by Smith, Skye
"So what?" She looked at him aghast, but then remembered that this man worked a small trading ship, and was very different from her normal acquaintances of parliamentarians and merchant knights. Her family were wealthy silk merchants, and her new father-in-law was a knighted judge with many years of service to the Admiralty and Parliament in London. She pulled him to one side out of the growing rush of people looking for news.
"So what?" he repeated looking down into her bright eyes. She looked ten years younger than two days ago, or rather, two nights ago. Good sex had a way of making a woman blossom like a spring flower.
"King Charles is a Stuart." She calmed down so she could think of the quickest way to get him to understand the importance of this news. "His father, James, was already the King of Scotland before he was made the King of England after Elizabeth died. Don't you see? Scotland's parliament has rejected Scotland's king. If Scotland's parliament can do that, then why can't England's?"
"Again, so what? So he withdraws some unpopular proclamations and gets on with life."
"No, he won't do that,” she told him. "Charles is not his father. He truly believes that God wants him to be an absolute ruler. That means ruler of both the state and the church. I am sure his wife Henrietta and her Popish French courtiers will not allow him to withdraw his appointment of bishops. Appointing Catholic-style bishops is the first step in reconnecting the Church to Rome."
"How do you know all this?" He lost himself in her eyes for a moment. They were so sparkling, bright and alive.
"My husband Henry and his father. They are very, uh, involved in the cause."
"What cause?"
"Oh, uh, never mind. The point is that Charles Stuart will not suffer the rejection of the parliament of his own kingdom. He will raise an English army and go to Scotland to enforce his proclamations. The Scottish Covenant is very popular while Charlie is not. What if the Covenanters raise a militia army to stop him? This news that you shrug off with a 'so what' could mean war."
"A small war, far away in Scotland. I have just been fighting in wars that cover the continent."
"Don't be thick. It means the King's supporters, armies of them, will gather together and march the length of England. Once Charlie has raised an army, he can silence all the tongues who have been complaining about his reign here and in Scotland, even if it means cutting off those tongues at the neck."
"If you say so,” he whispered. "Go on then and join the clumps of men discussing this. You will be safe enough from rude hands with me standing right behind you."
* * * * *
"Change of plans, Rob,” Daniel said as he walked through the door. There was some scurrying as Mary pulled her nightie up off the bed to sort of half-cover herself. "Uh, umm, yum, yes, we have rented a cart and it is waiting downstairs."
Margaret was right behind him so Robert began to scramble out of bed looking for something to cover himself. "A rented cart to Bristol? But that will cost the earth. Were the coaches all full?"
"We aren't going to Bristol, not yet. Next stop is the village of Longworth. It's only about nine miles away, but in the right direction, sort of."
"What is at Longworth?" Robert asked.
"My father-in-law, and perhaps my husband,” Margaret replied.
"This is a jest just to mess with my mind. You cuckold your husband and then take the cock to meet him. Dan is the best shot I have ever known. Could it be that you wish to be widowed yet again?"
"I won't tell him. Will you?" she asked.
"Dan, don't do this," Robert pleaded. "You are too trusting of women. Can't you see what you risk?"
"What else can we do?" Daniel replied. "We promised these women that we would see them safely home. Longworth is closer than Shrivenham, and the risk is the same. Besides, it is my risk and not yours."
Margaret walked over close to Robert and tugged away the blanket that was keeping him modest, and then said with the naughtiest of smirks, "Unless you want to make it your risk, too." The suggestion was so outrageous that Robert lost hold of the blanket and stared at her open-mouthed. The silent pause ended with the crash of a pot hitting the floor. Everyone looked towards Mary, whose face was now purple with anger, and shame, and disgust. "I was just poking fun, love,” Margaret told her. "He is such a prude."
Daniel was laughing so hard at the look on Robert's face that he was gasping for breath. He really enjoyed Margaret's company. She was a treasure, a brass treasure.
* * * * *
"A house. Margaret said it was her father-in-law's house at Longworth. I heard her distinctly, and I assumed a manor house. This,” Robert swung his arm slowly at the view of the estate, "this is a palace. Look, its fields stretch all the way to the Thames." He had stopped his mare beside the cart.
Margaret heard his chuntering and explained, "He bought it cheap because the owner did not have the income to keep it up. It costs a fortune to keep it up. He should have sold it for a good profit years ago. If there is a war coming, the price will fall again."
While the carter kept going and maneuvered the cart up close to the grand front door, Robert hung back to close the gate. After another good stare at the palatial building, he sniffed in disgust at its grandeur. There was no way of securing a building with all these windows. During times of war there were always bands of locals, roving ruffians looking to thieve. This would be one of the first places they would rob.
A man in drab Puritan dress with dark hair and a dark pointed beard was skipping down the front stairs to the cart and calling out. "Margie, what are you doing here?" He offered his hand to help her down from the cart, but then stopped still to stare at the two very dangerous-looking men who were riding towards him from the gate.
Margaret did a quick introduction, "Henry Marten, my husband, may I present Daniel Vanderus and Robert Blake. They saved us from footpads over Bedford way, and I convinced them to see us safely all the way home."
"But how did you know I would be here? I only just arrived."
"We heard the news from Scotland in Oxford. Even if you were not here, I felt it my duty to make sure that your father heard the news. You should ride into Oxford, Henry, today, now. The streets are filled with men discussing the news and its implications."
"I can imagine,” Henry replied as he gave his wife a quick hug. "Students, doctors, and other do-nothings standing around wasting time and hot air. Meanwhile my father sent for me a day ago because he has been summoned by the king to offer a loan for the raising of an army. Over my dead body." He turned to the men who were now tying up their horses and gave them a short bow as a salute. "Thank you for bringing my wife to me. Do you need refreshment before you go back to Oxford?"
Henry did not look at the men's faces but at the weapons that hung from their saddles. Very dangerous men indeed. He really did not want them around this estate, or his father, or his family. "If you will not be refreshed here, perhaps I can pay for your refreshment in Oxford. The best Genever and lots of it, in a good inn, perhaps. What do you say?"
"We thank you,” Daniel beat Robert to a reply, "but until your wife dismisses us from the oath we gave her, we cannot leave her side. Our promise to her was to last until Shrivenham which is still miles and miles away."
"I would accept refreshment here and now,” Robert interrupted, "if it came with your explanation of what is going on in this kingdom that makes this Scottish news so disturbing to everyone."
Henry was not happy to be inviting them into his father's house, but the only alternative was to be crass and rude and send them away. It was a dilemma. If they were brigands, then inside they would see the wealth contained within this house, which may tease them back under cover of darkness. If they were true, then to rudely send them away may anger them into violence.
Mary broke the silence of indecision. She jumped down unassisted to the ground and said, "I'll go and tell the household that we have guests and luggage, shall I? And fetch back a pot of ale for the carter while he waits for the cart to
be unloaded. He will be wanting to leave to return to Oxford, that is, unless you have another task for him."
"I think any decisions can wait until we are rested and fed,” Margaret told her husband and then trotted up the steps after Mary. She needed to pee in the worst way, and did not have the patience for Henry's word games. He was a lawyer of the inner Temple and therefore very practiced at tricking people into telling things that would best be kept secret.
All of the men watched her feet and ankles as she lifted her skirts to dance up the steps. Henry was the first to speak. "So a bit of bother with footpads, eh?"
Robert waved a finger in the air to gain the man's attention and then pushed his finger into the tiny dent in Daniel's armour over his heart. "Footpads well-armed enough to brave a daylight robbery. The man who ordered this killing shot died while the order was still on his lips." He then pointed to the heavy-looking blunderbuss tied behind Daniel's saddle. "If he had been given time to fire his blunderbuss, some of us would not be here now, and your womenfolk would certainly not be skipping up those steps."
Henry whistled low and slow as he inspected the dent and looked over at the blunderbuss. "My apologies gentlemen for my brusqueness. This changes everything. Please consider my father's house as your home until you are ready to leave. Come in, come in."
"You go, Dan,” Robert said. "I'll stay out here until the gear is all inside."
"My staff should be here in seconds,” Henry replied.
"I'll stay. You two go inside and hurry the staff. I feel some spits of rain." There was no way that anyone else was going to carry his saddle with his gold hidden inside the horn.
* * * * *
The women had left them to prepare for bed. The menfolk stood around the long table in the library of Longworth House, sipping Genever and looking down at a map of the British Isles. "So we are agreed, then,” Henry said. "You will escort my father's carriage and my wife all the way to Beckett house before you continue on to Bristol. You are most welcome to stay there if the weather closes in."
"That was our plan all along, Henry,” replied Robert.
"Good, then that means I am free to make for London on the morrow. Even though Parliament has not officially been called for a decade, some of us still meet. Sort of a shadow cabinet. Men, good men and protestants all, will be approaching London from the corners of the kingdom to attend such meetings. Hopefully this will all end with us joining the Scots in getting rid of this arrogant and out-of-control king, or better yet, all kings."
"Margaret warned us that you were careless with your criticisms of the king,” Robert interrupted. "Do you always talk treason to men you have just met?"
"Bah,” Henry waved the comment away. "You are both English merchants who choose to do business in the Dutch Republics rather than in England. That makes you republicans, and traitors to England, whereas I am just a traitor to England's king."
He watched carefully for either anger or panic to rise in the men's faces from his words. When they kept their silence, he continued, ""Forgive me if I have upset you. It is just that I look longingly towards the Netherlands and wish that some of their republican wisdom would cross the sea. I am treated as a pariah by Parliament because they want reforms to curtail kings, whereas I want rid of kings completely. And not just the office of king, but the entire archaic structure of rule by kings and nobles."
"Then you are against our inheritance laws?" Daniel asked as he poured himself some more, a lot more, of the excellent Genever. It wasn't their stock, this far from Cambridge, and he wondered where Henry had purchased it.
"Spoken like a debater, and yet you say you have little education. A loaded question if there ever was one, and straight to the heart of the problem." Henry chose his words carefully. "I would be a hypocrite to say I don't believe in inheritance while I sit here in a palace that I hope one day to inherit. Let me say that I do not believe that positions of authority should be inherited, nor should privilege. They should be earned, always earned. As for the inheritance of property, that is a more complex question where the answer lies in who truly owns it.
I am of a wealthy family. Does that wealth belong to my father, as an eldest son, and after he dies, to me as an eldest son, or does the wealth actually belong to the entire family, with the eldest son as the trustee, not the owner?"
"This is often discussed amongst rural protestant farmers and amongst monastic monks,” Robert pointed out. "The extended family, the clan, the monastery are all types of villages, where productive property should be held in common for the benefit of all villagers. This is a fruitless discussion, for there is never one right answer."
"Then we will not discuss it further,” replied Henry, as he topped up Robert's glass. "But do you agree that authority and privilege should be earned and not inherited?"
"Yes,” both men replied. Daniel continued. "If I were a shipowner in need of a captain, I would hire the best captain I could afford. And because I hired him, I would have a right to dismiss him and replace him. And because there is much coin involved, I would also hire the mate to watch over the captain's shoulder on my behalf. So it should be with the leaders of this kingdom, the leaders of the shires, and the leaders of the towns."
"Well said,” Henry smiled and clapped his hands in agreement. Then his face turned more serious. "If there are armies raised and marched to Scotland, what will you two do?"
"You mean which side will we choose?" Robert pulled at his best Puritan-style jacket. "Need you ask?"
"Me?" replied Daniel, "I plan on getting rich."
"How so?"
Daniel was feeling the Genever and he tended to brag a bit when he was drunk a bit. "I've a small house in Holland and the attic is filled with hundreds of captured pistols. I've been buying them for years for two shillings on the pound from all the battlefield gleaners along the border with Flanders. Most are Spanish cap-locks, for sure, but they are all serviceable and were cleaned and oiled before they were stored. When armies march it drives up the need and price of pistols. The shillings I have invested will turn into pounds, and every pistol I sell will make trouble for the idle rich of this kingdom. Ain't life fine?"
"Pistols? You said pistols but did you mean to say guns?" asked Henry.
"Nope, I don't believe in muskets. Useless things. I'd rather carry a good bow. No, I buy only pistols."
"And you will take them in your ship to Scotland to sell to the Covenanters?" Henry looked down at the map on the table and ran his finger along the North Sea coast of England all the way from the Wash to the River Tees.
Daniel guffawed. "Obviously you have never done business with a Scot! Cheap buggers, all. Nay, that would lose me a third of my profit. I will sell them to men like yourself here in England who have invested a fortune in big houses and will need to protect them from the thieves that march with armies. They will not dicker the price, for my pistols will be cheap even if they keep safe just a hundredth of their fortunes."
"Again, I don't understand. Why would I pay a premium for a pistol when I could buy a local musket?"
"No, you definitely do not unnershtand,” Daniel said with a slight lisp, "but then, you are not a Pistoleer."
"Yes, you mentioned that you had to join up and train with the militia in Holland in order to do business there. The Pistoleers are irregular infantry, yes?"
"Mounted infantry skirmishers,” Daniel said proudly as he pushed his glass away. This was strong stuff, or perhaps he was just overly tired. "Shall I tell him about the last time we rode for the Dutch, Rob, or will you?" Rob waved his permission. "Rob is a humble man, so he will not tell the story because the tactics we used were his. Rob has a knack for tactics. Now that we perfected it, it will be used over and over again by the Dutch army. The Imperial cavalry may as well go back to Spain."
"Ah, so I take it that you fought cavalry with infantry, and won. That is not so uncommon now that musketeers and pikemen protect each other." Henry fancied himself a bit of a tactician himself,
though from an armchair of course.
"The problem with infantry fighting cavalry,” Daniel slurred, "is that the cavalry can attack the infantry but the infantry cannot attack the cavalry. They can't catch them, see, unless they know their route and ambush them. But yes, you are right. Any cavalry charge against muskets and pikes is doomed to fail, which is why cavalry doesn't do that anymore.
Last year the villages along the Flanders border were being raided by troops of Spanish heavy lancers. The Dutch army is mostly infantry, militia infantry. No one knew where the buggers would strike next, so the Dutch couldn't ambush them. If the lancer scouts saw any infantry, they would just skirt them and never engaged them in battle. The villages were being ravaged randomly, one by one, day by day. That's when Rob had an idea and us and thirty other Pistoleers rode out to try it out.
Our horses were lighter than those of the heavy lancers, so therefore faster, longer winded, and more nimble. Instead of waiting in ambush and hoping the lancers would walk into it, we became a moving ambush. Once a village reported a raid, we would chase the buggers down and attack the rearmost lancers, or rather, the rearmost lancer horses.
We weren't there to fight the men, see. We were there to take away their horses. Take away a lancer's horse and what are you left with? A heavy and slow infantryman, that's what. Rob's plan was to take away their horses so they couldn't escape, and then call in the regular infantry to finish them off. Well, it worked, oh how it worked. Time and time again.
We would race up to the rear of their column at full speed, but not to engage the men or their lances. We would wheel at the last moment and fire our pistols point blank at their horses. A horses ass is a bloody big target even if you are aiming from a moving horse. After each attack, another twenty horses would go down, or would be useless or out of control. If they chased us, we would lead them towards our infantry. Usually though, they would gather around their horseless comrades to protect them while they made other travel arrangements. Like doubling up on the healthy horses.