Pistoleer: Roundway Down

by Smith, Skye

"No messenger. But the sheriff sent two different ones just to make sure."

  "None," the other scout replied. "This is the first time we have heard that tomorrow is the morning, or that we are to use Clifton Gate. Which one is that?"

  "But you must know Durdham Down. Clifton is the village to the west of that down," Rob explained. "The road from that village to Bristol passes over the ditch works on a temporary draw bridge, and through a gap in the earthworks. That same road takes you all the way to the bridge over the River Frome. That takes you through Frome Gate, which will be opened as soon as you reach the bridge. That puts you into the old town and most of the way to Newgate at the castle. But you don't have to remember all of that. Once you are through Clifton Gate you will have guides a'plenty."

  "I think you should come with us and tell this to the prince for yourself."

  "I can see why you think that," Rob replied, thinking fast for that could cost him his life, "but think again. No, don't turn around. Keep staring along the dyke. I need to sneak back into Bristol across that dyke without being seen by those rebel dogs. I need to confirm to the sheriff that the prince knows the plan so that he can re-arrange the shifts to make sure it is his companies that are keeping the gates in the early hours." Their silence was encouraging.

  Finally it was broken by one of the scouts, "And the sheriff didn't think to send two of you out here so that the confirmation could be carried to both leaders?"

  Rob decided to gamble. "Excellent. You have stumbled on the best answer. I will ride your horse to speak with Rupert, while you crawl back along these brambles and cross the ditch and the dyke and then run to the sheriff’s house with the confirmation.” He could see the scout's back stiffen at the thought.

  "I still think you should come with us. The prince is but a half hour's ride away. You would be back here within two hours, and by that time the poor light of dusk will help you to sneak across the ditch."

  "Right then. We'll do it your way," Rob relented, or seemed to. "Which of you will loan me his horse, cloak and hat?"

  "What's that you say?"

  "The entire dyke and all the forts will have seen you two approach and will be watching you. We cannot ride double out of here else they will send out warnings that you came here to pick up a spy. Two riders came so two riders must leave. Which of you will stay here and await my return?"

  "Oye, it was your idea," one scout said to the other. "You stay."

  "Not on your life," the other replied, and then to Rob, "Go friend. Go and warn your sheriff to be ready to open the gates at daybreak.” Each turned their horses, and without a wave goodbye trotted towards the two scouts who had stayed further out.

  Rob called out to their backs, "Make sure that the sheriff’s men know that the prince is with you. He must lead from the front so they can recognize him.” He then waited until all of the scouts were out of sight before he picked his way back to the ditch. Sam and Alex were there to greet him, but Rob called to them to keep their bloody heads down. The last thing he needed was for some other scouts to see him being greeted. He was supposed to be sneaking back in.

  * * * * *

  "Have you just lost your senses, or are you completely mad!" Governor Fiennes yelled at Captain Blake. "And you!" he pointed a finger accusingly at Colonel Popham. "You allowed it! You have invited the prince here to attack us. If he had not been told the details of the sheriff’s timing, he would have judged it a missed opportunity and ridden away. Instead, at daybreak, he will be on the other side of our half dug ditch in force. In force! Did you at least find out how many men he will lead against us?"

  "They never asked that question of me, so I thought it imprudent to ask it of them," Rob replied. "I did not want to make them suspicious." Fiennes remained silent so he continued. "Sir, this is the opportunity to capture the prince and his officers. If you do capture Rupert, then think of the lives you will save. Rupert has already ravaged the folk of a dozen towns. True not to the extent of what he did to Brentford, but ravaged just the same. We can put an end to that, here and now."

  "And do you think it is worth the risk. If there is one thing I have learned about battles from Lord General Essex, it is to tread carefully and make no surprise moves. So long as the dance of battle is orderly, then there is no mass slaughter."

  Rob did not say a word. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, he would lend words to his absolute distain for the Lord General. Thinking about Essex made him think of the military leader they had just lost. The man who should have been the Lord General. Lord Brooke. "Ask yourself what Lord Brooke would have done, given this situation?"

  "Fie on you for bringing his good name into this," Fiennes hissed.

  "I'll tell you what Lord Brooke would have done," Rob continued, despite Alex's frantic signals to stop talking. "Trap Rupert's flying army here, and then send Colonel Waller's army into Oxford to capture the king."

  "Brave words indeed, from someone free of the crushing responsibility of command. What you forget is that if I try to capture Rupert, and there is a slaughter of armies from which Rupert emerges a winner, then in his anger he may very well do to Bristol what he did to Brentford. Think on that, gentlemen, whilst I summon my other officers."

  "He's right you know," Alex told Rob. "Whatever we do, we cannot allow any of Rupert's cavalry to get behind my outer dyke, and yet our ditches are only deep enough to slow, not stop, a rider.

  "That is why we have muskets and culverins," Rob replied confidently.

  * * * * *

  "It is decided then," Fiennes confirmed to his officers. "So long as Prince Rupert and his officers lead the column towards the Clifton Gate, then our musketeers will stay hidden with their fingers off their triggers. The bridge-gate will remain down until the prince and his officers are through the gate, and then the bridge will be raised so that they cannot retreat. Only then will the musketeers show themselves and surround the prince.

  BUT! if the prince does not lead the column, then the gate will be raised ahead of time and the musketeers will show themselves to make them think twice about storming our defenses. Captain Blake, who caused all of this, will continue in his role as turncoat and stand alone in front of the bridge to welcome the prince. Do you accept this assignment Captain?"

  Rob looked around the room. Fiennes was testing him in front of the other officers. It could be a suicide mission. These thoughts and other raced through Rob's mind. "I do, sir, gladly," he said, but he could hear his own pulse in his voice.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15

  Chapter 9 - The Ruse to Catch Rupert in Bristol in March 1643

  Rob shivered despite his standing so close to one of the torches he had lit outside the drawbridge at Clifton Gate. It had taken him a good while to place the torches so that the scouts out there somewhere in the darkness of the downs could see him clearly, but not see any of the thousand men waiting behind the earthwork dyke. The smell of flaming pitch torches was being carried away from him towards Bristol by a light, pre-dawn breeze from the west. And then he smelled it.

  He sniffed and smelled it again. The unmistakable funk of a thousand horses and a thousand riders too long since their last bath. Not always, but every once in a while when the breeze eddied he could smell it. They were coming. Rupert's army was coming towards his torches. They were late. According to the sheriff’s plan they should have been through the Clifton Gate by now, so that they could reach Frome Gate before daylight put them in full view of the watch on central walls. They were fools to be late. If the plan had not already been found out, such tardiness may have foiled it in any case.

  Or perhaps they were not such fools. By being late they had a better view of this outer wall and what was awaiting them. After all, they were relying on the word of only one man, him, that this gate would be guarded by friendlies. The gloom was brightening on the eastern horizon, and also in front of him towards the downs. He coul
d just make out the column of horses coming across the downs.

  There was one long column on the road with a few outriders moving along the verge. They rode four abreast. He did some quick mentally arithmetic. If they were riding nose to tail, then at four yards per horse that meant a thousand horses four abreast would stretch a thousand yards along the road. Over half a mile. In this light, in this terrain, the end of the column should still be out of sight. He strained his eyes in the poor light. He couldn't see the end. Was that good news or bad?

  The good news was that he could clearly see a big white plume shining through the gloom. He kept staring at it. Eventually he could make out the grand floppy hat that held the plume. The kind of Spanish gentleman's hat that royalist cavalryers were so fond of. Beneath the hat he could see glints of light reflecting from polished armour. Could that be Rupert. If so, he was riding with only twenty scouts in front of him.

  Every minute the pre-dawn light was brighter and the column was closer. Every minute he felt more and more like shitting himself. Instead he stepped forward off the draw bridge into plain sight and waved them on. Waved them on impatiently, as if he was upset at their tardiness. The lead riders hurried their pace a little towards him.

  It took him until they were but twenty yards away before he recognized them as the two scouts he had given his message to. He tried to ignore them and stare beyond them. With this light and at this distance he was hoping to catch sight of the prince's face. Not that he would know the prince's face to see it, for he had never set eyes on him before. His friend Daniel had seen him. How had Daniel described him? Ah yes. To see the prince next to the king was like seeing the tallest man in Daniel's clan next to Rob Blake. He and the king were both short, whereas Rupert was as tall as Daniel's clansman Arno.

  The man with the white plume sat no taller than the riders around him. He turned instantly on a heel and ran towards the bridge. At the top of his lungs he was calling out, "Raise the bridge! Raise the bridge! It is not the prince! It is not the prince!" To his satisfaction, this end of the drawbridge began to stir. He must get over it before it was raised.

  Behind him he heard the curses of the two scouts and heard their horses hooves doing some tight maneuver. If those horses stepped onto the bridge, then despite the windlass, the gatemen would not be able to raise it. He cocked his pistols before pulling them from his belt, for in that way he could cock both at once. As his own feet touched the planking of the bridge he turned, ducked down out of sabre reach, and then pulled both his pistols from his belt, raised them, and fired at the horses faces.

  There was no missing those eager, trusting faces of those handsome, well groomed horses. Not at this range. One caught a full load of birdshot and brimstone from his dragon, while the other got a sixteen gauge pistol ball up his snout. His loads done he dived off the bridge and into the ditch, hoping that there were no sharpened stakes where he must land. To stay on the bridge would have meant sure death, either from the weight of the charging horses or from the sabres or pistols of their riders.

  Why wasn't the bridge lifting. It should be lifting. He stood up all of his five feet in height, and found out the hard way that Alex had not lied. The ditches were still not deep enough to stop a horse, for as short as he was, his head was fully above the bridge deck. A glance showed him the problem. One of the horses was dead or almost dead and his head and neck were weighing down the corner of the draw bridge.

  There was nothing he could do but to help that corner to raise, so he ran towards the horse head and put his shoulder under the decking and pushed up for all he was worth. This close to the far bank the ditch was shallower, so with his help the bridge deck rose a foot, and the horses head began to slide off it.

  But now there was another problem. The two scouts must have been talented riders because somehow they had both survived the fall from the saddles. They were now getting to their feet and hurrying towards him. He didn't know whether they meant to slash at him with their sabres, or to throw themselves onto the bridge deck to hold it down, but either would be bad news.

  And then there was a roar of muskets from the open gate and the two men dropped to the ground in agony. The edge of the bridge was three feet off the ground now, and unstoppable. The other scouts that had been leading the column turned their backs to the gate and were waving at the column to stop out of musket range. There was no sense in him staying in this ditch any longer, so he picked up his spent pistols from the muddy ditch bottom, jammed them under his belt, and then trudged his way across the ditch to the shoring on the dyke side of it.

  He called for someone, anyone of the gatemen to run out and lend him an arm to pull him out of the ditch, for there was no purchase on the steep, damp boards. No one came. Soon enough the raised bridge would close off the gate, and then it would be much harder for help to reach him. In desperation he reached up and caught hold of the rising bridge deck a few feet out from the pivot end. It began to raise him off his feet. He hung on for dear life as the angle of the deck became steeper and steeper, and all time he was being raised up with it.

  And then a strong hand reached out and grabbed one of his wrists, and another had grabbed his other wrist, and then he felt secure enough to swing his boot up and onto the great pivot, and with a tug from his saviour he was out of the ditch. His saviour hurried him out of the way of the bridge decking, for eventually it would top out and then fall the other way a few feet to rest at an angle against the dyke.

  "You are getting reckless in your old age, brother," Sam's told him, and never had the lad's voice sounded so sweet.

  "Take me to the horses," Rob told him while he tried to loosen his wrenched shoulders by circling them, and tried to catch his breath. They stepped inside the dyke and now Rob could see up and down the wall. The top of the dyke was one long line of musketeers. He called up to the men above him, "What of the column?"

  "They are retreating," was the answer back from a sergeant.

  "Be wary of them. A seeming retreat by seasoned cavalry is often just a regroup to charge."

  "Aye, and tell me more of what I've known for twenty years," the sergeant quipped back and then his face disappeared.

  Sam realized that it would be easier to lead the horses to Rob, than to half carry the exhausted Rob to the horses, so that is what he did. He even had to boost Rob into the saddle, for his brother's arms were obviously still not behaving themselves after such a stretching. Rob was, after all, pushing 44, and therefore pushing old age. That said, he now had to swing up into his own saddle and put his spurs to his horse to catch up to his brother who was already at a gallop, running along behind the dyke to the north, up Windmill Hill to the closest artillery redoubt.

  Rob tried to do a moving dismount as he pulled his horse up behind the Windmill Hill Fort, but it was a mistake. His legs were still hurting from his leap from the bridge into the ditch, and his shoulders were still hurting from hanging by his arms from the bridge. He had wanted to give the gunners in the fort a display of confidence, but instead he ended up limping towards them out of balance and out of control and he almost smashed himself against a wall.

  Two of the gunners steadied him enough to keep him on his feet, and he said Ta, and then asked them, "Why aren't you firing on the royalist cavalry?" These words he bellowed because gunners tended to be hard of hearing.

  "Cause our orders are to save our powder for repelling attacks," one of the gunners mumbled back defensively.

  Rob shook their steadying hands away and stomped up the slope and through the back gate to the gunnery platform. An officer was over with the gunners watching the royalist column ride away along the Clifton Road. Rob hurried to their side to mark how wide the range had become. He pulled the officer around by the arm and told him, "Put some low shots bouncing through the column."

  "By whose authority? You're Captain Blake aren't you. The twit who drew Rupert this close."

  "Yes I am Blake, and what use was all my good works in drawing Rupert close, i
f you didn't seize the opportunity to bruise him.?"

  "And I repeat, by whose authority?"

  "I have a pass from the governor," Rob said, fishing in his pocket.

  "Keep it. A pass to travel the defenses is a long way from an order to fire. Besides, if we use enough powder to send a ball that far, it may just keep bouncin' and blast through the village."

  "They're turning," Sam called out from beside the gunners peering over the low wall of the packed earth platform. "They're turning off the Clifton Road and are heading north."

  The officer looked down his wall towards Clifton Gate, and then said, "The colonel has seen the column's turn. He is sending companies of musketeers this way. They must be moving the musketeers along the wall to keep pace with Rupert's column, just in case Rupert turns and charges the wall."

  Sam turned to find out what Rob's reaction was, but Rob was already at the horses. He ran after him, and mounted up, but Rob was already spurring his horse towards the next fort, Colston's Fort.

  At Colston's Fort, Rob had the same reception to his order to fire the big guns as he had received at Windmill Hill, and for the same reasons, but this time he didn't bother to argue. Instead he climbed back into the saddle and made for Prior's Hill Fort, the most northerly fort. Sam had not even dismounted, so this time he didn't need to play catch up.

  Prior's Hill Fort was Rob's last chance. Rupert's column was still riding North East, in parallel to the wall, but his intentions were obvious. He was quitting these rolling hills and this plan. With a surprise attack, with the gates open, he could have handily captured Bristol. With musketeers on the walls, and the gates shut, and without his own infantry, it would just be a great waste of good men and horseflesh. Once the column was beyond Prior's Hill, it would disappear from view and press on to easier prey. Bath perhaps, or Chippenham.

  At the fort, a larger fort than the others, Rob took the time to retrieve his Dutch made spectacle looker from its scroll tube in his pack. Before pleading for the big guns to be fired, he would use the magnification of the looker to see if he could spot the seven foot tall prince. The sight of Rob leaning over the low wall of the gunnery platform with the looker to his eye immediately gathered the gunners around him. Each was either wondering what the hell it was, or wondering when they could have a turn with it.