Pistoleer: Roundway Down

by Smith, Skye

  On his plateau he could have slept soundly, but now he was forced to spend the night crouched in some damp bushes afraid that at any moment Millie would bray out to other horses and give him away. He was stuck here for the night, and in tomorrow’s daylight he would likely be captured. Millie was fifty paces away through the woods, but she wasn't stirring so he settled in to see if he could hear any good gossip. The infantrymen were talking, but no matter how he strained his ears he couldn't quite make out the words.

  They must be speaking Cornish. Cornish was not one of his languages, and eventually he dozed off with the effort of trying to understand anything at all. He slept fitfully in discomfort, coming in and out of dreams, and eventually he dreamed that he could actually understand what they were saying.

  "Dead? Ya hear dat?" came a heavily accented voice. It was the accent that made him wonder if it was a dream. If they were speaking Cornish, and if in his dream he was understanding Cornish, then there would be no accent, would there? What a fool he was to try to apply logic to a dream. He shook himself and thought again. Yes, the accent proved that they were Cornish voices speaking English, sort of. A pinch on his own arm proved that he wasn't dreaming.

  "Ere dat lads? Ole Grenville is dead. That crack on the 'ead did for 'im."

  "Well den fuck this lark," said another. "Bloody Hopton ain't got no respect for our lives. Yesterday he wasted them, 'e did. I didn't sign on to be slaughtered. I signed on for booty. If'n Grenville's out'a it, then so am I. I'm goin' home. Oo's wi me?"

  There was a chorus of "Ayes!" and one "But that's desertion, in't it?"

  "Fuckin' nobs 'ave deserted already. Didn't even finish the battle, did dey? Eh? Eh? Dey refused Hopton's order to charge the rebels after our lot 'ad done all the 'ard work 'o takin' the hillcrest, and lost a quarter o' us takin' it. Effin' nobs, effin' king's prancers. By now dey'll've shagged their way back ta Oxford."

  Another voice sounded like it was telling a naughty secret, to grunts of laughter. Then, "Pass de word to de odher companies. Tell 'em ta slip away in de night and make fer Cornwall. Tell 'em tonight afore yon General Waller can cut we off."

  The voices continued, but there were fewer of them, and then the voices were from further away, and then silence. Daniel had been listening intensely with his eyes closed. Now he nodded off.

  * * * * *

  Daniel woke to the sound of thumping. The sun had been up for some time, but it was behind a heavy grey cloud that churned about just above church tower. He rolled over from being curled in a fetal position so he could put his knees under him, and then listened again. Was it thunder? No, there it was again. A thumping, as if someone were dropping a barrel or a box onto a wooden floor. He crept through the bushes the twenty paces to where the Cornishmen had been camped. They were no longer there.

  Without leaving the last clump of brambles, he looked out towards the rectory on the other side of the road, but then the thumping came again, this time from the right. He dared a peek out of the bushes. Further east along the road there were two carts pulled up on the verge. From the looks of the kegs they carried, their load was gunpowder. Men were carrying trunks out from the rectory to the carts, and heaving them aboard. All together there were ten or a dozen men with the two carts.

  The sight brought another's words into Daniel's mind. The words of the wronged woman at Colerne with the baby with no ear lobes. She had told him of two powder carts with an escort of ten. He looked for a hat with a purple plume. Yes, he was there. This thought hung heavy on his mind as he backtracked to his bed roll and then went to find Millie. Thankfully she was still being quiet. He had tied her in this damp clearing in the bushes because there was a deep puddle for her to drink from. Thirsty horses tend to complain a lot. While patting her neck assuringly with one hand, he explored one of his saddle bags with the other. There they were. The two grenados that he had primed yesterday at Colerne. Was that only yesterday?

  Again he visited the Cornish troop's campsite and from the edge of the brambles stared out at their cooking fire. The coals were still glowing. Again he pushed his head out of the bushes and looked up the road. The powder carts were still there but the loading seemed to have finished for the men were leaning against the far cart, the front cart, and growling at each other in the way of hard-done-by soldiers. The plan in his mind was so risky, so stupid, that he could not believe he was even considering it. Without doting any longer on the idiocy of it, he checked both primes of his double barreled dragon, cocked the dragon dog, and put the dog safety in place. He must be insane.

  After a deep breath and on hands and knees, he left the cover of the brambles and moved close to the smouldering embers. He held the fuses of both grenados against the embers and blew on them until they were lit. The stock, uncut fuses should burn for a minute or so, which wasn't a lot of time in the great scheme of things, but long enough that he didn't have to dash to the nearest cart and thereby bring attention to himself. Against all of the instincts that were screaming at him to throw them and run, he walked sedately towards the closest of the carts as if he belonged, and then tenderly placed the two grenados amongst the powder kegs, and then turned to sprint back to the safety of the bushes.

  "You there!" a voice called out from the direction of the buildings. "What are you doing near my trunks?" The call was from an officer who was crossing the road from the rectory to the carts.

  Daniel didn't have time for idle chit chat. In perhaps a half a minute the grenados would go off, and then a second later a few kegs of powder, and then all of them. Despite being out of effective range, he pulled his dragon out from under his belt and shot his load of dragon's breath at the officer, and then ran for the bushes. The officer cried out in agony, and held his hands to his eyes and turned and stumbled blindly back towards the rectory. Behind Daniel one of the men at the carts was yelling something, but he wasn't paying attention. All of his attention was on diving through the bushes and reaching Millie before the grenados went off.

  * * * * *

  The hot gust of wind hit Daniel and Millie a split second before the thunderous roar, but was followed quickly by the dust and splinters that used to be barrels and cart planks, and that was followed by a floating cloud of shredded leaves. Luckily fifty paces of thick bush had stopped most of the force of the blast from reaching them, but that didn't mean that they could breathe or see or hear. The shock of it caught him with one foot in Millie's stirrup trying to mount her, but that did not stop her from turning her ass to the blast and running away from it. Not on any path, mind you, but headlong through the briars and the brambles where a rabbit couldn't go.

  It was just as well that he hadn't been seated on the saddle for he would surely have been ripped from the saddle by some low hanging branch of a tree. As it was, he was holding onto the saddle horn for all he was worth to stop himself from being torn off sideways by the thrashing he was taking from the bushes. The worst was the thick hedge of blackberries that marked the edge of the copse. Millie barreled headlong through them, and the thorns lashed at her and at him and stung as they tore at flesh. And then they were through them and onto the trail back along the spine towards his plateau. Millie was still in a blind hurry while Daniel was trying his best to both slow her down and climb into the saddle.

  He was yelling at her but he seemed to have lost his voice. No, his ears. There was a reason they called such blasts deafening. It came to him that Millie must also be deaf, so he stopped yelling at her. Almost at the same time that he got his other leg over the saddle, she slowed to a walk and then to a full stop and began to snort and sneeze. It took him a lot of kicking and slapping to get her to walk again, but then she was happy to follow the trail south back across the spine between the two plateaus.

  Besides the terrible ringing in his ears, the only other thing he seemed to be hearing was what the man from the cart had yelled after him. That was the last bit of sound that had been in his head before the great boom. What had the man yelled? Was it, "Oye,
he's shot the general.” General? The officer was a general. He tried to picture the man's face. Yes of course. He had met the man once before, a few years ago in Devon on Strode's farm just outside Bere Alston near to Plymouth. In those days the man had been a captain. Captain Ralph Hopton, but now he was the general of the royalist western army.

  By the time the morning light began in earnest, he was back on his own plateau once more and looking out over the next hill, the battlefield hill. He was there again, but where were the two armies? Overnight both armies had disappeared. Could it be that in the dark, both armies had felt themselves at a disadvantage and had left the field? Surely not, for that would be irony in the extreme. He looked up to the heavens almost expecting to see the Wyred Sisters looking back down at him. For the next few minutes he scanned the battlefield with his looker. The hill was not empty, for there were details of men at work stripping and burying the dead. Countless dead. Mostly Cornishmen.

  He searched along Waller's defensive wall on the flat top of the hill but all that was left were the torch poles, some of them still smoking. Still smoking? Of course. Waller had lit the torches and left a few men to keep them lit, while he had used the cover of darkness and the wall to withdraw his army from the hill and send them down the road to Bath. Meanwhile Hopton, thinking that Waller still had a strong defensive position, had used the cover of darkness to withdraw his army through the woods to the north east of the hill and up along the road to Marshfield. What a cock-up. What a cock-up on both sides. Just what did all those men die for? A hill that no one really wanted?

  * * * * *

  "Sir, there is an officer outside with a scouting report about Hopton's army," the immaculately dressed young lieutenant told his general softly into his ear.

  "Is that what all the yelling was about?" Waller asked as he turned away from the gathering of commanders in his tent to face the eldest son of one of the best lineaged families in the kingdom.

  "He is deaf sir," fancy-pants replied, "and deaf folks tend to speak loudly."

  "Well any news is welcome, so you had best send him in," Waller told him, but at that moment a sergeant of the guard came hurtling through the tent's flap with a ragged, filthy, blackened, bloodied man on his heel.

  "Sorry about that," Daniel barked out as he stooped to help the sergeant to his feet. "My loss of hearing takes a toll on my balance.” The sergeant would have taken a poke at him if he hadn't been under the gaze of a half dozen officers. "Ah, general," Daniel bellowed, "I have news of import from Hopton's camp."

  "Gentlemen," Waller said in a normal voice, "you may remember Captain Vanderus. When we were storming the royalist garrisons around Winchester and Chichester, the captain commanded our miners. The miners who knew how to use petards to blow gates up." By this time he was standing beside Daniel and he gladly accepted the man's hand-to-elbow warrior shake. The man's sleeves may have been shredded and bloody, but the back of his summer cloak was charred and black with soot. "By the looks of you, you have been blowing things up again."

  "I'm sorry sir, but you will have to speak up," Daniel bellowed. "I've been blowing things up again, so I'm a bit deaf.” He hadn't planned on visiting Waller but he had been captured by a scouting party as he tried to go around the army to reach Bristol. Waller's dragoons were patrolling the Bristol road, and were on high alert and expecting to be attacked by Hopton's army at any time.

  "So you have news of Hopton's army?" Waller yelled into his ear.

  "Yes sir. Hopton's army had spare munitions under guard in the village of Marshfield and they marched through the night to claim them. Along the way the leader of the Cornish infantry, Bevil Grenville, died in an abandoned village just this side of Marshfield. Once that news leaked out, the Cornish infantry began deserting Hopton and marching for home."

  "Then we hurt them more than we knew," Waller said to his officers. He called out to one of his majors, "Have our scouts spread a warning about these deserters to all the folks along the roads leading towards Cornwall. If the scouts come across any Cornish, they are to tell them from me that so long as they do no beating or looting, then they may return to Cornwall in peace.” The major jumped to act on the command, but Waller told him to stay until Daniel's report was finished.

  Daniel was still booming on saying how the general needed to warn all the villagers in harms way of the Cornish deserters, and that perhaps a truce should be offered to convince the Cornish lads to march home without looting along the way. On seeing the sour looks from Waller and the major, he decided it would be better to give just the facts, without the advice. "The king's cavalryers from Oxford, perhaps a thousand of them, have also deserted Hopton. They were heading northeast as if making for Oxford, but it is just as likely that they were only regrouping."

  "Major, send couriers to all of our garrisons to warn them that a flying army of a thousand are on the hunt, whereabouts unknown."

  "The regiments that do stay with Hopton," Daniel bellowed, "will be short on powder as a goodly portion of it just blew up. Hopton himself was likely blinded, if he survived."

  "Lieutenant," Waller said to fancy-pants, "take an honor guard and a message to Sir Ralph Hopton in Marshfield. Give him my compliments, and tell him that he is free to travel to Bath to visit the physicians there."

  "But he is the enemy general, sir," fancy-pants replied.

  "And he is one of my oldest friends," Waller yelled at the lieutenant. "Must I repeat my order?" Fancy-pants tripped over his own boots in his hurry to leave the tent. Waller turned back to Daniel's ear and asked, "How did Hopton come to harm?"

  Daniel thought better of saying proudly that he had blown dragon's breath into Hopton's face, since the man was a friend of Waller's. Instead he said, "Some powder carts blew up just as the general walked out of a church. Look at my back. He would have felt in his face what the back of my cloak felt." He pulled his charred cloak around to show everyone. "His timing was unlucky.” It was true enough not to be a lie. None of the men close to the carts would have survived. Because Hopton took a face full of dragon's breath, he had retreated back towards the rectory, which just may have saved his life.

  "And what caused the carts to explode?" Waller asked.

  "Carelessness," Daniel replied. "Powder monkeys should never be careless." This was also true enough not to be a lie. They had been careless. They had left one of their victims alive in Colerne and she had described them. If those men had not fit that description, he would never have planted his grenados. "Er, if I may ask, is Captain Blake with you, Robert Blake?"

  "He was with us in the battle. Very much so. His dragoon ambushes saved us from a press by Maurice's cavalry. The man's timing is a wonder. As to where he is now," Waller shrugged to his officers.

  A colonel whose face was familiar called to Daniel, "He and his dragoons are escorting our wounded to Bristol."

  Daniel thanked him and then remembered the colonel's name. Popham. Blake had once introduced them. Daniel stepped close to him in order to shake elbows, but afterwards turned again towards Waller and said, "That is all the news I have sir, so I will take my leave and press on to Bristol. I have urgent business there."

  Waller called to one of his aides, who rushed forward to his side. "Take the captain and sponge some of that bloody muck off him and find him some decent clothes.” Before the aide led Daniel away to bathe and clothe him, he took a wetted cloth to his ears and gave them a cleaning. It made all the difference, the difference between yelling and speaking. Meanwhile all of Waller's officers had gathered around the general to congratulate him on his unexpected victory over Hopton.

  "You've done it William," said Popham. "At Lansdown Hill you kept the royalist Western army from joining forces with the Oxford army to attack Bristol. Despite our retreat it seems that you have won the battle. Both Bristol and Bath are safe for the time being."

  "It would have been a better victory if Maurice's flying army had not escaped us. They are deviltry on the hoof, and we have no idea wher
e they are.” Waller walked slowly through the officers so they could congratulate each other. Eventually he said, "Send more scouts out towards Marshfield. Meanwhile we will stay here until I receive word back from Hopton as to whether he needs to travel to Bath. Hopefully the lad will have the good sense to appraise the state of Hopton's army before he returns with that message.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

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

  Chapter 28 - With Robert Blake in Bristol in July 1643

  "Sailed two days ago," a night watchman on the Bristol quay told Daniel. He had to ask him to speak up and say it again. "The captain, er, Sayle it were, Captain Sayle. Good name for a ship's captain, eh? The captain feared that Bristol was the next to be overrun, after we heard that General Waller had retreated from the battle for Bath on Lansdown Hill. Not that you can blame the man. If the royalists lay siege to us, then our army may have taken the stores he's been loading aboard it."

  Daniel just stared at the empty space along the quay where the ship had been berthed and moaned as the full scope of his situation struck him. His clan was away to Bermuda without him. "Would you know when the next ship is scheduled for Bermuda?"

  "Scheduled?" the watchman laughed at the jest. "Same month next year, I suppose."

  "Bugger," Daniel moaned, and then "bugger, bugger, bugger," in time with every step he took towards the gate where Millie was tied up. On a thought he turned and called back to the watchman. "And the Dragon of Bristol? Where did it sail to?" The Dragon was the ship that Rob Blake had claims upon.

  "They moved her further upstream into the inner harbour. I suppose Sayle could have done the same, but there was no point since he was ready an' waitin' to sail."

  Daniel rode Millie sedately into central Bristol and through the empty cobble streets towards the inner quays. Twice the town watch hailed him with warnings about the curfew, but none dared detain him. Not dressed as he was as one of General Waller's staff officers. The clothes had actually been Waller's from before he had been promoted to general. Tomorrow he would find a tailor to broaden the shoulders and tighten the middle so it would fit him better.