Pistoleer: HellBurner

by Smith, Skye

"If you will excuse me, sirs,” Leslie said, while pushing himself away from the table, "I must see for myself how good these Jocklocks are."

  Once outside, Leslie took a deep breath of fresh air. There was still an hour of bright twilight left. One thing about living in the north was the amount of twilight in the summer. There was even more of it in Sweden, though the Swedes paid for it by have winters with no sun at all. He went to join Daniel who was bent over a musket while showing the ring of men around him how to position a Jocklock, mark the holes in the lock's plate on the stock, drill the holes and then affix the lock using thick screws.

  While the men practiced with their own Jocklocks and matchlocks, Leslie walked Daniel away from them and whispered in his ear. "For the first time I have a feeling that I can stop the King's army from crossing the Tweed."

  "What, because of these locks?" Daniel asked while looking up at the sky, and noticing that Venus was already bright in the west. "They will make little difference unless it rains. Look around Alex. The skies are clear."

  "Because I have just convinced myself that I must ignore the two Earls and make my plans assuming that their men will be of little actual help in any battle. I will make plans and tactics based only on the men who have gained my trust, in other words, the men who came with me from the continent, and the local men from along this border. The battle will be run my way. No time wasting discussions with politicians who never reach a decision, nay, just snap my fingers and bark the orders and watch my men jump to them."

  "Well then, General. If your first order is to buy the King's army a drink, then your second order must be to send a messenger to my ship to tell them to meet me in Edinburgh at Argyll's brew house, wherever that is."

  * * * * *

  The next morning while Argyll was arranging with some of his own lifeguards to guide Daniel to Leith, near Edinburgh, where his whiskey was stored at his brew house, Alex pulled Daniel aside and spoke so low that no others could hear. "Do me a favour, man. If you happen to see the King while you're selling whisky to his army, feel free to put a pistol ball through the bugger. One well-aimed ball in that nancy boy would save a lot of folk a lot of horror."

  "Aye, it would at that. A nancy boy, you say?"

  "Why do you think the man has no mistresses and snuffs his nose up at those who do. He does his duty by Henrietta to gain heirs, but for a king not to have a mistress is just too suspicious. He's even rejected the women that Henrietta chose for him. If I capture him on the battlefield I will try him and hang him for sodomy, all legal like, I swear it. With him dead, the parliaments will rule in both our kingdoms until his son is of age, or longer."

  Daniel kept his voice low. "Killing him may allow these two armies to go home but it wouldn't solve the real problem. So long as the inheritance laws stay as they are, eventually there will be yet another corrupt king leading the same old corrupt nobility and nothing will really change for the folk." Daniel shook the general's hand. "But I'll think about it."

  Alex shook his hand absent-mindedly because he was already thinking about it. "Danny boy, could it be that you are a scoundrel yourself, or is this more strategy from your pistoleer friend, Blake? What you are saying is that we have a better chance of changing things if instead of killing Charlie, I capture him and keep him healthy and safe from rescue. While he is our guest, we force him to change the laws that keep the same corrupt families in power generation after generation after generation.

  Yes ... the more I think about it, the more I like it. So long as Charlie is kept healthy, he remains king, so none of his family can claim the throne from him. Keeping him safe in custody would give us years, nay decades, to change how our kingdoms are ruled, and by whom. Such huge changes would need to hold across a generation for them to take root. Very good. Belay my request to shoot the King. I will organize my plans so as to capture him."

  "Well, just be careful who you tell it to. If Lords such as Argyll and Montrose hear of it, your reward may be a ball in the back."

  "Aye, a ball in the back for sure," Alex muttered sadly. "A normal end for a soldier born of an alewench and promoted far above his station in life." His eyes went suddenly keen and he smiled. "Except that this bastard soldier was a field marshal of Sweden and personally commands the only professional infantry on this border."

  Daniel didn't reply. Argyll was coming towards them with two of his men and three horses. It was time for him to leave for Edinburgh.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 13 - The sorry state of Scottish Whiskey in May 1639

  The long ride north from the English border exhausted them well before they made it to Edinburgh, so the guides that Argyll had provided to Daniel led him to Argyll's home in Dalkeith. There they begged food and a roof from his Lady Margaret. She was so eager to hear news of her husband that she agreed immediately. So it was that Daniel arrived at the brew house in Edinburgh's port village of Leith early in the morning and rested and well fed. There he found the Freisburn docked at the nearest quay, but the watch told him that most of the crew had slept with the whisky in the brew house. Of course.

  He had barely walked through a side door to the brew house when Anso called out to him, "Danny, this Scottish whisky we've been traded is so rough that you have to chew it. It gives you a pounding head, and that after only one dram." He was holding a hand over his eyes, even though it was gloomy in the warehouse. "No innkeep with any sense would ever buy it unless we sell it for the price of ale."

  "Not to worry. We'll be selling this first lot to the English army in Berwick. They won't care about the quality so long as it burns their throats."

  Argyll's brewer was walking forward to introduce himself, but instead asked, "So you are selling this to Englishmen? You should have said so yesterday. I would have brought my bairn here to piss in it."

  The thought of children pissing in whisky stopped the Fensmen mid-conversation. They assumed it was meant as an insult and glared at him. "You do realize that we are also English,” Daniel told him with an edge, slowly and clearly.

  "No offense, Captain. We always have some virgins piss in our whisky if it is for the English market. The English prefer a lighter drink, and the piss makes the chewy bits drop to the bottom. In Edinburgh virgins are harder to find than unshaved coins, so I use the kiddies."

  Daniel stared at the man to gauge if this was a jest, but the brewer was straight-faced and serious. The Scots were actually pissing in their whiskey before selling it to the English. "You are right that we need to lighten the brew, but not with piss." He glanced at his crew who were gathering around looking the worse for a night's drinking, and asked, "What casks did you find? We need small ones, pins or smaller, but they need not be new."

  The mate called back, "There's casks enough but they've held a thick red wine by the looks of them, and now they smell like vinegar. We've got plenty of cheesecloth for straining the whisky, but unless we sweeten them casks, the whisky will be tainted." He hefted a small cask and held it out for them to check for themselves. "Smell it first."

  Anso choked on the fumes and backed away to make room for Daniel. Daniel took a sniff, made a sour face and asked the mate, "What do you suggest?"

  "I don't think there's a hope in hell of us passing this muck off as Genever, even if we strain it and add juniper juice." He meant the squeezings of the juniper berry that the Dutch used to mask the malty musk of their Genever. The Freisburn always carried some jugs of the juice just in case they needed to doctor some cheap Genever before selling it.

  "If we can get rid of the vinegar smell from these casks, we may be able to flog it as Irish whiskey. At least then we may be able to turn a profit on it. Trying to flog it as Genever will never work."

  With orders to sweeten up a few of the casks, the mate and five men began experimenting with them. The brewers were burning dried peat bricks to fuel their still, so first they used some of it to
scrub one of the casks. That cleaned it but did not get rid of the sour smell, so they threw some burning clumps of peat into the cask and then slowly rolled it around until the inside of the barrel was charred black. It worked. The sour smell was now gone, though replaced by the sweet smoke of the peat.

  After shaking and wiping out all the peat, the ashes and the dust, they covered the cask with five layers of cheesecloth so they could strain the whisky as they filled the cask. Three times they had to dump the clots out the cloth, but finally they were done and had their first cask. They decided to let it age for at least an hour before they sampled it. In truth, it was two hours because they brought in food from the quayside market in hopes of settling their stomachs and removing the bad taste of the foul Scottish whiskey from their mouths.

  The food made little difference. Never had they eaten food so foul as these delicacies from the Leith public market. Not only did the Scots brew foul aquavitae and dare call it whiskey, but their women had no idea about how to make bland food tastier. Everything seemed to be mixed with half-cooked oats and mutton fat. There were no spices, or herbs, or any kind of vegetable in the mix. Even the fresh fish was overcooked, which was a crime because it was so fresh that it didn't need cooking at all. If the Fensmen had caught such fish they would have sprinkled it with vinegar and eaten it raw, as would any sensible fishermen.

  With their stomachs full and their heads easing, the crew gathered around to pass judgement on their cask of doctored Scottish aquavitae. The brewers supplied actual glasses to drink it with so they could see the color and the clarity. The first pouring was so cloudy that they decided to filter it again as they poured it from one glass to the other. The first tasting raised some eyebrows. The mate said it all with, "T'ain't half bad. Different, but tasty."

  Meanwhile the brew master had fetched his children, just in case, or perhaps just so they could finish the food. He reached over and filled a glass from the still cloudy cask and showed the brown color to the crew, then he set it on the ground and had his youngest daughter piddle a few drops into it. When he held it up again, the change in color was quite noticeable. It was no longer brown, but a tawny color, and the top half of the glass was no longer cloudy. "There, ya see. Now do ya believe me? Now, compare the taste."

  No one volunteered to taste the pissy stuff, so the brew master did, and then compared it to the strained glass. "Aye, try it. It has a sharper, cleaner taste." Again no one volunteered, so the mate was pushed forward by the men standing behind him. He took a deep breath and tried it, and then smiled.

  Within the hour the brew house was a flurry of activity as the entire crew set to work on cleansing and toasting the casks and doing the first strainings of the whisky. Daniel, meanwhile, sat down with a sharp knife and a page of parchment and created a stencil. When he was finished he took some black paint, and the stencil and painted a label onto one of the small casks.

  "What's it say,” asked one of the crew. Few of the crew could read.

  "Bushmills,” Daniel replied. "It's the Irish Whisky that has become fashionable in London this year. I'm sure they won't mind. Our modified Scottish foulness is at least as good as theirs. I wonder if the Irish piss in theirs, too? Just for the English market, I mean."

  "Likely," laughed the mate. "The Irish have no love of Londoners. And like as not they don't bother searching out virgins, but just hang their own sausages over the brew."

  * * * * *

  It took them four days to scrub and toast the port casks, fill them with strained and pissed-in aquavitae, load them onto the ship, and sail them to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Luckily the days were long and the seas calm enough to give them the cover of a light mist as they sailed along off shore until they were miles south of Berwick and in English waters. The Freisburn then put about, hugged the shoreline, and sailed towards Berwick as if they were coming to it from the South.

  Daniel was standing on the steering castle next to tillerman Anso in case he needed help. They were purposefully close to the treacherous shoreline to make sure that the King's scouts would report that they came in from the south. As long as the fog stood away from the shore, they would stay in this close, but it was risky enough to warrant a doubling of the men on bow watch and the tiller.

  "You've got horseshoes up yer ass, Danny,” Anso jibed. "Not a ship of the line to be seen. If the king had ships the likes of the Sovereign standing by for his use, you'd 'ave lost us the Freisburn and the cargo."

  "I can't say I'm not surprised that there are no tall ships in the harbour, what with an army of twenty thousand camped along the river. Surprised yes, but relieved not to be facing two decks of brass cannons." He called to the bow watch to pick out a likely fishing dory. "I'll use a local dory to take some samples in and gauge the humour of the guard."

  The harbour guards were, of course, in a much better humour once a sample pin was tapped and the honey-colored aquavitae poured into their tin cups. In truth, they were surprised to even be offered the samples, them being just lowly soldiers. Daniel was surprised that the liquid that poured out of the false Bushmills casks had aged so well in just four days. It was smoother, tastier, and didn't have that pervasive latrine smell of malt brew that the Dutch hid with the taste of juniper.

  The gift of the rest of the pin for the use of the guardhouse was enough to send the off duty guards out in every direction to collect the quartermasters of the various divisions of the King's army. Meanwhile, with their tongues loosened by the burn of whisky, the guards were an endless source of gossip about Charlie and his army.

  These men were quite happy to be working the harbour detail, because they had ready access to sea food, and were far away from the five thousand cavalry with their prancing young lordlings who tended to treat any infantryman like a personal servant.

  In his first hour ashore, Daniel heard enough of importance that he knew that once the whisky was sold, he would have to sail back north and relate it all to Alex Leslie. Meanwhile the quartermasters were arriving, and drinking his samples. From the snatches of talk amongst themselves, it was evident that the arrival of such fine Irish whiskey was a dream come true for these agents. As was usual in an army, when supplies ran low it was always the quartermasters who were berated. The arrival of this whisky would save their careers and their standing with the gentry who paid them.

  They would have paid top shilling for the casks, and were in disbelief that this honest English captain was not gouging them, but was offering his casks at just above the London price. Quartermasters are renowned as scoundrels and cheats, but on this day the whiskey was offered at such fair prices, that there was no need for double dealing or for mandatory requisitions. Once Daniel was convinced that there would be no such requisitioning, he paid off the fishing dory and sent a signal to the Freisburn that it was safe to dock. Meanwhile the quartermasters sent for their carts.

  In truth the last thing the quartermasters wanted was for these casks to be requisitioned, for that would make them the property of the army. They wanted to buy these casks from their own purses, for at these prices they would make considerable personal profits from reselling the whiskey to the gentry.

  The brewer in Leith had marked six of the smallest casks with a red X. These six casks were sold as best quality, for double the price, to the quartermaster that came from army headquarters. The whisky inside the marked casks was no different, of course, but there are many in the ruling class who do not judge quality from knowledge, but by price.

  Less than four hours later, the entire cargo had been unloaded and whisked away from the port, and the Freisburn was once again safely away from the docks and anchored in the river mouth to wait for Daniel to return. Daniel had been 'invited' to accompany the red X casks to headquarters where he would be expected to tell his news from the South.

  The quartermaster who led him was a foul man in a foul temper. He railed on about how the King had replaced Bob Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, and the only horse general in the army with any actual
battle experience, with the rich prick Harry, the Earl of Holland, who was rumoured to be bouncing the Queen.

  "Wait,” Daniel pulled at his sleeve to slow his furious pace. "This man Rich has the nerve to claim to be the Earl of Holland? Holland is a Republic."

  "Nothing to do with the real Holland,” the man replied testily, "just a title the Queen made up so her darling could rub shoulders with the other earls in the palace. They've renamed some swamp in the Fens as Holland."

  "So if he is incompetent, and Essex is gone, then who is the real general in charge?"

  "Well, it's supposed to be old Tom Howard, you know, the Earl of Arundel, but he is more interested in a collection of paintings he bought on the cheap in York than in leading this army. The King is in trouble and that's the truth. We just got word that the bloody Covenanter army is being supplied with more muskets, and now they have more than we do."

  "So why were there were no Navy ships protecting the harbour here?" Daniel pressed him for an answer, and rightly so because the Freisburn's safety depended on this news.

  "They's at sea and they won't be back any time soon. Word is that the French ships are landing the loads of muskets for the Scots, so the Navy will stay offshore to blockade the Frenchies."

  A smile warmed Daniel's cheeks. The false rumours had worked. "And who will I be talking to at headquarters?"

  "Just to old Tom. The King rarely leaves the privacy of his quarters now that the bishop has arrived with his bum boys. More's the pity because bloody Harry Rich is busy making plans with his horse commanders to cross the Tweed at Kelso and take the Scots by surprise, you know, before the Scots have a chance to train the bloody farmers in how to shoot the Frenchie muskets."

  At the rate the quartermaster was walking, they would soon be to headquarters, so Daniel pretended to trip over a cobblestone so he could slow the pace by limping. "Oye you! My little ship is all my village has in the world to keep bread on the table, and now you tell me that the King's ships are blockading this coast. I really don't have time for chit-chatting with your generals. I have to get south again before my ship is confiscated by the Navy. Besides, that red X whiskey is so good that I will be ignored for hours, and by then they will be too drunk to listen. With your permission, I mean, please allow me return to my ship and take it back south to safety."