Two days in bed with his two wives, the two second
wives he had saved from widowhood, were just not enough to make up
for his long absence and the rigors of sea travel and the dangers
of battles. It was so pleasant to be so relaxed and rested and well
ridden, never mind sleeping warm and safe without the need of
keeping one ear keen at all times. Unfortunately, Daniel had
promised Cleff that he would meet him in London in case there was
trouble over the salvage fees for the collier, should the price of
coal have soared on the news that the Scots now held
Newcastle.
He poled his punt up to Quayside in Ely and tied it off at the end of the quay well out of the way of the many boats that were continually picking up and dropping off passengers here. A boy raced up to him with an offer to watch his punt for a ha'penny, but there was no need. Every boat, cart, horse, cow, sheep and anything else of value to Wellenhay village was branded.
Everyone in the fens knew the brand of the stroked D. Originally it had been a bow with an arrow nocked, but that had been simplified over the centuries. His clan even allowed good friends to use their brand to keep their own belongings safe from theft. No one in the Fens would dare steal from the Wellenhay clansmen. Anyone so foolish would soon be caught out, and then punished. Not through the sheriffs or the courts mind you, but punished just the same.
The walk to Oliver’s house, the Abbey titheman's house, was a pleasant one that led between the wooded meadows of the ruins of the motte and the constantly-under-repair Abbey. He took his time and occasionally rested by putting down his Dutch carpet bag and his Dutch horse leathers with their built-in holsters and his weapons. His easy good looks and quick smile caused the locals to stop and chat with him. They all knew him even if he was often embarrassed by not knowing their names.
He almost hoped that friend Oliver was not home, because what he really needed was to collect his horse quickly so he could make it to Cambridge in time to catch the last coach to London. Oliver, bless his curiosity for all things, would have a thousand questions about his latest voyage to Scotland, and about the battles and the politics of the Covenanters.
As he came within sight of the house a lad's voice called to him and Richard, one of Oliver's sons, raced up to him. "You're back, and safe. I'm so glad. A carpet bag. Are you going away again so soon?"
"Aye, and more's the pity. Could I ask you to deliver my punt back to Wellenhay?"
"May I use it first?"
"Of course."
The lad, he was a teen now, spun on his heel and raced towards the house yelling, "Captain Daniel is here, the Captain is here!" but instead of turning into the brick house, he turned the other way into a shed. By the time Daniel reached the house the lad had swapped his town shoes for some swampy-looking boots and shot passed him again carrying a football and an old garden spade.
Of course. It was Sunday, the day of rest for all good Christians. The day that women went to church to pray for piety in their men, most of whom were at the football pitch or at the alehouse. "Where's the match?"
"Earith,” Richard called over his shoulder. "Got to go. Got to tell my mates that we have a punt." Daniel closed his eyes and brought forward a map of the fens from his memory. Football matches in the Fens were not about fun or sport. The pitch chosen was always on a public common that was about to be privatized through enclosure. In the Fens that did not mean enclosed by walls but by drainage canals. The first half of every match was spent filling in the latest drainage ditch to level the playing pitch.
The king's men and the sheriffs were helpless against the football tactic. If a mob had gathered to fill in the ditches, they could be detained and charged with unlawful assembly and destruction of property. By tradition football matches were played on the common, so entire villages of men had a just purpose to gather without being charged with unlawful assembly. It was customary to remove animal shit and level the playing pitch for safety reasons before beginning any match, so pushing dikes into ditches was legal, sort of.
A few years ago, when the football tactic for fighting enclosures had first begun in the Fens, Daniel had feared that the drainer crews would use violence to stop the footballers. Such had never come to pass. The game itself could be forty or fifty men aside, big fit men. The crowd of kin that turned out to watch swelled that number with the old, the young, the mothers and wives and sweethearts. Any drainer who dared to put the women at risk by threatening violence to stop a match, would end up underwater in one of his own ditches.
Besides that, what did the drainers care if they had to dig the same ditch again and again. They were paid by the day, and these days there was precious little paying work. The footballers were doing them a favour. It was no surprise that the recent football craze in the Fens was spreading to other commons that were being threatened by enclosure, such as on the Isle of Axholme up near the Humber.
"Was that Richard?" a woman's voice called to him. She was Elizabeth, Oliver's wife, and she looked drawn and tired, but that was normal for any women who raised a large family of children. "Why was he running?" At the single word response of 'football', she sighed and withdrew back into her kitchen garden. He followed her.
She and her two youngest were picking runner beans. He put his things down at the gate and went to help her, just to give him an excuse to talk with her, for she usually shunned his company. "What's the matter, love? What's the problem?"
"You are the problem, or rather, your elder, the man Cleff. He has put such wild ideas into my Ollie's head. Not that he is a stranger to wild ideas, but he sees everything so... so... so black or white. He either doesn't care or he cares too much. It has already caused the ruin of him once, and now he seems bent on being ruined again. Ooo, he is such a purist, such a pain in the ass! Things were going so well for us here in Ely. A good position, a house big enough for all of us. We've been putting coins aside so that at least one of our sons can attend college in Cambridge. With a son at college, my daughters will be introduced to other students, good matches."
On and on she went, and he in a hurry. The angle of the sun told him that time was passing, and all he had come for was his mare. There was no sign of her in the vacant field beside the house. Elizabeth droned on. Nothing he hadn't heard before. How Ollie had studied law, not to be a lawyer but to create laws. How he had been elected to Parliament by Huntingdon because of the sponsorship of the powerful Montagu family.
"He was enraged that he was not allowed to do his job. Black or white. He was elected to represent Huntingdon, all the folk there, whether they voted for him or not, whether he agreed with them or not. He was their messenger to government and he was obliged to make their case. When he spoke out for the cottagers against the enclosures, he was dragged in front of the Privy Council. He was enraged that the Council treated him like the leader of the cottagers rather than just their messenger, and they were enraged enough to ruin him with fines."
Blah, blah, blah, she went on about how they had to flee the town and scrape a living from a farm in Saint Ives that had been bought for them by the Montagues. Those were dark days, hard days, endless days. Her Ollie had bounced from religious sect to religious sect. Once he had almost joined the Brownists, which would have meant moving to their colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Another time he had almost joined the Mennonites, which would have meant pledging everything they owned to the community.
"Aye,” he interrupted hoping to shorten her rant, "that was when he realized that the underlying problem of any farming community was that without a public common, a small farmer cannot make a go of it. You proved that on your farm because the village common was already enclosed. With no common you had no place to graze your animals, or cut wood or peat, or draw water in the dry season, or fish or hunt."
"Exactly, and the religious communes were trying to create new commons," she replied. "but meanwhile I still needed milk for my children. Oh, how I hated being a farm wife. I am a city girl from Cripplegate in London, and from a wealthy family. Ollie had sunk so low. We were so desperate."
Daniel tried to hurry her rant by showing that he already knew all this. "And then Oliver's uncle took ill so you moved here to help him do his work as tithe collector, and when he died the Abbey offered Oliver the position, rather than to his cousin."
"Well, poor Willie has always been a bit touched." Everyone in Ely knew Willie. He was the duckherd who moved his flock from garden to garden to eat the slugs. A gentle man, but as thick as a post. "But now, that sodding husband of mine has become the Member of Parliament for Cambridge, and he is up to his old tricks again. He is being the best representative that he can be, and these days that means speaking out against the king." She sobbed, "and I fear he will say too much and be punished again. And you and Cleff fill his head with wild ideas."
"Because I tell him about the Republics of the Netherlands, and Cleff tells him about the ancient traditions of the Fens, and the customary laws."
"There is a dangerous side to him." Her breath hitched on a sigh. "A side that isn't satisfied with collecting tithes for the Abbey and raising children. A side that isn't satisfied with the king. A side that thinks it's wrong to privatize land that is better left public for all times. If I didn't love him so much I would leave him and take the children to live with my parents in London."
"Love, you can't blame Oliver for wanting to make things better for all. Times are getting harder for the folk because of the short summers and cold winters. It will be very cold in London this winter. Even the king will have a hard winter."
"It is not the king that worries me, but his Star Chamber. A dozen years ago when they ruined us, the Privy Council warned Ollie that next time he would be judged by the Star Chamber. Do you know what that means? They can charge you with treason and you are not allowed to defend yourself. Ollie is keeping the company of republicans, but he himself is a democrat."
"You've lost me there, love. Aren't all democrats republicans? Aren't they two words for the same thing?"
She looked at him with disdain. Why did this otherwise intelligent man resist book learning? "All democrats are republicans but not all republicans are democrats. Anyone who wants an elected king for a term rather than an inherited king for life is a republican. Most of the House of Commons are now republicans, but they are mostly wealthy men from wealthy families. T'were it left to them, only the wealthy of the kingdom would have a vote to choose the king. A democrat wants everyone to have such a vote, rich or poor, aristocrat or commoner."
"They sound much the same to me, and both better than what we have now."
Again the look of disdain. "Don't you see that with one the folk work for the king, while with the other the king works for the folk?"
Daniel sighed. This discussion could go on forever. "Do you have anything to drink, love? I'm a bit parched."
Elizabeth felt so much better having gotten all that off her chest. She picked up the basket of beans and led him to the kitchen shed, pausing briefly while she checked the renderings of her slowly boiling soup pot. Satisfied, she led him into the only room in the house that could fit all of her family at once... the kitchen-dining room. Putting the basket down on the table she asked, "Was Bridget in Wellenhay?" Bridget was her mule-headed teenage daughter, whose best friend was the girl Teesa, of Daniel's village.
"She is teaching Teesa to read. Umm, they are practicing with some play by Shakespeare. A comedy, so not the play 'Rome and July'. They did tell me the name. Oh, ... 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Is that one of his?"
"Teesa should be taught to read from the Bible!" Before the words could leave her mouth she had her first hard laugh in a week. Just the thought of Bridget and that amazon huntress, Teesa, reading that play … of all plays … while floating in Teesa's punt somewhere misty and mystical that only clanswomen like Teesa would know had her going again. Was that life imitating art or art imitating life? Teesa would have to explain all the naughty bits to her daughter, because Bridget hated boys.
Elizabeth had a sudden worry and spoke again, but her words became mixed up with her thoughts. She had meant to ask a question about Teesa but she said 'Bridget' instead. "Do you think that Bridget is still a virgin?" She blushed as soon as she realized it, but did not correct the name, for his answer might prove interesting.
Bridget frequently slept over with Teesa in Wellenhay, and Wellenhay was village known for its strong-headed women. Since their men were at sea for months at a time, it was the women who ran the village. For this reason, the line of inheritance still passed through the eldest daughter in the ancient way. The clanswomen therefore had a sexual morality that was very different from the morality forced upon Puritan women by their men.
Daniel didn't know what to answer or even if he should. He stalled while he thought about it. He suspected that Teesa would have seduced Bridget's little brother Richard, just to get that over with, but what about Bridget? Better to say nothing and change the subject.
Though he had left his carpet bag outside by the shed, he couldn't leave his pistols out there, not with children about. Now he took his time draping the gun leathers over the chair with the tall back. As he turned to do this, he ran his eyes along the shelves of the room searching for a jug of spirits.
Elizabeth glanced with disgust at his pistols, so carelessly hung over her best dining chair. Daniel saw her face and decided not to beg a dram of Oliver's whiskey after all. As an aging mother of eight, she would have a puritanical hatred of strong drink, weapons, and most of all, drunks carrying weapons.
"Betty, you are a woman of letters. In Scotland I learned a new word for when a people kill their own king. Regicide. What is the word for when a king kills his own people?"
She forgave him his use of her pet name. He was handsome enough to forgive him almost anything. "I don't know. We could form a word in the Latin way, like 'Citizencide'? No, too singular. 'Publicide'? No, not that, not unless he hates innkeepers." She smiled at her own wit. "What about Politicide?" The very saying of the word made her face age. "Why? What did you hear in Scotland? Is my Ollie in danger?"
"Shouldn't think so,” he said in a calming tone, "so long as he stays clear of Pym and his rabble rousers."
"But he is with Pym now, at a rally in Cambridge."
He stood, turned, and threw his gun leathers over his shoulder as he strode out of the back door and into the sunshine. "I'm borrowing a horse."
She dropped to her knees to beseech the Lord, but instead she sniffed up her tears and called after the tall pistoleer, "Oh please Daniel, keep my Ollie safe!"
* * * * *
Daniel rode hard until he reached the George Inn, the first Inn in Cambridge as you approached it on the River Cam from Ely. The innkeep, Will, was a good friend to Wellenhay, because his wife Tara was a clanswoman. As he tied up his borrowed horse he instinctively scanned the garden to see who was here, hoping to see Oliver. There was only one group. Three students from one of the colleges were completely fixated on a ravishing alewench. She was Britta, Teesa's older sister. She would be all of nineteen by now and still hoping to make a husband out of a rich student.
Daniel walked by her carrying his leathers and his carpet bag but instead of speaking to her, he just tapped the side of his nose with his index finger. "Oops,” he heard her tell the adoring students, "customer. I must get back to work." The clip-clop of her wooden clogs followed him into the inn and up to the front desk. Once there, he hooked his leathers over a peg and threw his carpet bag onto a bench. It was a good thing that he emptied his hands because a moment later they were overfilled with wriggling girl.
"Welcome back,” she whispered into his ear as she kissed his cheek. When she released his neck she purposefully slid her chest down his and then squeezed one of his thighs between hers.
"Behave yourself. You risk your reputation doing such things in public."
"Who me? Do you know what the students now call me? The angel of all virgins. It's so unfair."
"Unfair? Any other alewench would be pleased by the name. Think of what else the men call them."
"Well," she said in a sultry, teasing voice, "I do tell everyone that I am saving my honor for my future husband."
"And they believe you?"
"If I want to bed a man, I will do it far away from Cambridge. If I am seduced even once in this town, my reputation will be shattered, and with it my hopes of a rich young husband." She pulled a book out from under the desk and flipped it open to today's page. "If you need a room we have only one left. Number Six."
"Your worst room for your favourite uncle?" In truth he shared no blood with the girl. Even though her mother Venka had been his older brother's wife, both of her daughters had been flower girls at their wedding.
"We've been full all week,” Britta repeated to pull him back from his thoughts. "There is a big political rally this afternoon and some of the members of parliament are staying here."
"Oliver?" he asked hopefully.
"Mr. Cromwell? No room in his name, though he has been dining here with them. He could be bunking with someone else. Since he is the local member he could be staying at the college where the rally is to be held." She swung her hips to roll around him and then skipped to the garden door to yell at her admirers. "Oye, you lot! Where is the rally this afternoon? Oh, good. Thanks!" She danced back to him making sure her cleavage gave his eyes a treat. "Sidney Sussex College."
That made sense. That had been Oliver's college. "Is there a John Pym staying here?"
"Why yes, it was he who rented most of our rooms,” She handed him the key to room six. "I don't know the names of the other members who are staying here because no one else but Pym is registered. Pym's valet keeps that all straight. His name is Trevor. Do you want me to find him for you? He's a bit sweet on me."
"Everyone is a bit sweet on you, love. That is why you are still not married. None of your suitors thinks they are good enough for you. It's the same reason that no lad asks you to dance with them at the summer faire. You are always the prettiest girl at the faire, and yet you are always left dancing with the girls." He immediately regretted his words. Young pretty girls did not want to hear a brutal truth about themselves. She lost her smile and without another word she turned away and left him standing there alone.
He cursed him self under his breath. "Well, that went well. Fool!" It was not easy being responsible for four comely women. Worse still, that they were two sets of sisters aged 16, 19, 36 and 40. Worse still, since the village had lost a third of its men in one ship's disaster. There was no hope of any woman becoming his first wife, his actual wife, with four other comely women already sharing his life.
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The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14