by Smith, Skye
"Speaking of humping, why don't you come over here and visit with me for a while? Do you know how long I've been faithful to my hand? It's been almost two months now."
"Not a chance. Not until Oudje tells us what is wrong with you. Not until your breath is healthy again."
"If Oudje is with Teesa then just look for her mare Femke," Daniel suggested. "The mare will have searched her out as soon as I dismounted."
The door to the one room house opened and Venka led Oudje through it. The crone hobbled over to his pallet and then told Sarah to bring her a stool. Sarah grabbed up the low three legged milking stool from beside the hearth and set it down beside the pallet. "Not that stool," Oudje said, but sat down on it anyway, "his stool."
While Sarah disappeared outside to fetch the night's slop pail, Oudje inspected Daniel's eyes and gums, and sniffed his foul breath. The pail that Sarah brought back reeked, and the crone held her breath while she inspected it and stirred it with a twig of kindling. "As I thought," she announced as she waved the wretched pail away. "Worms. You have been eating old fish or meat that has not been properly cooked."
"Probably," Daniel replied, "for there is a shortage of both food and firewood in the midlands because two great armies have been circling each other for months. So how do I kill these worms and how long will it take?"
"Kill. I've taught you better than that," Oudje told him. "You want them to leave your body, not die inside you and poison you. Tincture of wormwood taken in every drink for a fortnight should rid you of them, as well as any fleas or lice that you have picked up." She chuckled at the sour face that Daniel gave her. Nothing was as bitter as tincture of wormwood.
"Two weeks," he sighed, "and I suppose for those two weeks I must sleep alone."
"Of course."
"Ach, the Wyred Sisters have cursed me again. Here I am, a man just returned from a long absence who has two comely and willing wives, and I am denied their comfort."
"A tincture made from the absinthe wormwood would get rid of them in a week, but that whole time you would be having visions and disturbing dreams."
"I cannot. I must keep my head clear."
"Sarah," Oudje said, "please go to my house and ask Teesa to dispense some of my woodworm tincture for him, but not the absinthe that she is using to bring on her Seer visions." Sarah left them immediately, eager to be of help to her handsome husband. "Danny, while we wait you can tell me about the state of the midlands and about these two armies."
All this time the elder grownups of the village had been wandering in through the door, and the audience sitting cross legged on the floor mats was growing. They were keeping absolutely still and therefore it was quiet in the room save for Daniels voice. Even when Daniel told of the slaughter of the kitchen boys by Prince Rupert's cavalryers, they did not break their silence, not even to mutter a curse.
Oudje was also listening. She was sitting absolutely still on the stool with Daniel sitting cross legged with his back to her so that she could hold his neck with both of her hands. Her eyes were closed and she was in a deep trance. The silence of the crowd was not for Daniel, but for her, so that they would not wake her from the trance.
Eventually she opened her eyes and let go of Daniel's neck, and then took some deep breaths to wake up her mind. "I warned you all that our clan must flee this kingdom. This madness of men is caused by the beginning of the age of ice. It has been getting worse each year, and now this ... thousands of young men have died in one battle ... and for what? Tell me again where it was fought?"
"In the fields between the village of Kineton and the slopes of Edgehill," Daniel replied.
"And it achieved nothing," Oudje confirmed. "Instead of putting an end to the violence of armies, it will lead to more of the same. We should have sailed away from this kingdom in October. We had men enough, and ships enough, and silver enough, but no ... we sold our best chance of leaving just to gain more silver."
"Oh be still old woman," Venka told the crone. "You say the same thing over and over again every day. Our trading profits have never been higher than they are right now, so of course our council voted to delay our sailing."
"So the new rigging on our ships is paying for itself?" Daniel asked eagerly. The clan had risked everything they had to buy more ships and re-rig them in the Bermudan way. With the triangular sails the ships no longer needed a full crew of oarsmen, and could travel at speeds that put the Netherlands within a day's sail. They had risked all in the hopes that running more ships with smaller crews on faster crossings would reap profits. He loved it when a plan came together.
"Yes, the ships are earning well, and the silver is rolling in," Venka replied. "Oudje was the only elder who was against the council's decision to delay our trip to Bermuda until the spring, even though it was she who told us that this long autumn would end with massive storms. It was her storm predictions that decided us to charter our smaller ships out to the association of trainbands, rather than use them on the Rotterdam run, otherwise our profits would be even greater. But we will speak of this later, in private. For now the elders are waiting to hear more news and more of your adventures."
Daniel told some more stories to his kin folk while he waited for Sarah to return.
It took Teesa a long time to dispense the tincture, but Sarah waited patiently for it. Teesa was floating about Oudje's house in slow motion for her mind had just come back from an 'other-world' vision. Oudje was training her mind to allow the visions by forcing them to happen using toadstools, or absinthe, or rye spurs. Eventually with practice, Teesa would be able to bring on the visions without the use of herbs, but not yet.
They walked together back to Venka's house, and their entrance completely interrupted Daniel's stories for Teesa ran to him and gave him a joyous hug.
"Teesa told me that the only wormwood tincture at your house is absinth," Sarah told Oudje.
"I brought some of the absinth in case you wanted to use it," Teesa interrupted and she wiggled a little flask that she was carrying in her left hand. "We sent our entire stock of normal tincture to Freiston three days ago, remember. All of their returning men needed it for the same reason Danny does." She was speaking of the men that Daniel had rescued from being pressed into the king's service."
There was a cheer from some of the men in the room. Daniel had just finished telling them the story of how he had freed the Freiston men on the battlefield at Kineton. How they had fought their way through the king's lines and over Edgehill so they could flee the carnage.
"Well, we'll start him out on the absinth then," Oudje said to Teesa, "and tonight I will show you how to make wormwood tincture so we can replace our stocks."
Daniel groaned. He hated taking absinth. Yes it was a powerful medicine with many uses, but it also gave you an anxious mind and weird dreams. He had been looking forward to a few nights of blissful sleep. He looked around at his kinfolk and said, "Absinth makes me impatient with groups. If Oudje is going to force it down my throat, then I would rather you all left me in peace for a while."
Teesa did not let go of him as the room emptied of folk. "Femke found me," Teesa told him softly. "Thanks for bringing her safely home to me. I can't believe what she is telling me about all the noise and smoke and blood."
Daniel made no reply. As a child Teesa had always pretended that she could talk to the animals, and here she was fully grown and still pretending.
"She will never forgive you for setting fire to the long grass and then running her in front of it," Teesa added.
Daniel shrugged and grinned absent mindedly at her while he signaled to the last man to leave Venka's house that he would come and find him later to speak of men's things. It wasn't until Teesa was out of his arms and measuring out a dose of absinth into a pot of ale that he thought about her last words. He hadn't told anyone the story of setting fire to the pastures of Edgehill. Not yet. How could Teesa possibly know about it?
Teesa passed Daniel the pot of doctored ale. He sniffed it
cautiously and then took a swallow. The bitterness of it made his throat close and his neck muscles spasm. Why was it that medicine was all so bitter? He made a sour face at the women, but he kept drinking it until it was gone. Nothing ruined the taste of good fresh ale more than stirring bitter herbs into it. This pot of ale had been far more bitter than any of the ale he had tasted in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean they mixed bitter herbs into the ale so that it would not spoil as quickly in the heat ... sometimes absinthe, but more often hops.
"More?" Teesa asked.
Daniel made a face and shook his head.
"More," Oudje insisted. "Get as much of it down as you can to give a quick start to the cleansing process."
"He has a new wound on the hip, but it seems to have knitted well enough." Venka told the crone. "Love, take off your clothes so she can see."
Daniel did as he was told, and stood patiently in the nude while four women prodded and poked at his skin. "The ball did not dive deep ... just furrowed along under the skin," he explained. "I think it must have glanced off the saddle before it hit me. It hurt and ached and I lost a lot of blood, and had to rest for more than a week to regain my strength."
"Whoever did the stitching had a neat hand," Venka observed and then reached down and gave his cock a playful squeeze. "Was she pretty?"
"She was young and pretty and had a sick baby and a missing husband. He'd been pressed into the king's service. We hid together while she nursed me, and afterwards I escorted her back to her parent's town. I didn't, we didn't ... well, she'd been used by some of the king's gentlemen."
"Bastards," Venka hissed. While Daniel had been away in the wars, she had been spending most of her time in the villages of Fishtoft and Freiston nursing the many women who had been 'used' by the king's gentlemen after the villages' able men had been pressed into service by the Earl of Lindsey. Nursing them in body and in soul. "The men that returned to Freiston tell that you wounded Lindsey."
"Aye, and hopefully by now that wound has killed him. When I last saw him he was lying on a pallet in a pig shed while his wound was being bled by a physician."
The four women guffawed at the irony of his words. Each of them knew more about healing wounds than any English physician. Each of them certainly knew that a wound touched by pig shit would fester and cause the lock jaw fever. It was a slow, painful, horrible way to die. "Sweet justice," Venka said, and everyone nodded in agreement. "When will you know that he is dead? There is sure to be a feast in Freiston to mark his passing, and you should attend it."
"Give me a few days to rest," he replied, "then I will go into Cambridge and ask for news of him. Now tell me about the terms that you chartered our ships under."
"Not now. The absinth should be taking effect soon, so logical thought will become difficult," Oudje told him. "Since you are about to have visions, then we should let Teesa practice reading them."
Daniel glanced over a Teesa. She was tall for a woman, and thin and fair and still had the sweet smile and angelic face of a young teen despite her being almost twenty. "I've just returned from a bloody battle where thousands were slaughtered," he told the crone. "My visions, when they come, will be gory and disturbing ... possibly the worst of all visions to be training an innocent with."
"An innocent," Teesa said and stomped her bare foot on the thick matting that covered the packed and polished clay floor. "When we snuck into Dover Castle it was I who killed the sentry, remember. I shot an arrow through his neck and then watched him die to ensure that he did not call out."
"I'll be here to pull her away if the reading does not go well," Oudje told him.
"We'll all stay," Venka said while nodding to her sister Sarah.
"Four of us is too many," Oudje objected. "That will just distract the girl. Teesa and I will take him to my house, and soon before the absinth visions begin."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Brentford by Skye Smith Copyright 2014
Chapter 6 - The Seers of the Fens in November 1642
Once Daniel and Teesa were both comfortably lying on her bed, Oudje covered them with a fresh down comforter. Fresh so that it did not have any odors to overwhelm any visions. The two were skin to skin, back to back, bum to bum, neck to neck. The old crone took the long perfect crystal from around her neck and dangled it in front and just above Daniel's eyes. She adjusted the position of a candle lantern so that the pattern of lights shining through the crystal would fall on his eyes. Now she was ready.
Softly she told him to watch the crystal. His eyes had to look up to see it. The longer he looked up, the more tired his eyes would become. Her soft voice told him how tired his eyes were becoming, how heavy his eyelids were becoming. She kept urging him to sleep, but kept reminding him that even asleep he would still hear her voice and would still answer her questions.
Once Daniel's eyelids had closed and his breathing had slowed, she moved herself and the candle lantern so she could repeat the process with Teesa. It took longer for Teesa. The lass was excited by her first try at seeing the visions of others, her first try at being a seer. Eventually having to look up at the crystal made Teesa's eyelids so heavy that she too entered a sleeplike trance.
Daniel's eyes were twitching under his eyelids so he was already dreaming visions. "Where are you Daniel?" Oudje asked him in a soft, calm voice. There was no answer. She patiently kept her silence, as often it took external words a long time to reach through and into the dream visions.
"In Sarah," Daniel replied in a breath more than a voice.
Oudje looked down at the man's crotch. His cock was a rigid pole pushing up at the comforter. Absinth often had this effect on men. Rather than cursing it as a distraction, she welcomed it. Sexual dreams were strong visions shared by both parts of his mind, and therefore easy for a Seer to find and lock onto.
"Teesa," she whispered into the ear of the lass, "where are you?" The answer came almost immediately. Teesa was riding the piebald mare she had trained for trick riding. Oudje reached into her purse and pulled out a smooth and rounded crystal the size of an egg, and this she placed between the two necks so that the curve of both heads fit the curve of the crystal. "Teesa, get off your mare and reach out with your mind for Daniel. Envision Daniel. His face, his body, his smile."
Patience, she must have patience, Oudje thought. She must give the round crystal a chance to warm. Even though she had been the seer of the clan for twenty years, she herself had experienced true seer visions but a handful of times. The rest of the many visions had been false. She had made them up by combining her knowledge of the situation and of the players, and their expectations, with her logic and experience.
Yes she had been trained as a seer, just as she was now training Teesa, but being trained in the way did not make the visions happen. It just allowed you to encourage them and to recognize them when they did happen. A handful in twenty years. She wondered how many her old teacher, the previous seer, had actually had. Her hope for Teesa and for their clan was that the lass would become a gifted seer.
The lass already had other gifts. Teesa had healing hands which were always warm to the touch. All she need do to calm an animal, or a child, or a wound was to place her hands on it. She had other gifts too. She had an extra sense, an animal sense, a proximity sense ... an intuition beyond what the nose, the ears, and the eyes could sense. This animal sense had made her the clan's most successful hunter ... huntress. She never came back from a hunt empty handed for she could track animals like a cat or a dog could.
Oudje had known for a decade that eventually she must train Teesa, but the timing of the training had to be left to Teesa. It was no use training someone who was not ready to be trained. Three weeks ago Teesa had gone hunting and had come home empty handed. The girl had been hunting geese to supply meat and down and feathers ... simplicity for her ... and yet she had come home empty handed. The lass had walked into Oudje house, stripped herself of her hunting weapons, and had declared, "I
just can't kill them any more. They are too alive, too beautiful, too innocent for me to rob them of their lives."
A sound jerked Oudje out of her memories. Teesa's was beginning to moan like a woman being pleasured. "Teesa, where are you?" the crone whispered. This time the reply took a long, long time to be put to words.
"With Daniel," the lass whispered. Her body was in tiny spasms. Soon the spasms would grow stronger and her bum would begin bumping Daniels and wake him. It was time for Oudje to direct her, to train her.
Daniel moaned. Oudje glance away from Teesa and towards him. A wet stain was spreading on the comforter in front of him. What more proof did she need that Teesa had connected to his mind. She felt like crying out in joy but she swallowed cry, swallowed the joy, swallowed the praise for Teesa's achievement and instead said, "Daniel, I want you to empty your mind, empty it of everything. Think of nothing ... see only a white light, hear only your heart beat. Your mind is empty."
She waited long for a response, but there was none. She was a fool. If he was thinking of nothing, then how could he speak. "Teesa, what do you see?"
"A white haze like a fog." The reply was barely a breath.
"There are things to be seen behind the fog," Oudje told her. "To see them you must blow at the fog. Blow the fog away until you see the shadows, and then blow some more." She could see Teesa's lips pursing. It was all good.
Both young bodies began to move, but not together and not in the rhythm of sex. Arms, legs, hands, feet were all jerking. Short jerks, fast but short, like they were being interrupted before they could get going. Oudje forced herself to be patient and silent. Any outside noise may stop the visions and she so hoped that no one would knock at her door, not now. Eventually Teesa began to sob. She was squirming as if she were wracked with pain. And then she screamed ... an unearthly scream ... a terrifying scream ... yet so softly that it barely crossed her lips.
