Pistoleer: Roundway Down

by Smith, Skye

  On Tuesday Hopton asked for, and received, a temporary truce while he weighed Waller's latest terms for surrendering the garrison. No one thought that he would surrender, and most of Waller's officers advised the general that Hopton was simply stalling for time in hopes that reinforcements or supplies would arrive from Marlborough. Despite this good advice, Waller showed compassion for his injured old friend Hopton and so Tuesday was peaceful.

  Peaceful everywhere except for the dragoons at Shepherd's Shore. The pickets on watch on the dyke high above the inn reported to Daniel that a column of carts and horses were coming down the coach road from Marlborough. Before too long they didn't even have to look to know that the column was still in motion because there was a continuous and eerie shrieking coming down the road. The Wiltshire born Henry warned them that the shriekings were from the ghosts that swirled around haunting these ancient earthworks, and he was quite sure they were an evil omen, an omen from Satan himself.

  The shrieking turned out to be the over used brakes of the heavily laden carts coming down the long, gentle slope of the road. The column of carts was guarded by a large troop of cavalry, some of whom had tied off their horses to the carts to help slow them down the long slope in the road and save the brakes. As Daniel sent two of his men at the gallop to report all this to Major Duett, he couldn't help but wonder how these carters expected to get down Roundway Hill which was steeper by far. But that was wonderment for another time, for what mattered now was to block the carts and their escort from retreating back to Marlborough long enough for Duett's cavalry to ride here and force a surrender.

  The simple solution is often the best, and in this case it meant hiding out of sight until the carts had passed over the plank bridge, and then dash out and remove the plank bridge so that they could not retreat. Of course there was no way of stopping the cavalryers from riding off to any point of the compass, but those who stayed with the carts to protect them might be captured with the carts.

  Since there were cavalry scouts riding ahead of the carts, this plan meant that they could not hide at the inn, so they grabbed their horses and gear and led them up the ditch to where the picket camp was, and then turned the slight curve of that ditch to wait out of sight above the inn. They had plenty of time to do this because the carts were moving so slowly. They could do it secretly because they were hidden from the column due to the dyke. The only problem with the plan was that the cavalry guard outnumbered them, so if they were discovered before they could return to the inn, it could go very badly for them.

  Only Daniel with his looker peered over the earthworks to keep an eye on the column. The scouts did a very quick search of the empty inn, and luckily found nothing to make them cautious and so they waved the carts on. The carts rumbled through the shore and past the inn without stopping. Daniel hadn't realized that he was holding his breath waiting for the rear guard to get beyond the inn, until he almost choked and had to stifle a cough by ducking down a burying his head into his elbow.

  The timing of the dragoons' return to the inn was not theirs. The column must have seen Duett's cavalry coming towards them along the road for suddenly the officers began riding up and down the column to discuss the situation. There was only one logical thing for the column to do and that was to return to the inn and hold Duett off from there. Of course, Daniel had the identical plan. He and his men rode down the ditch to the inn, and leaped from their horses. Half of the men ripped up the plank bridge and then remounted, while the other half carried all the carbines to the upper floor windows and loaded up.

  Moments later the scouts returned to the inn at the gallop, but pulled up hard when the carbines began shooting at them from above. Now they knew they were in a trap. They could see the open culvert, so the carts could not retreat beyond here. They could see the snipers in the windows and the mounted dragoons waiting for them in the shore, so there was no retreating this way. It was senseless for them to wait within range of the carbines for the carts to arrive, so they turned and raced back to their column to make their report. A few moments later the carts lost their cavalry escort, because to a man they left the road and hurried away up Maggie’s Hill to cross the dyke uphill from the inn and thereby escape capture.

  Left without an escort, the teamsters leaped from their carts and began to leg it across the downs in the same direction as their escort, but they were soon overtaken by Duett's company. Luckily for the teamsters, Duett’s men were more interested in chasing the royalist cavalry than capturing unarmed carters. They were just lucky that rebel cavalry were not in the habit of slashing workers, unlike the royalist cavalryers.

  With triple their number of cavalryers riding up and over the dyke, Daniel's dragoons had no choice but to keep to the inn and defend the shore, so it was some of Duett's troops who reached the abandoned carts first. They leaped onto the carts to see what the cargo was, probably hoping for silver coins or some other portable wealth. It was the arrival of Duett himself that sent them all scrambling back to their horses and away over the downs to join their brethren giving chase.

  By the time Duett's men reached the dyke where the cavalryers had crossed, Duett had changed his mind about giving chase. He was too pleased at having captured the supply carts to risk any of his own men to the chase of the royalists across rough ground. His trumpeters sounded the recall, so only six of the escort were captured and those only because they or their horses had been hit by the carbine or dragon fire of Daniel's men. Meanwhile the teamsters had gone to ground along the dyke, so only four of them were captured.

  The carts carried munitions being sent to Hopton from Marlborough. Neither the four captured carters nor the six captured cavalryers seemed to know that Devizes was surrounded by an army of some 5,000 men. As Daniel pointed out to Duett, even if the army had not been blocking their way, it was doubtful that they could have stopped these carts from racing out of control down Roundway Hill. The entire relief effort showed a lack of planning or intelligence.

  The major took Daniel along to make his report to Waller. The general was well pleased by the capture of the supplies, but not at the escape of the escort. That escape put him into a foul temper, but Duett later explained to Daniel that his display of temper was not actually due to letting the escort escape, for the camp already had more prisoners than they could feed, nor was it because the escort would take word to Marlborough that Devizes was under siege. In truth, Waller was furious at himself for allowing his old friend Hopton to play him for a fool. Hopton had been negotiating in bad faith, while anticipating the arrival of these supplies.

  His officers calmed Waller by pointing out that the situation was now much better than it had been, for now Hopton would remain desperately short of supplies, and could no longer expect any, so he would stop his stalling. Meanwhile they could use royalist powder to run their siege guns. None of this lightened the general's foul mood, and though he would not break the Tuesday peace, he ordered a full storming for the morning.

  On Wednesday, Waller had even more reason to be in a foul mood. He had most of his dragoons camped out blocking every approach to Devizes, and those closest to Devizes were backed up by Haselrig's Lobsters who were camped around the siege guns. Despite this, Prince Maurice and his flying army surprised everyone when he broke out of the town and raced away along the Kennet valley road towards Marlborough. Perhaps 'army' army was no longer the right description as the prince had less than 300 men with him.

  The Lobsters gave chase but were too heavy of hoof to catch the prince's light cavalry, even though the cavalryers were being slowed down by dragoons manning barricades and ambushes. Less than twenty of the prince's men were captured and even that was done not by the Lobsters, but by a troop of dragoons who ambushed the rear guard of the prince's column in skirmisher fashion. This once again proved to Daniel that despite the grand horses and fine armour, heavy cavalry was not as useful as light cavalry.

  "And light cavalry is not as useful as well trained dragoons," Daniel ad
ded as well earned praise for his lads once he got back to the shore. "The bad news is that now Oxford will know for sure that Hopton needs relieving, and now that Maurice is no longer trapped in the town, the rest of us will have to post double the pickets to give us early warning if he tries any of his deviltry."

  * * * * *

  On Thursday the storming of Devizes was brutal, with Waller's infantry driving back the Cornishmen through the town streets until they almost reached the market place. Faced with such ferocity Hopton pulled many men into the castle and then sent out offers of a truce to speak again of surrender. Against the wishes of all of his officers, Waller again allowed the truce asked for by his old friend Hopton.

  Daniel heard all about this third hand at the inn from yet another group of dispatch riders being sent to Essex. The latest message to the Lord General was to plead with him that if he was not going to feign an attack on Oxford to keep the king's cavalry otherwise occupied, then at least send out large patrols to block all roads leading south. "This is the fourth time that Waller has sent dispatches to Essex saying the same thing," he confirmed with the riders. "Has he had any reply?"

  "Only one that I know of and it arrived last night," the ensign replied. "Essex wrote that he could be of no help to Waller because the king and queen had just been re-united on last years battlefield at Edgehill. She brought with her an army of 3,000 fully equipped mercenaries complete with artillery and an arsenal of small arms and munitions. Essex wrote that since he was facing such a change in his own situation, he is more likely to retreat from Oxford than to attack it."

  "Go with God," Sergeant Henry Foster called after the dispatch riders, but to Daniel he said, "It's time that our armies were led by soldiers, not by pandering lords or gentlemen politicians. It's getting so that I suspect every ranking officer of being a possible turncoat."

  He got no arguement from Daniel, for Daniel had been saying this for a year to anyone who would listen, including to Waller, Pym, and Hampden. He said a quick prayer at the thought of poor Hampden. "I don't like this truce," he told Henry. "I think I will ride over and speak with Duett. I'll need an escort of five men plus the pack horse, because I will be bringing back some tools."

  Some hours later he was back from the main camp accompanied by another troop of dragoons sent to help defend the dyke. Major Duett had given his permission to block off the shore with a wall or a ditch to make the inn more defendable against cavalry. On the pack animal were picks, shovels, spades, and a keg of gunpowder in case the ground was too solid to dig.

  "What's that new gun ye'r carryin'?" one of his own men asked him.

  "Major Duett calls it a signal gun because its report is so loud, but being a sea farer I call it a hand cannon. It's really just a short handled blunderbuss that on a ship would be used to clear the decks of boarding pirates. These days ships carry larger versions called swivel guns. Swivel because they are too heavy for a man to hold, so they are mounted onto the timbers of the ship using a heavy version of an oar-lock. Since we are so far from the main camp we are to use this signal gun to warn if we see any royalist cavalryers coming our way. One shot for a single troop, two for more than a single troop."

  Daniel gave the other dragoon captain a tour of the great dyke, the picket camp, the shore and the inn, and only then did he tell him the real problem. "The bad news is that the royalists now know that we are here. Those that escaped from the supply train will have taken that news back to Marlborough. As of now they will either ignore us and go around another way, or we will be attacked in force. I told Duett that I wanted to block the shore so I could defend the inn. In truth, I want to block the shore to give us more time to flee to safety."

  "What did you have in mind?"

  "Re-dig the dyke and ditch to close the shore, and put horse traps in the shallowest stretches of the old ditch."

  And so the work began. Sixty men digging and lifting chalk until everyone and everything was coated in white dust. When not digging, men scoured every clump of bushes for stalks and branches stiff enough to use as stakes on the dyke side of the ditch. After two days of digging, neither the new dyke blocking off the shore, nor its ditch was as high or as deep as the original. It made one wonder how many men it took and for how long, to build the dyke that stretched some fifteen miles along the southern edge of the Marlborough Downs?

  Although not as high or as deep as the original, the new dyke had one advantage. It was newly dug loose chalk and earth, so it was steep and any foot or hoof attempting to climb it would have no purchase. Eventually Daniel told the lads, "good enough" because the heavens had opened up in driving rain, and they could all use the heavy shower to wash off the milky mud.

  The rain gave a bit of excitement to that night's blackness. Well not the rain so much, for this had been a very wet spring and early summer, but the lightening that came with it. When you are standing exposed on a hill, lightening can be very exciting. It rained hard enough to raise the water level in the ditch where they had set horse traps. Though the stakes they had rammed into the ground remained intact, most of the pot holes they had dug quickly filled up with white mud.

  "I told you so," Henry said, fitting it between his choice curses and his quotes from scripture. "It is the Great Deceiver's own dyke, which is why it is called Woden's Dyke. We shouldn't be here. We shouldn't be rebuilding Satan's work. Those barrows just outside the dyke mark the graves of ancient heroes who were killed by Satan's giants. They do not want this dyke rebuilt. It was a mistake to anger them, especially since tomorrow is Friday the thirteenth."

  Daniel ignored his warnings and walked towards the inn to see if he could find a dry place to sleep. He cursed his luck, for who knew how much of their hard work would be undone by the flooding. Once curled into his cloak for the night, he tried to force his sleeping mind to dream about sitting in the warm shade underneath a palm tree on a white sand beach while sipping fresh coco water. His mind had other ideas and instead he dreamed of the Wyred Sisters. He could clearly hear the cackle of old crones as they sat about knitting socks and gossiping while they looked down on him from the heavens to spot new ways in which to thwart his toil for the amusement of the gods.

  To protect themselves from the endless drizzle, the men had stretched tent duek over the worst holes in the roof, and some of the windows, and stretches of the duek were held in place by the weight of heavy stones. At one point he awoke with his nose pressed against one of these stones. During the night it must have been pulled lose by the wind billowing of the duek and fallen off its perch. A foot to the right and it would have crushed his skull.

  He rolled onto his back, stared up at the heavens through a hole in the roof no longer covered by the duek and told the Wyred Sisters to stop playing with him. Told them, not pleaded with them, nor prayed to them, but told them straight out. Long ago his clan's wise women had told him that when men pleaded and prayed to their gods, they simply gave clues to the Wyred Sisters about how to thwart their hearts desire with irony.

  "Go and weave your irony for someone else for a change," he hissed under his breath as he stared up into the damp gloom. "Prince Maurice for instance. You could have big fun ironing him.” He immediately regretted his words, for the sisters were perverse. They may now weave his destiny more closely with Maurice's. That would be quite typical of their irony.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Friday morning, he left the other dragoon captain in charge while he took a small squad of men to explore and patrol the highest hill, Saint Margaret's Hill, by following the great dyke as it climbed along its southern slope. From the top of Maggie's Hill you should have been able to see forever, except that there were heavy clouds and mists covering the downs all around. It was all so different from his low flat island home in the Fens.

  Again Daniel missed Rob Blake's company for he could have explained more of the history of this place to him. He mistrusted Henry's explanations for they were based on local fables which may have had a spark of
truth in them had Henry had not changed them to fit with bible stories. For instance he wondered who built the straight stone road that they could see from the top of the hill? Had it been an ancient highway to Bath? Why did the great dyke block it? Why did both seem to end at the same place? Eventually they were caught by a drenching rain, and so turned back towards Shepherd's Shore to get out of the weather.

  As he had on the way up the hill, so did he on the way down keep scanning the horizons from this height with his looker. It was difficult to see anything for there were curtains of rain passing over the downs towards Marlborough. Everyone in his squad took a turn, and whoever had the looker would still their horse so as to hold the instrument steady, and then have to catch up to the others. Daniel had stopped Millie so that he could pull his hood further over his forehead, when he heard a shout from behind.

  "I think I just saw a river shining over towards where the sun should be," the lad with the looker said as he caught up. "Over there. You see that rain storm to the east, well in the field to the north of the storm where the sun is breaking through.” He passed the looker to his captain.

  For a few minutes Daniel stared through the looker thinking that the lad was seeing things because there were no rivers on these high downs, and even if there were they would have cut a deep trench down through the chalk. "You must have seen the sun shining off the road," Daniel told him. And then a sunbeam shone down through the clouds and he saw it too. Not a river, and not the road, but something long and shiny snaking along the road. And then the sunbeam dulled, and instead of one shiny thing it was countless shiny things. "Armour. It’s the glint of the sun reflected off armour. Many bits of armour. A long column of armoured men.” He handed the looker back to the lad, for the lads eyes were younger and brighter than his.

  "Oh I see," the lad said in an excited voice. "So it is the road, not a river. How many do you think their are?"

  "Too many to count from this distance. It could be hundreds, or even a thousand. We won't know until they are closer. By the time they are closer, we have to be back at the Shore. Now hand me back the looker and let's get riding."