by Smith, Skye
"Of course."
"Will you come and visit me tomorrow in Cripplegate?"
"I will."
"Good. I have something to show you and someone for you to meet. After breakfast would be best, after the old man has gone off to make his factory workers miserable."
* * * * *
"It has been well kept up." Daniel walked slowly through the rooms of the townhouse with Oliver. "Do you think Betty will be happy to move back to London, especially to a house so close to her parents?"
"Hmm, perhaps not happy, but fulfilled. Her parents are getting old and she is a dutiful daughter. In Puritan households it is the duty of the youngest daughter to take care of the aging mother."
"Is that a duty, or just the way it works out because there is no dowry left over to attract a good husband for the youngest?"
Oliver ignored the barb. "As soon as Parliament is officially recalled, I will send for her and the children. They can stay at her parents' house while she makes up her mind." They walked towards a man of Oliver's age and attire who was standing on the staircase waiting to show them upstairs. He was introduced only as 'Edward', and was the owner of the house. Daniel was curious as to why an obviously much-loved house was being sold, so he asked.
"It was my brother's house," Edward replied. "He sold it to me for a shilling the day before he was arrested by the archbishop. We are Independents, you see, and my brother was a pamphleteer who was speaking out against the way the Church of England is sliding back towards the Papist ways. "
"Was? You said 'was'." Daniel put his hand on the man's shoulder. "I am so sorry."
"I meant, was a pamphleteer. He still lives. He was transported to the Plymouth colony in New England. He is now happily living in a commune of Brownists. The rest of us have decided to join him there rather than have a sea between us."
"You have missed the traveling season. No ship will take you this late in the year."
"This we know." For the first time the owner took a hard look at Mr. Cromwell's friend. He had the face of a man who had stared into storms at sea. "You are a seafarer, then? All summer we tried to find a ship and a captain to take us, but with all the changes in trade routes since the Spanish fleet was captured by the Dutch, well ..."
"Too expensive?" Daniel interrupted. The man shook his head.
"The sale of our houses will provide coin enough. No, it was that we couldn't find a ship with a good bottom that had a captain we trusted not to throw us overboard as soon as England was over the horizon."
"Daniel has a ship,” Oliver announced. "And he is very proud of her. He is also thinking about moving his folk to the New World."
"Do tell. To which colony?"
"Therein lies my problem,” Daniel replied. "We don't know. We wish to escape the evermore brutal winters on the North Sea Coast, so we are asking other seafarers about places with softer climates. There seems to be a lack of trustworthy information. Since we now have a ship that can make the crossing, I have decided that this spring I will go and explore the New World for myself. Only once we decide on a place, will I risk taking our women and beasts."
"My brother raves about Plymouth. It is in Massachusetts, you know."
"And my Dutch friends rave about New Amsterdam, which is further south, but they say that winters can be brutal there, too. It would be foolish of us to up roots and move, and not to escape brutal winters."
"Ah, then you are thinking of the Caribbean, the sugar islands?"
"My Dutch friends say that the sun there is too strong for those of us with fair eyes. All of my people are fair. Perhaps somewhere halfway between the Caribbean and New Amsterdam. An island with water and a good port and a long growing season."
"Ahh, yet another captain in search of paradise. The Bible says that you must look inside to ..."
"Umm, you were going to show us the upstairs,” Oliver interrupted the quotation. Once a Brownists began quoting the Bible, it was difficult to get him to stop.
"Oh, of course, please wander at your will, Mr. Cromwell. I have things to discuss with your friend." He waited until the older man was at the top of the stairs and then he turned to the young captain. "You could pay for your journey of exploration by carrying my folk to Plymouth. Please, oh please, think about it. It is a plan that could serve us both well."
"This winter will be longer than the last, and the king is making trouble across his four kingdoms, so it would be foolish for us to commit to such a plan until we can smell the coming of spring. For one thing, you are a Brownist and Archbishop Laud has a new home in Saint Paul’s for his Inquisitors. You may be transported before my ship can take you."
"Laud!" the man punched the air with the small Bible in his hand, "that is one fat neck I would slit, given half the chance."
"Your Bible forbids killing."
"It forbids murder, not killing. There is a difference, but you are right, and I ask you to forgive my anger. Are you a Puritan?"
"Frisian Anabaptist, of the old way."
"So a communist?"
"Yes,” Daniel replied, hoping that Oliver would return soon and save him from this zealot. "Almost everything in our village is communal, including our ships."
"Then do not move to a city, for they seduce the innocent into sinning. It is only in communes that are close to the soil that you can live according to the teachings of King Jesus."
"Our elders have said the same thing for a hundred generations. Umm, please excuse me, but Oliver asked me to view the house with him. I must join him upstairs." At the top of the stairs he turned and called back, "Before the Inquisitors move into Saint Paul's you should go there and look at the wonder that Inigo Jones has created. It is beautiful. They say his fourteen classic columns have captured the look and grandeur of a Roman Temple and are worthy of a cathedral in Rome." As he spoke he saw the man's cheeks flame in anger.
Oliver had heard the words spoken about Inigo and he scolded Daniel for teasing the man. "A Brownist is part Lollard and part Anabaptist. He believes that every church should be run for the congregation by the congregation and that no one and nothing should stand between a man and his God. That is why Laud suppresses them, and why he has recalled his Inquisitors to judge them.
The Brownists do not just attack Laud's bishops as unnecessary, but the cathedrals, the priesthood, the altars, the statues, the paintings, the gold, the liturgies and the ceremonies. They decry the theology of Laud's churches, but more frightening to Laud is that they decry the financial and political power of the church."
* * * * *
The baby smiled at him and drooled down his bib and then filled his smile with his tiny hand. The little tyke was so engaging, even at this age. Mum was busy in the kitchen getting ready to feed the adults now that the baby was finished with her tit. Daniel shifted the tyke into the crook of his arm and used a finger to pull the tiny fist away from the tiny mouth. Immediately there was milky gack all over his sleeve.
He was enjoying his time in London. Between staying at Henry's house and visiting this goldsmith's shop he was getting lots and lots of baby time almost every day. It was a time as far removed as could be from the grisly battlefield at Newbourne, or from the day to day worries of running a ship or a village. Between Cleff and Anso the village and the ships were in good hands. Those were the men who would run the place while he and the Swift were exploring the New World.
Out in the shop he could hear Tom as he showed his golden fancies to the two stuffy but wealthy women who had come into his shop almost a half-hour ago. Oh, how he hoped that they bought one of Tom's creations. The man had put his heart and soul into them. Working in silver was a craft, but working in gold was an art, and all artists thirsted for praise.
Pounding. Some one was pounding on the front door. Tom would have securely locked it behind the women if he were showing them golden fancies. Alice came to him, wiping her hands on her apron before she snatched the baby from his grasp. Daniel grabbed his wheel-lock pistol off the sideboard
and ran through to the shop. Tom was calming the two women and assuring them that the door was stout and the windows barred. Meanwhile, he was retrieving his fancies from around their wrists and throats and shoving those and the ones on the display table into his pocket.
"Quickly, open up, it's me!" The voice came from the face peering through the bars on the windows. It was Oliver. Daniel stepped to the door, unbolted it and swung it just wide enough to let Oliver in, while keeping one foot lodged behind to prevent it being opened further. Such panic and haste was not like Oliver. He friend squeezed through and then the door was shut and bolted.
"Quickly, you must take your display out of the window and shutter and lock everything down,” Oliver spoke out between pants. "There is a mob coming down Cheapsides. Every Separatist and Independent and Brownist in the city is heading towards Saint Paul's and they are carrying hammers and wrecking bars. Quickly now!"
Alice came into the shop from the back and told the two women to follow her upstairs where they would be safe. The hooded cloaks that these women wore were worth more than her entire wardrobe. One of the expensive women called to Tom. "Please tell my driver that we will stay inside and that he should go, but return after the mob has passed." Then she scurried after the shopwoman who was carrying the sweetest of babies.
Tom was busy snatching up everything in the window, and then closing the inside shutters, so it fell to Daniel to call out to the driver. The man didn't need to be told twice and he hurried his horse forward. Once back inside, and with the ground floor locked up tight, there was nothing to do and nothing to see, so the three men followed the women upstairs.
The shop front, the workshop and the back door to the small yard and the kitchen shed were all on the ground floor. One floor up was the dining-room-cum-sitting-room which was the largest space in the house. It had two large windows facing down onto the street. They could hear the mob now, the dull roar of many voices urging each other on to keep their courage from waning. As it passed the shop they could see that yes, it was a mob, but it was not out of control. They weren't bullying folk or smashing things despite their obvious anger.
"What started this? Do you know?" Tom asked Oliver as he took the baby from Alice so that she could serve the fine ladies some cake and some sipping cacaolait. Meanwhile the ladies were pressing their faces to the window trying to look up and down the street.
"Laud's men have been rounding up the Brownist leaders for questioning, yet again," Oliver replied, "but this time the High Commission is in session in Saint Paul's, so there are fears that the prisoners will be tortured."
"Laud is a righteous ass!" one of the ladies pronounced. "First he clears the sheds and the barrows in a swath around the portico of Saint Paul’s, and then he forces most of the shops at this end of Cheapside to close. He closed down my draper. He has brought this upon himself."
The other lady agreed. "He lives in London, for God's sake. Surely he can gauge the temper of the city. My husband has threatened to send my children and I to the country if there is any more violence. Impossible. The man is impossible."
Tom didn't know if she was insulting Laud or her husband. Considering the age of the woman it was probably both, for her husband would have had a string of mistresses by now. He sat himself and the babe on the cushioned bench he had made by widening the window ledge, and balanced the baby while he opened the window to stick his head out.
"What's happening?" he yelled out to the trailing edge of the mob below.
"Laud has declared," a precise voice called back from the street, "that all fines levied by his Inquisitors will go to the restoration of his temple. He means to squeeze us to pay for a building that offends our King Jesus. We are going to teach him a lesson." This was not a mob of porters and apprentices and fishwives like the one that had broken the gates at the coal yards. These men were educated.
Oliver looked towards Daniel and lifted an eye brow. "The roof?"
They moved as one and began climbing the two more flights of stairs to reach the attic where there was a hatch to access the roof. Tom yelled up to them, "Be careful. The roof is old. Don't put your foot through it."
They gingerly stepped across from rafter to rafter until they reached the hatch, and then the unbolted it and ever so carefully crawled out into what passed for fresh air in smoky old London. Then, one at a time on all fours they crawled to chimney where the roof would be the strongest and then crawled as high up the slope as their fear of falling would allow them. From here they had a view across the rooftops and chimney pots all around.
The mob had surrounded Saint Paul's and men were at every door using their hammers and bars, trying to break through any or all of them. A mob does not move on cat's paws so the church men had plenty of warning of the trouble coming their way, and had locked the cathedral down tight.
In their frustration at being locked out, other men were venting their anger against the workers' scaffolding that still surrounded half of the massive building. Inigo's rebuilding of the facade was only three-quarters done. They heard a smashing sound so loud that it echoed down Cheapside. The mob was hurling the facing stones that were stacked inside the scaffolding through the brand new stained-glass windows.
Perhaps their tools had beaten the small door facing Cheapside, or perhaps someone inside had opened it out of fear that the mob were so riled that they were capable of setting fire to it. Whatever the case, a cheer went up and the mob began to squeeze through the door.
"I don't know whether to hope that the Inquisitors are inside the chapel or safe at their homes,” Daniel told Oliver. "I don't like mob violence. Once it begins, it always goes too far."
"Not me," Oliver replied, "I hope that Laud is with the Inquisitors inside and that the mob lynches them all." Daniel looked at him in shock. Why was it that the most devout of the Bible thumpers always seemed to have a deeply-hidden vicious streak?
Now that the mob was inside, there was nothing much to see from the roof. The mob seemed to have settled down, and there was no sign of men being dragged from through the doors with ropes around their necks. They went back inside to see if the cacaolait was still hot.
Tom looked up at them from his seat by the window. "Don't tell me that the crashing was the stained glass." From the look on their faces he knew the truth. "Oh, poor Inigo! The restoration of Saint Paul's was his masterpiece. The largest work of art imaginable. He will be devastated."
"Then Master Jones should have used his talents to design schools and hospitals,” Oliver snapped back. "How can he countenance wasting a fortune to restore that monstrous Papist temple?"
Alice was serving the two ladies cacaolait in her finest cups, her only two fine cups. Though the women did not comment on the cups, for in their homes they likely used better for every day use, they both moaned at the richness of the cacao. "Oh, my dear!" one of them exclaimed, "this is delicious. You must give me your recipe."
"Uh, not today madam,” Alice replied softly, "for the excitement has put me in a muddle. Perhaps when you return with your friends to our shop." There was only a faintly crafty glint to her smile.
The woman looked back at her and a smile stole some years from her own face. "Of course my dear, but next time please don't feel obliged to arrange for a mob to trap us in your shop. Your husband has a deft hand and an eye for elegant simplicity, which is more than enough to hold our interest."
It was two more hours before the driver and trap came back to fetch the women. The driver told them that all was quiet at the cathedral. Apparently the mob had smashed some crucifixes and stolen some papers and burned some books, but the Inquisitors had been left shaken but otherwise unharmed.
After the ladies had left, Daniel pulled Oliver to one side and accused him, "You know more about this than you are telling. Was that mob play acting their rage? Was this more of your Reform party's work?"
Oliver grinned. "They were play acting, yes. They wanted no violence so they pretended the rage to scare everyone away.
They were after the paper files of the High Commission, and nothing more. Yesterday the files were moved into Saint Paul's for use by the court, and today they are in the hands of the people they accuse. Hopefully that will completely geld the court process, yet without needing to lynch the Inquisitors."
"They will just move the court and reconvene."
"Yes, but still without their files. This does not end at Saint Paul’s, you know. From now on wherever the archbishop's court choose to meet, there will be a mob waiting for them."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 16 - Collaring a King in London in November 1640
"It's chilly in here,” Daniel told Mary who was wrapped in a quilt and rocking in a chair with her baby. "Let me build you a fire."
"No!" she answered sharply. It was a cross between a command and a panic. Realizing she had been too sharp with her friend, she explained. "It is All Hallows. The hearths must stay cold until well past midnight, and then they must be lit with a flame from a Hallows bonfire."
He smirked. Christians were so superstitious. In his own village there would be feasting to celebrate the harvest being in and the animals brought home from grazing the common. Those who had been keeping the crops safe from animals, and the herds safe from poachers would give up their summer shelters and return to live in the village.
During the next week all the huts of Wellenhay would be transformed in readiness for the icy North East winds of winter. Mostly this meant adding some fresh reeds to the roof thatch, and wrapping the North and East walls in retired sail duek. To stay warm over a Fens winter one had to stay dry and out of the icy winds. The oiled linen duek sailcloth lasted only three or four years before the threads of it were no longer strong enough to hold a wind and push a ship, but it was still good enough to keep the wet and the wind out of a wall, especially if it was white washed with chalk.
