Pistoleer: Edgehill
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The Pistoleer
Edgehill
(Book Four of the Series)
By Skye Smith
Copyright (C) 2013-2014 Skye Smith
All rights reserved including all rights of authorship.
Cover Illustration is a part of “Pappenheim Curassiers”
By an Unknown Engraver (1632)
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Revision 0 . . . . . ISBN: 978-1-927699-15-7
Cover Flap
In 1642 King Charles realized that he was losing control of England to parliament so he gathered an army to him in Nottingham. Since he couldn't beat the Reform Party in the House of Lords, in the courts, or in public opinion, instead he would kill or capture them. The seers had told Daniel that the ever colder winters and shorter growing seasons would bring violence to the kingdom, and now that prediction was coming true.
He could no longer delay moving his clan to the New World, for the nobility were choosing sides, sons against fathers, brothers against brothers. Worst of all, mercenaries were being brought in from the brutal continental wars. When some of Daniel's clansmen were pressed into the king's service, he had no choice but to find them and rescue them.
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
About The Author
Skye Smith is my pen name. The Pistoleer is a series of historical adventure novels set in Britain in the 1640's. I was encouraged to write them by fans of my Hoodsman series.
This is the fourth of the series, and you should read at least the first novel 'HellBurner' before you read 'Edgehill' because it sets the characters and scene for the entire series. The sequence of the books follows the timeline of the Republic of Great Britain. The chapter headings identify the dates and places.
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Prologue
This adventure is as historically accurate as I could make it, however I have not included my endless references because the main character, Daniel, is fictional. I have kept the descriptions and actions of the non-fictional characters as close to historical accounts as possible.
As a rule of thumb, if the character is a parliamentarian, or has a title, or has a military rank of captain or above, then they and their families are non-fictional. If the character is a member of the Wellenhay clan or goes unnamed, then they are fictional.
All dates have been converted to our modern calendar to save the reader the confusion of January being the tenth month of the old year rather than the first month of the new year, thus the Battle of Edgehill takes place in Gregorian November rather than in Julian October.
Note that at the end of this book there is an Appendix which is organized like an FAQ. There you will find answers to dozens of questions such as:
- Where can I find out more about the historical characters and events?
- What was the significance of Edgehill?
- Why is Prince Rupert, a royal hero, portrayed as being evil?
However, the next few paragraphs will set the scene of this era for you.
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This novel begins in February 1642 after King Charles Stuart and his family had fled the mobs of London but before the mobs forced the surrender of the Tower of London. Parliament's reformers were being split three ways between the "peace" party, the "war" party, and the "middle" party. The money men behind the reformers were some of the richest lords in the kingdom ... the Earl of Essex (Robert Devereaux), the Earl of Warwick (Robert Rich) and the lordly partners in Rich's powerful Providence Company.
The Stuart Regime's natural allies were the English lords with Scottish blood, the wealthy Catholics, and the second sons of the nobility. In this era the first sons inherited everything while the second sons often became soldiers in hopes of winning the favours of kings and generals. Parliament's natural allies were the lords with English blood who had been deposed by the Scottish Stuart regime, the lords who hated and feared the Spanish, the businessmen who wished to profit from the misfortunes of Spain and Portugal at the hands of the Dutch, and anyone who thought that they were paying too much tax towards supporting lavish palaces.
England was an island, therefore most of the military budget went to providing a fleet to protect its shores, especially the much larger 'summer' fleet for when the weather was good. Instead of keeping a large standing army, each shire and main town in England was responsible for arming and training a militia unit ... the trained bands. If need be, the militia could swell to include every able-bodied man, and thus the armouries and magazines were well stocked. The first widespread violence between king and parliament was the result of both sides claiming command of the shire militias and their armouries. Students of history will note that this was also how the first widespread violence of the American War of Independence began.
In each shire an appointed Lord Lieutenant controlled the militia, and when parliament began replacing these Lieutenants with their own men, the king issued 'charters of array' so that his own chosen lords could call up any able bodied men or horses. The rioting that London had experienced began to spread to other towns as men refused to be called up or to give up their horses.
Meanwhile experienced soldiers were coming home from the brutal continental wars, and bringing mercenaries with them. The once peaceful England was being set up for a Thirty Year's War style conflagration, and all because the king refused to share power with the elected parliaments.
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Table of Contents
Title Page
Cover Flap
About the Author
Prologue
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - At Warwick House in London, February 1642
Chapter 2 - Storming the Tower of London, February 1642
Chapter 3 - Prince Rupert in Dover, February 1642
Chapter 4 - Queen Henrietta flees from Dover, February 1642
Chapter 5 - Admiral Robert Rich in London, March 1642
Chapter 6 - With the Summer Fleet off Deal, July 1642
Chapter 7 - Breaking the dikes in Hull, July 1642
Chapter 8 - Finding Providence in Hull, July 1642
Chapter 9 - The Siege of Hull, July 1642
Chapter 10 - Taking Dover Castle, August 1642
Chapter 11 - College Silver in Cambridge, August 1642
Chapter 12 - A Lion in Skegness, Lincolnshire, August 1642
Chapter 13 - Blake is missing in Somerset, September 1642
Chapter 14 - Blake found at Yeovil, Dorset, September 1642
Chapter 15 - Trap on Babylon Hill, September 1642
Chapter 16 - Grief in Beaminster, Dorset, September 1642
Chapter 17 - At Holland House, Kensington, September 1642
Chapter 18 - Bad news from home in London, September 1642
Chapter 19 - Defending Boston, September 1642
Chapter 20 - Freeing friends near Nottingham, October 1642
Chapter 21 - Shot on the Shrewsbury road, October 1642
Chapter 22 - Hiding in Bury Walls, Shropshire, October 1642
Chapter 23 - Flying Squads at Warwick, Octob
er 1642
Chapter 24 - Rupert sighted in Warwickshire, November 1642
Chapter 25 - Two armies line up at Edgehill, November 1642
Chapter 26 - The Battle for Edgehill, November 1642
Chapter 27 - Collecting prisoners at Kineton, November 1642
Chapter 28 - Lions led by Donkeys at Kineton, November 1642
Chapter 29 - Rupert's Vultures at Kineton, November 1642
Chapter 30 - Appendix FAQ
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 1 - At Warwick House in London, February 1642
Was he dreaming or was there someone in the room with him. He tried to wake himself to call out but try as he might, there was no sound. He tried to lift the pistol that he knew was beside him in this overstuffed chair but it was as if it was stuck between the cushion and the arm. Everything was molasses slow.
There it was again. A waft of moving air and the shuffle of soft feet on carpet. His whole being wanted him to wake up, to open his eyes, to raise his pistol. And then ... soft warm skin pressed into his eyes. Was he dreaming. He knew the touch. Some woman was slowly rubbing the silky skin of her breasts against his face.
As soon as he stopped fighting to wake up, he woke up. Not that he could see anything for his eyelids were pressed shut by the breasts. What a magic feeling. What a magic way to be woken up. Her scent came to him. Butter and cinnamon, so she was Lydia the baker. The same woman who had showed him to this chair. How long ago was that? Was it morning yet?
"My bread is in the oven, so there will be warm water to wash in by now,” Lydia whispered into his left ear.
By bending towards his ear, her breasts had moved either side of his nose. With pursed lips he kissed the goddess spot between them. She stopped still, so he kissed again, but then she pulled away. He reached out with both hands to stop her.
"No you don't,” Lydia whispered as she stepped back out of reach. "Not with those filthy hands."
He opened his eyes just as her breasts disappeared back in place inside her smock. Her white linen smock. In truth, all of her was white. Her smock, her cheeks, her arms, her hands ... everything was coated with the finest dusting of white flour. Her bare arms were bent up at the elbow and she had her hands cupped up as if to remind herself not to touch anything. Not to smear dust on anything, and not to dirty her baker's fingers.
"Er, thank you,” Daniel told her, "it was a truly delicious way of waking me up."
"How else would I wake a filthy man sleeping with one hand on a pistol butt?"
Still half asleep he foolishly said, "By calling gently to me." It was the wrong thing to say, for her playful grin disappeared.
"And what fun would there be in that."
He was about to tell her it would be safer to wake a rough man from a distance, but as he was about to speak she turned in the light and he saw the ripple of muscles in her arms. Of course, she was a baker and the endless days of kneading dough would have given her the arm and shoulder muscles of an oarsman as well as a grip of steel. This woman would not stand to be roughhoused by any man.
"Wake up, sleepy, if you want me to lead you to the washing room,” she told him. "I have bread in the oven and the sands of time are running."
Of course, she would be timing her bread with an hourglass. With a heave he pushed himself to his feet and tried to stretch but a sleepy dizziness put a stop to that. Once the dizziness had left him, he bent down to grab his woolen cloak off the floor. No wonder he had been cold. He had fallen asleep with his cloak as his blanket, but it must have slipped off. With a practiced motion that he didn't need any thought he grabbed up his compact wheellock pistol from behind the cushion, checked that the safety was on, and then shoved it into the pocket of his fleece jerkin. "Lead on."
She picked up her candle lantern, and on cats paws they crept through the sleeping house and down the back stairs to the cellar where the ovens would be. House, hah, Warwick House was a palace. At the bottom of the stairs he could smell the baking bread, and was suddenly ravenous. He followed Lydia into a large room. It was not her kitchen, but the room on the other side of the giant brick chimneys from her ovens.
The room was thankfully warm, unlike the library he had been sleeping in. The February storm that raged outside was so cold that it had iced the inside of the library windows. They were tall, wide, and very fashionable windows, and totally silly in places that suffered a lot of winter. This winter had been bitter in London, just like the prior three.
This room was strung with clothes lines and there was a row of stone washing tubs along the far wall ... the laundry room. When she had told him 'washing room' he had expected a bath house, perhaps with a sweat lodge. A sweat lodge would be perfect right now, for he was cold to the bone.
"You can bathe yourself in here,” she told him, "so that you don't wake the rest of the house. Once you're clean I'll find you a bed."
The night watch on the gate knew him personally, so he had been let through into the house despite it being three hours shy of dawn. The only person of the household who was awake at that hour had been the baker, Lydia. She had absolutely refused to show him to a bed until he had bathed, so instead she had left him sitting in the library while she went to build up the fires of her ovens.
He reached out and picked up a pail. "I'll follow you into the kitchen to fill this with hot water, shall I?" he guessed.
"No need. Just flip that lid up." She pointed to a covered stone cistern that was built out from the back of the oven chimneys. "My ovens heat the water in that cistern. This may be an old house, but the Rich family keeps it modern."
"Mmm, yes, I noticed the new windows in the library. Why didn't you just bring me straight here. The library was perishing cold."
"Well, you being a gentleman and all, it seemed more proper to have you wait in the gentleman's room."
"I am not a gentleman, and you are not proper,” he replied as he took the pail over to the cistern. This deep in the cellar there was no longer any reason to whisper.
She watched the tall handsome man flip the cistern's lid open. A tiny whiff of steam drifted up, but just one. "Ere, grab that laundry basin for standing in,” she told him. "And set that stool beside it. I can stand on it to pour warm water over your head."
Behind her was a line of candle lanterns and she lit two of them from hers. By the stronger light she found the stacks of clean linen and grabbed a towel from the 'service' pile. No need filthying the good linen with the grime that would come off this man. He had the smell of horse to him: horse and leather and street mud. Perhaps she should have brought him directly here, and she suddenly fretted that he may have soiled the overstuffed chair he had been sleeping in.
"Gracious! My bread." She threw him the towel as she spun on a toe and rushed away.
It took him but moments to undress because his riding boots had never made it passed the front door. Once naked he shivered and was sorely tempted to climb into the cistern and have a bath, but that would never do. This cistern would be kept scrupulously clean and the water must be dipped out of it.
There were four bars of soap on the closest of the stone tubs, and he went and sniffed each one of them, but they all had the smell of laundry lye to them, so he gave up on the idea of using soap. With warm water the muck should come off easily enough even without soap.
He pushed the laundry basin along the tiled floor, but the scraping made a terrible screech in the quiet room, so instead he lifted it and placed it down beside the cistern, and then did the same with the three legged stool. The two candle lamps were too far away to throw much light on his basin so he fetched them and put them on a small wall shelf next to the cistern.
Something was already on the shelf and it clinked against one of the lamps. It was a small plate and on it was a small bar of soap. He sniffed it. Flowers. Perfect. Time to bathe. He used a dipper to rinse off the beaten tin pail to make sure it woul
d not dirty the cistern, and then lifted out his first pail of warmish water. This he used to douse his long hair and face and shoulders. The splashes down his body would soften the grime while he washed his hair. The flowery soap turned easily into bubbles, and soon he had more bubbles than hair.
And then he had more bubbles than eyelashes. Oh how those bubbles stung his eyes. He had set the empty pail down while he had used the soap. Fool, he told himself, you should have filled the pail again before setting it down. He bent down and groped for the pail, and groped and groped. Eventually his blind hands found it, but then it was pulled out of his hands. "Quickly Lydia, rinse this soap out of my eyes."
While he kept his eyes tightly shut, he heard the scraping of the stool being pushed closer, and then the splash of the pail scooping water from the cistern. "Hurry." The stool creaked as Lydia stepped up on it, and finally, fresh, clean, warm water cascaded down his face and took the soap bubbles with it. He sputtered and rubbed his eyes but they still stung. "More water, please."
The sequence of sounds repeated and then there was more water and the touch of fingers combing through his hair to help the water rinse it out. "Now the back and shoulders while I scrub." This time Lydia didn't have to step up on the stool so it went faster, but now instead of fingers combing through his hair, they combed through his pubic hair. With each down stroke they rubbed him in the most delightful way, with the expected result. Her hand grabbed his swelling pint and began to squeeze it ever so gently.
"Lydia, you are being most improper,” he told her with a laugh, and wiped the water from his eyes so he could open them. "You're not Lydia." It was an obvious and foolish thing to say to Susannah Rich, the Lady of this house, as well as seventy or eighty manors. "Susannah, you mustn't. Not in your family's home."
"Mustn't. I mustn't, yet you laughed when you thought I was my baker. How dare you?" It was false anger. She was simply playing for time, more time to be close to this comely man before he pulled away from her and covered himself with his towel.