by Smith, Skye
"I'm to Cambridge,” he told her. "Besides, I'm married now. Very married."
"Whose the lucky girl. Have ya knocked her up yet, or was that why you married her?” the woman asked, eager for juicy gossip.
"Venka, the mayor of Wellenhay."
"Her, but she's older than I am. Why didn't you ask me instead of that dried up old hag. I'm still nice and juicy."
"She's not that old,” he replied loyally. "Besides, she was my brother's wife so it seemed like the right thing to do when he died."
The son of the innkeep had a much better understanding of good business than the women. Not only was this man an elder with good coin in his pocket, but he was married to the mayor of the most successful village in the Ely Fens. "Well that was very generous of you, Danny, and I envy you. Venka is a fine woman, nay a lady, and a looker no matter what these trolls say. I wish you happiness and good fortune."
* * * * *
"They're all in here,” the stable keeper told him as he pushed open the side door to the stable. "I put them all under one roof as soon as the freezing rain began. See how warm it is in here. You can't even see your breath.” Inside the stable were twenty horses all crammed together, some of them holding each other up by the sheer crush. "If'n you're goin' to Cambridge and back you'll be wanting one of the big mares. A calm horse with strength and stamina. The bay over there would be my choice. I'll get her saddled up and ready.” Without the backing of the Wellenhay clan, he would have lost this stable to his creditor, the Abbey. For Danny he wouldn't just saddle the horse, if necessary he'd carry the damn thing.
"I'll take Femke,” Daniel told him. He could see the spindly small horse over in the corner leaning against a wall made from stacked bales. Of course she would have chosen the warmest place in the stable.
"Femke? You mean Teesa's pony. Don't be daft. A man your height will look silly on such a short horse."
"There's a foot of snow on the ground with an ice crust under it. I need a horse smart enough to pick her own way. I'll saddle her up."
The stableman was glad Daniel had offered to saddle Femke. The last time he had tried, the bitch had bitten him. What this tall, handsome soldier saw in that scrawny ornery mare, he couldn't say, but the last two times this soldier had ridden off to find armies, he had made the same choice. He dragged a small saddle out of a pile of saddles and heaved it up and balanced it on the wall of a stall. The mare pushed her way through the other standing horses and parked herself beside it as if she knew it was for her. He backed away from her, or rather, from her teeth.
"While I saddle her up, you go and find me some horse blankets and a riding cloak. I want her covered in wool from belly to the top of my head, and across her neck and her rump. It's bloody cold outside."
|"Yeh, like I haven't noticed. I'm glad I nicked the coal from the bishop's palace else my wife and kin would be freezin' to death in our house right now. The other folk were all goin' after fine cloth and the silverware. I had the coal to myself."
"Coal eh, well you be careful,” Daniel told him as he rubbed Femke's nose. "If you get coal too hot it will set your chimney on fire, and if you dampen it down to much, the smoke will poison you. You be careful with that foul rock."
* * * * *
He had not even gotten across the first bridge when he was glad he had chosen Femke. The snow was deeper on the bridge, and under it the planks were coated with ice. She was walking along in the center of the bridge, when suddenly she shied to one side and then back to the center. Daniel looked behind them. With the vibration of her steps the snow had loosened and had caved through a hole left by a broken plank. If she hadn't have shied, her leg would have gone down through the hole and would have snapped, and he would have been thrown off her into the river below. The current was still keeping the center of the river free of ice. He wouldn't have survived the fall and the cold, not without someone close by with a rope to pull him out over the ice.
Femke and he had come through some sticky situations together, and he had learned to trust her. The best way of trusting her was to ignore the reins, and let her pick her own way at her own speed. He didn't need the reins to control her anyway, for she was trained to verbal commands. Teesa has trained her that way so she could use the mare for trick riding.
Once off the bridge, the mare picked up her pace. The snow on the road was not as deep as that of the bridge, and there was no ice underneath it, just a hard crust of what had been wet snow before the temperature had dropped. He decided to tell her why they were both out in this brutal cold. Even if she didn't understand, it would give him something to do other than sit there while she did all the work. Teesa had trained her trick pony, not in English, but in Frisian, so that she would not be distracted by the calls of others. In the mother of all North Sea languages, Daniel told the mare the reason for this journey through the snow.
"So the short of it is,” he ended, "that to save Rob's life I need to find oregano and get it back to Teesa.” At the name of her mistress, the mares ears picked up, and she sped up. Mayhaps she had understood the story after all.
What a difference it was to ride under the cloaks rather than tramp through the snow. He was warm, truly warm, because Femke's heat billowed up underneath the blankets and cloaks, and his boots were not touching the icy ground. He actually took his scarf away from his mouth because so much heat was coming up under his hood. The scarf he wrapped around Femke's forehead and nose, which were exposed to the weather. It was sixteen miles from Ely to Cambridge and the tough little horse covered the distance in her pacing walk in just under three hours. Her quick step walk was a joy, because it ate up miles without pounding Daniel's kidneys to bits.
As he entered Cambridge along the Ely road, he was disappointed. Everything was closed up tight against the frigid air and there was not a soul on the streets. At each inn and alehouse along Ely road he stopped long enough to barge through the kitchen door and call out, "Ya got any oregano?” and would then wait while the message was passed from ear to mouth around the inn, and the answer was always "No,” but many also added "Try Edward's Levant Emporium in the market street."
Daniel gave up after the third inn and hurried Femke across the castle bridge and towards the market square to find the Emporium. He hated doing this. The Edwards family were backers of the Levant Company which held the king's patent on trade with the Turks. Since Wellenhay had recently expanded their liquor and gun trade with Holland to include spices, they were in direct competition with the Emporium. He hated doing this but he had no choice, for Rob's life was at stake.
The shop was shut. Every shop around the market square was shut. There were no stalls set up despite this being market day. He knew the Emporium because it announced its grand name on a fancy sign hung above the tiny shop front. After Daniel motioned Femke towards the shop's door, she sidled right up to it hoping to gain some warmth from being out of the frigid breeze. Daniel leaned out of saddle and thumped on the door.
An upper floor shutter clattered open and a face looked down at him and called out, "What foolish errand brings a man out on a day as cold as this? Can't you see that everything is closed? You must be on an errand for a comely woman."
Daniel recognized the man as the other Daniel who supplied Cambridge with kofe and spices, Daniel Edwards. He was the cousin of the London family, and had been trying to expand their Emporiums beyond London. "Mister Edwards,” he called up as he pulled back his deep hood so the man could recognize him. "It is I, Daniel of Wellenhay. We have a man down and near dead with bubble lung fever, and I have been sent by our healer to find oregano."
"If your healer is comely, then my guess was right."
"She is comely, and the sick man is in desperate straights. Do you have any oregano?” Daniel asked. The shutter slammed shut above him. Blast the man for his rudeness. If he didn't have any, at least he could have told him who in this blasted city would have some. He turned Femke away from the front door, and looked across the square hoping that the alehouse was
open. The door creaked behind him.
"Here is all I have left,” Edwards handed up a package wrapped up in yesterdays news sheets. "I hope it is enough."
Daniel reached down for it, and smiled at the man. "Thank you sir. How much do I owe you?"
"Twenty pounds,” Edwards replied.
Daniel looked down at him in shock. Twenty pounds for perhaps three shillings worth of spice. He controlled his anger, otherwise he would have shot the man down like a footpad. "I have only two pounds on me, but I will come back tomorrow with the rest."
"You would ride the highways alone carrying so much gelt, and in these times. You are a fool,” Edwards told him. "Take it as a gift. I don't hold with ransoming men's lives, and the life in peril is obviously dear to you."
"Thank you Mister Edwards,” Daniel said with a nod of respect.
"Call me Daniel. And don't you be thinking that I don't know of your ships and trade. Come back in better weather and we will discuss your ships supplying my shop with Dutch spices and cacao directly. Now off with you and take that wondrous herb to your comely healer."
Daniel pulled his hood up again, saluted the man, then turned the horse towards the bridge road and told Femke to hurry. Told her in Frisian, of course, for that was her language. She leaped ahead and they were away, with Femke magically quick stepping over the treacherous cobbles without missing a step or slip-sliding.
Three hours later they were back in Ely. It was already dark. That inky blackness of winter evenings on the days following a full moon. Now Daniel had a decision to make. Did he stay overnight in Ely or did he continue on to Wellenhay by way of the treacherous bridle path, and if he did continue, would he be safer on foot or on Femke. The delay in getting the oregano to Rob would be twelve hours. The delay could mean a lifetime of difference. The stable was on the Cambridge road, so he pulled in for some warmth and nourishment, both for he and for Femke.
The stable man made the decision for him when he said, "The horses are nervous. There's another storm coming.” He moved around to the other side of the brazier so he would not block his guest's heat. "The moon will be up in two hours, so I'll wait until it sheds a bit of light before I see to the horses."
Two hours. Two hours to rest and eat and get warm, and then Daniel would ride Femke to Wellenhay.
Three hours later, for the moon goddess always seems to take her own sweet time in rising when you needed her the most, he stopped Femke at the edge of Ely in an oak grove. His branch was still blocking the path, and there were no new footprints since he had made his this morning. He guided the mare towards the correct oak, and then told her to stay perfectly still while he stood on her saddle and reached up with his dagger to loosen the lungwort away from the bark. Loosen, not cut, for he did not know which part of the plant that Teesa would need. It weighed nothing despite its size, and he carefully put it in the saddle bag on top of the parcel of oregano.
Now the danger began. The road to and from Cambridge had seemed long and tiresome in the frigid cold, but this disused bridle path was treachery itself in the dark shadows of the pale moon. He decided not to touch the reins at all and give Femke complete control of pace and path. She stepped forward full of confidence and they quickly covered the first half of the distance, but then the storm hit. Not a snow storm, not an ice storm, not a rain storm. Just a wind storm. An icy wind that blew the dry snow off the ground and into their faces and covered his tracks from this morning. Was that only this morning?
After an age fighting the wind and the cold and the blowing snow, it came to Daniel that if he had set out on foot he would have perished. Not only would he not have had the rising warmth of Femke to keep him from freezing to death, but his feet would have frozen in his boots. There were a dozen places on this path where game trails forked away from it and all of them looked the same under the dry drifts of frigid whiteness.
Even Femke was having trouble keeping to the path, and occasionally would bury her nostrils under the powdery snow and first snort the snow away from her nose and then sniff in to assure herself of his scent from this morning. The very cold that would have claimed his life had iced over the deep pools that had eaten into this path over the centuries, so there was no fear of her slipping to their death. Though Femke was timid and suspicious of the ice and tried to stay off it, Daniel knew that it would be thick enough to carry the weight of both horse and rider.
By the time they lurched across the frozen waterway to reach Wellenhay island, their cloaks and blankets were so covered with dry blown snow, that they looked like a moving marble statue from one of the squares in London. They were spotted by the watch in the tower, who rang the warning steel giving the code for 'single rider approaching'. It was a signal not often used by the watch of this village, because the normal signal was 'single punter approaching'.
Two armed men leaped out at them from behind the small houses at the back of the village. They had dressed hurriedly, and lightly, and were having trouble holding their pistols steady for their entire bodies were shuddering in the cold. "Friend,” he told them in answer to their query, "it's me Danny. Grab some cloaks for yourselves and meet me at Teesa's cottage. This horse needs taking care of, and I doubt I have the strength left to do it myself."
At the mention of Teesa's name, Femke lurched forward between the houses and then turned towards Teesa's. Folk were peering out of their doors. At the sight of the walking ghost a few of them called out warnings to the others. Did he really look like a ghost. Well perhaps, since he was wearing his sailcloth cape over his woolen cloak, and since he was glazed in snow, and since the wind was whipping snow into the air around him. One man called out, questioning whether the phantom was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Daniel said nothing. He was too tired to even brush some of the snow off or to tell them who he was.
It was Sarah who brought them all to their senses. Sarah who had been watching over Rob all night while Teesa slept. But that was only after she had grabbed Femke's halter to stop the mare from pushing her way into Teesa's cottage. "It's Daniel,” she cried out, "and he needs help."
Until he tried to dismount he hadn't realized that he needed help. The blankets and cloaks were stiff from the moist warm air that had risen up from the mare and then frozen within the cloaks. The cloaks were frozen stiff and frozen together. It was as if he and Femke were wearing one very large piece of armour. The guards had arrived, now in their cloaks and without their guns, and immediately began beating on the ice armour with their hands to crack it free, just so they could lift him down. He had the extraordinary experience of being lifted like a plank of wood off the back of a horse. When his feet touched down on the ground, his legs were not working properly and he slumped to the ground, leaving the layers of cloaks above him like a free standing tent.
"Forget me for now, I'm fine!” he yelled up through the hood of his ice tent. "See to Femke. Get her inside one of the animal cottages and rub her legs to keep the blood flowing through them until they warm up. She needs water, she deserves oats. See to her right quickly. Oh, and leave her saddlebag with Sarah.” The ice tent was lifted over his head, and then two strong sets of arms pulled him to his feet. He still could not stand by himself.
"What do you want us to do with him?” one of the men asked of Sarah. "The bath house fires are dampened for the night. Do you want us to fire them up and get the sweat lodge working."
"That will take too long,” Sarah replied. "Carry him to Venka's cottage and let her keep him warm. What was he saying about this horse?"
"To put her in with the sheep for warmth, and to keep rubbing her legs until she is warm. He's right. She's stopped moving so her legs will begin to freeze up.” He looked around at the growing crowd of curious clansfolk and saw some cousins. "Oye, you, carry Danny to Venka's cottage while we see to the horse."
"Hand me the saddle bags,” Sarah told them.
"Sarah, you must hurry them to Teesa,” Daniel called out as he was lifted out of a snow drift. "In
side there is oregano, and what I think is lungwort."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Invasion by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-15
Chapter 18 - Icebridge to the Valiant Sailor in January 1643
Three days. He had barely gotten out of bed for three days, and he wasn't alone. Outside the storm had raged, so the folk of Wellenhay had hid inside, and where was warmer or more comfortable than under the down comforter of a dry bed. To be truthful, Daniel had spent most of that bed time sitting up and telling stories. Eventually he got out of bed, but only to walk as far as the longhouse, and he took the comforter with him. Hiding from the weather under down comforters while singing and storytelling to pass the coldest days of winter had been a tradition in his clan since time began.
That day he visited Rob just to see if he could be of any help, but between Teesa and Sarah, Rob was well in hand. His fever had broken and his breathing had eased and his pulse was stronger. Teesa had not used the lungwort at all because she didn't know its uses as well as she knew those of Oregano. Daniel was inwardly glad that he had not turned home after finding the lungwort, instead of making the journey to Cambridge, despite how many times he was now being scolded for making such a journey alone in a storm in the dark.
Today he was being scolded by the man whose life he had saved. Rob was feeling so much better that he was sitting up and feeding himself the herb laced soups that Teesa prepared for him. "Always playing the hero,” Rob chided Daniel. "In the Dutch wars it was the same. You were always the one to volunteer for the most dangerous missions. Dangerous is one thing, but riding alone through a blizzard to buy oregano was foolish and reckless. You used to calculate the risks better than that. You used to use your brain to plan the best outcome before ever you volunteered."
Was it true, Daniel wondered? Was he getting reckless? "I did have help. The best of help. I was far safer partnered with Femke than with anyone else from this village.” It was a truth that had come to him only after he was safely home. Although he knew ahead of time how sure footed and wise footed Femke was, and that a horses heat could be trapped by a rider's cloak, he had not known how well the over-capes made of sail duek would work. When the rising moisture froze in their threads, the duek had become a fitted shield that sheltered both mount and rider from the worst of the storm. The only parts of them not sheltered were his boots, and Femke's legs and hoofs. His weak defense amounted to, "It wasn't as if I was charging a cannon. I was just going to market."
