Pistoleer: Edgehill

by Smith, Skye

  Daniel didn't mention that he had been told all this already, for that would unravel the natural flow of the story telling. "What about Freiston? What happened to Freiston?"

  "Well, no one knows whether the Earl planned to invade Boston or whether it was just a trick to draw the men in from the villages. He didn't push his surprise and enter Boston, but held back. While his cavalry caused a standoff in Boston, other men of his were out and about stealing horses. There was a lot of confusion and delay and by the time the village men were allowed to leave Boston to make sure that their own villages were safe, the Earl's men were waiting for them.

  They gave the villagers a choice, have their villages burned and slaughtered, or send able men and horses to join the king's service. They promised that the men would not be used for fighting, but just as servants and grooms. They made a lot of promises. That all happened while our ship was in Lynn so I am just repeated what we were told when we returned."

  "And they broke those promises,” Daniel ventured to keep the story going.

  "I don't know about other villages, but no promises saved Fishtoft or Freiston. At first perhaps, but not once their men and horses were taken away. That was when the Earl's cavalry arrived. They must have been told that that help was coming by ship from Lynn, for they camped in those two villages to stop the Lynn men from landing, and while they waited they did things, terrible things, vicious things.

  All six of our Freisburn ships sailed out from Lynn with Cleff in command. They carried the first of the militia from Lynn. From the sea Cleff could see that the Earls cavalry were on both sides of the Haven, so he didn't enter it. Instead he set the bands down in the creeks and beaches to the east of Fishtoft. At least two hundred men landed in those first loads, and that caught the Earl between them and the men in Boston so he retreated without a fight. We kept ferrying men and cannons and gunpowder for two days, perhaps a thousand men, but except for that first crossing, we took them straight into the Haven."

  "But what about Freiston?"

  "Oh that was dreadful. The cavalry murdered some of the elders, and they used the women, and when they retreated they set the roofs on fire. The Norfolk militia lads were a good lot. Once the Earl had retreated, they pitched in to put out the fires and clean up the villages. Not in Freiston. Our men helped Freiston."

  "So other than Sonja and the wives who stayed behind in Freiston, were any others of our clan hurt?"

  "No, not that I know of, except that their husbands were dragged away to serve the king. Our men were running the ships, not fighting."

  For the first time in days, Daniel felt his stomach unclench. For the first time in days he cracked a grin. Just ahead there were five sets of triangle sails, and when they came abreast of them he stood tall on the bow and waved to the five overloaded Wellenhay ships inbound to Lynn. The Norfolk bandsmen all sitting on the cabin roof with their feet dangling over the water. The only faces he recognized were those of the crews, each a clanswoman.

  The overloaded Swift was just leaving the Haven's mouth when they arrived. Cleff waved to him from the wheel and yelled out "Two or three more ship loads should do it."

  * * * * *

  Fishtoft had the look of all the Dutch villages along the Netherlands border. Half broken, half charred, half fixed, and half hearted. The marshy land had charcoal blackening it, and that blackening had spread to walls and floors, hands and faces. The last of the Norfolk men waiting for ships were up ladders pulling newly cut reeds into place to thatch the roofs or fix the roofs. The gaps between the houses were filled with the old, charred thatch that had been raked down.

  Children were racing about pretending to help and making a game out of it. Older men and women were piling the discarded thatch into carts and pulling those carts towards the fields to be used as winter mulch after the harvest was in. People pulling carts because other than dogs, there was no sign anywhere of any animals. The Earls men had stolen or eaten them all.

  The old stone church still had its roof and women were coming and going from it. They were dressed all in black and from a distance they almost seemed like bats flitting in and out of a cave. When they got closer to the church they could see the bruised faces of the young women who were sitting and using the sunlight to thread needles and mend things. Black clothes, black bruises, black stares. A crone yelled to them that men were not allowed near the church or the women. Had it been only three days since Daniel had been at Holland House surrounded by laughing women dressed in gaily colored silk.

  With the young men of Fishtoft taken, who would crew the fishing boats or work the clam beds and the eel pens, or harvest the bean fields? Luckily the cavalry had not torched the crop fields when they torched the roofs. These folk would survive so long as someone came to help them with their harvest, but what they really needed was to get their young men back so the women could smile again.

  Freiston was a mile inland from Fishtoft, and the walk was pleasant once you were away from the ruined village. Out in the fields there was no sign that anything was amiss, other than the absence of grazing animal. The cartway led along one of the few large drainage canals that had not been filled in. Over the past two years most of the Earl's drainage ditches had been filled in by the village folk who stood to lose their commons if the ditches were ever completed. This one large one had been left unfilled because it allowed punts and other small boats to be floated from the Haven at Fishtoft all the way to Freiston.

  Freiston village looked much like Fishtoft had, but here Daniel knew all the men who were working on the roofs. The clan's Goliath, Anso, was lifting the main beam of a roof with his shoulders so that two other men could peg it into place. A girl of about ten was handing pegs and nails up to the men on the ladders, and behind her an older girl who looked like a sister was sitting in the shade and staring off into space.

  Daniel asked her what she was staring at, but her only response was to whimper and cry and run away.

  "She's afraid of men,” Teesa told him. "She was one of the ones that was ... you know."

  "They gang raped her ... but she can't be more than twelve."

  "She was one of the lucky ones, for she wasn't gang raped," Teesa told him. "The Earl wanted some pleasure, but he was afraid of catching the pox, so he sent for a virgin. She was the prettiest of the young lasses. You wouldn't know it now."

  "The Earl was here. He was actually here personally?"

  Anso heard the question and answered for her, "The Earl is the king's Commissioner of Array in Lincolnshire. He came to pronounce that the pressing of the men and horses was legal and the king's will." The pounding of nails and pegs from above forced him to stop talking for a moment. "The women are all over in the church."

  The great old stone church of Saint James loomed above the village like a tombstone. It was another bat cave with black skirts flitting in and out and about it. Well, not all the women were in black. Some of them were in dun colored homespun. Some of those were walking towards them.

  Venka sprinted the last few yards and threw herself into Daniel's arms. "Are you fit and healthy? Why didn't you send word?"

  "I am, are you?" The strength and then softness of their hugs proved they were both healthy. A moment later he was in a three way hug because his other wife Sarah had joined them. Neither sister wanted to be the first to let him go, so they just hugged and hugged.

  Afterwards they stood around watching Anso hold up a roof as the listened to the news from Boston, followed by Daniel's news from Yeovil and London. Eventually the news was said and the questions answered, and that was when Daniel scolded them. "We were trying to get our clan away to Bermuda before all the violence began. We don't need you lot volunteering to fight and getting involved in the struggle."

  "We didn't volunteer,” Anso defended, "The bands wanted us to join up, but we didn't. We offered the use of our ships, that is all."

  "And as for getting involved,” Venka hissed, "we have a mutual aid pact with these folk, remember, fo
r when we are away in Bermuda. That aid runs both ways. They needed our help so we are helping."

  "It's just that ...." Daniel saw the stubborn looks in all their eyes. You can tell a Frisian but you can't tell them much. "... oh never mind. I'm just glad you're all safe."

  "Not all of us,” Sarah pointed out.

  "I know. I've seen Sonja and the others,” Daniel said softly.

  "At least they were experienced women who knew what to expect," Teesa added. The teary eyed waif who had been used by the Earl had returned and was hiding behind her skirt and peering out under her arm at the big men.

  "Well that pretty well scuppers our plans of leaving this year,” Daniel moaned. "It was they and their Freiston husbands who were going to run Wellenhay once we left." He smiled at the waif but she ducked behind Teesa. "Is the little one related to any of our new clansmen?"

  "She's the little sister of one of them,” Teesa replied.

  "Venka, why don't you invite her to join the Wellenhay clan?" Daniel suggested. Venka was the select-elder of their village. The equivalent of a mayor.

  The others threw him an inquisitive look, but not Venka. Her eyes shot up and she stared at him. "You cunning sod,” she called him. The others still didn't get it so she explained, "Under our clan's traditional laws the penalty for raping a virgin is..."

  "Death, or the Weregild amount of a grown man,” Sarah finished her sisters words. "Of course. If she were of our clan then our moot court could convict the Earl and sentence him and afterwards any clansman could take his life without penalty."

  Venka was shaking her head. "We can easily vote her into the clan, but there is not enough evidence to warrant me calling a moot court,” she told them. "There are witnesses to attest to her virginity, and we can prove that she was raped, but all the witnesses to the act are the Earl's men. She can't even point him out to the court, because an Earl would never stoop to attend our court. In any case, such a sentence would not be accepted by the current rule of law in England."

  "Look around, Venka,” Anso told her while waving his hand at the ruined buildings. "There is no rule of law in England anymore, so the only law is traditional law."

  "I can charge him with the crime, and I can charge him to appear before our court. That is all I can do. Since the penalty for the crime is death, then force can be used to bring him to court, but not deadly force."

  "Then make it so, and draw up a written warrant,” Daniel told her. "If it helps us to capture, it will be worth the effort. Without the Earl, most of Lincolnshire will go over to Parliament. That means that the king and his men will be forbidden the entire east coast from the Humber to Dover and inland from Lincoln to Portsmouth. The fens villages will become backwaters rather than battlefields."

  One of the men working above them slid down a ladder and introduced himself to Daniel. "So is someone going after the Earl?" he asked. "I can tell you where he was going, or at least where he was taking the pressed men. I was one of them, see, but I escaped on the second night. We were to be mustered in Newark-on-Trent for the long march over to Shrewsbury on the Welsh border."

  A gleam came to Daniels eyes, and Sarah grabbed him and shook him and yelled, "No!"

  "I have to, love. These villages need their men back. We need their men back else our move to Bermuda will be delayed yet again. I'll take some silver with me to buy them back. All I have to do is find them, and Newark is where I will start looking."

  "All you have to do is stay alive,” Anso whispered under his breath.

  "And you'll promise to stay away from the Earl,” Sarah pleaded. "He's the king's captain-general. You can do nothing against him. Promise me you will stay well clear of him."

  "I promise that as soon as I free the men, I will bring them home. That is the best I can promise because I may have to bargain the silver with the Earl."

  Teesa was leading the frightened girl away from these big men, and once they were away from their big voices she asked her calmly, softly, "How would you like to become almost a sister to me? All you have to do is to tell my mom that you want to join our clan, you know, like your brother did, and then we can spend more time together."

  * * * * *

  "Take my bow,” Anso told Daniel as he handed him a long, sturdy, unstrung bow and a quiver of giant arrows. Anso had caught a ride back to Lynn and then on to Wellenhay on Teesa's last ferry just to be with Daniel. He wanted to give him his longbow. He wanted to give him support and advice before he rode off to find the Freiston men.

  "I'm crap with a bow,” Daniel replied. "Do we still have that old Spanish deer rifle around?"

  "Now Danny, there is only one reason why you would choose a deer rifle over a good bow. I thought you were off to get the men of Freiston back."

  "Yeh, well, there are only so many ways of doing that. One way is to break them free, which means they must mutiny, which will be easier if I kill their officers. Another way is to buy them out. Pass me that purse, please." You always said please to a man a large as Anso.

  Anso looked inside the purse. "This ain't silver. This is gold eights." The standard gold coins of England were Spanish pieces of eight.

  "Of course. I can't carry enough silver to pay the Weregild on forty-two men. I would need a cart to haul it." The traditional 'manworth' was 200 shillings, and that was back when shillings were pure silver, so it may take as much as 600 per man in today's Stuart shillings."

  "Forty two? But only twenty or so men were pressed from Freiston,” Anso told him.

  "And if I come across the Fishtoft men first, what then, eh? Do I leave them as pressed men or do I buy them out. I quite like the Fishtoft folk and what the Earl did to them was ...."

  "Yeh, completely,” Anso interrupted before Daniel could start up a rant. "But even in gold eights you don't have enough to buy out forty men. Not nearly enough."

  "But I have enough to bribe their guards into turning their heads while they escape. Gold always bribes better than silver because most men no nothing of gold and think it more valuable than it is. I have a chance of freeing them so long as I find them before they reach the king's army."

  "So bribing is the third way,” Anso said thoughtfully. "What about slipping a message to the men about how Lindsey broke his promise and about what happened to their women and their village after they were taken away. They would mutiny for sure."

  "Mutiny and get themselves killed. They will be bound, helpless and guarded until they are assigned to a regiment. I am trying to bring them back to their women, not get them killed."

  While Anso went in search of the Spanish longrifle, he continued to pack his kit. It was more or less the same kit he had taken to the south on his search for Blake. His pistols and horse leathers, his curved steel chest armour and matching helmet, his carbine, his light battle axe, powder and shot, and a heavy purse. This time he would take a bed roll as well as a winter woolen cloak because summer was gone and the nights would have an autumn chill to them.

  A shadow crossed the doorway and dimmed the entire room. "Did you find the deer rifle?" he asked. Only Anso was as big as a doorway.

  "No, but look who I found loading a punt,” Anso told him as he pulled some squirming struggling thing from his shoulders and laid it gently down on the closest sleeping mat. It was Teesa. "She had all her huntress gear with her, plus a pack and a bedroll." He held something out in his hand. "And this." It was the small wheellock pistol that Robert Rich had given her.

  Teesa pushed herself up from the mat so she could pull her bow and quiver out from under her. "Let me go. I am of age. I can make my own decisions,” she hissed up at the two tall men.

  "Go where?" There was no answer so Daniel nudged her with his foot.

  "I was going hunting,” she said with the sweet smile of a poor liar.

  "Hunting with a pistol. There is only one game you can hunt with a pistol that small. A gentleman."

  "Alright, I was going to hunt the Earl of Lindsey. I can do it you know. I've spent time am
ongst the nobility and I know how to seduce them. I can trap him with his own lust and while he has his pants down around his ankles ready to pork me, I will fillet him with my eel knife."

  "Teesa, Teesa, Teesa. You wouldn't get anywhere near him. He is a captain-general. There will be a thousand men around him, and every one of them would want to do you for themselves. Have you seen Sonja's bruises? Do you understand what she went through in the hands of soldiers?"

  "But I've got to do something about a man like that. I want to do something to help."

  "You already have helped. You ferried the men who relieved Boston. How many men could do that, never mind women. Can you imagine any of those silk wrapped hussies in the great houses of London piloting a ship laden with soldiers? You've done enough. It was me capturing Prince Rupert's men and treasure that caused this mess, so it is me that must set it right."

  "I'll go and get the rifle,” Anso said and left them alone.

  "Are you taking my Femke again?" Teesa asked.

  "I have to, love. She's the only horse in the clan that won't be stolen by the first army foragers I meet."

  "Well good. If you insist on traveling alone then at least you will have Femke on your side." She handed something to him. Her hunting bow and a quiver of arrows.

  "Love, I'm crap with a bow."

  "You're crap with a long bow. This is my bow, and much too small for a man of your size, which means you can use it from the saddle. Take it." Teesa was sobbing. "It's all I have to give."

  “Teesa love. You’ve given me Femke. Is that not enough?”

  “She belongs to the clan,” She sobbed as she dropped the bow and quiver on the mat and then dashed out through the doorway holding her hands to her eyes.

  A shadow cut off all light from the doorway again. "Was that Teesa crying?" Anso told him. "I've never seen Teesa cry before." He held out a long thin bundle wrapped in sacking cloth towards Daniel.

  Although Anso passed the bundle as if it weighed nothing, Daniel almost lost his grip on the thing. The deer longrifle was of full Spanish size ... over six feet long and weighing the best part of twenty pounds when bundled with its tools and steadying fork. "Will you punt me to Ely so I can grab a horse?"