Pistoleer: Invasion

by Smith, Skye

  Still the defenders held out using the stalling tactic of spinning the negotiations out over days. They must have been hoping for a miracle or for Prince Rupert's flying army to break through and relieve them. On the morning that Waller finally had his big guns placed to blow the city gates to pieces, Daniel was ordered to place his petards against the bricked in gate. They were not to fart until Waller himself issued the order.

  For hours Daniel crouching in the lee of bushes along the river bank with Jack and his dangerous men, all of them waiting for the order to fart. He was shivering but it was not from the cold, but from the wait. The Scots on the wall had seen him place the petards, but had not reacted quickly enough to be a danger to him. Now they would be watching and waiting to give a proper greeting to the poor sod who was sent out to light the damn things ... him.

  Some of the lads had volunteered to do the lighting, and to reward their pluck he had told them they were his backups in case he failed. In truth they needed the lighting to work first time, and without blowing up the man doing the lighting, so there was no better choice than himself. Every second he waited was like a minute, and every minute like an hour, and with each breath he felt the cold more and more until he couldn't stop shaking.

  "This waitin'll make cowards of us all,” Jack grumbled as he checked the prime of his carbine for the umpteenth time. He was cold and scared, and being scared made him feel the cold, and being cold chipped away at his courage, so he could well imagine how Danny was feeling. "You got a wife, Danny?” he asked just to get their minds away from the cold fear.

  "Why do you ask?” Daniel replied absent mindedly.

  "I've got a wife,” Jack tried again. This time he got Danny's attention. Danny was staring at his sliced face, pondering the announcement.

  "Oh, you mean from before the ...ahh... the slash."

  "Nope. From two years back, when I was sent home with my payout.” In Holland each military company kept a widows, orphans, and cripples fund paid into from wages and from booty. "Six pounds they gave me, and my passage. I was set ashore here in Chichester and began to walk home. So that I needn't dip into my purse, I did chores along the way to earn my meals. That was how I met her. She fed me well for the work of splitting firewood."

  "And you asked her to marry you and she said yes?” Daniel said trying to keep his amazement to himself. She must be as homely as a sow.

  "Wasn't as easy as that, now.” Jack replied. "Lisa was only visitin' her pa, carin' for him while he died. Church mouse poor they was, though they owned a good sized farm. It was the old story, you know, debt and bonding. A decade ago the dad borrowed enough from the local landlord, the local nob of the parish, to build a barn and buy a new plough horse. When crops were bad, he missed some payments so the debt kept growing. Rather than lose the farm to the debt he sold Lisa into bondage to the same nob to keep up the payments. She was taken on as an upstairs maid."

  "So she is comely then?” Daniel asked almost in wonder. In grand manors only pretty young things were taken on as upstairs maids. The nob women would have worked Lisa's buns off during the day, and the nob men would have worked up her buns during the night. There was no need to speak of this to her husband, so he stopped speaking.

  "She'd been in bondage for almost eight years, so has aged and thickened a bit, but yes, she is still pretty. Unfortunately for her, once her dad died, the nobs would take the farm to pay off the debt and the bond, and she and her kin would be left with neither dad, nor farm, nor her service position. The best she could hope for was to become a chamber maid at the local inn, and you know what that would mean. It was bad enough that she'd already been covered by every nob in the parish, but to be covered by every man with the price of a bed at the inn, well, her situation was grim."

  Daniel had already guessed the end of the story, but he let Jack keep telling it. He looked around at the others. They all knew, of course, for they had been living at the farm.

  "So while she fed me and told me her sad tale,” Jack continued, "I came up with a plan. I would pay the arrears of her fathers debt and buy out her bondage, and stay on to run the farm, so long as she married me and her father willed us both the farm. Despite my face, and me being a stranger, she said yes almost immediately and we went to her father's bedside to work out the details."

  "The nobs must have been pleased by that bit of news,” Daniel chuckled. "To lose a farm and a good fuc... er ... servant in one swoop."

  "They were not pleased, not pleased at all, and they tried everything in their power to make the farm fail so that the debt would go into arrears again. That all changed when a couple of the lads showed up on our doorstep. And then more of them. With their help we turned the farm profitable, rebuilt the house, added a bunk house, mended the fences, expanded the fields under plough, and frightened the nobs into leaving us be."

  Daniel's smile was cheek to cheek, and why not? He liked a happy ending as much as the next man. "So what is next? Children? Little Jacks...” He stopped speaking because the other men were frantically shaking their heads.

  Jacks face had gone grey. "In Lisa's first year of service one of the nob sons stuffed a child into her. The lord would suffer no bastards, so in the guise of punishing her for allowing men to cover her, he had her beaten ... around her baby belly. She lost the child and the power to create more. Fuckin' king's gentlemen.” His last words were ignored by the other men because they had all turned their heads to look towards the strange and loud sound coming from along the wall towards the North Gate. It could be nothing else but the roar of a mob.

  "That's it,” Daniel told them. "Waller is rousing his men to storm the walls. Once we hear the big guns, it will be time for us to blow those bricks and then fight our way into the back streets.” He raised his head and waved to another company of men, a much larger company on the other side of the river. He caught the attention of Captain Roberts who would lead two hundred mounted men through the breach. Roberts waved back, but did not give the signal to fire the petard. He was waving Daniel to come to him. Daniel crouched low and ran towards Roberts, with his men following him but well spread out in case of musket fire.

  "The flag, the flag,” Roberts was calling to him and pointing towards the North Gate.

  Daniel stared in that direction but could see nothing from ground level so he leaped up onto a big old tree stump. Then he saw it. At the far end of the wall, above the North gate flew a white flag. The king's men had surrendered. That was what the cheering had been all about. Six thousand men didn't need to charge the wall and a thousand men did not need to defend it. They would, all of them, live to see another day.

  Roberts was turning his horse towards headquarters to go and find out for himself what was really happening. Almost as an afterthought he turned towards Daniel and invited him to come with him.

  "I didn't bring a horse,” Daniel said. His uncontrollable shivers had disappeared and had been replaced by a warm glow underneath his cloths, despite the biting wind off the estuary. He glanced around at the members of Robert's cavalry, but none of them offered up their mounts to him, and Roberts didn't urge them to. "I'll catch up on foot."

  While Roberts rode away accompanied by his two ensigns, Daniel used the height advantage of the stump to have a proper look around. The Scottish mercenaries on top of the nearest section of wall were cheering, so they obviously approved of the decision to surrender. A line of poorly dressed and poorly equipped infantry, standing off to one side of Robert's cavalry, were also cheering. Until two days ago they had been prisoners of the king inside the wall. They had volunteered to be the first men through Daniel's breach, because it was their families who were still inside the walls. Their plan had been to race to their homes and defend their kin from all comers.

  He continued his sweep around with the looker until he was staring across the open marshy fields towards the estuary. The barge which had brought the culverins was stuck in the mud of the low tide, but another craft was now slowly drifting ar
ound the far headland. It was a ship, and not just any ship, but a navy ship. And it wasn't alone. Over the top of the low headland he could see the masts of two other ships. No wonder the royalists in the town had surrendered. From their vantage point they would have seen the sails an hour ago.

  Daniel called to the closest of the cavalryers, "You, race after Roberts and tell him that there are three ships entering the estuary, navy ships. Waller may not know that yet.” The gentlemen of quality looked down their noses at him as if to say 'who are you to be giving us orders'. "Hurry damn you. Waller must be told.” One of them finally shrugged and mounted up and set out after Roberts.

  "I need a horse after all,” Daniel told Jack, "and none of them bastards are likely to offer me theirs."

  Without saying a word, Jack walked over to the closest gentlemen of quality, snatched his reins from his hands, and led the horse back towards the big stump. The young gentlemen started to react to such a rude theft by such a pig of a peasant, but his companions pulled him back and put a hand over his mouth. Lantern Jack had a certain reputation.

  "I thank'ee for the loan of the horse,” Daniel told the youngster, "I'll see that he is returned to you after I have found myself a dinghy.” His own company and all of Roberts' cavalry stared at him opened mouthed as he rode away, not towards town and headquarters at the Almshouse, but in the opposite direction towards the barge at Fishbourne, the stinking fishing village at the end of the estuary.

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  The Pistoleer - Invasion by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-15

  Chapter 9 - The Surrender of Chichester in December 1642

  On the banks of the estuary were a dozen dinghies. All of them had been dragged above the high water mark and flipped upside down on the banks. Two old fishermen were sitting on one of them waiting for the siege battle to begin. They would have been paid a few coppers to watch the barge, so that the crew of the barge could go ashore. Old or not, coppers or not, the tiny silver coin that Daniel offered to each of them, had them up and off the dinghy and flipping it and pushing it on rollers down to the water's edge.

  One of them was to earn his silver by rowing Daniel out to the closest of the navy ships, while the other was to watch the horse, as he continued to watch the barge. If Daniel didn't return, the horse was to be returned to her owner. Maddeningly, once the dinghy was in the water, neither of the old fishers wanted to take responsibility for the horse.

  "Can't ride, never learned,” one said.

  "I get seasick on horses,” said the other, a man who had worked tiny coastal fishing boats for most of his life. Daniel handed him the reins and told him that he could always walk to town leading the horse, and then he stepped into the dinghy. The other man was well skilled with the oars, but his old back lacked the strength to hurry him to the navy ships, so Daniel took up the oars himself and put his back and shoulders into them. It felt good to be in a boat again, on the sea again, rowing again. There was something so immediately satisfying about rowing.

  "Dat first ship is droppin' da hook offa Birdham Pool,” the old fisher told him as he adjusted the tiller. That there was a tiller rudder meant that a crude sail could be rigged to this boat, or at least rigged during the summer months. In the winter the sail rig would be stowed ashore and the fisher would keep closer to home and trust in his oars.

  "How far is Birdham?” Daniel asked. He had discovered the natural glide speed of the dinghy and in order to save his strength he had slowed his pulling to a pace that would keep it gliding. Forcing the dinghy faster than the glide speed took a lot of energy for very little increase in speed.

  "Mile'n'alf. She's a big'un so she'll be needin' deeper water and a wider swing on the hook. I count three hands of gun ports on this side."

  Daniel lifted his oars and turned his shoulders and neck to see. What he saw confirmed his best hope. She was a fast looking ship, almost like a Dutch style frigate, and the timbers still had a new look to them. Best of all she was flying the admiral's standard, despite being named the "Henrietta Maria” after Charlie's queen. Admiral Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick, had answered his message to London by coming here himself. This knowledge renewed his impatience to reach the ship, so he became impatient with the oars and the slow glide speed of the dinghy.

  A voice called out from the ship. "Clear off. Ye can claim your crab pots another time.” Daniel kept rowing. "Clear off I say. We're not interested in whatever yer sellin'"

  Daniel shipped his oars and allowed the dinghy to glide the rest of the way to the ship. He yelled up, "Drop a ladder mate, I've a message for the admiral!"

  "Sorry sir,” the crewman called down. "I wasn't to know there was a gentleman at the oars. May I take your name to the captain."

  "Captain Vanderus of the ship Swift Daniel,” he called back but had to duck because a rope ladder was unfurling and coming down towards his head. He latched onto it with one arm and then stepped onto it and tried to make climbing it look effortless to the audience of crew members watching him from above. What a grunt. As soon as he was on deck he saluted the bridge where the captain was standing. He didn't know the man, but since this was a new ship, he would be one of the admiral's chosen men. "Permission to come aboard, sir, with an urgent message for the admiral."

  "From whom?” the captain called back to the boarder who looked more like a pirate than a messenger.

  "Why, from myself, sir. I am the admiral's officer attached to Colonel Waller's staff."

  The captain tilted his head to look again at his face, but then he set his eyes on the pistols this man carried. Fine pistols, expensive pistols. This would be the Dutch gun runner who worked for the admiral. "Welcome aboard Captain Vanderus. Lennon, show the captain to the admirals quarters."

  "Sir, if I may suggest,” Daniel told the captain. "The admiral will be needing a shore party immediately, perhaps forty armed men to row him the mile and a half to the Chichester end of the Estuary. The city is surrendering as we speak."

  "I'll take it under advisement. Thankyou."

  Daniel was led to an aft cabin, and as his guide knocked on the low door, he could hear orders being given behind him. A shore party was being roused. Inside the cabin, the Earl of Warwick was being fitted into a uniform jacket worthy of an admiral. A jacket that had far to many decorations to be useful, and the decorations meant that he could not wear body armour with it.

  "Danny, I got your message and decided to come myself,” Warwick said instead of a polite greeting. "What is this all about?"

  "Send them away,” Daniel said nodding to the valet and two midshipmen who were hovering around the earl. A nod to the men had them crowding the small door to leave the cabin. Once the door was shut behind them he said softly, "I don't trust Waller, or to be more accurate, I don't trust the officers who Waller trusts."

  "Whom,” Warwick corrected his English. "Yes, your message was uniquely blunt on the subject. On the face of it I agree with you. To let the rank and file of your prisoners walk home is one thing, but to give the officers their freedom, or allow them to escape ... well, I agree that such happenings are highly suspicious."

  "I fear he is about to do the same again, but this time it will be a monumental blunder which will cost you and your reformers dearly. To understand it you must realize that of the king's army within the city, almost a quarter of them are officers. This includes officers who have previously been defeated and released by us, and those who have escaped from us, and those that have run away in front of us. Every royalist officer near to Sussex has rallied to Chichester to join Edward Ford, the king's Sheriff here. As an example, Waller has already captured and released the sheriff once before. Officers aside, there are some cavalryer gentlemen of good families, and some Scottish mercenaries, but most of the rank and file have deserted them. The walls are kept by the Scottish mercenaries, three to four hundred of them, and they look dangerous to a man."

  "So if he allows this garrison their freedom ....” Warwick bega
n a thought.

  Daniel finished the thought, "We will meet the officers and cavalry yet again in the next battle, and meanwhile the Scots will thieve and beat and rape their way across England until they find a new paymaster. Hurry now, the city is surrendering as we speak."

  Warwick crossed to the cabin door, opened it, and yelled out. "I want a double shore party, heavily armed, on the double!” He turned back to Daniel and told him, "It will take a few minutes for them to prepare and lower the away boats. Meanwhile tell me more."

  "Well that is the most of it. The most important thing anyway. Otherwise I cannot fault Waller in his command of his army except that his stinginess with owed pay has cost him most of his infantry. Certainly his leniency to prisoners has saved many lives on both sides, for his reputation for fair dealing has meant that royalists are not afraid to surrender to him. He is straightforward and certainly not treacherous, but the same can NOT be said of many of the officers who answer to him, especially not to those of titled families."

  "So you do not accuse Waller himself?"

  Daniel thought before he replied. "He is being careful not to insult or threaten the king, but that may be due to orders from General Essex. That said, so far he has been true to your good ol' cause.” Perhaps he should have said more about his misgivings, but he had no proof.

  "I am relieved to hear that, for while you have been riding with him, London's scandal sheets have been reporting his victories. They have made him into a household name; a larger than life hero. They are calling him William the Conqueror. So long as he is so popular with the London mob, he is untouchable.” He pushed some sheets of cheap newsprint across the table to Daniel. "I brought these samples to show to Waller."