But Hopton had stepped aside now, moved on.
Leaving the virtual fiefdom in the hands of His Highness Prince Rupert.
And Morrison had history with Rupert. None of it good.
*************************
Algernon Starling had been Gilbert Morrison’s eyes ears and living ledger for more years than he cared to remember, noting every single button, every single bullet his master had supplied to the thriving garrison.
Item: A dozen dragoon saddles @ seven shillings
Item: with pistol, powder, ball and holster @ ten shillings.
Item: Three score pikeman’s tucks with crossguard, scabbard and leather baldrick @ six shillings.
Item: Three gross plain shirts…
Page after page, pound after pound, shilling after shilling.
Sir Gilbert nodded, agile mind calculating his margins to the nearest happenny.
“What about those remounts? They’ll want straw and oats,” Sir Gilbert wondered aloud, watching some idiot dragoon measure his length alongside a prancing piebald.
One of Rupert’s new cavalry troops being put through their paces by a one-legged veteran left over from the siege.
God help them if they ever had to face these wondrous Ironsides they had heard so much about. Rumour had it they had triumphed in the Midlands. Beaten the King’s army into ignominious surrender. And here was Rupert, left to kick his heels in Bristol.
Make of that what you will.
The castle authorities were denying it of course. Claiming the battle had been more of a draw, all things considered. Well they would wouldn’t they?
Morrison had put out feelers of his own, trying to gauge the threat from this New Model Army.
Reports seemed hopelessly muddled. They were by sworn account a gang of drunks and wasters. By another God’s own crusaders come to scour the land. Paying good coin for every morsel.
The merchant stroked his chin, calculating the time he might have left. Especially with that bastard Rupert in charge. No amount of saucy hyperbole would shift that iron-arsed Saracen. The times were changing, he sensed it might not be long until he was forced out all over again.
This time though, he had made sure to liquidise his assets. Good coin rather than notes and promises and warehouses stacked with goods. Readily transportable, he could be gone, with his fortune, in an hour. Aye, by land or sea.
The rest of his income had been invested into land. He’d picked up acre upon acre of north Somerset – farms and small estates. Grand houses to peasant hovels. Not as easily transported, land. Not when you owned half the damned county.
Sir Gilbert had turned his own fields over to rearing sheep and cattle. Bristol relied on his corn, wheat and peas. He brewed their beer in his old home and bred good horses on his latest acquisition - Kilmersden Hall.
What a deeply satisfying piece of business that had been, taking over the estate from his departed rival Ramsay.
That idealistic fool. Stuffed full of honour and family pride. Well he was dead and so were his family. And Sir Gilbert Morrison wasn’t about to be gobbled up in the same way.
Widow Ramsay, well, the old girl hadn’t been able to bear it. She had slowly lost her mind. Her son, daughter and her husband lost to the war. In no particular order.
It would have been a shame to see the old place go to a stranger.
He had left Jamie, his own poor son returned from the wars, in nominal charge of the place. All he had to do was ensure the supplies were gathered up and dispatched every week. Even that simple-minded wastrel could manage that.
A fifteen mile trip to Bristol’s market and hearths.
And every pound accounted for.
“It’s costing us more to ship in horseflesh from Ireland than we’re getting from the garrison,” Starling observed.
Couldn’t be helped. Morrison sensed he wasn’t the most popular tradesman showing his face up at the castle. Supplying good remounts for Hopton’s green cavalry squadrons made him practically indispensable. Until Rupert had appeared on the scene.
Morrison had also trodden a very fine line between the warring parties down the years.
Aye. And if Rupert or the New bloody Model got much closer he might need to change course again.
“We can live with that, so long as they pay ready coin for everything else,” Morrison countered.
Starling’s wrinkled features soured all over again.
“We ought to go west. Somerset, Devon.”
“Goring’s been all over the south west - he’s had every broke back nag between here and Cornwall,” Morrison argued. “We’re better off paying passage for Irish.”
Horses and men. Irish or Welsh, the garrison was shipping them in as fast as they could find the boats to carry them.
“What else have you got there?” Morrison wondered, watching Starling re-arrange his ledgers and lists.
“Letters. From Rupert’s secretary - about the quality of our muskets.”
“A poor workman always blames his tools,” Morrison observed. Starling raised his eyebrows. Well they had no shortage of those around Bristol’s bustling wharves and warehouses.
“Apparently one blew up - barrel split.”
“Must have crept through our quality controls.”
“The fellow lost three fingers.”
“Well he can always join the pike block,” Morrison snapped.
“And Rupert’s complaining about the breastplates.”
“What now?”
“He says they’re not pistol proof.”
“How does he know?”
“He shot a pistol straight through one,” Starling read aloud.
Morrison snorted.
“Well what does he expect? We go making breastplates an inch thick they aren’t going to be able to walk let alone mount a horse are they?”
Starling shrugged, trying to unravel Morrison’s labyrinthine theories of warfare.
“And besides, if there’s a hole in it, least you know not to be such a damn fool the next time, don’t you?”
“If you say so sir.”
“I do say so sir. I didn’t live through the siege of Gloucester wearing inch thick armour, did I? Well did I?”
“No sir.”
He didn’t live through the siege at all, as far as Starling knew. Camped out at Barton Green for the duration and let that rogue Nybb run his regiment.
Luckily for Bristol Nybb had taken himself off to the West for now - fallen in with that scoundrel Grenville down around Plymouth. Good riddance to them.
In truth Prince Maurice hadn’t had any more success out west than he had outside Gloucester.
Half a dozen small towns were still holding out. Lyme, Plymouth, Weymouth, Poole, Taunton.
No wonder the King had so many men out west - not doing an awful lot of anything save looting and upsetting the locals.
And they were getting very uppity, according to the latest reports Morrison had received from his outlying agents and factors. Clubmen everywhere.
If you try and steal our cattle, be assured we’ll give you battle.
Clever slogan, but it wasn’t suited to being sewn on to a flag. You’d not read that across a damned battlefield. They claimed total neutrality, denied they favoured either party.
Just don’t try and lift their horses, stock or crops.
Sir Gilbert had put out feelers, identified a few local ringleaders in case he needed additional allies beyond the walls. Well you couldn’t be too careful. Good friends didn’t grow from seed, after all.
“We’ve put ten thousand men into the field, Rupert can’t argue with that, whatever the quality of the damned muskets,” Morrison scoffed. Starling sighed, turned over his papers.
“There is another, more curious message.” Morrison glanced sideways as Starling extracted another scroll from his bundle.
“From Marlborough.”
“Marlborough? Who do we know up there? That rogue with the underweight pigs? He won’t get anothe
r penny from me,” Morrison declared.
“No. Rather more serious. A Master Nathaniel Eagleton. Commissioner to Parliament.”
Morrison frowned.
“Parliament?” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. You never knew who could be ear-wigging around the wharves. Spies everywhere. From the castle, from Hopton, from Prince Robber Rupert. Starling passed the note over.
“How on earth did we get it?” Wouldn’t do for the nobs in the castle to discover he had been in correspondence with the enemy.
“It didn’t go through official channels. It was carried by footpost to the stage at Marshfield.”
Marshfield? The village was one of Morrison’s main collection points outside Bath. An outlying station, gathering in supplies from the surrounding countryside for dispatch on down the London road to Bath and Bristol.
“How did the rogues know to drop it there?”
Starling hadn’t a clue.
He watched Sir Gilbert’s thick fingers peel the note apart. Gimlet eyes scanned the spidery handwriting.
“God’s bones.”
“Good news sir?” Starling inquired.
“Bella’s been hurt. Badly. Caught up in the battle at...Naseby? Where on God’s green earth is that? Hugo...her husband?” His gimlet eyes widened. “Missing believed fallen in the late action.”
So the sorry wastrel had gone and got himself killed. A pang of remorse quickly packed away beneath his finely cut doublet. Well meaning lad. But poor material for a son-in-law.
Married her had he? So Bella, his beautiful Bella, in widow’s weeds. Or out of them, if he had his way. Get her back on the marriage circuit. A fine catch, always had been.
“They’re coming here,” he exclaimed.
“Here? Bristol?”
“No. Eagleton...some snivelling clerk,” Starling - King of snivelling clerks everywhere, raised his chin a notch.
“Has dispatched her West - to take the waters at Bath.” He shook his head wonderingly.
He had to hand it to Bella. She could talk her way out of anything. How had she persuaded some Parliamentary penpusher to supply her with a pass to carry her half way across the country?
“He wants it ratified. By Hopton. A pass for a coach and her escort.” Escort? His lips moved as he digested the rest of the rambling note.
Bella Telling nee Morrison and diverse bodies?
Morrison read the note aloud:
“Albeit I am instructed and by duty bound by my masters at Whitehall to cease and desist all accommodations relating to the exchange of prisoners, whether they be of the nobility or common soldiery, common courtesy could not countenance the extension of such an instruction towards the corporeal remains of three Somerset gentlemen lately slain at Naseby field.
“Therefore, be so good as to accept the bodies of Hardington Harrigan, knight, Flavius Mitchell, colonel of horse, and Edward Barnard, captain of horse, with all due commiserations from your obedient servant, Eagleton, commissioner of Parliament.”
So Bella was on her way to Bath, surviving travelling companion to a waggon load of damned corpses?
“God’s bones,” he repeated, momentarily at a loss.
There was something amiss here, for all the sealing wax and stamps.
Morrison shook his head, calculating the odds of ever persuading the notoriously short-fused Rupert to sign such a note – Royalist corpses or no.
And yet...Eagleton wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know. From the little he had managed to gather from his sources up north, it appeared all the usual favours and courtesies had been set to one side. There would be no prisoner exchanges, not this time.
Fine ladies would not be favoured, delivered safely across the lines to be reunited with concerned husbands from the opposite party.
Not this time.
The very fact Parliament had determined to cut off its own nose to spite its face suggested a horrible, iron-willed purpose not always evident in their previous endeavours.
Roundhead officers taken in the summer campaigns would languish in Royalist prisons – there were plenty more where they came from after all.
Parliament could find new officers but the king couldn’t. Not without importing more chinless wonders from Ireland.
He cursed under his breath. According to the note they were already on their way. When had it been written, how long had it taken to get here?
He re-read the letter - taking in the scrawled notes written sideways in the margins.
“I don’t believe it. He’s sending Sparrow here and all - to marry poor Mary!”
Starling raised an eyebrow in astonishment, digesting this unexpected intelligence.
Young Mary Keziah had been left with babe in arms alright. Well, fine lad now. Toddling about with a great mop of brown curls. Even Starling would be forced to admit he was a bonny enough child. Sir Gilbert had always been fond of the girl, and had kindly kept her on as housekeeper despite her disgrace.
“To make an honest woman of her! Our Mary,” he exclaimed with a shake of his head. “Better late than never, I suppose.”
“Why would the commissioner be bothered about some old...these wayward souls,” Starling corrected himself. His master eyed him.
“Who knows what Bella’s cooked up now. You recall the mess with that reptile Clavincale?”
Starling was hardly likely to forget the young flirtgill’s outrageous anabasis around Gloucestershire?
Clavincale, a fine Royalist Lordling, no less, had ended up dead in some bar-room brawl. Most of the details had been hushed up. They hadn’t really gotten to the bottom of the sorry tale but Bella hadn’t come out of it smelling of roses, that was for sure.
And hadn’t Rupert been involved in that damned mess as well, Morrison remembered with a start.
The complications...Morrison closed his mind against the damned complications.
“He wants us to provide a pass, so we can meet up in Bath without Sparrow and the escort being shot as spies.”
“We’ve a garrison in Bath,” Starling pointed out.
“I know that Starling, we supply the greedy buggers. But I can’t go trolling in there with a coach and four entertaining outcasts from Parliament’s army!”
“Indeed not sir.”
“Not without a pass at any rate.”
*************************
Morrison had kept a wary watch on the castle since before dawn, observing Rupert ride out of the portcullis at the head of a gang of buff coated bodyguards. Glorious reds and blues, taffeta scarves. Lobster pot helmets or wide brimmed hats. Paired pistols. The ensign was toting Rupert’s personal guidon.
The Prince had stared ahead, a mechanical man filled with nuts and bolts and levers and screws rather than proper flesh and bone, Morrison wouldn’t wonder.
He had given the rogues a few moments and then proceeded over the drawbridge and into Bristol castle.
The moat, usually choked with rubbish, had been cleared. The battlements – shot riddled and shattered during the old storm – had been repaired. The approaches to the keep had been levelled, all the odd cottages and temporary shelters torn down to create better fields of fire for his guns.
Rupert was nothing if not thorough, Morrison observed with a stab of resentment.
Damn his iron arse.
He doffed his hat and strode in to the guardhouse with all the bluster he could muster.
*************************
“His Highness Prince Rupert is not presently available,” Scipio Porthcurn repeated, rolling his eyes for emphasis. Damn the fellow, he didn’t seem to be hearing properly. Not with both ears anyway.
“Oh ho, he’ll see me,” Sir Gilbert declared, flicking his wrist for emphasis.
Porthcurn, but lately arrived at Bristol with a fresh draft of Cornish foot, took a deep breath, trying to keep his frayed temper in check. He had spent years fighting on the West coast and wasn’t used to dealing with rear echelon stallions like the overly familiar merchant
. But Rupert was away on the works and Porthcurn had drawn the duty.
The merchant rolled his eyes as if he could conjour the governor from the guard room. Tightly curled grey hair, lively eye and ready tongue, he looked like an actor from some troupe of travelling players, well used to delivering speeches.
Pompous ape.
“His Highness is attending to...”
“Did your servant not catch my name? Morrison? The governor and I are like this,” he crossed two sausage fingers, held them up as close as he dared to the black-maned rogue across the desk.
“I have been summoned by the Governor to...”
“I have no indication you have been summoned,” Porthcurn answered. “Not on my watch.”
“Ah well there you are then. Didn’t think I knew the face. New are you? Just in from over the water?”
Porthcurn chuckled at the intruder’s feigned nonchalance. It was either laugh or run the bastard through. He had balls, he would have to give him that.
Sir Gilbert flourished a scrap of paper. Porthcurn reached for it but the merchant snatched it closer, began to read it out loud.
“Kindly present yourself at your earliest convenience to discuss the aforementioned matters. There. Plain as your beard sir. I am to report to the Governor.”
Porthcurn raised his chin, trying to read the scrawled note. Morrison folded it back up, briskly efficicent.
“From His Highness Prince Rupert?”
“I just said so didn’t I? A matter of the utmost importance, crucial to the King’s war efforts, in which I, it must be admitted, play no small part.”
Porthcurn frowned.
“The Prince is inspecting the defences at Royal Fort. He won’t be back before supper.”
“Royal Fort? And where do you imagine the stone has come from to build that? Three hundredweight of lime, gabions by the dozen? Morrisons.” Sir Gilbert clicked his fingers in front of the truculent Cornishman’s nose.
Porthcurn balled his fists, greviously provoked and sorely tempted to rip the fingers from those fat paws.
Black Tom's Red Army Page 26
