  Daniel followed the great dyke up hill from the inn, and after only about two hundred yards, the dyke did a strange thing. It traversed the south side of Maggie's hill rather than keeping to the highest point of the slope all the way to the top of the hill. Very strange indeed for a dyke built to protect the south from the north. Daniel turned around at that point because his need of the dyke was only as a place to hide his pickets in a place with a good view along the coach road towards Marlborough. This was the best place.

  He looked back down the dyke towards the shore and the inn. There were still a few men doing chores in the yard, but he was pleased that he could see no other sign that his troop or their horses were there. It took him but moments to ride back down to the inn while keeping to cover on the same bottom-of-the-ditch route he had used to climb up. Once at the inn he ordered one of the corporals to take five lads and set up a picket camp up above them at the bend in the dyke. Meanwhile he handed Millie to one of the lads to take into the inn so he could stride around the cut in the dyke to find some easy and natural way to barricade the road.

  If all he needed to do was to stop a cart, this was easy enough to do. Even in today's light rain the bottom of the ditch was running with water down Maggie’s slope, and to get that water to the other side of the coach road without constantly washing the road bed out, there was a deep culvert dug through the roadbed and a plank bridge over the culvert. The culvert was less than two feet wide, but if the planks weren't there, then no cart could cross it. Unfortunately he could see no way of blocking the gap to riders or walkers. Even if he pulled down the inn and used the stone from it to build a wall, riders and walker would simply go further up or down the dyke and go around. The dyke was so weathered that in many places the once steep slopes were now gentle enough for a horse to climb.

  The inn was made of stone, even though there was no stone anywhere near to it on this chalk down. It looked like d
ressed stone, like what masons used for building churches. Henry explained it to him. "There used to be an ancient town near here and it was built of dressed stone. The locals quarry the dressed stones from the ancient buildings to build new buildings."

  Daniel ran his hand along one of the stones. It was perfectly formed and there were no chisel marks from the dressing. The smoothness of it reminded him of the paved floors you found in better cottages. Cottagers with enough chalk and firewood would pave their dirt floors with slaked lime. They would heat the chalk into quick lime and then mix the lime with fine sand and water and then pour it over their floor and smooth it out and let it dry. When it dried, it was rock hard and could be polished. Could these stones have been cast like bricks out of quick lime and sand and water? Did the ancients know of such things? He would have to ask Rob Blake the next time he saw him.

  "Get the lads to loosen that planking over the culvert so we can pull it up in a hurry if need be," he told Henry.

  Henry was looking back along the Bath coach road towards Bagnall Hill. "Some lucky bugger has meat to roast," Henry grumbled as he stared at a plume of smoke rising from the side of the hill. "For the officers of course. Bugger all officers, er, no offense sir."

  "None taken," Daniel said. He took out his looker and stared at the source of the smoke. The locals called it Bagnall Hill, but with the plume of smoke rising from it the name Beacon Hill would be more appropriate. Duett must be building a camp on the side of the hill to guard the Bath road that led to Chippenham. That road was nearly level with here, while the Devizes spur wound its way down the steep grade of Roundway Hill to the valley floor where the town was. The descent of the road looked to be a hundred man heights vertical, so quite a grind for a coach and four.

  Henry had told him that they used to keep oxen at this inn and also in a barn at the bottom of the grind. Carters and coachmen could rent the oxen to help the horses slow the coaches down the grade, or to tow the coaches up. Needless to say, the down cost more than the up because it took longer. Oxen may be a lot slower than horses, but they had the advantage of pulling with all four legs, or holding back with all four legs, whereas horses only ever used their hind legs to pull and were clumsy at holding back because they tended to brace themselves with locked fore legs.

  "The smoke must be from Major Duett's own camp," Daniel told the lads who had gathered to loosen the planks, "and he has a few hundred horse with him, besides the one on the fire." The lads laughed at the pun. "Any shot by us will bring them down here to help us out. Oh well, they can have their nob of a hill. It'll be cold up there tonight if this wet wind picks up, whereas we have four walls and a roof over our heads."

  Waller must have ordered Duett and some of his light cavalry up to camp on Bagnall Hill to secure the road from the direction of Chippenham. Haselrig's heavy cavalry would have remained camped down on the flats near to Devizes because riding up and, especially, down these steep slopes was exhausting work for men and beasts when they were carrying so much heavy armour.

  "Horses a'comin'," came the yell from the watch in the upper window. "Seven of them coming up from Devizes. They look like friendlies.” Despite the call of friendlies, every man ran for their carbines and their dragons and hid out of sight inside and behind the inn and the stable.

  "If you must shoot, shoot to blind not to kill," Daniel called out. "It's damn lonely work questioning a corpse."

  They were friendlies. Henry's corporal and the two men he had taken with him to report to Major Duett, plus four of Waller's dispatch riders. A cheer went up as the corporal lifted up the end of a roast haunch of French from behind his saddle for them all to see. It wasn't enough for thirty hungry men, but even a mouthful to chew on was better than nowt.

  Daniel touched his temple in salute to the dispatch riders and said, "Let me guess. Urgent dispatches to General Essex from General Waller, asking Essex to do anything necessary to stop a column from being sent by Oxford to relieve Devizes."

  "You didn't hear that from us," one of the riders replied with a guffaw. "That's top secret, that is," and then he laughed heartily with all the men around him.

  "Go with God," Henry called after the dispatchers as they rode on. "Poor buggers. What are the chances of four lads like that getting all the way to Essex with the land all a crawlin' with royalists?"

  "Fair to good," Daniel told him. He had ridden the same kind of trip three times this month, and alone. "And they won't be the only ones that Waller will have sent with the same message. He will have sent at least four groups, each by a different road. That said, they would be fools to stick to the main roads when there are lonely empty tracks all through these hills."

  An hour later the same watch called out, "A dozen riders coming up out of the hollow from Bishops Canning. I doubt they are friendlies cause they are trying to keep to cover."

  This call again had everyone hiding and waiting, and Daniel had some time to do some thinking. If these men were unfriendlies, then they might be carrying dispatches from Hopton, but to where, to whom? Why trust this high road? There was a lower road that ran east from Devizes towards Marlborough that followed the Kennet valley, and it was not yet controlled by Waller's forces. Or perhaps by now it was blocked too.

  Again Daniel called out, "Shoot to blind not to kill, but none of them must escape us whatever the cost to them."

  Daniel's troop stayed hidden until all twelve unfriendlies were abreast of the buildings, but then their way forward was blocked by mounted dragoons riding out from behind the stable. While some of the lads yelled down to them as they showed their carbines from the upper windows, other mounted dragoons circled behind them, while others on foot popped out of their hiding places with their dragons cocked and ready to fire. Some of the unfriendlies spurred their horses forwards, while some turned them to run back, while others rode in a circle looking for a way out of this trap. Because they did not immediately see the sense in surrendering, all of the horses, if not the men, were hit in the face by stinging clouds of dragon's breath.

  After waiting just a moment until some of the foul and stinging dragon's breath had cleared, Daniel called out to them, "We've got twenty carbines aimed at you, and twenty axes ready to chop legs. Don't play the fool. Throw down your weapons and dismount."

  Half of the riders were too busy trying to regain control of their panicked horses to be listening, but the sight of the other half throwing down their weapons must have been a warning to them. Eventually all of their weapons were on the ground, and the unfriendly were told to dismount.

  The captives had to be taken to a ranking officer and Major Duett was the closest over in the new camp on Bagnall Hill. The captives were bound with hands behind their backs. By that time the stricken horses had calmed down but still some of the captives had to double up on horses because three of the horses were in no shape to be ridden. Those three horses were left at the inn with half of the troop, who were to butcher and cook one of them before Daniel and the other half of the troop returned from delivering the prisoners.

  Before they could ride out from the inn's yard, a call came from the watchers above that there were about fifty cavalry approaching down the Chippenham road from Bagnall Hill. None of the dragoons panicked for it was clearly Major Duett coming to support them after hearing the shots. They waited for him at the inn, and the first thing the major said to them when he rode up was to apologize for his delay in coming. The delay had been the time it took to help each other on with their armour, or to find and saddle their horses. Duett took charge of the captives and escorted them down to the village of Rowde where Waller and most of his army were camped in a field for the night.

  Duett confirmed that Waller had indeed blocked every road out of Devizes with bands of dragoons such as Daniel's at the inn. That explained why the captives had not taken the valley road. A quick search of the saddle bags confirmed that these riders were taking dispatches to Marlborough and then on to Oxford.

  Most of Daniel's lads did
n't care beans for this interesting information. Some were off gleaning for wood to burn, while others were busy building a cooking fire in the kitchen shed behind the inn, while others were cleaning and sharpening the axes they would use for skinning and butchering. Daniel didn't mind their lack of interest, for however damp and chilly it got up here on the hill tonight, and whatever the morning brought, it would all be made easier by them having full tummies.

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

  Chapter 30 - The Storming of Devizes in July 1643

  The next day, Monday, Waller moved his main camp from the damp field near Rowde up to Bagnall Hill above the Chippenham-Bath coach road. He still intended to storm Devizes from the village of Rowde, but the hill was a more strategic place to camp. For one thing it was out of reach of sorties by Hopton's garrison. He did leave the Lobsters to protect the siege guns left at Rowde. He had no choice, because Colonel Haselrig's heavy cavalry were just that, and too heavy to be constantly riding up and down the steep slopes to reach a camp on the hill.

  Once the main camp was moved out of harms way, Waller repeatedly stormed Devizes, first with his big guns and then with his infantry. He no choice but storm tactics because he could not afford to wait the weeks it may take for a siege to work. Daniel was very thankful that his own men were safe on picket duty at Shepherd's Shore rather than storming the barricades that the royalists had thrown across every street, or fighting hand to hand, building to building, against the thousand Cornish infantry who had yet to desert Hopton.

  By the end of the day the town had still not surrendered, but Waller had more captives than he knew what to do with, including one lord and many officers. He sent messengers out to all of the gaolers in towns still friendly to him that he would be sending them captives to house.