Pistoleer: HellBurner

by Smith, Skye

  "It's a fine gift, aye, but only if it is used. My own patron, King Adolphus, was carrying it back in '32 when he died in battle at Lutzen. His lifeguard gave it to me to prove to the field that I was now in command on the King's behalf. In all that time I have fired it only twice for my own protection. Such a pistol deserves a more needy owner." The beaming grin on Daniel's face said all the thanks that was needed.

  Daniel beamed all the way on the ride back to the coast. He had heard of these rare double-barreled dragons, but he had never ever seen one. Now he owned one. He couldn't wait to show it to the crew. It would bring a fortune from the right buyer.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 15 - Explaining Scotland to Cromwell in Ely, September 1639

  It was a busy and profitable summer for Wellenhay. When the Freisburn returned from Scotland in June, overloaded with large casks of the foul Scottish whiskey, the village set to work turning it into Irish-style whisky and casking it as faux-Bushmills. Meanwhile, Daniel had taken the Freisburn to Rotterdam to collect his profit from John Stewart's banker. He invested some of the profit with Jock the gunsmith, and used some to fill the Freisburn with casks of finest Genever for the return journey to the Fens.

  Since Genever was constantly going up in price there was no hurry to sell it, so instead the village concentrated on selling the Scot-Irish Whiskey. They did this by loading it into the Freisburn and taking it to London where they sold it as Red-X Bushmills Whisky for a good profit.

  By doctoring the Scottish whiskey, they were making more profit than on Genever. Since the Freisburn might be recognized by the King's spies, they had sent the village's other ship, captained by Daniel's elder brother, to Scotland to fetch back more of the foul stuff. It should have been safe enough even though the English Navy was still standing off Scottish ports. A peace treaty was signed at Berwick after the inglorious retreat of the Earl of Holland and his cavalry.

  That ship was now long overdue returning. Too long not to have received word of any trouble, or change in plans or routes. The women of Wellenhay feared the worst, that the ship had foundered, and worse still, had foundered with all hands for why else had there been no word? Any survivors of a tragedy would have sent word immediately.

  The village elders had decided that it would be foolish to send the Freisburn out in search of the missing ship, for why risk it to the same circumstance that had claimed the first? In truth, they did not even send the Freisburn north for Scottish whiskey. The Genever trade with Holland might be less profitable than the faux-Bushmills trade with Scotland, but it was also less risky, and that was just fine with the clan, and especially with the women who were already grieving one lost ship.

  By September even the Genever trade was too risky. There were fleets of war ships moving along the coasts of Holland, Flanders, and France, and any fleet, whether friend or foe, was a risk to a small trading ship. Especially to a small trading ship carrying casks of aquavitae.

  In truth, Daniel preferred the risk of the foes, for at least with the foes you knew to run from them as soon as you spotted them. With the friendlies, on the other hand, running made you look like a foe, so with them you had to stay calm, hold your course, and hope they ignored you. The risk was that your cargo, your ship, and your crew would all be commandeered. To keep the women happy, the Freisburn was now staying close to the Fens and making small trips hauling barrels of live eels.

  On short hauls like those, Daniel encouraged other men to take turns commanding the Freisburn, for he did not want the command for himself. He preferred the life of a merchant trader to that of a sea captain. So it was on the Sunday when Oliver Cromwell punted up to the village dock, he was pleased to see Daniel sitting on it. It was early morning because Oliver was here to pick up his son and daughter to take them to church. Daniel was being the lifeguard to a frolic of village children and a few young women who were splashing in the water beside the dock where the ships usually tied up.

  "Danny," Oliver called out as he threw his friend the painter, "are Richard and Bridget with the children? I've come to take them to church."

  "But they sent you a message,” Daniel replied politely. It was always wise to be polite to Ely Abbey's tithe collector. "Didn't you get it?"

  "It said that they were overnighting in Wellenhay village for a festival. They haven't gone home already have they?" Bridget had been teaching the children of Wellenhay how to read as an excuse for hanging about with Teesa for two days a week. Richard often came with his big sister because, well, because this Frisian village still followed the old ways, which intrigued him.

  "The scallywags. They sent you only half the message. They weren't overnighting here, but at Sutton or Mepal. They went on the Freisburn with half the village to watch the big football match between the two villages."

  Oliver didn't know whether to be angry or amused. Angry because of the half-truth his teens had told them. Angry because Bridget was a young impressionable girl in the company of rough men. Amused because while she was teaching these villagers how to read, they were teaching her about real life. Amused because the big football match was just an excuse to fill in a drainage ditch and thereby save yet another Fens common from enclosure and privatization.

  "Don't worry about Bridget, she is with Teesa. No one will take liberties with your girl for fear of having Teesa unsheathe her filleting knife." Daniel left unsaid that with Teesa along, no man would even notice mousy little Bridget. "And don't you be blaming the girls. Going to the match was all Richard's doing. The girls have no interest in football. They only went to watch out for your son. Not to worry, other women went along. Some of them have decided to hunt for new men to bring into the clan."

  "So you have heard word then? This ship and crew are gone?" Oliver asked softly while in his mind saying a small prayer for the good men of this village who had been lost at sea. He wondered if he should be saying the prayer to Freyja, the Frisian moon goddess, rather than to his own God, but then decided that it did not matter. After all, did not God create the moon? He said them to Freyja. This village had lost a third of its men, half of its young men, all at the same time.

  "Aye, we've had word from the light house on Spurn Head,” Daniel looked up, "That is at the mouth of the Humber. She ran aground in a summer storm and the surf smashed the ship and the crew. Hard to believe my brother would have run aground on that shore, with the light and all to warn him off. It must have been one hell of a storm,” Daniel sighed with sorrow. "Or perhaps he was just too loaded down with kegs of rot gut whiskey."

  Oliver decided it prudent to change the subject. "So my teens are in Sutton, eh? It was because of the riots against the drainers eight years ago in Sutton that I was fined into ruin. I was charged with inciting the riot, but when I won my case in Huntingdon's court, they dragged me in front of the King's Star Chamber where I was not allowed to defend myself."

  "Aye, well there won't be any rioting today, just one bloody big football match. The ditch they hope to fill in has been dug as wide as a river. If it is ever completed, the next step will be the enclosure of an entire hundred." Daniel decided not to mention to this worried father that the real reason his crew had rowed the ship all the way to Sutton, rather than docking at Ely and crossing the island by road, was so they could have their weapons close to hand. "No, there'll be no riot this time. And them drainers won't be digging out that canal again any time soon. The plan is to bury their ditching tools when they fill it in."

  Oliver couldn't help but laugh. It was so simple. Have footballers fill in the ditch, so there can be no claim of unlawful assembly, and bury the tools so the ditchers had nothing to dig them back up with. Daniel did not join in the laughter. If the sheriff's men turned up to bash heads, his crew would take up their arms and stand between the two sides to keep the peace. There was always the chance that it could end badly, very badly for Wellenhay.

  Wi
th the Freisburn away and the other ship lost, the dock where the children were diving was empty of ships. Oliver watched the children at play in the water and then it came to him what the children were actually doing. These clanfolk so often turned their work into play that it had taken a while for it to come to him. They were diving down and filling baskets from the mud on the bottom. They were dredging the silt bottom to keep it deep enough to float ships.

  He sat on the decking of the dock beside Daniel, and the tall blonde man passed over the pot he had been sipping from. Oliver, as Ely Abbey's tithe collector, did not drink aquavitae in public and even at home he used it only as a throat wash, but that did not mean that he did not occasionally enjoy a drink or two. "Mmm, that is good. Very smooth."

  "Getting better,” Daniel replied as he took back the pot of Scottish Whiskey and finished the rest of it in a gulp. "Good enough for good profits. More profitable than bringing Genever over from Holland. Besides, because we do the final casking of the whisky ourselves, we have an endless supply of the dregs to mix with herbs and make the potions that keep us all healthy. I wish the King's bloody ships would come back south so we can make a few more runs to Edinburgh before the winter sets in up there."

  Oliver looked around at the seeming squalor of the mud island village. The homes were nothing more than thatch huts made of local reeds and sedge and built on mounds of earth to kept them above the high water mark during winter floods. "I don't understand your village,” Oliver said softly. "It is making huge profits from the trade in muskets and whisky and eels, and yet you live in poor huts in this dismal marsh."

  "My clan has lived on this Fen island since time began. And what is wrong with the huts? They keep us warm and dry, and are quick to fix using the rushes that grow all around us." He pointed towards the largest of the buildings, "That longhouse for instance. Was there a happier place anywhere in the Fens last winter? Nay, it was filled with warm happy folk eating good food and filling the long nights with story and song."

  Oliver had to admit that even though he shuddered involuntarily every time he visited this island in the marshes because it looked such a poor and forlorn place, it was anything but. He glanced at the old women sitting together just beyond the longhouse. The women were sitting cross-legged on mats on a raised platform under a light roof made of the same material. They endlessly and effortlessly wove rushes to create mats, the mats that were the basic building material of this village. The old women of this island had probably been doing exactly this since before the Norman Invasion.

  Daniel was silently keeping an eye on the children in the water, making sure that none of them stayed under too long. Basket after basket was being filled with silt and then handed up to the shorter children still on the dock. It was the season of equal day and equal night, so the water was no longer summer warm, but the game the youngsters had made up seemed to keep their mind off the chill.

  "The children will catch their death of cold." Oliver mentioned the obvious.

  "Nay, Ollie. I have fired up the sweat lodge for them. Once the ones in the water are finished filling the baskets, they will jump out and help carry them to the new hut mound we are building. Then they will rush into the sweat lodge to warm up again. When they can no longer stand the heat, they will go diving again."

  Oliver looked over at the bath hut, the warmest hut in the village. He had always wanted to try a Frisian sweat bath, but it was a social thing they did in a group, in mixed company, and in the nude. He had never trusted his cock not to embarrass him. Those doing the diving in front of him were all working in the nude, both boys and girls. As he had been told many times, wet work was best done in the nude because skin dries faster than cloth.

  Once there were no longer any empty baskets, they all climbed onto the dock and began carrying the baskets of earth over to the new hut mound. When that was finished they all ran towards the waiting warmth of the sweat lodge, with all of them giggling and screaming in glee as they passed Oliver. Some of them were not that young. There were two middle-aged mothers amongst them. He wanted to look away from the sleek fit bodies, but that would have soiled their good clean fun with his Puritan morals. How was it that these clan folk lived so immorally and yet always seemed so pure? Not innocent mind you, but pure.

  Last week for instance, he had been caught out in his punt by a drenching storm and had sought shelter in Wellenhay. Two of the local wives had taken him in, stripped him, dried him, wrapped in him blankets, sat him by the fire, and fed him. When they offered him a bed, one of the wives disrobed and climbed under the covers with him to warm him. Not from lust but from logic. Not innocent, but pure.

  The whisky trade of this village was another example. The strongest connection that Puritan communities had with each other was their condemnation of drunkenness and of the destructiveness of the drinker mentality. Puritan women were now calling Aquavitae the devil's brew, while strong ale, strong cider, and wine were being decried as temptations that led you to the devil's brew. This clan was in the business of strong drink, and yet he had never once seen any of them drunk, and their lives certainly didn't revolve around the desire to drink. Not innocent, but pure.

  "So what are you going to do with all the profits?" Oliver repeated.

  "Find another place to live,” Daniel replied. Oliver laughed as if it were a jest, so Daniel called the oldest of the mat weavers over to sit with them. Her presence cost Daniel a pot of whisky, but it was well deserved. She was the village seer, the eldest of the elders, the keeper of their clan's history and all of the knowledge and wisdom that was passed on between the generations.

  "Tell Master Cromwell about the weather, Oudje,” Daniel said while he refilled the pot from a jug marked with a red X.

  She took a sip, then another, while she eyed the Puritan outlander. "But he is a drylander, an outlander, a godfanaat. Worse, for he is the Abbey's man. If I read the runes for him, he will denounce me as a witch."

  "He will never harm you,” Daniel assured her.

  "Will you swear to avenge me if he ever does?"

  "If he ever harms you, I will feed him to the eels. I swear it."

  She harrumphed and then got up on wobbly old legs and disappeared into the longhouse with much clumping of her walking stick. When she clumped back, a voluptuous woman, one of the nudes who had been diving, accompanied her carrying a long pole. It stood about five feet and was wrist thick at the base but tapered to a point at the top. It was stacked with bracelets of beads.

  Oliver pretended to take a closer look at the beads so that he could take a closer look at the body of the woman who carried them, but the wave of lust turned into a wave of guilt, so he focused on the beads instead. They were all of bone or horn or something similar, and the ones at the bottom were grey and cracked with immense age. The ones at the top looked almost new. All of them had runes carved into them. He crossed himself in the Christian way, but the voluptuous woman thought he was reaching for her breasts so she pushed a nipple forward to put it within easy reach. He pulled his hand back from her nipple and his cross turned into an N.

  Oudje noticed his distraction and shooed her buxom helper away and then settled herself beside the column of bracelets. "The pole is a unicorn horn from the lands-of-ice," she explained. "The bracelets hold our clan's history. Each bracelet marks twenty years, a generation. Some of the ones from the bottom have been lost through age and decay and brittleness, but the top ones are complete. You count the years backwards from the top.

  Do you read runes? I suppose not. You Puritans think it more important to learn Latin in your schools so that you can read all the lies that the monks have recorded."

  Oliver did not rise to her taunting. Instead he leaned forward to inspect the supposed unicorn horn, expecting it to be made of wood. He drew back from it in awe. It was a five foot long, perfectly straight, perfectly rounded and tapered, horn. It was actually a horn. If this was from a horse-like unicorn, then the animal would have been immense. It dawned on
him that this was a book, a very unusual book for sure, for it was a book made without paper and therefore could survive the damp.

  Meanwhile Oudje had settled herself down with her bony twisted hands near the base of it. She seemed to be praying for she was still and quiet and barely breathing. Then he noticed that her bony fingers were working the bead bracelets as if they were rosaries. Her voice was weak, and sounded as if it was coming from far away. "Twenty generations after we first met the Latins, the summer did not come. A time came when there were seven years in a row with no summer, so the folk that lived along the shores of the Oostzee and the Noordzee began to migrate south like the birds."

  "She means the Baltic and the North seas in the early days of the Roman church,” Daniel translated quietly, respectfully, just so that Oliver could match it to some history he was familiar with.

  "The norderlingen had to fight to push southwards, and those they defeated were thereby pushed southwards in front of them. They were hungry times. Times of blood and battle. We, the chosen people, the Frisian brotherhood, kept them from filling our own lands by taking them in our ships along and across the seas. We brought the Jutes and the Saxons and the Angles to these shores. We built winter villages on this side of the sea, on the islands of the marshes that were kin to the marshes of our motherland. Islands that were safe places for women and ships.

  Because Friesland was becoming colder and colder every year, our winter villages in the Fens became all year villages. We had twenty villages around the holy island, the big island, the Isle of the Eels. Ely was our holy place where the clans gathered during eel season."

  "It still is a holy place, the Abbey ..." Oliver interrupted.

  She hissed at him like a snake. "The Abbey is not a holy place! How can a place built by mere men be a holy place? You speak nonsense. Shush, fool." She moved her hands upward through the bracelets, while reading the runes carved on the beads with her fingers. "After four generations of ice in the north, the summers began warming again, but though the winters were shorter and the summers longer, our clan did not go back north. Life was good here. We stayed. We pushed the little dark people, the Britons, out of the lowlands and into the hills."