Pistoleer: HellBurner
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THE PISTOLEER
HellBurner
(Book One of the Series)
By Skye Smith
Copyright (C) 2013-2014 Skye Smith
All rights reserved including all rights of authorship.
Cover Illustration is "The Burning of Royal James at Solebay”
By Willem van de Velde II (1633-1707)
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Revision 0 . . . . . ISBN: 978-1-927699-12-6
Cover Flap
In 1638 two English friends, Daniel Vanderus and Robert Blake, sailed home from the war-torn Dutch Republic. The two had met while riding as pistoleers in the Dutch Militia. The flying squads of pistoleers were skirmishers who targetted the Empire's officers.
As their ship rowed up the River Great Ouse towards Ely, a girl's call for help linked their futures to Oliver, the tithe collector of Ely. Together they made history.
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THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
About The Author
Skye Smith is my pen name. The Pistoleer is a series of historical adventure novels set in Britain in the 1640's. I was encouraged to write them by fans of my Hoodsman series.
HellBurner is the first of the novels and sets the characters and scene for the entire series, so you should read it before reading any of the others. The sequence of the books follows the timeline of the Republic of Great Britain. The chapter headings identify the dates and places.
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THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Prologue
This adventure is as historically accurate as I could make it, however I have not included my endless references because the main character, Daniel, is fictional. I have kept the descriptions and actions of the non-fictional characters as close to historical accounts as possible.
As a rule of thumb, if the character is a parliamentarian, or has a title, or has a military rank of captain or above, then they and their families are non-fictional. If the character is a member of the Wellenhay clan or goes unnamed, then they are fictional.
All dates have been converted to our modern calendar to save the reader the confusion of January being the tenth month of the old year rather than the first month of the new year.
Note that at the end of this book there is an Appendix which is organized like an FAQ. There you will find answers to dozens of questions such as:
- Where can I find out more about the historical characters and events?
- What was a Pistoleer?
- What was a Hellburner?
- What were the different pistols of the era?
However, the next nine short paragraphs will set the scene of this era for you.
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Britain spent most of the 1630s at peace, but that does not mean that life was good for most Brits. They were struggling with increasing unemployment and higher prices for food and shelter because the coming 'Little Ice Age' was lengthening the winters. Since the aristocracy had a near monopoly on farm land, the gulf between the opulence of the aristocracy and the desperation of the poor was ever-widening. The educated middle class were horrified by the descent of the workers into depravity, but they were powerless.
They were powerless because King Charles Stuart was determined to be the absolute ruler of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England. He rarely called parliament into session, for that just gave a forum for the educated middle class to question the corruption and incompetence of his regime. Charles was always squeezed for money to keep up his lavish palaces but without calling parliament he could not enact any new taxes. Instead he twisted the existing laws, even outdated laws, to wring out more income. He tended to do this at the expense of on the merchant middle class of the cities rather than of the aristocratic landlords.
One source of income was from twisting ancient laws in order to privatize and then sell off the common land that was traditionally shared by rural cottagers. The King's Deputy, Lord Strafford, was doing this to create a plantation-economy in Ireland, and other favourite Lords were doing this in the wetlands and fenlands of England. These were very bad times for cottagers and farming clans, so there was an ever increasing number of small local rebellions against such privatizations.
Under the Stuart Regime, Britain had become a peaceful, self-involved, and corrupt backwater that was being left far behind in the European race to create worldwide empires. The British Empire consisted of the four kingdoms plus a few failing colonies in the Americas. English was rarely spoken outside of England ... it was not even spoken in Scotland outside the main cities.
In contrast the Dutch Republics were booming, despite having suffered through seventy years of war with the Hapsburg Empires. The Netherlands had become the first modern nation state, complete with global trade, international banking, multinational corporations, stock markets, and stock market crashes. Dutch was fast becoming the international language of commerce. The young and vibrant of Britain were leaving for the opportunities offered in the Netherlands in trades, commerce, and the army.
The Dutch and the Swedes were allied to the German Protestants who were fighting the Catholic Hapsburg Empires, while Britain was neutral. Previous Stuart forays into international politics had been so disastrous that Charles had signed peace treaties with Britain's historic enemies in the south of Europe, and had distanced himself from Britain’s historic allies around the North Sea. Thus Britain was at peace, while the Thirty Years' War was killing off a fifth of the population of Europe, including half of all German men.
Charles shattered this peace on a whim when he demanded that the Scots use his prayer book. Since Henry VIII, the Church of England had looked, sounded, and behaved like a Catholic church, but with the king as its head rather than the pope. In Scotland, however, the Church had been further reformed by Knox Presbyterians, for whom King Jesus was the head of the church, while the king was a parishioner. This did not sit well with 'absolute ruler' Charles, so in 1638 he set about un-reforming the Church of Scotland to make it more like the Church of England.
The Scottish Presbyterians were outraged, for to them this was a giant step backwards towards Catholicism. Some Scottish clerics and lawyers drafted 'The Covenant' as a petition to tell Charles that their Church was already perfect in the eyes of Jesus and therefore he must not mess with it. Since the petition was signed by over half of the Scots (known afterwards as the Covenanters), Scotland refused Charles' un-reforms, including his choice of bishops and his prayer book.
This anti-Episcopalian snub hit Charles in his absolute ego, so he called up the militias of his kingdoms and sent an army to invade Scotland and punish the Covenanters. At a time when the Hapsburg Emperors and the Imperial Catholic church were slaughtering entire cities on the continent, the amateur armies of Britain fought over the choice of prayer books. Such was the extent of the incompetence of the Stuart regime and of the inbred aristocracy who supported it.
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This is the first of a series of historical adventure novels set in the era of the British Civil Wars. In this first novel two battles are described. The first is the Standoff at the Tweed in May 1639 during the First Bishop's War. In this war, King Charles Stuart marched 20,000 men to the Scottish border
where they were met by the Covenanter army of the Scottish Parliament. Unfortunately for Charles, a Swedish Field Marshal called Alexander Leslie had rushed back to Scotland from fighting the Thirty Years' War and had brought his veteran Scottish mercenaries with him. Though it is now seen as the first of the dozen wars that make up the British Civil War, at the time it was mocked by the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile, Europe was nervously watching the weapons race between the Dutch Confederate Navy and the Spanish Armada. The second battle in this novel is the Battle of the Downs in October 1639, where Dutch Admiral Maarten Tromp destroyed the combined Spanish and Portuguese Armada. Since it was fought within range of Southern England's gun forts and under the eyes of England's navy, Charles' neutrality was criticized by both sides of the battle, but more importantly, by his own subjects.
The collapse of the Empire's navy drastically changed the trading maps of the world, for it allowed Dutch merchants to take over much of Portugal's rich spice trade with the Indies. The defeat of this armada was far more important to the world than Queen Elizabeth's defeat of the previous one.
Enough history ... flip to Chapter One and enjoy.
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THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Table of Contents
Title Page
Cover Flap
About the Author
Prologue
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Pistol shots near Ely in November 1638
Chapter 2 - A visit to Cambridge in November 1638
Chapter 3 - A room at the George in Cambridge in November 1638
Chapter 4 - Footpads on the road to Oxford in November 1638
Chapter 5 - News from Scotland in Oxford in November 1638
Chapter 6 - The road to Bridgwater, Somerset in November 1638
Chapter 7 - Saving Alice in Bridgwater in November 1638
Chapter 8 - Taking Alice to London in December 1638
Chapter 9 - The treasurer of Scotland in London in March 1639
Chapter 10 - The search for muskets in Rotterdam in March 1639
Chapter 11 - Running guns to Edinburgh in May 1639
Chapter 12 - To Duns near the Scottish Border in May 1639
Chapter 13 - The sorry state of Scottish Whiskey in May 1639
Chapter 14 - The retreat from Kelso in June 1639
Chapter 15 - Explaining Scotland to Cromwell in Ely, September 1639
Chapter 16 - Trouble near Ramsgate in September 1639
Chapter 17 - The Dutch fleet at Calais in October 1639
Chapter 18 - The Battle of the Downs at Deal in October 1639
Chapter 19 - With Cromwell and Blake in London, April 1640
Chapter 20 - With Alice at the Royal Exchange, London, May 1640
Chapter 21 - With the mob at Lollards Tower, Lambeth, May 1640
Chapter 22 - Appendix - FAQ
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THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 1 - Pistol shots near Ely in November 1638
Edward watched the girl hop and stretch to reach and pick another apple. An apple from a half-wild tree in a long-abandoned orchard far from any farm or village. It was a delight to watch her homespun shift stretch thin and tight against her budding body. The two men who shared his hiding place behind the bush were moaning in their own appreciation. Each time she added to the weight of apples in the pouch she had made by hiking the front of her shift high, she needed to hike it up further. The weight of each new apple dragged the top a little further down her breast.
"She is comely to the extreme. Who is she?" Edward asked his men in a whisper.
"Village girl, eeler's brat,” whispered Tom, one of the diggers. The lad that Edward had brought along only to carry the pack. An uneducated lout like most of the labourers hired on to dig out the drainage trenches.
"That is her punt,” whispered Cornelius in his Dutch accent while he pointed to the small flat-bottomed boat. He was a Dutch engineer who had first come to England to open up some abandoned mines, but now he worked on Edward's drainage projects. "I saw her ven she landed it. She is all alone."
Tom nudged Cornelius. "Shhh, she's reaching up again. Ahhh." He could hear his gov'n'r, the honorable Edward Heath, moan in lust. This was much better than working. The girl was well worth watching, and why shouldn't they be watching? Stolen fruit is the sweetest, and just like she was stealing the apples, they could steal an eyeful. Besides, something would give them away soon enough and then she would hide herself or run away, and it would be over.
Cornelius was feeling a bit guilty watching the girl. They were here to walk this land and choose an end course for the drainage canal they were about to dig. He should be sighting the elevations so he could return to their house in Cambridge and finish the chart. "The best course for the ditch would be ..."
"Shhh, not now. Not while she is still picking,” Tom sighed. The girl was a vision of beauty, like an angel dancing. He felt his gov'n'r Edward rise and step out from behind the bush, so he also rose and followed him towards the ancient orchard.
"You there. Those are my apples you are stealing,” Edward called softly to the girl. The girl pulled in her reach and turned to face his voice. Her shift was now held so high in order to hold the apples that her legs were visible up to the thigh. He walked slowly and carefully toward her, all the while hoping she would not dart away to her punt.
She didn't. She was too busy lowering the front of her shift to cover more of her legs. "This is abbey land,” she replied. "This orchard is no longer worked, so anyone can pick the apples if they've a need."
"The abbey land is across the river,” he told her pointing over the Great Ouse River to the other bank. "This is my land, and so this is my orchard, and so those are my apples, which makes you a thief."
The girl thought he was jesting, but flushed at the word 'thief'. "I've never thieved anything in my life. How dare you accuse me of it, especially in front of witnesses?" she asked defensively while pointing in the direction of the other two men.
"Girl, I charge you with the theft, caught hand-haebbend and since you are still on my land, and since I am a sworn magistrate, then I can judge you and have you punished where we stand."
"Can he do that?" Tom whispered to Cornelius.
"Shhh," was the reply. "Pay attention in case you are called on to bear vitness."
"Punished!" the girl called back, now getting worried and looking towards her punt which was held alongside the river bank by the pole stuck fast in the mud. The lord was now moving sideways to place himself between her and her punt. If she ran for it, he would catch her before she could reach it, and even if she made it into the punt, he would catch her before she could push it away from the bank. "Punished for what? For picking unwanted apples? If you want these apples, then you can pay me for the labour of picking them."
Edward leaped the last two steps to her side and gripped her wrist. She pulled back from him and her bunched shift dropped and the carefully picked apples cradled there all fell to the ground to join the bruised and wormy windfalls. He didn't give a damn about the apples, he wanted this girl. "So should I cut off your hand for the theft, or just a few fingers?"
"Cut off my ..." she pulled away from him, fighting his grip. When that didn't work she stepped into him and tried to nut him with her knee. He was quick and his other hand slipped underneath her rising knee to unbalanced her and suddenly she was falling to the ground. With her one free hand she tried to break her fall, but she still landed hard. The fall knocked the breath out of her, and he knelt down next to her and held her down so that all she could do was to try to squirm away from him.
He let her squirm, thwarting her with his weight until she was exhausted. Just watching her lithe body squirm had aroused him. She must have realized it, for she gave up squirming and instead lay still. When she opened her mouth to scream, he pressed
his hand cruelly down onto it to muffle her voice. "Shut up and lie still. If you don't fight me I won't punish you. You may keep your hand, keep your fingers, and keep the apples. All I want is to see you without your shift and to run my hands over your skin."
"I do not vant any part of this,” Cornelius announced and moved as if he were going to help the girl up, but Tom pulled him back and told him not to interfere.
"After he has had her, it will be our turn, you know, to keep us quiet as witnesses,” Tom said, but he had spoken too loudly The girl heard him and stared daggers at him and then spat some strangely foreign words at Edward.
"Did you hear that?" Edward looked towards Cornelius. "A witch's curse in a demon's tongue. You are witness. If she doesn't fuck me willingly, I will have her tried as a witch."
"That was no demon's tongue,” Cornelius Vermuyden pointed out. Ever since King Charles had commissioned him as a drainage engineer, he had been living amongst Englishmen who were quite ignorant of the wider world outside their island. "She spoke in the mother tongue of your English language, Frisian. And it wasn't a witch's curse, though it was a curse."
"What did she say?" asked Edward as he pinned her shoulder under the weight of a knee so he would have both hands free to fondle her.
"May you meet Grutte Pier on your vay to hell,” Cornelius replied.
"Who? Does she mean Hugo Grotius, the Dutch theorist on law?" Edward had studied law at Cambridge. After all, his father, Sir Robert Heath, had been at various times the King's Solicitor General, the Attourney General, the Chief Justice, and now he controlled the all powerful Star Chamber. "How would a Fens cottager girl know of Grotius? She probably can't even read, never mind read his treatises on Natural Law and International Law."
Cornelius rolled his eyes and took a breath before he said, "Not Grotius. Grutte. The old leader of the Frisian Rebels. The leader of the first rebellion against the Burgundians that began the push for the Netherlands to become a republic. Grutte was over seven feet tall and swung massive broad swords, one in each hand. His call to arms was 'Rather death than a slavery'. She has cursed you to reach hell without your head." He looked down at the girl and asked her in halting Frisian, "What village are you from, girl?"