by Smith, Skye
"Aye, that I will,” Anso replied. “That will give us a chance to talk one on one with none of the women listening."
The goodbyes from the folk of Wellenhay took another half hour, with much hugging and kissing, but eventually the two men pushed the punt away from the dock and used the poles like oars until they were across the ship's pool.
"I don't want any of our men volunteering to go and fight,” Daniel told Anso. "Keep them home even if you must tie them to the masts of the ships. An insanity is gripping the kingdom ... neighbours no longer trust neighbours and men are joining opposite sides from fathers and brothers and cousins."
"I know Danny. I was in Boston, remember? What about our move to Bermuda? No one in the clan but you has been there. You were to be our guide, our navigator. What if you don't return?"
"The clan must move even if I don't return. In Bermuda they will be safe from winter and away from this man made madness. Our plan has always been to use Lyme as our last port in England before we head out across open sea. We have good friends and shipmates in Lyme and some of them know as much about getting to Bermuda as I do. They can guide you. Pay them what they ask."
"We'll wait for you."
"Nay, don't wait. How will you know if I am dead or captured or in some hospital somewhere. If you are gone when I return then I will try to catch up to you in Lyme."
"But we've already missed our best chance to sail,” Anso argued. "The winter storms will begin soon."
"That just means that you can't go the westward way via Newfoundland, but you can still go the southern way. So long as you get south of Spain before winter you will still be able to reach Bermuda without much risk. Portuguese fishermen sail that way almost every month of the year."
"All right, I will push the women to leave,” he said and then laughed at a thought. "I will tell Venka that we must meet you in Lyme."
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 20 - Freeing friends near Nottingham, October 1642
By questioning the folk traveling to and from Newark-on-Trent, Daniel found out that the town was solidly royalist. For him to even enter such a town dressed as he was as a Dutch Pistoleer, would not only cause the town watch to hold him for questioning, but would likely end up with him being pressed into the king's service. The good news was that pressed men and volunteers from all over Lincolnshire were indeed being assembled at Newark before being marched to join the king's army in Shrewsbury.
Since the obvious way to begin such a march was south west towards Nottingham using the old Fosse Way that ran along the Trent River, Daniel needed to watch only one road. About half way to Nottingham that road went through a lonely stretch of thin woods near the hamlet of Flintham. A cart track led away down one side of the woods to a foot passenger ferry that crossed the River Trent to Hoveringham, the closest big village.
On the other side of the wood was a small fresh water spring that came from the foot of a small hill and filled a small pond. There were not many folk on the road but all of them stopped at the spring for it was water fit to drink so everyone stopped to fill their water skins.
Femke must have thought it strange for him to unload the saddle and make camp in the small hollow on the top of that small hill, when the buildings of Flintham was so close. She didn't know that by using his looker from that hill, Daniel could view everything that moved along Fosse Way. Femke nibbled the sweet grass and ignored the buttercups and waited patiently while Daniel stared endlessly through his looker. It was a wise horse that ignored the poisonous buttercups.
In these uncertain times no lone man, rider, or cart was using the road. They were clumped in groups for their own safety. About every half hour a troop of men would march by on their way to Nottingham. He watched the latest one through the looker. This was the fifth since he had arrived but only two of them so far had been troops of pressed men. Just be looking at them you could tell whether they were volunteers or pressed men. The pressed men had their wrists tied in front of them and were not carrying weapons. This latest troop were pressed men.
With the previous troops of pressed men he had simply waited until they had stopped for water and then had ridden down the hill and spoken to the officers of the guards. He had told them that he had an urgent message for Nick Norwood, who was Sonja's husband, and then had bellowed directly to the bound men, "Does anyone know Nick Norwood of Freiston?"
So far none of the troops had ever heard of Nick. He had then apologized for wasting the officers time and ridden back up the hill before the officers could cause trouble for him. It was all easy except for the waiting. While keeping watch on this boring stretch of straight road, he felt like he wasn't doing anything and that frustrated him. He felt like he should be racing across the countryside searching out the Freiston men, not sitting here chewing on grass stalks. His logical mind told him that he must keep this watch even if it took a week, but the rest of him wanted to ride.
The latest troop were almost at the spring. They were the only folk on the road for as far as Daniel could see through his looker. There was one mounted officer riding in front, followed by three musketeers who looked like experienced men. They were followed by a troop of thirty bound men, and them by six pikemen, who had the look of green volunteers. He looked over the bulky gear he had unloaded from the saddle ... his pack, his bedroll, the rifle, Teesa's bow, and no he didn't need any of it to ride down the hill. All he needed to do was check the prime on each of his pistols, and then mount up.
He mistimed his ride down to the spring slightly for he got there before the officer had dismounted. "Good afternoon, sir,” he said pleasantly to the officer as he drew near. "I have an urgent message for Nick Norwood and I was wondering if you knew of him."
"Not good the English, say again,” the king's officer replied in a thick German accent.
This was a complication. It would be risky for him to yell out for Nick if the officer did not understand what he was doing. "Do you speak Dutch?" Daniel asked, and when the officer nodded he repeated his story in Dutch. Without waiting for permission he then turned the horse and yelled out to all the men, "Does anyone know Nick Norwood of Freiston."
He was expecting the usual silence but instead some voices chorused, "Yeh, we know him. He's not with us."
The officer was looking around nervously as if he expected an ambush but there were no other men to be seen. He motioned to his musketeers, and they quietly cocked their muskets, just in case.
"Do you know where I can find him?" Daniel called out, first in English, then in Dutch just to put the officer's mind at rest.
"The Freiston men marched out of Newark two days past," one of the bound men called back. "They'll be the other side of Nottingham by now. Hey, ain't you Cap'n Daniel of Wellenhay. I'm Burt from Fishtoft. I once sailed with you."
"No more talk,” the officer called out in his clipped German English.
"Thank you for your time,” Daniel told the officer while willing Femke to turn so her left flank was towards the officer and her right flank towards the three musketeers. The musketeers certainly understood English for when Daniel offered them a coin for their trouble, all three of them stepped forward with a hand out. The coins dropped out of his hand and fell into the dust on the road. All three of the men followed the coins with their eyes and their heads and all three stooped to pick them up. It was too good of an opportunity to miss, for all three of their heads were together.
Daniel whipped his double barreled pistol out from his saddle leathers and fired the dragon barrel down at the three heads. Immediately the men fell to the ground howling in pain and surprise and pawing at their eyes to make the stinging stop. A barrel full of bird shot, lye, and sulphur fired directly into someone's eyes would blind them for life. He had fired down at the tops of their foreheads so they may not be blinded for life, but certainly for an hour or two.
With the explosion still ringing
in his ears he didn't hear the officer draw his sabre but he knew that was what the officer would be doing over on his other side. He spun at the waist and aimed the spent dragon at the officer. Sure enough the officer had drawn his sabre and had already moved his horse within sword range for a slash or a stab.
The German laughed and pointed his sabre at the still smoking dragon. "What now?" he said in Dutch. "Are you going to throw the thing at me." He wasted his life saying his own epitaph because he didn't hear the second flint strike steel and didn't notice that this gun had two barrels. The upper barrel erupted at him and a ball tore through his nose and into his brain. The force of the ball pushed him back in his saddle and then he slumped forward and tumbled to the ground.
Daniel hadn't wanted to kill the man but he had no choice, not with a razor sharp sabre that close to his throat. The pikemen. He had been so focused on watching the German fall from his horse that he had forgotten the six pikemen. He kicked Femke to make her stumble through the three musketeers who were still squirming about in pain on the ground and raced her to the other end of the troop.
The Fishtoft men closest to the pikemen were grappling with the long pike poles but it was a fight that was sure to cost some of them their lives. That would happen as soon as the pikemen came to their sense and let go of the poles to draw their daggers. As Daniel rode closer he yelled to the pikemen, "I have a fresh pistol! Which of you wants a ball in the teeth!" While he had their attention he shoved his fancy dragon away and drew his normal. pistol. By that time Femke was to them. She stopped absolutely still in her tracks and he aimed the barrel at the closest pikeman. The man let go of his pike and backed away with his hands up.
Since the bound men did not have to worry about being shot, they took the advantage and began winning each fight, especially when more of the bound men began pummeling the guards from behind. In a moment the pikemen were all on the ground and they called out for mercy.
"Take their pikes and their knives and stand away from them!" Daniel yelled. He had to yell it twice before anyone took any notice because they were eagerly putting the boots to the pikemen.
Luckily the kicking soon stopped so that the pikemen could be searched for knives with which to cut their wrist cords. Daniel told the troop. "Your women sent me to fetch you home for supper." They all laughed as they passed the knives from man to man to cut their hands free. "How many of you are from Fishtoft?" He did a rough count of hands. About twenty out of the thirty. The rest were from other villages around Boston. He wondered if he should tell them what Lindsey's cavalry had done to their villages, but decided not to. That may anger them enough to cause the death of all these guards, and these guards probably didn't even know where Fishtoft was.
Some of the men were still giving the occasional boot to the blinded musketeers, so he called out, "Let them be. They are blind already. What worse fate can there be. Instead of giving them the boot give them some water to wash out their eyes. The rest of you get ready to march. I'll lead you as far as Sleaford. You can make your own way from there." Sleaford was due east about halfway to Boston.
He told the six pikemen that they must lead the blind men to the closest place of any size to get medical help for them. That was Hoveringham, so he handed them the ferry fare and warned them to keep moving until they were on the other side of the ferry. That would stop them from going for help in Newark. Once those men were on the move, the Fishtoft men had collected the weapons and had stripped the officer of anything of value including the company purse. After hiding the corpse of the officer in the bushes beside the road they struck out up the slope of the hill and due east. Only one man was injured, a knife gash across his calf, so he rode the officer's horse.
The suddenly free men felt so high in spirits that they quick marched away from the ambush and away from the main road. After a few miles they stopped for a rest and that was when Daniel told them of Lindsey's broken promise and what they could expect to find in Fishtoft. It was lucky that this was lonely countryside, for they shouted out in anger and screamed in frustration and some of them even beat the ground with their fists.
They lost the light in the middle of nowhere, and since the troop had not yet been kitted out, all they had with them for warmth was their fishermen's cloaks. They needed to get out of the wind if they were to stay warm, and the only place they could do that was in a roofless old cottage that hadn't been lived in for years. The lad with the slashed calf had lied about how bad his wound was and now he was shivering and weak from loss of blood.
Daniel was pretty good at battlefield medicine, and in Holland he had once amputated a leg to save a life. He never want to ever have to do that again, so he carefully cleaned the leg wound and then bound it to stop the bleeding. "You can have my bedroll for the night,” he told the lad, for the lad could not stop shivering.
"It may be warmer for him in the shed,” one of the lad's friends said. "It's still got a roof."
Daniel went with the friend to inspect the shed. By the smell it had been used by animals so he lit a candle stub and used it to check the floor for droppings.
"What are you looking for?" the friend asked. "Can I help?"
"Shit. I'm looking for shit. All shit is poisonous but some shit is more poisonous than others. If the shed has been used for sheep or cattle or horses, fine. If I find rat turds, that is bad. Pig shit is a definite no. Pig shit poisons wounds and even a small wound can kill you with the lock jaw fever. There, what is that."
The friend picked up some of the crap from the floor and sniffed it. "Pig." Then he brushed off his hands like he had touched the plague. "Pig shit causes lock jaw. Good to know. My grandfather died of lock jaw. It was terrible. He screamed in agony for a week. The gossip is that my grandma killed him to put him out of his misery. We ate his prize pig at the funeral."
The next morning the injured lad was not only still alive, but was no longer feverish. The morning light shone off a tall church spire to the east. It could be none other than the Saint Denys church of Sleaford. The officer's purse was more than enough to see the men all the way home, so Daniel claimed back his bed roll and said his goodbyes.
"There are Wellenhay women helping out in Freiston. Let them know that you saw me and that I was well," he told them. They would be home by tomorrow, whereas he still had a mission to complete.
* * * * *
Daniel was cursed by how simple it had been to find and free the Fishtoft men. Just like a young man can be cursed with a gambling habit just because he wins big in his first game of dice, so Daniel now had a habit of expecting to see the troop of Freiston men marching along just around the next bend in the road.
On leaving the Fishtoft men, he had ridden Femke hard to get beyond Nottingham and to catch up to the Freiston men. He had originally thought that a days hard ride would put him in front of them on their march to Shrewsbury. That turned into two days because he could not take the main roads, not with Nottingham so firmly royalist. This meant he needed to travel long hours to be sure he was well ahead of the ever marching men.
That put him well beyond Nottingham which gave him another problem. There were many routes out of Nottingham which could be used to reach Shrewsbury and the further he got from Nottingham the wider apart were these routes. So far apart that he could not possibly watch them all. While he was riding along one road asking folk if the king's men had marched along it, the Freiston men could pass by him on another.
In frustration he began drinking at the rough roadside ale stands so favoured by carters in hopes that for the price of an ale a carter would admit to seeing the men he was looking for. There were risks to this strategy. Every time he approached other men dressed as he was as a Dutch pistoleer, he risked being attacked by men for political reasons or by men made hungry because they had lost their means of making a living.
Eventually it was a ruined old carter who gave him, ugh, sold him the news of the men he was searching for. It was in an alehouse in the south of Cheshire in t
he village of Wheelock. Yet another village where every woman had dyed their homespun black in mourning. He could have followed the king's army throughout the kingdom just by following the change in the color of women's clothes.
The alehouse was built beside the bridge over the River Wheelock. The carter was there because his horse and cart had been pressed into the king's service. He was ruined because they had no use for an aging, limping man, so he hadn't been taken to drive his cart so now there was no hope of him ever getting them back. The news cost Daniel a bowl of French stew and a jug of ale.
"Bloody ruined I am, and at my age,” the old carter moaned into his pot of ale. "I kept my life savings hidden in a hollowed out cross member under the cart. Now what am I supposed to do. How do they expect me to make my living without my old mare, or my old cart, or my savings."
"But you are sure they were pressed men?" Daniel asked trying to keep him talking about what was important to his quest.
"Aye they were pressed men. That is why they needed my cart,” the carter replied while looking around for his cadged bowl of stew. "They hadn't been issued boots yet, so a quarter of them were marching with rags around their bleeding feet. Eventually I suppose no amount of beating on a man's back will make him stand if his feet pain him enough. The captain pressed my horse and cart so the men with broken feet could ride."
There was bad news and good news in this. It was bad news that the men were suffering. It was good news that the suffering meant that they had yet to reach Shrewsbury. It was bad news that the cart would now hurry their pace.
"The bastard wouldn't listen to reason. I offered to take them anywhere he wanted for free as a gift to Good King Charlie." The carter spat on the straw floor and ground it in under his boot. "I suppose my being so nice made him suspicious of me, which is why he left me behind and warned me not to follow him. As if I could with this game leg of mine. Well, I couldn't very well tell him that I had a hundred shillings hidden in the cart could I. He'd have just stolen it for himself."