Pistoleer: Slavers

by Smith, Skye

  Erik drew back into the shadow of a tree. The sun was just setting and the shadows were long and dark. As he watched, the front door of the house opened and the watcher stepped out and then hurried to the bush beside the gate to see what had been stashed there. Seconds later he went back inside with a small cask under his arm. He didn't go back to his post at the window.

  With a purposefully casual stride, Erik walked towards Bridge Street where the three who had run by were waiting for him and chatting to a pretty lass in a full bonnet. Young Teesa was helping them because Britta was too well-known in this town. "They took the bait,” Erik told them with a grin. "Now we must wait, but I doubt it will be a long wait."

  They all strolled towards the bridge, but only Erik and Teesa crossed it. The others stood at the crest of the bridge and signaled the punts. Erik and Teesa strolled like a couple through the streets of Cambridge until they reached Trinity College. Once there, they waited across the street from the main gate and pretended to read the political pamphlets that were posted on a wall. In truth, Teesa read them to Erik because words longer than dog and cat were slow for Erik to read.

  After a half hour they were bored and wondering where they could find a seat, but then Erik whispered to her, "They are coming out." As they watched, about twenty lads came through the gate chatting, then broke into groups of two and three and went their ways in all directions. A lone student stayed near the gate and began to talk to a master who seemed to be trying to end the talk as if he had an urgent errand elsewhere.

  "That is young Edward Conway,” Erik told her. "He waits at that gate for his escort. We don't want him to get impatient and walk home without them. Find some excuse to keep him here." The master was walking away from the lad, and the lad was looking with impatience up and down the street. Erik pushed back into the shadows and left Teesa standing alone.

  She waited while a carriage rumbled by and then she crossed the street to the college gate. Once there she did much the same as Edward was doing, looking up and down the street as if waiting for someone. After a few minutes she began to pace so that with each turn she could snatch a look at Edward. Eventually his body language told her that he was tired of waiting, but before he took the first steps towards his home, she called to him.

  "Excuse me. I'm supposed to be meeting my sister here. Have you been here long? Did you see a woman?"

  The lad swung around to face her. He was supposedly only seventeen but his face looked older. He had fine features and dark hair and dark eyes. "What did she look like?"

  Teesa was completely covered from head to foot by Britta's long cloak and full bonnet. For the clanswomen of Wellenhay, dressing for town meant covering up legs and arms and hair that usually went uncovered. Teesa removed her bonnet and flicked her long hair out from under the neck of the cloak. "Like me but a few years older."

  The lad caught his breath and was lost for words. The girl was not just pretty, there was something else about her. She seemed to glow with life. Her yellow hair was like a halo around her face. Her eyes were smiling at him, and her lips. "I, er, I. No, there has been no woman here."

  "Oh dear,” Teesa feigned worry. "It is growing dark. If she has forgotten me, then I will be standing here alone. If I leave, then she could be standing here alone. What am I to do?"

  The lad forgot about his own missing escort. He forgot about walking home without them. Indeed he forgot about everything in the entire world except for the twinkling eyes and the pouted lips in front of him.

  * * * * *

  It had been an hour since the watcher had grabbed the cask. There was still no one in the front window. One of the men who had been crying 'thief' stepped through the gate and walked up the steps to the front door to knock, and then listen. He knocked again. Nothing. He stepped around to the corner of the house and whistled a signal to the men in the punts on the river behind the house. Shadowy figures left the punts and made their way towards the back of the house. He went to join them. Erik was already there.

  "Oy, Erik, I thought you were keeping an eye on Teesa. You didn't leave her alone with the Conway lad did you?"

  "Anso relieved me. He wanted to be part of this but we couldn't let him near the house in case he was recognized." Erik turned to the men behind him. "Boost me up and I'll climb in this back window."

  Once inside, Erik unbolted the back door but as the men came through it he motioned to them to stay still while he checked the rest of the house. That said, he lit a candle lamp and then moved slowly, cautiously, through the house. The house was dark except for the large room that faced the street. He stopped breathing and crept towards it down the hallway and past the stairs. He inched an eye around the half-open door, watching for any movement. There were four men in the room but they were all snoring.

  Erik crept up the stairs. The only light came from the middle room and quietly he angled an eye around the door. Another four men, all snoring. That made eight. That was all of them. He went back downstairs, more quickly but still silently. "All accounted for, all passed out," he told his mates. "Four in the front room and four in the upstairs room that faces the Heath house."

  Daniel moved forward towards him. "One of you stay here at the back door. One of you guard the front door and warn us if any of the men in the front room move. Erik, show me this upstairs room." They climbed the stairs and entered the room. It held two beds and a long table. The men had been sitting around it playing dice, but now they were slumped across it.

  They had also been doing other things on it. The stains and smell of pine pitch was everywhere. There was an open case of tiny throwing bombs on the floor. This was where they had made the fire bomb. Daniel had brought the firebomb along, and now he put it on the table. Erik eyed it warily. "You're not going to light it are you? These men are out of it. They would be burned alive."

  "Oudje forbade our harming them, remember?" Daniel replied, a bit dismayed that Erik would think he could do such a thing. "There is our Bushmills cask. Tip out the rest so no one else can drink it." He looked around at the four men. If they had put a poison in the cask instead of a sleeping powder, this same ruse would have killed them all.

  Leaning into a corner was a short blunderbuss and two full length muskets. So he was right about the Dirty-cheeks. They were musketeers. He glanced out the window. Heath's house was about fifty feet away, and must have been built at the same time by the same builder. The equivalent window faced back at him. There was a bright light in the room.

  For a time he just watched the Heath house. A shadow alerted him to someone moving in the equivalent room so he pulled back from the window but continued to watch. It was the Dutch engineer. The room must be his office because he was unrolling a large scroll of paper along a slanted desk top. The Dutchman turned up the oil lamp so he would have more light to work by, but then left the room.

  Daniel's mind raced along a thought. Tonight was all about making it up as you went along, and right now he was making a lot of things up. "Erik, do you think you can handle that blunderbuss? Pass me one of the muskets."

  Both men checked the primes. The guns were ready to fire. As quietly as possible Daniel opened the window. "When I say so, blow out the window of that well-lit room in the next house." He waited while Erik aimed the blunderbuss, then he rested the musket on the window ledge and took careful aim. "Shoot." Before he lost his aim through the smoke belching from the blunderbuss, Daniel also pulled his trigger.

  There was a call from below. Erik was putting the blunderbuss down and looking around at the sleeping men. One coughed, one rolled, but none awoke. Daniel told him, "We are out of here. Grab the others and run for the punts. Keep to the shadows." While Erik leaped down the stairs, Daniel waited while the gunsmoke cleared enough to see the other window again. It was no longer brightly lit.

  Then there was a flicker of red and orange light. Erik’s shot had blown the window in, whereas his own shot had smashed the oil lamp. Now the papers in the office were catching fire. T
he fire in the Heath house was spreading rapidly. He wedged the spent musket under the arm of one of the sleeping men, and laid the blunderbuss across another's lap. It was time to leave.

  As he ran along the shadows towards the river and the waiting punts he yelled over and over "Fire! Fire!" but when he got closer to the punts he stopped shouting. From the front street he could hear a neighbour now yelling, "Fire!" Good. It was time to go. He balanced his way aboard a punt and sat, then hissed to the other punt, "Back to The George."

  Erik looked down at him from the stern where he was pushing off with the long pole. "What? Aren't we going to stay around and watch the fun?"

  "No, thank you. The first thing the night watch will do once they get here is to tell everyone to form a bucket brigade. They won't be letting anyone leave until the fire is doused. I really don't want to still be here when the constables arrive. They have a nasty habit of locking everyone up until the morning."

  "Right, of course. The first things you ever taught me about taking vengeance were: don't be seen; don't hang about; don't go back; and don't tell anyone."

  "Aye, and that last on is the toughest to do, especially when you are proud of what you have done."

  Anso and Teesa were the last to get back to The George, because Teesa had kept Edward Conway's interest until the cry reached them that there was a house on fire near to Magdalene College. By the time the Giant and the Faerie arrived at The George, there was a feast set out and ready to begin. That night was an evening of song and dance and food and drink and many fine stories were told, but absent from all the stories was any mention of the Irish mercenaries.

  * * * * *

  The next morning the five politicians who were making themselves comfortable in the first class coach to London went mostly unnoticed by the locals. The folks around the coach house were all too busy watching and envying a younger, taller man who was being smothered with goodbye hugs and kisses by four comely women of all ages. Even the five dour politicians enjoyed looking on.

  There was a tapping on the offside door, and a hulking great man opened it and passed some folded sheets of paper in to the politicians. "It's this morning's Advertiser,” Anso told them. It was the morning sheets that businesses bought space on to tell the town about their wares and prices. "It has an extra sheet today, because there is so much news." John Pym took the paper from him and thanked him, again, for all his help.

  "Anso,” Daniel called as he gave one last hug to Venka and then made his way toward the coach, "please take the women to visit Sarah's boy Teller, and give the lad a hug from me. Tell him I will take him to hunt venison when I get back." Anso waved his understanding and then went to stand by Sarah.

  Meanwhile, Oliver had shoved his head out another window to call, "Teesa, please keep a watchful eye on my family while I am gone." The lass danced over to him and kissed his cheek and told him not to worry.

  When everyone was finally aboard and the coach had lurched into motion through the throng of friends, family, and food vendors, only then did Pym read the Advertiser. At the bottom of the first page he found an item that he had to read out loud.

  "Eight soldiers have been charged with arson after a house owned by Lord Heath was set afire last night. No one was injured in the blaze but it destroyed two rooms and part of the roof before it was put out. Cornelius Vermuyden, a resident, lost many important papers to the blaze. He described them as survey maps that were vital to the building of drainage canals in Cambridgeshire.

  The eight men, who lived next door, are claiming to be innocent. A search of their house produced firebombs and the makings of firebombs plus an undisclosed number of guns. A younger man who lived in the same house has been detained for questioning but has not been charged. He is believed to be the son of General Conway, of the King's army.

  Sheriff John Crane was overheard saying that they are searching for evidence that the eight soldiers were Irish Papists rebels. The attack on their neighbour seemed to have been the result of a bout of hard drinking, but the Sheriff believes that the true target of their arson bombs would have been a much larger building, perhaps even the chapel at King's College."

  Pym stopped reading. "Well, what do you think of that? Irish rebels right here in Cambridge."

  The men all laughed with him, a rolling laughter that left them breathless.

  Oliver was the first to gain his breath enough to talk. "What do you think will happen to them?"

  "Tried and hung," Haselrig answered, "as they should be."

  "Nay, they will all be disappeared, and soon,” Daniel speculated.

  Pym nodded his agreement. Neither General Conway nor his king could allow the Irishmen to be questioned. If it were but one man, he would have accidentally committed suicide in his cell, but there were eight of them. A squad of soldiers would soon arrive to escort them to a safer prison, and they would never be heard of again, by anyone.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 14 - The price of coal in London in September 1640

  The first class coach from Cambridge pulled into the grand yard of the Bull and Mouth Inn just before eleven at night. It had covered the sixty-five miles to London in an astounding fifteen hours and with only three stops. The passengers poured themselves onto the paving stones and tested their wobbly legs. Grubby men crowded around them offering them anything from carts and porters, to rooms at various inns, or wenches complete with beds for the night

  At eleven at night no sane man would cross London with his luggage unless he wanted to lose it, so the six of them rented one large room at the Inn and hoped for less confusion in the morning. The room was more costly than it deserved but it was the best option, this despite pillows that crawled with lice. The pillows they stacked on an overstuffed chair that no one wished to sit in and then they took the linens out on the balcony and gave them a good shake.

  None of them slept much. They were too tired to sleep, too itchy-crawly to sleep. Whatever hopes of a long sleep they had were crushed at dawn the next morning with the sounds of teams of horses being assembled and fed in preparation for the morning coaches. For another hour they stared at the stains on the walls, wondering which were piss and which were blood, until finally they heard the arrival of the first passengers for the first coaches.

  If there were passengers assembling, then they would have come by trap. They couldn't leave the room quickly enough, and once downstairs they hired two traps and set off for Pym's new townhouse in hopes that there was bacon enough in the house to feed them all a well-deserved breakfast. They were in luck. While munching down on egg and bacon, they made plans to meet again in the evening, and afterwards the men left Pym's house to go to wherever they were staying while in London.

  Daniel shared a trap with Oliver. Oliver had decided to beg a room at his father-in-law's house in Cripplegate, and where Daniel would stay in Cheapsides was on the way. Tom Smythe's goldsmith shop in Cheapsides, tucked in behind Saint Paul's, was already open for business when he stepped down from the trap in front of it. He walked in through the front door, and hadn't even opened his mouth before Tom, on seeing the carpet bag, invited him to stay.

  Not that Tom had any choice in the matter. His wife Alice had a new baby to show off to Daniel. Daniel was the closest friend of her eldest brother Robert Blake, and he was also the man who had once saved her from a sure drowning. He was not just a welcome friend, he was like family. For the next two hours Daniel dozed in a comfortable chair with a tiny baby dozing against his chest.

  He didn't bother washing before he began his London quest. He had come to help old Cleff to claim a salvage reward for saving a collier in distress. That meant a visit to the coal docks in East London. He would definitely need a thorough wash after being to such a place. He took a trap because he was too tired to walk, and besides, the last place he wanted to get lost was the tangle of dangerous alleys on the other side of the Tower.r />
  The collier was still unloading when he reached the docks, but neither the commander nor Cleff were aboard. He was pointed towards the office of the coal market where they had gone to show their papers. A filthy lad the size of a ten year old, but who was probably in his early teens, led him to the office to earn a ha'penny. Coal dust had that effect on the health and size of the children hired to sort it. It stunted their growth and killed them young.

  As he walked across the sorting yards he was very glad that he hadn't bothered to clean up before coming, and he was very glad that he was wearing old clothes. There was a thick layer of black greasy dust on everything. Even the insides of the large, noisy office did not escape the foul stuff. He saw Cleff at the far end of the counter which separated the office clerks from the madness of those in search of permissions that would release profits.

  Cleff gave him a big smile and a big hug. The man's face was black, but what could you expect after being more than a week on a loaded collier? "Is there a problem?" Daniel asked him.

  "Not anymore,” Cleff told him. "When the owners saw the salvage contract that we all signed, they refused to honor it. Our cargo is fetching half again as much as the cargos landed just four days ago. Peterson was staying out of it, and I was losing the arguement. That was until I offered Peterson a tenth of whatever I was paid. That is double what the owners will be paying him."

  "So why is he over there waving his hands about?"

  "Just making a show of it for the sake of the owners. The cargo can't leave the dock until all that is owed on it is paid in full. Once Peterson showed the clerks our contract, they dug their heels in and demanded that I be paid out. I'm glad you arrived though, for I am carrying a fortune under my cloak and I don't fancy wandering the alleys of dock lands with just the lad as company."