by Smith, Skye
"So you have heard of him. Apparently there has been a plot by royalist Scottish nobles to arrest or kill the leading Covenanter Lords in Edinburgh."
"Isn't that why your lot beheaded the King's Deputy, Strafford, because he plotted the same for Westminster?"
"Aye, and unfortunately for Charlie, the man who betrayed this Scottish plot, betrayed it to Leslie. The general has been most blunt with our king. He has sent word to Charlie that he is turning his army around to march it back to Newcastle, and that London will spend this winter without coal."
"That will ruffle some feathers, and some down comforters."
"Other reports say that the Covenanter leaders, Lords Argyll, Hamilton, and Lanark have fled Edinburgh in fear for their lives. Meanwhile Leslie's threat has hit Charlie like a bucket of ice water, so he is riding to Edinburgh to immediately make peace and sign the treaty. At long last."
"My wish for Charlie is that it is Leslie who greets him in Edinburgh rather than the Lords." Daniel couldn't help smirking. He and Alex Leslie had once made a pact that if ever Charlie came within their grasp, they would not kill him. Instead they would hold him in isolation while he signed away the hereditary rights of the aristocracy and do away with how land and honors and privileges are passed unearned and undeserved to their eldest sons.
"There is more news, news from Ireland,” Warwick told him. "Strafford's army was formed from the king's garrisons in Ireland, but it has yet to be sent home from England. Charlie refused to disband the army until the treaty with the Scots was signed. Now we know the reason why. He seems to have had other plans for them, such as helping this latest plot by the Royalist Scots.
Again he has foxed himself. Charlie's castles and garrisons in Ireland have been short handed for a year, and the Gael Irish have finally woken up to the fact. They have rebelled and have tried to capture some of the castles. If Charlie doesn't send the army back to Ireland, and soon, the Gaels will take the king's Irish castles from him."
The enormity of this news hit Daniel, "But Charlie is fully busy in Edinburgh and will be out of touch with Ireland. As you say, he has foxed himself good and proper, for now he has rebellions in three of his kingdoms." He sat back and smiled. "Well good luck to them Gaels, then. They deserve far better than the poverty, starvation, transportation, and slavery that they got under Charlie. Who are these rebels?"
"I suppose we won't know that until they actually take a castle. Like you say, good luck to them. Ireland has been completely mismanaged ever since Henry the Cock invaded it as part of his rampage against Catholics."
On his way back to the ship, Daniel sent off two letters. The first, on the West Country Post Coach was to Robert Blake asking him to come to Wellenhay to discuss some profitable business. The second, on the Essex Post Coach, was to Lady Susannah Rich, asking her to join her husband in London to chaperone Teesa... just in case Warwick forgot to ask her.
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The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 18 - Spanish guns for Londoners in November 1641
The Freisburn Two had fought the wind all the way from London and the Thames Estuary to the Wash and Wellenhay. Despite having to tack the entire way it took her but two days. Daniel and his crew were now convinced that this was the best style of ship possible for their trade in costly goods. She was perfect for smuggling because she was agile and fast. She could outrun any ship upwind and most ships across the wind, plus she could hide in shallow creeks and rivers where navy ships could not go.
Not that they were smugglers, for they always paid the taxes and duties without argument, that is ... whenever they were asked for. Was it their fault that tax men seemed to all be posted at quays where large ships docked. The one failing of the clan's largest ship, the Swift, was that it was too large and looked too much like a pirate ship for the navy and the tax men to ignore it.
Once back in Wellenhay, Daniel told Anso the new ideas about how to improve the design of the Two by getting rid of the aft cabin and enlarging the fore cabin. The crew working on the refits agreed immediately to the change, but they also told Daniel that the Two would be the last ship to see this change, for it was more urgent to re-rig the other ships, than to tinker with the Two.
All the way north he had bored the crew while he practiced how he was going to tell Anso about changes to the design of the ship It was almost a disappointment when Anso had accepted the change without question. He had also practiced what he was going to tell Teesa's mother Venka. He ran scenes through his head, including the one he most expected, of being told to get right back to London and fetch her home. He was so fearful of not being able to calm the natural worries of motherhood.
When he finally sucked up his nerve to tell Venka of Teesa's situation, she simply shrugged and said "lucky girl." It seemed that Venka, never having been to London, believed in the 'streets paved with gold' stories of the evil, filthy, debauched city.
Robert Blake arrived on the next afternoon. Since his return to Bridgwater from the Americas he had been wanting to do more business with Daniel and the clan's ships. From the moment he arrived he immersed himself in finishing the refit of the Three, and planning the refit of the Four, for his family's fortunes in Bridgwater and Lyme could well depend on creating similar ships. He needed to know everything he could about them.
Daniel had been looking forward to picking Blake's brain about politics, politicians, history, and the situation in Ireland. Instead, each night Blake would fall exhausted into Teesa's vacant feather bed. Daniels other wife, Sarah, saw more of him than Daniel did for she still had some aspirations of becoming Mrs. Robert Blake.
This left Daniel alone in Venka's bed, which had its merits, for he and she rarely had naked time together anymore, just the two of them, because last winter Sarah had moved in with sister Venka so that Teesa could have Sarah's house all to herself. Not that Daniel minded sleeping with both sisters, but having them one at a time was also good, and far less exhausting.
Or at least he thought he would have Venka to himself, until Teesa's older sister Britta arrived for a visit, which meant that Daniel, with two wives who each had a house of their own, suddenly found himself sleeping in the longhouse with the other single men.
"So it's true?" Britta, the more classically comely of his step-daughters, asked. "Teesa stowed away to London, and now she is living in a palace and wearing silk. Do you think I should go to London?"
"What about your job?" Daniel asked. She worked at The George Inn on the River Cam just downstream from Cambridge. "The George would be lost without you."
She gave him a sour look and then ignored him completely while she talked with her mother. "Do you think that if I took the Post Coach to London that I would be allowed to stay with Teesa?"
"Why ask me?" Venka replied. "It is Danny who knows the man and the house, though he hasn't told me much about it." She glared at her husband.
She spoke the truth. Daniel had been so relieved at Venka's first reaction of "lucky girl" that he hadn't pressed his own luck by telling her more. Now that explanations were inevitable, he described Earl Warwick and his wife and their manors and Teesa's meeting with them as best he could. That was a mistake. He should have first told them of the frightening risk that Teesa was taking by being at the mercy of a lordly old rake, because he was interrupted by Britta before he got to that part.
"I'm going." Britta pouted. "I'm the older sister, and the pretty one. Why does she get to live high in London while I sling ale to students with wandering hands."
"I don't think you are Warwick's type,” Daniel tried to talk her out of it. "Warwick likes Teesa's wild spirit and he is looking forward to going hunting and fishing with her."
"I can't believe it. My huntress sister who would rather bag a deer than a man, has bagged the richest man in the kingdom. That sucks," Britta groaned, but as soon as the last words left her mouth she grinned. "Of course. That is exactly how she won the ol
d goat over. I'm going to London."
The arguement was still going on between mother and daughter as Daniel stumbled through the dark village towards his bed in the communal long house, eager for some peace and quiet amongst the farts and snores of the other unattached men. In the morning he would go and work on the ships with the rest of the clansmen. Blake would be working there, and he needed to have a long talk with him.
* * * * *
"So what do you think?" Daniel asked Blake as both men stood in the rowing-steering-well at the stern of the newly re-rigged Freisburn Three. They were putting the Three through its paces and trying it at every angle to wind and wave and current in the Lynn Deeps of the Wash. The Deeps were the only place in the Wash where they need not fear running aground on shifting sand bars.
"Sleek, graceful, fast, spacious, covered, simple, agile, did I mention fast?" Blake called out from the tiller with glee.
"Not the ship. I mean about you being our factor in Holland."
"For this winter only you say?" Blake confirmed.
"Just until we make a good profit out of Warwick. We need you there to buy up all the muskets and pistols that have been captured from the Dunkirkers, the Spanish, and the Empire's mercenaries. We need you to recruit English gunsmiths to fix them up, and meanwhile convince them to take Warwick's offer of moving them to London. In your spare time you could keep your eyes open for Genever and spices at discount prices."
"Spare time. What spare time. I would have to tramp the border villages to find the guns. I would need to speak to the English gunsmiths in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam. And I suppose you will want wine as well as Genever. That means dealing with the smugglers that cross the border with Flanders. What spare time?"
"So is that a yes?"
"I suppose. My usual cut?" Blake asked.
"Your usual. I'll even give you part of my cut if you take Sarah with you to keep you warm."
For a moment Blake's face reddened in anger, but then softened, "Oh, you mean as a wife. Don't take this the wrong way, but instead of coin I would rather be paid off with one of these Bermudan ships so I could use it as a model for building my own. With a few ships like this I could revive my father's business. Finally we could compete again on his old wine run from Cherbourg to Lyme and from Bridgwater to Dublin."
"How about Sarah and a ship? She's a good woman and she likes you."
"She is a wonderful woman, but she is too old to be my wife. The wife I choose must have a belly young enough to pump children out. No, Sarah is too old, but don't you dare tell her that I said so."
"Still hoping for Mary Ward, eh?" Mary was a mutual friend of theirs who was now keeping house for another friend ...Henry Marten. Keeping his London townhouse as his concubine.
"A ship,” Blake repeated, getting back on topic.
"The use of a ship while we are still setting up the cargos, and the ownership of the ship once the cargos are all delivered to Warwick."
"Done,” Blake said with a slow grin. "For that I will be your agent in the Netherlands for the winter."
"Good. When we get back to Lynn you must send a letter to your family telling them that you are on your way to Rotterdam, for we'll shove off either tomorrow or the next day in this ship and the Two."
"Why not take the Swift?" asked Blake.
"She's too valuable to lose if we are caught carrying muskets into London by the king's agents ... and too noticeable. The Navy frigates will pull her over just to have a look at how she is rigged. I'm hoping that they won't bother stopping ships as small as this one. Besides, even when manned for rough weather, two of these ships take less crew than the Swift."
"That all makes good sense." Blake nodded. "This hull was designed so it could take shelter from storms in any harbour no matter how small or shallow it is. At one time my father was running four ships this size on the wine run from Cherbourg to Lyme. I suppose that is now my dream. To run four rigged like this one on that same run. Think of the profit."
Blake daydreamed a bit while staring up at the gracefully curved main sail. The crew that took the Swift to the Americas and did the work of re-rigging her in Bermuda had been mostly from Lyme. They would leap at the chance of re-rigging and sailing ships like the Three. He could set his brothers the task of buying a few idle but seaworthy square riggers. Once those ships were in Lyme, all he need do is get the Three to Lyme for say a week, so the crew could see how the carpentry of the new fore cabin and fin keels were done. He may yet become as wealthy as he father had once been.
"What ya thinkin' friend?" Daniel asked.
"Just daydreaming."
* * * * *
Old Cleff was feeling the late October chill, so he volunteered to stay behind in Wellenhay and keep the re-rigging work moving ahead. This meant that Anso commanded the Two and Daniel the Three for the voyage to Rotterdam and after that ... to London. Blake was sailing with Anso in case the two ships got separated on the crossing. When standing beside Blake's squat figure Anso truly looked like a giant.
Any stranger watching the ships being loaded with barrels of live eels and cages of wild geese would have thought it very strange indeed that the crews were also manhandling a swivel gun onto each ship to fix to the gunnels.. The giant blunderbusses were strange enough just being breech loaders, but to protect a cargo of eels and geese? Why?
The whole village turned out to wave them on their way. The women were weeping as usual, for should the winter storms hit while they were at sea the ships and crews could all be lost. Knowing that two ships would sail together for added safety did not relieve their fears, for both of these ships were new to the clan and their design was yet to be proven in a storm.
Daniel waved to his two wives, and then frowned. Britta had yet to return to her job at the The George in Cambridge, and yet she was not standing with her mother. "Anso,” he called over to the other ship, "make a search for stowaways." At these words, his own crew laughed their heads off but then set about searching their own ship. It was Anso who found Britta. She was wearing boyish clothes but they were a sorry disguise because her womanly figure stretched the cloth out in all the wrong places.
"Britta,” Daniel called out to her apologetically, "these ships are bound for Dutch ports. There'll be nothing to see but harbours, quays, and warehouses. You wouldn't like it."
Blake, meanwhile, watched the angel in boys clothing leap onto the dock and join her aunt Sarah. Sarah was too old to bear him children, but Britta was exactly the right age. He suddenly regretted that the girl had been caught out, for she would have been good company for his coming winter in Holland.
As usual, the ships rowed down the Great Ouse until they had passed the shipyards at Lynn, in hopes of keeping the design of the Bermudan rigs to themselves for as long as possible. Once across the bar and into the Wash, they shipped the oars and set the sails and even though the wind was light, the ships flew along at good clip. For a short time the two ships raced, but the older version, the Two, had no chance against the newer version, the Three, with her larger sails and sleeker silhouette.
They kept together all along the northern coast of Norfolk and followed the great bend of that coast to the south. A hundred miles later as they approached Lowestoft, and with less than an hour left in the short October day, they had to make a decision. Should they overnight in Lowestoft harbour or sail through the night due east towards Holland.
On one side of them was the welcoming port of Lowestoft, while on the other was a hundred and fifty miles of open sea. It was times like this that Daniel truly missed the cantankerous Cleff, for the elder had an uncanny weather sense. In the end it was the local fishing boats that decided them. They were all preparing the oil lamps that they used to attract the fish to their nets on nights that were calm enough for fishing.
So that they would not be separated on the dark crossing, the ships shortened sail, came alongside, and then the crews rafted them together. Rafting small North Sea ships together had been perfected before
the days of the Vikings, and how else would those small Viking ships have traveled so far from home across the endless seas.
To do the rafting they maneuvered Three to be the windward ship, with its larger sails. They shoved all of their woven rope fenders down between the hulls, before hauling the hulls together with strong lines holding them tightly for and aft. In case of emergencies a line axe was put within easy reach of each line, so the hulls could be quickly separated in case a rogue wave came along.
With the ships rafted, and only the windward ship carrying sail, the men could relax. The Three's sails would not only push them along, but keep the hulls pushed together. The rafted ships sailed at a good rate and without the customary rolling of the hull. This meant that the crews could visit, and share the watch and eat well and sleep well, and wake up refreshed ... hopefully on the other side of the sea.
During the night Blake and Daniel made the decision to make their first stop Rotterdam, rather than Amsterdam, so as to check the price of used Spanish muskets around Holland’s main naval port. Dawn over the beaches of the Netherlands woke them, and as soon as they turned south down the Holland coast they separated the ships. This because the ever varying coastal winds required more precise control over rudder and sail. Despite the twenty mile run up the River Meuse to reach Rotterdam, they were docked before noon.
As soon as they were alongside dry land, or rather mud land, for this was the Rhine delta, Daniel and Blake raced away to visit their old contacts from the five years they had lived together in Holland. For four of those years they had also served in the Dutch militia as Pistoleers, so they had many friends in all the war-time professions. Their first stop was to discuss the musket situation with one of the more shady gunsmiths of the town, a one legged Scot by the name of Jock
Within two hours they were back at the dock, during which time they had arranged for a ship load of Genever to be traded for their cargo from the Fens ... the live eels and geese ... plus a goodly number of the clan's gold pieces-of-eight. .
