by Smith, Skye
"He stole it anyway,” Daniel pointed out.
"Nay, he has taken it, but he hasn't stolen it. It's just lost to everyone, for the time being."
"And you are sure that the men that climbed aboard told you where they were from?"
"Did I say that? Yes, I think they did but I can't quite remember because my throat is so parched." He smiled as this tall fair pistoleer filled up his ale pot. "Oye, love,” he called to the alewench, or rather, the alecrone for the wenches were all in hiding. "give us an end of bread with the stew. Pretty please."
"It's important," Daniel hissed. "What village were they from?"
"Somewhere in Lincolnshire. I could tell that because of their funny way of speaking." This from a man with a Shropshire accent so thick that he may as well have been speaking Welsh. "They used a lot of North Sea lingo."
"Please think. It's important." Daniel was holding onto his temper, just barely. The alecrone came to the table with stew, bread and another jug of ale. "Take it back,” Daniel told her. "He's playing me for a fool."
"Freiston," the carter said quickly.
"And where did they take your cart from you?" Daniel asked eagerly. The man ignored him and stared at the jug on the crone's tray. "Leave the tray, love," he told her.
"On the Drayton road just this side of Wybunbury. If you were on a proper horse instead of that nag, you could overtake them before Drayton. Maybe sooner if the wheel gives out."
Daniel had been pushing his bench back to stand up, pay, and hurry off to Drayton. Now he settled onto the bench again. "What's this about the wheel?"
"The right rear wheel hub is old and worn so it loses grease. Faster under load, and with all those men aboard it was running heavy. If they don't grease it every hour the hub will overheat and catch fire."
"And if I don't catch up to them before Drayton?" Daniel asked. "What then? Did they mention which road they were taking to Shrewsbury." The carter looked at him as if he had two heads.
"Thar be only one road from Drayton to Shrewsbury. All the roads come together at Drayton, and then there is only one." The carter dug out a big piece of marches-meat from the stew and inspected it carefully. "You headin' out then? If you find my cart send word to me. I rent the shed downstream from the bridge."
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 21 - Shot on the Shrewsbury road, October 1642
Daniel accepted the risks of traveling the main road in the interests of speed, but he did not catch up to the troop of marching men before he reached the town of Drayton. It was too risky to enter the town, for if the king's army was in Shrewsbury then there would be a garrison stationed at Drayton. Drayton was but twenty miles from Shrewsbury, so he was running out of time.
He turned west on a likely looking cart track about a mile before Drayton and followed it hopes that it would bypass the town. It ended two miles further on at another cart track that he assumed led back to the main road. The cart track must have been built along an ancient road because it was absolutely straight and was raised above the land around it on a good road bed. It did lead him back to the main road, but at the crossroad he had the dilemma of which way to turn.
The troop may still be passing through Drayton, or they may be ahead of him towards Shrewsbury. Logic made the decision. If they were towards Shrewsbury then he must find them soon, so that is the way he turned. A mile or a mile and a half later he found them. They were sitting about watching as four men were trying to mend a wheel on the cart.
They were in a clearing of a wooded area just beyond where the River Tern had turned away from the road. Because of the woods and the bushes and the twists in the road as it climbed away from the river bank, Daniel did not known they were there until he rode into the clearing. He was seen before he could backtrack and go around to get in front of them. There was nothing he could do but to carry on towards the broken cart in hopes of bluffing it out.
Some of the men immediately recognized him and he gave them a signal of a finger across his throat to warn them not to call out. They nudged the men beside them to pass on the warning. Their wrists were bound and they were guarded by a similar array of men as those that had guarded the Fishtoft troop. A captain with a horse was in charge with three seasoned musketeers to back him up, and six volunteer pikemen to make the pressed men behave. The musketeers and the pikemen were in a ring around the men, while the captain was dismounted and supervising the four pressed men who were trying to refit the wheel on the axle.
Daniel rode straight up to the captain, who on seeing him straightened up and turned around to face him. As Femke came to a halt a big man came out from under the cart and said, "It's fucked. Both the axle and the hub are charred. Even if we got the wheel back on, it may not last an..." The man stopped talking and stared at Daniel and was about to yell a greeting until Daniel shook his head at him.
The captain made a signal to his musketeers, and then asked Daniel, "Are you Shrewsbury bound?"
It was such a silly question that Daniel should have realized that the captain was stalling for time. He turned his head slightly. The three musketeers were coming up behind him. Good. Same plan as last time then. Blind the musketeers with his dragon and then kill the captain. He willed Femke to turn her left flank towards the captain and moved his right hand slowly to the butt of his dragon.
The word bugger went through his mind a dozen times. These musketeers were armed differently than the last lot. They didn't just carry clumsy muskets, but also dragons, and their three dragons were cocked and pointed at him. What made it worse is that he recognized the dragons. They were part of a consignment he had shipped in from Holland. He had given six of them as wedding presents to the six Freiston men who had married into his clan.
"Calm yourselves, lads,” he told them, even though the men were older than he was. "I just came to do some business with your captain."
"And just what business would that be?" the captain asked.
Daniel was thinking fast. If deadly force wouldn't work, what about bribes. "My regiment needs more men. These ones will do nicely. If you take them all the way into Shrewsbury, they won't be given to my regiment."
"They are the Earl of Lindsey's men,” the captain told him, "the ruddy captain-general. Damn rights you won't get them."
"Can I speak freely in front of your men?" Daniel asked while nodding towards the musketeers.
"Yes, but move closer to me and speak softly so the troops don't hear." They all moved further away from the cart and the pikemen.
"I'll make it worth your while. Name your price to have them escape, accidental like."
"What? And look incompetent to my general,” the captain sneered.
At least this captain spoke English, though his accent was strongly Tyneside so he may as well have been speaking Scottish. "Then your price be in coins of gold, rather than silver,” Daniel told him. That got the man thinking.
"Sergeant,” the captain called out, "keep him covered. Shoot him if he moves. I'm going to search his saddle bags. This is all too suspicious. If he came to buy these men then where is the guard he will need to march them to his regiment."
Bugger was the word that went through Daniels mind a dozen more times for he was about to be robbed and forced into service with the Freiston men. He glanced around at the musketeers. So did Femke. She must have sensed he was in trouble. Femke, of course, ... Teesa's trained trick horse that knew word commands, word commands in Frisian. While the musketeers came closer he patted her on the neck and then told her "Spurna!"
Femke did exactly what she had been told to do. She kicked out, front, back, all around. The musketeer standing behind her got her shoes in his chest. The one beside him got a hoof in the groin and third dived and rolled away. Of course this meant that she bucked a bit so Daniel had to hold on to the saddle with both hands, and couldn't reach for his pistols. The best he could do was to kick the captain in
the face, but then there was a fierce bark of a dragon from behind him so he yelled out "Runnen!" to Femke.
As Femke sprinted passed the broken cart Daniel yelled out, "I'll find you,” hoping that the captain would think it a curse of revenge rather than a message to the men. There was another roar of a gun, but if it was from another dragon then he was already out of range, and if it was from a musket ... well best of luck hitting a fast moving target with a musket.
He slowed Femke as soon as they were out of range and were hidden by the bend in the road. There was a game trail to the north of the road that angled up. That was what he need, high ground. The game trail took him along the slope and climbed up behind the woods. He let Femke pick her own way for she was already breathing hard either from a hard days ride, the sprint, or from the excitement.
They stopped when they reached a ridge with a faint path running along it. From here he could not see the clearing where the wagon and the men were, but he was right above where the road left the woods on its way to Shrewsbury. He was glad of the stop, for his back and his bum ached from the days ride, and he was thirsty. The hand that he used to reach behind him for his water skin came back bloody.
"Bugger, what else can go wrong. They've hit you Femke. Sorry girl." He scratched at her ears and made soothing noises and then dismounted. As soon as his right foot touched the ground and took his weight a pain shot the full length of his body. He stared at the hindquarters of the mare, and there was a lot of blood but it wasn't hers. It was his. He tenderly touched his right side and bum. There was a lot of blood just beneath where his armour ended. The bloody musketeers were definitely experienced men.
Sounds of men and commands were drifting up from the clearing. For now he had more important things to do than worry about his wound. It would have to wait. Right now he was angry with the captain for trying to rob him, for wounding him, for stealing the cart from an old man, and most of all, for stealing the men of Freiston. Six feet of deer rifle wrapped in sacking was hung by a strap in the front and in the back of the left side of his saddle. Why else had he carried the clumsy thing all this way?
Hurriedly he unwrapped the long rifle. Originally it had been a full length matchlock musket that some Spanish gunsmith had grooved with rifling for the last foot of the barrel. Once the hunters in his clan had tried it out, they kept it for themselves and had replaced the matchlock arm with a Jocklock.... an invention of a friend in Rotterdam ... a one legged Scottish gunsmith called Jock. It was a bolt-on flint style lock with a cover that fitted over the existing flash pan and would turn any matchlock into the equivalent of a snaplock.
One look into the barrel told him that it had been put away clean and oiled and ready to load. Good on ya Anso. He measured the powder down the muzzle and then chose his ball from a selection in a heavy purse. He chose one of the largest for when this barrel was very clean you could use a larger ball which allowed the rifling grooves to spin it. When it was dirty you had to use a smaller ball and then it became just another musket. He rammed everything home and then primed the pan making sure that some of the fine priming powder made it down the vent into the breach of the barrel.
This rifle was far too clumsy a weapon for a battlefield but it was exactly what you needed to bag game. A long distance ball heavy enough to down a deer. He stuck the fork pole into the dirt. The barrel was so long and heavy that you had to rest the muzzle in the fork to support the muzzle weight while you aimed it. He put the butt into his arm and then bent over to aim it. Bending over hurt too much so he knocked the fork out of his way and then lay down in the long dry autumn grass.
There was a change in sounds from down below which told him that the troop was on the march. Quickly he built up a mound of dirt to rest the muzzle on and then sighted along the barrel to the iron bead welded to the end. He was trying to remind himself which way to adjust the thumb screw on the sprung sighting notch. Was it out for distance. Yes, that was it. With the notch out the muzzle aimed higher.
This was an extra long shot so he would screw it all the way out.. He cocked it and aimed it and tried to visualize a sapling down by the road as if it were a man. Yes, definitely screw it out for distance. A horse was coming out of the woods. He aimed and put his finger on the trigger. It occurred to him that as soon as the hammer fell he would lose his aim to the flash smoke, so he would have to hold the gun absolutely still during the split second delay while the flash pan ignited the main charge.
At the same time that he squeezed the trigger and the hammer sparked, he realized that the man on the horse was not the captain, and that the horse had no saddle. Luckily he was so intent on the aim that he had forgotten to swing the weather cover off the flash pan. The man on the horse had bound feet. He must be the most crippled of the troop. The limping men would be taking turns on the cart horse. He was having second thoughts about how far he had unscrewed the thumb knurl so he screwed it back in a bit.
Another horse left the woods. He swung the weather cover out of the way and aimed for a body shot for the captain hadn't been wearing his chest armour. He waited impatiently, for the captain was moving too fast. Someone must have called to him because he reigned in the horse and turned to look back. Aim, deep breath, squeeze the trigger. Click, spark, flash, hiss, BOOOM. For a second he could see nothing because of the gun smoke and the ash that blew back into his eyes. This was the problem with all muskets ... to aim them properly along the barrel meant putting your eye and face too close to the flash pan.
When the smoke cleared he could see the captain still in the saddle, but the horse was spinning in circles trying to bite at something on his flank. Of course. The ball had not hit the captain in the body but had dropped lower and had hit the flank of the horse. Bloody hell. He wouldn't get a second shot. By the time he reloaded this monster they would be gone. He hurriedly began cleaning the hot barrel in hopes that he could reload in time for another shot..
As he went thought the steps of loading, the captain leaped from his injured horse and into the bushes for his own safety. Hopefully the bushes were something prickly and thorny. A musketeer had run forward and stopped the lead horse carrying the man with the wrapped feet. The troop must have been told to keep marching along the road, but the captain and the guards were no where to be seen. They must have ducked low to use the bushes as cover while keeping up to the troop.
He never did get another shot off before they were all out of range. One of the pikemen was leading the injured horse, who was wincing at every step and complaining. A walking butcher shop for tonight's cooking fire. Once well away from this hill they would transfer the saddle to the cart horse so the captain could ride again.
As for Daniel, he had to pack up the rifle and find somewhere safe to hide while he checked and attended his wound. He could no longer walk or sit a saddle, so he stood in the stirrup with his good left leg and leaned over the saddle with more weight on his chest and used voice commands to guide Femke. The ridge track bent around and joined a larger trail on a higher ridge which led west away from the road.
It dawned on him that this was not just a ridge of a hill. These were ramparts of some ancient fort. By the sparsity of the trails, the only ones using the ramparts today were sheep, although in truth he could not see any sheep, just sheep droppings. All the sheep trails joined into a larger trail that led down through a wooded gully to a small cottage below. The other way the larger trail led along one side of the rampart. The rampart was very steep and even if Femke could haul him up to the top he would be visible from down below against the skyline, so he followed the main trail along the side instead.
The trail led to a cut through the rampart, a manmade cut through stone so possibly the ancient gate to the hill fort. Femke didn't wait for his instructions, and walked through the cut. Inside the ramparts the ground was level but with some random knolls. This was as good a place as any for him to attend his wound so he told Femke to stop.
She wouldn't. She kept on walking towards the f
ar end of the fort, but then he saw why. There was a small pond and she was on her way to have a drink. The pond was not all scummy so it must have been spring fed rather than rainwater fed. Using only his good leg he hopped down from the stirrup and hopped around in a circle taking a good look at where he was. There were no sheep tracks to the edge of the pond so that meant there had been no sheep drinking at this pond since it had shrunk to its summer size.
Over to one side of the pond there was a sheep pen made out of piled up rocks and earth with a gate made of lashed saplings that still looked useable. On the other side there was a grass covered mound, perhaps a barrow of the ancients. He hopped around the pond to the barrow side of it. There were fresh foot prints in the mud. Footprints of a lad or a woman. He hopped up the slight slope to the barrow. The entrance was blocked by a door of the same workmanship as the gate of the pen.
"Hello?" he called out two or three times. The only answer was that Femke wandered over to him. If the mare thought he was calling her then the place must be empty. He lifted the door out of his way and looked inside. You would have to stoop to enter, and then go down a ramp, and that was as far as he could see by the light of the doorway. He wasn't good at stooping right now, but it was a good place to unload Femke so that is what he did.
When he was down to the saddle and bridle, he paused. Perhaps he should leave her saddled in case he needed to ride out of here fast. Who was he fooling. He couldn't ride. Once Femke was unsaddled, she wandered back to the pond. Now that the mare was unsaddled it was time to unsaddle himself. He stripped himself of armour, and weapons belt, and britches, and everything else until he stood in just the white silk night shirt that Britta had given him. Except that it was no longer white. He had worn it almost non stop for two weeks. It was grimy and stained and the worst stain was his own blood all around his right side and buttock.