Pistoleer: Brentford

by Smith, Skye

  Despite the weakness of her age and her crippled legs, Oudje dropped down beside the squirming girl and pulled on her and rolled her away from the man and then just held her and soothed her. Daniel went suddenly very still. Teesa was still sobbing, but more loudly now. "Shhh, Teesa. Be calm. It was just a vision. Shush now and slowly wake yourself. Slowly open your eyes. You are in my arms. You are safe."

  A short while later the two women, the crone and the lithe huntress, shared a pot of ale while sitting on the bed next to the still sleeping Daniel. The ale was not bittered, not doctored with absinth. It was delicious.

  "Do you remember the visions?" Oudje asked her. "It is best if you speak of them right away to keep them from fading into your own hidden mind as does any dream after you have woken."

  "First there was thunder and smoke, a lot of smoke, and the smell of gunpowder and sulfur. So much smoke. And then there was howling and crying and screaming from all directions in the smoke."

  "That must have been the battle that Daniel was caught up in. He said it was huge. Tens of thousands of men, so therefore the smoke of tens of thousands of guns going off. Try not to think of the battle. Those are the visions of the past. As a seer you need to find visions that lead to the future."

  "Perhaps large bloody battles are the future," Teesa said slowly, word by word. It was if she first had to remember how to speak, and then had to remember how to put words together so that they would make sense.

  "I fear that battles are the future," Daniel said softly. His eyes were not open but he was awake and listening. "Your sobbing woke me. What caused you to sob so?"

  "There was pile of broken and torn bodies. Bodies which were missing limbs and had to pallor of having lost too much blood. They were all boys. Lads barely in their teens. It was ... was ... disturbing to see ... no ... despicable to see. I felt the grief of their mothers."

  "Ah yes, the water boys from the camp kitchen," Daniel explained. "That was Prince Rupert's brave work. Instead of risking injury by attacking our fighting men, he and his flying army of noble gentlemen slaughtered our helpless kitchen staff. What else did you see?"

  "Faces. Faces and bodies of people coming out of the fog towards me and then disappearing again."

  "Did you recognize any?"

  "The Earl of Lindsey," Teesa replied, and then finished the ale in one gulp and handed the pot to the crone so that she could again lie down next to Daniel and close her eyes. Her eyes hurt as if they were swollen to twice the size they should have been. "That is one face I will never forget, not after what he did to the village of Freiston, to the women of Freiston."

  "I shot him with that old deer rifle right at the beginning of the battle. The ball went deep ... and hopefully he will die of the wound. Was he walking? Was he limping?"

  "He was lying still on the ground with crows pecking at his eyes."

  "A good omen then," Oudje hissed. "A sure sign that he will go to the devil." She spat onto the mud floor and then ground the spit under foot to enact the curse.

  "I do hope so," Teesa said softly. "There was another man. A man I recognize from the London riots. The officer who was in charge of the king's horse guard when the mob attacked his carriage."

  "Thomas Lunsford. Another demon walking this earth. Yes he was at the battle too. He is now a prisoner waiting to be traded for Oliver Cromwell's cousin, Valentine."

  "His face and eyebrows and hair were singed. So much so that it was hard to place the face."

  Daniel did not reply. He went quiet, thinking. How could Teesa know that Lunsford had been burned when one of the king's powder magazines had blown up? Was his step daughter actually having visions. He knew that Oudje was a trickster who was very good at pretending to see visions. They always made sense and often came true, but this was different. "Was Oliver with him? I tied Lunsford's arms behind him and turned him over to Oliver to use in the prisoner exchange."

  "No one was with him," Teesa replied, "and he was not tied. He was running. He ran towards me out of the fog and then ran away again into the fog."

  "Perhaps he has escaped," Oudje said the obvious.

  "Never," Daniel replied. "He was Oliver's best chance of having Valentine exchanged, and exchanged whole and hearty. He would never have left him unbound or unguarded."

  "Then let it remain a mystery until we hear more," Oudje pronounced.

  "Who else did you see?"

  "John Hampden," Teesa replied.

  "You know John Hampden to see him?" Daniel asked skeptically. Hampden was the brain behind the Providence Company, which was the Earl of Warwick's great company that was behind the Reform Party that was leading this rebellion against the king. John Pym was a shareholder in the Providence Company and the leader of the Reform Party, but much of what Pym said was scripted by Hampden.

  "I spent months in very close company with Robert," Teesa said, impatient at being asked such a silly question. She meant Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick, and the richest man in England. "You know, riding and hunting, and sometimes as his escort to fine houses and parties. I fancied myself as his protector, for no guard ever thought to ask me to surrender my pistol at the door. I met all of them ... all those of importance to the Reform Party and to the Providence Company." She laughed, and it was a naughty laugh. "I have batted away the roving hands and ignored the lusty stares of all of those powerful men."

  "Sorry love," Daniel said quickly, "of course you will have met them all." He took her hand and held it. It was warm. "Hampden came late to the battle for he was in charge of moving the cannons and the powder and other supplies. Heavy guns move slowly on country roads. By the time his cannons came within range of Edgehill, the main battle was over. Once the main armies had moved away from each other, he was again put in charge of moving the heavy guns, and the wounded. Rupert's flying army tried to capture the guns before they could move out. Hampden's Buckinghamshire trainbands fought them off. In revenge, Rupert slaughtered our wounded."

  "Hampden was wearing a green coat and a woolen sock hat," Teesa told him.

  "Aye, his Buckingham lads were proud of their new uniforms."

  "I remember the hat," she said, " because one of the crows pecked it off his head. You know. The crows that were pecking at his eyes."

  Daniel sat up with a jerk and opened his eyes and stared down at the lovely girl beside him. "What's that you say. When I left Hampden he was not wounded. The prince and his vultures were on the run so Hampden was safe."

  His words were loud and angry and Teesa pulled back from him. "Don't get mad at me. I am only telling you what I saw. It was your mind that created the vision for me, and what I saw was John Hampden, and he looked very dead." She felt Oudje's hand on her shoulder ... a warning not to upset their patient. She took a breath and then said matter-of-factly, "Perhaps he was shot from a distance. You said yourself that you shot Lindsey with the deer rifle from across the battlefield. You aren't the only one with a deer rifle you know."

  Daniel's head ached and he suddenly felt angry at the world. He began to rise but Oudje put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Here, drink this. It will take away the anger from the absinth and allow you to sleep." She passed him a stoppered vial.

  "What is it?" he asked suspiciously and then dabbed his finger in some of the stickiness at the mouth of the vial and touched it to his tongue. He recognized the sweet bitterness immediately. Oudje's tonic of honey and poppy juice. "Nay, not yet. First I must learn more about Teesa's vision of Hampden."

  Oudje took the vial back and then told him. "The visions were not Teesa's, they were yours. Teesa was seeing what the untrained half of your mind wanted her to see."

  "Untrained half?" Daniel asked.

  "The half of your mind whose vision is not blocked by words and languages and all of the mustn'ts and shouldn'ts you have been taught in your lifetime."

  "Can Teesa go back into that vision and tell me more?"

  "She is a novice, she is just learning," replied Oudje.

&n
bsp; "Then can you find that vision, or can you coax me into seeing it?" he asked.

  "Your best chance of finding it again will be through Teesa. Both of you lay back down and we will try another trance."

  It took another half hour before Daniel's worldly mind allowed him to sleep, but then his untrained mind came forward. It took another half hour of playing puzzles with questions and answers to get Teesa's mind to again find the vision of John Hampden coming out from the gunsmoke, or fog, or mist, or whatever it was that was obscuring the visions.

  "Teesa," Oudje whispered, "you must push away more of the fog. The vision of Hampden and the crows is not one of Daniel's memories, but his prediction made from a memory. You must push through the fog to the memory that caused the prediction." Oudje watched the lass squirm and mumble and heard her gasp. Daniel's memories of the battlefield would not be pleasant ones. They would be colored with his raw emotion caused by the fear and the horror of the events.

  "It is all confusion and smoke. Canons are roaring, horses are screaming, many men are moving about on each side of me, and hundreds of men and horses are fleeing from the cannons."

  "Pay attention. Watch carefully for Hampden "

  "I see him. It is like I am seeing him from a corner of my eye. He is standing on a cart with his sabre out and he is yelling orders to the other men all around him. Ach ... he has disappeared. No, there he is again ... far to the side, still on the cart yelling orders."

  "And..."

  "And ... there is so much smoke. The cavalryers are charging again, but this time not at the canons but along them. There is a smaller group of them off to the side. They are ignoring the cannons and are charging the carts. Three of them have made it to Hampden's cart. He is slashing at them ... no ... it's alright. His men have used pikes to ward them off. Ugghh ... no, I don't want to see this memory anymore. Save me."

  Oudje reached out and pulled her away from Daniel, and then place a hand over Teesa's eyes and told her. "Teesa, as I count to ten you will slowly wake up. One, two, more and more awake ... three, four, you are feeling rested ... five, six, you will remember this vision when you wake up ... seven, eight, almost awake ... nine, ten, open your eyes." While Teesa lay there trying to focus her eyes on the thatch roof above her, Oudje brought Daniel out of his trance in a similar manner.

  After both had drunk deeply from a pot of ale ... unbittered ale, Oudje told Teesa to describe the vision to Daniel.

  Teesa whispered, almost as if she were in prayer, "You had enemy cavalryers in a field in front of you, and you were standing behind some cannons ordering the men to load and fire them, one by one, so that there was always one that was ready to fire."

  "Ah, then that must have been at Kineton, when Prince Rupert's flying army tried to capture the cannons and the supply wagons. Most of the army had already left to march towards Warwick." Daniel sighed. "Hampden was commanding the rear guard so it fell to him to fight off Rupert. We did it. We fought them off."

  "You and Hampden were not standing together. You were with the cannons and he was with a line of carts to your left," Teesa continued. "Your cannons were slaughtering the charging horses, a scene I did not want to watch. Instead I watched to the side of your sight rather than forward. You know, like out of the corner of your eye. I tried to keep the vision of Hampden, but there was so much smoke and confusion, and you were concentrating forward on the attacking cavalryers. The last time they charged they ran along the line of cannons rather than towards them."

  "Aye, only a fool charges straight towards or straight away from a gun," Daniel told her. "It is much safer to charge at an angle across the field of fire. You must know that from hunting geese."

  "One group of cavalryers did charge straight, but straight towards Hampden and the cart he was standing upon. He was very lucky to escape their pistols and sabres."

  Oudje interrupted with, "And that was what the untrained half of your mind saw from the corner of your eye while you were busy yelling orders to your gunners. Your untrained mind saw something that caused it to expect ... to predict Hampden's death."

  "But that still doesn't make sense," Daniel argued. "He was safe and healthy when I left him and that was hours after Rupert's men had given up trying to capture the cannons."

  "We are seers. We try to find out what your untrained mind, your natural mind is thinking. But theses are predictions, not history. They may or may not come true, but you believe they will come true."

  "So Hampden may still be alive?" Daniel asked.

  "Possibly, probably," Oudje replied.

  Daniel relaxed and finished off the pot of ale. "Well why didn't you tell me that before. All this trancing was for nothing."

  "Do not dismiss your own mind's predictions so lightly," Oudje scolded him. "You had good sound reasons to predict that the Earl of Lindsey would soon die, and you would have had equally sound reasons for predicting that Hampden would soon die. Now that you know what to look for, you must search your own memories of that attack on Hampden," She tapped the back of his head. "The answer to the puzzle is in their somewhere. Somewhere in the jumble of your memories."

  * * * * *

  Daniel woke up alone in Oudje's bed, alone in her house. How long had he slept. He rolled off the stacked mats that formed the bed and rose to his feet to search for his clothes. All he could find was his silk nightshirt, the shirt that he wore under his armour, or rather, under the itchy woolen homespun under his armour. Covered only by the thin, shiny silk he wandered out the door and into the weak November sunshine.

  What a blessing to still have sunny dry days this late in autumn. Perhaps it was a blessing hiding a curse. The coldest days of winter were often clear and dry. Last night had been cold enough for frost, but there was just a light dusting because the sky had been so dry. Some women waved to him from the washing pool where they were wringing out wet cloth. Damn, this silk shirt was also a blessing and a curse. It saved his skin from the itchiness of wool, and it kept his skin and any wounds clean, but it attracted women like flies.

  "Daniel love," one of the women had dropped her wet cloth and was wiping her hands dry on her smock as she skipped towards him. "You promised that I could try your shirt on, remember?"

  "But your husband has one just like it," he replied without slowing his pace towards the bath house. "We brought a dozen of them back from Rotterdam when he bought all that chest armour."

  "He's with the Swift in Rotterdam and he took it with him," she said as she latched onto his arm with one hand to stop him from walking, and then began to stroke the silk with the other. "You won't need it in the bath house."

  Two other women were now striding towards him. Not only was his shirt of silk, but it was shiny white so it stood out clearly like a flag of surrender. The first woman was now stroking his upper leg on the pretence of stroking the silk. It was a cruel tactic for he hadn't been with a woman for weeks and weeks. He pulled the shirt over his head and handed it to her before his flag of surrender could be held up by a flag post. Once she had the silk in hand she let go of his ... er ... elbow and he made his escape, nude, into the bath house.

  Daniel spent much of that afternoon moving between the heat of the sweat lodge and the cold clean pond behind the bath house. He was feeling much better now. For one thing, the wormwood made your blood taste bitter, so all of the fleas, lice, and ticks had given up on him, even the very tiny 'black-dot' ticks that burrowed under the skin and created itchy bumps that could last for months.

  This time as he stepped naked out of the sweat lodge, Teesa walked by him without seeming to notice him. She was being led along by the hand by a toddler, and she was being followed by Femke. At least Femke noticed him and gave him a gentle bump with her nose.

  Daniel caught up with Teesa and walked beside her along the path that led around the pools towards Oudje's house at the far edge of the island. The toddler stopped, so Teesa stopped and then turned and saw him, as if for the first time. Her eyes were big and sky blue, whi
ch was unusual because normally her eyes were turquoise.

  "Sorry," Teesa told him, "I wasn't paying attention. Oudje fed me some of the blue mushrooms and has sent me off to play with the kiddies." The blue mushrooms were magical, and prized by all seers. They allowed adults to see through the eyes of a child. The more blue dye there was in the mushroom, the stronger the effect. At one time or another, every elder in the clan had eaten them, and had felt their gentle magic.

  "Can you tell me more about the attack on Hampden?" he asked.

  "Now. No. Not now. I want to go and play with the kiddies and see the wonder of the world through their eyes. Your dreams are as far as can be from playing with kiddies. They are grownup nightmares."

  "I don't mean more visions. Just describe the one you had in more detail." He had to wait for the answer because a honey bee buzzed by and Teesa reached out so it could land on her finger.

  "It was just like all those stories you used to tell my on visits home from fighting as a pistoleer in the Netherlands. It was skirmisher tactics, just as you always described them. Ride in fast, target the leader, and then escape."

  "Describe their weapons... please."

  "I told you before. Sabres and pistols."

  "Not carbines and axes," he suggested.

  "No," Teesa said impatiently. She wanted to follow the bee. Perhaps there would be honey. She licked her lips in anticipation. Bees were gentle to those under the spell of the blue mushrooms.

  "Were they wearing steel armour or hide armour?"

  "Ugh. I don't know. It was painted. On the front was a fighting bird, like a falcon with its wings out. A black falcon."

  "All of them, the same bird?"

  "All the same."

  "Thanks, love. That helps a lot. Go on then. Go and play with the kiddies."

  "You don't think it's silly to play with the kiddies do you?" she asked, suddenly unsure of herself. "Oudje says that young girls are so eager to become grownups that they miss out on many of the wonders of childhood."

  "Go. Oudje knows what she is doing," he told her and then shivered. He was naked standing beside the pool and the air had now taken the heat out of his skin. He would sit in the sweat lodge a little longer before he did his last rinse.