Pistoleer: Edgehill

by Smith, Skye

  Four other riders, two on each side of the road were now at the tree ends of the ropes and hacking at it with their sabres. The bushes separating their horses from the anchor trees were thick enough and wide enough that they could not reach the windings or the knot on the trees, so they had no choice but to hack at the loosely draped rope. Their blades could not get purchase because they just bounced off or slid down the rope. Then those riders were obliterated from view by gunsmoke. They were shot at close range by carbine balls, and their armour wouldn't have saved them from injury.

  Again the column turned and raced back along the killing road, anything to become a moving target again. Anything to try to regroup and find a way to escape this trap. Some of them leaped the brambles on the down hill side of the road, but no one followed them. Not after they saw those riders and their horses tumble on bad landings and saw the riders trapped under their rolling horses and crushed.

  Now there was an increased frequency of shots from the other end of the trap. Blake was pushing his men towards this end and closing the trap. This time the riders had realized that they were safer off their horses than on, and they dismounted and used their horses to shield them. The volley's trickled to a stop. Blake had been explicit. Don't harm the horses. Leave them as a liability to their riders.

  "We want to talk terms!" a voice yelled out from amongst the horses.

  "You didn't give the men from Dorchester any terms!" Daniel yelled back. He didn't mind talking. With every phrase, Blakes men were closing in from the other end.

  "That was Lunsford, not me!" was the reply.

  "Then let Lunsford show himself and do the talking!" Daniel yelled back.

  "He was leading the infantry. He should almost be to Sherborne Castle by now."

  Daniel didn't reply for a moment. Lunsford had escaped him because they had spared the infantry from this trap. He focused on the situation in hand. The lad with the two saplings was on his feet again and was looking on from the safe side of the rope. He was about to yell at him to get off the effing road, when Ralph Hopton came out from behind his horse offering his sabre in front of him with one hand at each end.

  Instead of Hopton walking towards Daniel he was walking towards the lad. "I surrender,” he told the lad. "Here, take my sword." Before Daniel could yell out a warning, the lad had dropped his saplings and had ducked under the rope to skip towards Hopton. He wore a big grin on his face at being so honored. The grin became a grimace as Hopton's sabre ran through his heart.

  A lot of things then happened very quickly and there was confusion everywhere. Hopton threw his own body down onto the rope so he could hold it taught while he sawed through it with his sabre. That very action saved his life because a half dozen balls whizzed through the space where his chest had been but seconds before.

  Hopton's men put one foot in their stirrups on the other side of the horse from the guns, and then half stepped along behind the cover of their horses in the direction of the cut rope. The horses picked up speed as they moved towards Daniel who had left his cover and was running across open road to hack at the gallant Hopton with his battle axe. The young Scot, Balfour, on the uphill side had also left the safety of cover and was running towards Hopton with his sabre outstretched.

  The other lad in the road, the lad who had piked the hunter in the belly, was running too, but he was running away from Hopton because he could see the horses gathering speed on their way to cross the rope once it was cut. The lad dropped a shoulder into Daniel's stomach and physically lifted him off his feet and carried him back into the safety of the bushes. Captain Balfour had no such guardian angel, and he was slashed and slashed again as Hopton's cavalry rode over him and then over the cut rope.

  By the time Daniel regained his wind, Hopton and his cavalry were gone and his own men were building a barricade out of saplings and bushes to block the road in case they decided to regroup and come back on the attack. Meanwhile Blake and his men were walking towards them from the other end of the trap gathering horses, weapons, and wounded prisoners as they came. "Are you hurt?" Blake asked him, with a tinge of guilt that his friend was here at all.

  "Just bruised and winded, Rob,” he replied but didn't mention that this was all from being tackled by his own man.

  Blake took a good look down the road towards Sherborne before he came back and told Daniel "So Hopton escaped, damn him. Oh well, we killed his second in command, one Captain Hussey and we captured his Sergeant Major, one Bampfield, though he is just a lad."

  Daniel told Blake about the other lad, the one that Hopton had murdered by shame faced trickery, and then about the loss of Captain Balfour who had tried to avenge him.

  "Bloody hell," was Blake's reply. "Balfour was the son of Sir William, the true commander of this brigade. What are we to tell him? That his son played the fool and got himself killed." Blake shrugged and reminded Daniel of the Dutch Pistoleer saying, "Fools rush in where Pistoleers fear to tread." Daniel decided not to tell him that he also had been one of the fools.

  "So we have your two dead,” Blake said, taking a butcher's toll, "and my four injured. But Hopton had the worst of it by far. Twenty dead or near dead and fifteen who will survive to be prisoners."

  With a shaking finger Daniel pointed to the lad's corpse lying in the bloody dust and the captain's corpse just beyond him. "I'd gladly trade all the prisoners to have those lads beside me again. Some day I'm going to take great pleasure in doing for Mr. Ralph Hopton."

  "You mean Sir Ralph Hopton, for anyone with that much of a demon in him is certain to have been knighted. You do realize that since it was you who saw him die, you will have to break the news to Balfour's father."

  It was dark by the time they had stripped corpses and prisoners of anything valuable, especially their armour. In truth, the armour was stunning in quality, for most of the dead and prisoners were of the manor born. With Yeovil so close, Blake's men had come without the gear needed to make a camp, and now that they controlled Babylon Hill Road, they were just a short ride from the now-safe-bridge into Yeovil. They bound the wounds of their prisoners, mostly thigh and buttock wounds, and tied them to their saddles and led them down the hill and to Bedford's headquarters.

  That night the two flying squads and their prisoners were the last to eat before the army's camp kitchens closed for the night. On hearing that there were a half dozen dead horses up the hill, the cooks dispatched a squad of men with a cart to go and butcher them. The corpses of Hopton’s men weren't collected until the next morning, to give Hopton a chance to collect them himself. Thus was the reality of battle that a dead horse was valued more than a dead man.

  Blake took Daniel along when he went to make his report to the Earl of Bedford, and to the man who really ran things, Colonel Balfour. For the sake of the grieving father, Daniel swapped the roles of the two lads who had died trying to keep the rope across Babylon Hill road. Balfour was enraged that Hopton had used a false truce and false surrender to murder his son, but at least his rage softened his deep despair at such a personal loss.

  The defeat and humiliation of Hopton gave the young Earl of Bedford some good news to report to London, finally. He was so overjoyed by being able to make such a report that he hosted a dinner party for his officers. Neither Robert nor Daniel were invited. Bedford's glory lasted only two days, for then the news came that Goring, the king's governor of Portsmouth, had surrendered the town and the castle to General William Waller and Admiral Robert Rich.

  Bedford's army were jubilant at the news for that meant that their mission of stopping Hertford's army from relieving Goring in Portsmouth was now done. Bedford left for London to make the most of 'his' victory on Babylon Hill and left his brigade to his second in command, Balfour.

  With Bedford gone, reason and logic became the rule because Colonel William Balfour was a wily Scot with long experience in the Dutch wars.. He was planning a proper siege of Sherborne, one that would keep the Earl of Hertford's army surrounded and cut off until the
y had no choice but to surrender. Daniel could not afford to wait for such a siege so he said his farewells to his friend Blake.

  "This may be the last time we meet before I move my folk to Bermuda,” Daniel told him.

  "I also must move my folk,” Blake told him. "With the Wyndham family and their royalists in control of Bridgwater it is no longer safe for them there. I'll likely move them to Lyme."

  "Come with us to Bermuda,” Daniel offered.

  Blake smiled. "Perhaps, someday. But not yet. I refuse to be pushed off my father's land by the bloody Wyndhams."

  Daniel mounted up and pointed Femke east towards the market town of Beaminster on the other side of Blackmoor Vale. He had to return a costly carbine and pistol to a father who did not yet know that he had lost a cherished son. He was not looking forward to that duty for a second time. Not at all.

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  The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 16 - Grief in Beaminster, Dorset, September 1642

  The lad's name on the quartermaster's list was Bill of Beaminster, which also showed that he had volunteered and was not part of a militia group. Daniel had kept possession of his weapons up on Babylon Hill, but it took some convincing before the brigade's horse master would allow him to take the lad's horse to carry the corpse home. In truth it was Blake who convinced the horse master, who was being stubborn over the loss of such a good horse ... Blake and about five of his flying squad.

  The rolling green hills and copses around Beaminster were pleasant enough to ride through on a warm summer's day, but not while transporting a body that was already smelling ripe and in this heat should have already been under the ground. He stopped in at the first stable he saw on North Street in hopes that someone would recognize the horse, because Bill was all the name he had, and he really didn't want to open the shroud to show the face.

  "The mark on the horse is Parnham Manor,” an old man told him, "but old man Strode has no son named William. Let's see. There's John the eldest, then George, Hugh, and Tom."

  "Strode?" There was that name again. "How old?"

  "All in their teens."

  Daniel pointed to the body hung over the saddle. "Bill was older than sixteen but not yet twenty. Dark hair, your height, and he knew horses."

  "Well, if'n I wus you I would ask at the manor first. Ride into town but when you reach the market square turn left and cross the River Brit. That puts you on the Bridport road. Parnham is about a mile on. You can't miss it, it's huge. Walter Raleigh had it built out of his profits from tobacco."

  By the time he reached the square he had already made some assumptions about Beaminster. It was a town of weavers that had seen better days but was still well off, and every religious cult he knew of seemed to be represented amongst the folk walking about. He reminded himself not to blaspheme in their presence. At the river bridge there was a hostel of sorts which had the look of a church building, so perhaps for housing pilgrims or monks. The woman scrubbing the front step was dressed in black like a widow, and did not look friendly or hail him like an inn keeper would, so he did not ask the cost of a bed for the night.

  You certainly couldn't miss the manor. It was an Elizabethan palace in a wonderful setting beside the river just before the valley narrowed. There was a large stable building towards the river from the main house, and Daniel made directly for it. There was no man about, but there was a washer woman hanging clothing out to dry and he decided to call to her to find out where the men were.

  He never had a chance to call. The woman must have recognized the horse for she had dropped her laundry basket and lifted her skirts and ran towards them. Once she realized what was slung over the saddle she began to wail and scream and ran right by Daniel to the body and began to hug at it and tried to lift it. Her screams brought others, mostly women from the house.

  About the time the other women arrived, the washer woman had left the corpse and ran at Daniel and slapped him and hit him and scratched at his face, and all he could do was to hold her and hug her and try to calm her while keeping his face out of reach of her finger nails. Luckily for him washer women tend to have short soft nails. The other women dragged her off him and began comforting her, all save one.

  By her clothes she was obviously the lady of the house. By her haughty manner, to the manor born. By her face about forty and by her weight a mother to many. "What is your business here?" she asked.

  Two men had arrived, both from the stables, and both carrying pitchforks. He gave them what he hoped was a non threatening look and shrugged his shoulders. "I brought the lad home. He died bravely, fighting the king's army. May I speak with his father? I would tell him the story of it." Everyone about him seemed to be embarrassed by the question, including the sobbing washer woman. "Was she his mother?"

  "Yes,” the Lady said curtly. "You have done your duty. You may go."

  "The lad deserves his story be told. May I speak with his father?" Again everyone seemed too embarrassed to answer.

  "My husband has gone to Nottingham,” the Lady replied.

  Before she could once again dismiss him, he pulled open a sack that was hung from his saddle and reached into it to lift out the lad's carbine and pistol. "He told me that these guns were his father's. Who should I give them to?"

  "They are my husbands,” she replied. "Jacob, take them from him." One of the men handed his pitchfork to his mate and took the guns from Daniel. He didn't check the flash pan for powder, so he was not trained in guns. "Is that all?" the lady asked haughtily.

  "No!" the washer woman shouted out as she shrugged off the arms of the other serving women. "I want to hear my Billie's story, so that I can tell it to John."

  "His lordship to you,” the Lady hissed angrily, and then in a calmer voice, "I have been married to Sir John Strode for nineteen years. Bill was twenty. One of my husband's dalliances between wives."

  "Do I look like I give a shit,” Daniel said, finally losing his temper with the manor born bitch. The Christian distain of bastards always angered him. In his clan there was no such thing as a bastard because there was no such thing as illegitimate. How can something as innocent and wondrous as a newborn ever be illegitimate. "The mother's boy is dead and the father deserves an explanation. Who should I tell it to if not to the mother."

  Jacob said softly, "Go into the stable and tell it. That was where Billie lived. Those who wish to hear it will come to you."

  "Well I will not be coming,” the Lady said and turned on her heel and stormed back towards the house. After four steps she turned and yelled, "He was a thief and he got what he deserved for rebelling against the king!" and then seeing the looks of horror her words had caused, she turned and stomped towards the house.

  The stable included a bunkhouse for the outdoor staff, and that was where Daniel was led, and that was where the men lifted down Billie's body and unsaddled the horses so that they could take feed and water in comfort. Daniel sat on a bench in the shade and the mother sat beside him and other folk gathered in a ring around them. Quietly he told the story of how Ralph Hopton had murdered the lad by pretending to surrender to him.

  "He was a brave lad to rush out in front of running hunters with saplings in his hands to make them shy from the jump,” Daniel said after his story was finished. "You wouldn't see me doing that."

  "The lad grew up in the stables and ate, slept and lived horses,” Jacob told him. "He had no fear of them."

  "Is the John Strode of this house any relation to the William Strode of Devon, or of Somerset?"

  "Oooh, don't let her ladyship hear you mention those names. The Strode family is split down the middle about who really should have inherited this house. It's all quite complicated because cousins married cousins, but William's brother Richard has been in and out of the courts for twenty years trying to wrest this house out of John's hands. That is why his lordship has gone to Nottingham to petition the king."

  "So he is not
a king's man?"

  "In this part of Dorset,” Jacob laughed, "don't be daft. The folk here's'about hate the bloody Stuarts. About ten years ago we had a famine. Bad it was, with lots of children dying, and what did the king do. Squat all except to raise the taxes and have them that didn't pay beaten. Can you imagine, the tax collectors took the milking cows away from starving children. Bastards."

  "So he hasn't gone to Nottingham to join the army?"

  "Him, he's eighty. Married his ladyship when she was twenty and he was sixty. We were all surprised he didn't fall off her and die of apoplexy, but she's born him seven children, four of them sons. The randy old goat."

  "His first wife died childless," the mother added. "When she died, he used me as a bed warmer." She giggled. "I was pretty back then. All the men wanted me. When I bore him Billie, that was when all the trouble over the inheritance began. So John married that Wyndham bitch and my life has been hell ever since, and now, now ...." She was lost in her tears again.

  "Wyndham. Would that be the Somerset Wyndhams. Friends to kings."

  "Oh aye. Royalist bastards to the one, including her ladyship. Her fondest dream is to court the queen. Charlie's queen. A popish queen."

  "Will you tell Strode how his eldest son died for me?" Daniel asked of the group. Everyone nodded. "Tell him that if he wants vengeance, then make trouble for Ralph Hopton. Hopton shouldn't have done what he did. Not to someone so trusting. Was Billie really a thief."

  "Do you mean, did he steal the horse and the carbine?" Jacob asked. "In a way. He left the day after his lordship left, so he never asked his permission to take the guns or the horse. Old John would have tried to stop him from going, but if he was going anyway, he would not have begrudged him the horse and gun."

  "It's getting late. Do you think her ladyship would forbid my sleeping in the stable tonight?"

  "We just won't tell her,” Jacob replied. "That's usually what we does around her. What she doesn't know doesn't hurt us."