Standing at the gunnels of the Freisburn alongside
the tall oarsmen, Oliver felt as if he were a child standing
amongst adults. Not only were these men fit and fair, but they had
arms and shoulders like wrestlers. Years of pulling on oars would
do that to a man. They were all taller than he, though he was not a
small man. The only man on the ship shorter than himself was Robert
Blake, who was perhaps a hand shy of six feet. Though Robert was
well-accepted by these men, he was not of their blood.
Robert did not feel like a child amongst adults. Since there was nothing he could do about his short stature, he had long ago accepted and come to terms with it. He pushed through the tall crew with an easy gait and grinned at their praise of how he had defused the issue with Heath. During his years in Holland with Daniel he had traveled, and supped, and drank with each of these men at one time or another. When he reached Oliver's side he stopped and stood beside him and muttered, "Using football matches to defy the king's men. Was that your idea?"
It was a question that Oliver did not want to answer. Helping the Fen folk resist the drainers and the privatizations had already landed him in front of the King's Star Chamber, and they had forced a bond-of-good-behaviour onto him which had cost him his worth. The justices had warned him that any further involvement on his part would cost him more than wealth. With a large family to keep safe, silence was the only prudent answer to such a question posed by a stranger.
"I mean, it's brilliant,” Robert continued. "Football. How else can you lawfully assemble a crowd that includes entire villages of folk? And of course it would be expected that both sides of the match would pitch in and level the common before it was used for the match. By right they could pull down dikes to fill in trenches, so long as the common was not yet claimed through enclosure. Brilliant."
Oliver kept his silence.
"And what could a magistrate or a sheriff do about it? It would be a lawful assembly on public land with no legal reason to read the riot act against them. Besides, they would look like fools if they tried to stop a football match. Worse, the footballers might have dragged them into the 'friendly' game and pummeled them. If the sheriff complained to the courts, then the knowledge of this football strategy would spread like wildfire across the kingdom and the king's privatizations would be blocked in every village. Even the king would have no recourse. Banning football and footballers would be the end of him."
"It was my son Richard's idea,” Oliver finally spoke. "He is twelve now and loves the game. Whenever a villager needs a lot of free labour, like for raising a shed, or moving a family, .... well, Richard and the other lads organize a match to bring the folk out. All I did was to suggest a bigger match with bigger footballers for a bigger job. Filling in trenches is a lot of work, and to do it in an afternoon takes a lot of strong backs. In truth, it only caught on because the local men would rather spend a Sunday on a football pitch than in a church."
"Brilliant,” Robert repeated his praise. "Now that I know of it, it seems so obvious. What better way to assemble a mob on short notice?"
Once the ship was under oar again, Oliver pulled the elder Cleff to one side and they sat together on the steps to the small stern castle and talked. Daniel went and stood with the bow watch to memorize the bars and inlets of the river, since he was expected to become the ship's master once Cleff retired. On the trip over from Holland, Robert, who had once been the master of a ship, had been awed by Cleff's knowledge of ships and the sea. Now he sat with Oliver and Cleff and listened to the elder's explanation of how the Fen villages were governed before the Normans had arrived and messed everything up.
"In each village the folk elected twelve eldermen to rule,” Cleff explained. "The eldermen would then elect one of them to be the village spokesman, who nowadays would be called the mayor. In a separate election the warriors elected the village warlord, who would lead them if there was any fighting to be done, and the elder women would elect a woman as their spokeswoman.
Beyond the village, the warlords of many villages would gather and elect one of them to be the warlord of the shire, the shire reeve. These shire reeves would gather and elect one of them to be the jarl, who nowadays would be called an earl. The jarls would gather to elect one of them to be the king."
"So,” Oliver said thoughtfully, "it was a kind of democracy. Was the king elected for life?"
"Certainly not. None of the elected men were,” the elder told him. "Their role lasted only until those who elected them lost confidence in them. In theory anyway, for usually that would lead to bloody arguements."
"Were the positions hereditary?" asked Oliver.
"If you mean did the elected man's family still control the role if the elected man was wounded or died, then no and yes. By tradition no, by force of arms or wealth, yes. But it was all different back in those days, because the elected men were just the trustees of the land, not the owners of the land."
"I don't understand."
"Take the king. He sat on the throne, and wore a crown, but that crown was just a symbol of the true crown. The true crown was the God-given wealth of all of the land in the kingdom. He didn't own that land like the king owns land today. He was just the chief trustee and the chief magistrate in the highest court. It was the same with the reeves and mayors. They did not own the land of the village. The land was held in-common except for the land that an occupied home stood upon."
"I still don't understand."
The elder sighed. The two men listening to his words were both educated men, university men. Oliver from the colleges of Cambridge and Robert from those of Oxford. He feared that eventually he would say something that would open him up to their ridicule.
He chose his words carefully and tried to explain it again. "Take this ship. I am the captain but I do not own the ship. The clan owns the ship and the crew elected me captain. The crew have families and animals and planted fields at home, but the fields are owned by the clan.
If a man is lost overboard, then what becomes of the fields he worked? His family has the right to keep working them. If no one works them, then it would again become in-common and some other clansman could petition to work them."
"Ah, now I understand,” Oliver said softly, "and that explains what you said to Heath about the orchard. The orchard was on common land, and was not being worked. The apple tree was a gift from God, and so a gift to all. The fruit therefore belongs to them that laboured for it."
"Aye, close enough." The old man smiled and hoped he could now stop talking. This curious man was the Abbey's tithe collector and Cleff had a widowed sister who leased a farm from the Abbey and was behind in her rent. He noticed that Oliver had gone very quiet and now had a beaming smile on his face as if he were a village idiot touched by the goddess.
Oops, he was glad he hadn't said that out loud. These two men by their words and dress were Puritans. They would not approve of folk that did not accept the Puritan teachings about the desert gods of the Holy Lands as read from their version of Holy Scriptures. He looked around at the endless wetlands and shrugged. What good were the teachings of a desert god to folk who lived in a marsh?
"What are you thinking, Oliver?" Robert asked. "You have a look on your face like you just invented the wheel."
"Oh, just that a lot of my old beliefs just clicked into place," Oliver replied. "I have always thought that our laws have become unbalanced over the centuries and the result is that a few people own everything, while the rest of us work like dogs and cannot get ahead. Cleff has just pointed out that private ownership of productive land was not normal in Britain before the kings knelt to the Pope and adopted his Roman way of land ownership.
It makes me think that perhaps the kings, the aristocracy, the nobles, the bishops, the abbots, all of them, are nothing more than land thieves in fancy clothing with well-paid lawyers. The lawyers twisted the traditional common laws, so that shared in-common land could be privatized into great estates owned by the few.
My mind is racing through what I learned at college and I see it all so clearly now. The Conqueror removed the distinction between king and crown and then methodically claimed the common-crown land as his own. Oh my, of course ... his Forest Law. It was the outright theft of in-common land on a massive scale.
The aristocracy followed his lead and their lawyers perverted the spirit of the traditional enclosure law. Originally the enclosure law was meant to allow young families to claim enough land from the common to build a home upon. Instead, the same law has been stretched and twisted in order to claim vast stretches of common land for the rich. It was all theft. Theft by legal trickery."
"Aye,” Cleff agreed, "and hereabouts the lords are now waving pieces of paper at the courts so that they can claim the very land that the our clans have worked for countless generations. And they win in court because the clans' rights to the land are by oral tradition, so they don't have any pieces of paper to wave back at the court."
"These papers that the lawyers wave, would they be deeds of title?" asked Oliver.
"Aye, they wave deeds, but they are actually misdeeds. Written deeds are just proof that someone has stolen in-common land from the rest of us,” the old man muttered, looking around nervously to see who was listening. "If I were king, anyone who waved a deed at a court would be hung as a thief."
They were all silent for a while until Robert told Oliver, "Stealing a little bit at a time from the many is the way to become rich without being hung as a thief. In Amsterdam the bankers have perfected theft from the masses in the way that they charge interest and commissions for trading shares on the stock market. Think about it. When a banker takes a tiny cut of a coin spent on a share, then neither the buyer nor the seller of the share complains. But there are thousands of shares traded every day by thousands of folk. It doesn't matter how tiny is the cut, eventually they add up to full coins. Eventually the bankers become rich in the coins of the folk without ever being accused of theft.
And what court would listen to any one person who charged a banker with theft? Can you imagine one person taking a merchant bank to court for the theft of say, a tenth of a penny? Yet if the banker does it a thousand thousand times, they have actually thieved thousands of pounds from thousands of folk, and yet none of the folk have a claim worthy of making a case in court."
"When you think about it,” Oliver replied thoughtfully, "the Normans did the same thing in Britain, but with land. The land they thieved did not belong to any one person but to all people. How could any one person make a case in court, especially against an aristocracy so willing to butcher any troublemakers?"
These were sobering thoughts that depressed Robert, but Oliver laughed with glee at his new-found way of viewing them. When scolded about his misplaced laughter, Oliver quietened and said, "I have this grand idea in my head, but I have not yet thought it through or phrased it, and yet I know it will work and it will be grand."
"What is this grand idea, then?" Robert asked. "A way to make as much money as the Dutch bankers? Count me in."
"No, a way to collar King Charles,” Oliver laughed nervously.
"I'll have no treason spoken on this ship,” Cleff told him. "The crew all swear to speak like republicans in the Netherlands and like royalists in England, and to never mix the two."
Oliver, however, had an urgent need to speak his thoughts, just so he could hear if they rang true. "Parliament must again separate the crown from the king, like it was before the Conqueror. Hmm, that sounds too simplistic. I don't mean the crown on his head, I mean the crown that was, er ... is the common wealth of the kingdom. Parliament should be the trustee of the common wealth so that no king can never again assume that he is the owner."
"Hah!" Robert laughed aloud. "I don't trust Parliament any more than I trust the king. What we need is to elect an honest protector of the common wealth. One whose only function is to make sure that the common wealth is used wisely to benefit the kingdom and all of its folk. A protector who is not a politician, nor an aristocrat. Someone that everyone trusts, and who will refuse to make the role hereditary."
"Sounds like the Pope,” Cleff cackled, which became a belly laugh when he saw the effect of his suggestion on the faces of these educated Protestant men. "What, can't you take a jest? Ooh, you should see your faces."
"By what Cleff was saying earlier, according to British tradition the role or protector was the role of the elected king,” Oliver pointed out. "That would solve it. Let every mayor of every village cast a vote and chose the next king from the ranks of the kingdom's best mayors. Even you, Robert, could be elected king."
"In your dreams,” Robert replied. "I could never win for I have become a purveyor of fine aquavitae, and at the moment the good Puritan wives all have a hate on for the demon spirits."
"You, a Puritan, are a spirits trader?" Oliver said with shock in his voice.
"Not a spirits trader,” Cleff laughed. "THE spirits trader. Robert and Daniel oversee and buy the finest Genever in Holland and ship it on Wellenhay ships to Cambridge, where it keeps all the wealthy students in a fine humour."
"That is ... uh...,” Oliver searched for a word other than 'disgusting' so as not to insult Robert. "...sinful. I cannot believe that two so formidable men would take an active hand in ruining the lives of so many. And not just the ruin of the drunks, but of their families and all others who suffer from their drunken behaviour."
Robert blushed and looked away. He had never been comfortable with his business of shipping Genever to England, and so he usually called himself a purveyor of fine woolens. As an excuse he said, "The drunkenness is not due to the aquavitae but to the abuse of it. The Dutch sip and savour their strong spirits, whereas the English bolt it down as if it were ale. Is that my fault?"
Genever was five times the strength of strong ale, so the result of the English habit of binge drinking was streets awash with drunkards. "Our Genever is the finest. You won't find it sold in taverns. The malt wine is filtered before it is distilled, and then the resulting tawny Genever is flavoured with juniper berries and aged in smoky casks. It is sipped by the wealthy, not swilled by the street drunkards."
"Aye,” Cleff added, "and if you wished to kill off half the aristos of Cambridgeshire, all you need do is add some oil of monkshood to our casks. And so what if the rich aristos do become drunkards? What is wrong with ruining the lives of the idle rich? Nothing that I can fault."
"That having been said," mumbled Robert, "this is my last shipment of Genever. I've had word that my mother is dying and as the eldest son, I must take my savings to Somerset and clear my father's debts, for they will come due with a widow's last breath. My time in Holland is finished. I must go home and care for my younger brothers and sisters."
Meanwhile, Daniel had returned from the bow where he had bored of watching out for sand bars in the river. Robert's last words made him frown. He and Robert had been partners in the Genever business for a year, a profitable year, and they had argued about his giving it up to return to Somerset. This was not the time or place to rekindle the argument, so he looked around for something with which to busy himself that would keep him within earshot of the men.
Oliver watched with great interest as Daniel lodged an oar horizontally and then heaved his saddle leathers over it. They were not like any saddlebags that Oliver had ever seen, and he stared at them trying to figure them out.
Daniel noticed his interest and said, "Robert and I spent enough time in Holland that we were required to join their militia. Due to our business we owned riding horses, so we joined the Pistoleers. These are the saddle leathers of a Dutch Pistoleer."
He pulled the heavy leatherwork down straight on both sides of the oar. "It hangs over the shoulders of the horse, in front of the saddle and down in front of the rider's legs. The long leathers on each side keeps your legs safe from being slashed by bush or blade, but their main purpose is to provide holsters for your weapons so their handles are close to hand. I carry a pistol on each side, a carbine on the left and an axe on the right. Up top here there are pouches for the powder and shot, also close to hand."
Daniel began reloading his carbine and then Robert's pistol. The carbine he had used to shoot the pistol from Edward Heath's hand, and the pistol for Robert's warning shot. "If you want the theory of using Pistoleers instead of Lancers, you must ask Robert, for he is the tactician. I am but a marksman, so all I can explain is the worth of weapons."
Silence was Daniel’s cue to continue speaking about weapons. "This carbine is a musket with its stock and barrel shortened so that it can be used from a saddle. This one is rifled, which means that there are spiral grooves inside the barrel that set the ball spinning as it leaves the barrel. A spinning ball flies truer. Longer barrels aren't rifled because it makes them hard to keep clean."
"Actually I was looking at your pistols,” Oliver pointed to the two holstered guns. "I have rarely seen such long pistols. The trend here in England is towards shorter and smaller. Are they old?" .
"Old,” Daniel made a face and his voice took on a nasty edge. "They are the latest from the Dutch gunsmiths. Short pistols have no range, but they can be concealed. They are the tools of the assassin. We carry our pistols in plain sight in the holsters. Their locks are weatherproof, which is critical when fighting in the wetlands. The barrel is long enough to make a killing shot while still out of range of smaller pistols or lances."
"Calm your temper, Dan,” Robert urged. "Most Englishmen have no idea why or how the Dutch use their flying squads of Pistoleers."
"So tell me,” Oliver replied. "I want to know."
Robert shifted his legs and made himself comfortable while he thought of a way to explain such tactics to a man who had probably never been in a modern gunpowder battle. "First, you must realize that pistols and muskets are replacements for arbalesters and crossbows, but they do not replace archers with bows. Guns, like crossbows, are slow to reload. In the time it takes me to reload my pistol, any trained archer can loose a dozen arrows at me.
We carry two pistols and a carbine, so we have three shots before we must fall back to reload. Just as our horse gets us quickly into a fight, it also gets us quickly away to reload. We carry a long-handled axe rather than a cavalry sabre, because it has many other uses than just slashing at men."
"So you are cavalrymen?"
"Nay, the Dutch republicans don't field a true cavalry. In most armies, the aristocrats and nobility form the cavalry, but in the Netherlands the lordly have mostly sided with the Empire. The Imperial army is ruled by their lordly cavalry, but most of the grunt fighting is done by an infantry of mercenaries hired from across Europe. There is nothing more foolish than having cavalry officers command the infantry. They drill the mercenaries endlessly in using pike squares to defend against cavalry charges, and yet the Dutch republicans field no cavalry, just infantry militias and field cannons."
Daniel interrupted. "Poor brave bastards. They stand in their pike square formations and get mowed down by Dutch cannon grape. It's as if they are still fighting the last war, a war from before field cannons were perfected by the Swedes."
"As I was explaining," Robert shot 'the look' at Daniel to stop his interruptions, "The republicans have no cavalry but they do need some mounted forces, so they created the Pistoleers. We are companies of mounted infantry and we carry carbines and pistols instead of heavy armour and lances. We ride fast cheap horses rather than huge expensive chargers.
When the army is on the march, we Pistoleers serve as scouts and messengers. When the army is forming their fighting lines, we serve as skirmishers and make targeted attacks either on leaders or on powder supplies. As the armies close on each other, we serve as a light cavalry to keep the enemies' cavalry and skirmishers at bay. Once the battle is fully engaged, we serve as a fast-moving reserve infantry, for filling in holes in our lines, or for pushing through any advantage."
"Dangerous missions all,” Oliver whistled in awe. "A Pistoleer must have a short lifespan."
"Not so short,” Robert replied, "for the regular infantry admire the Pistoleers. You have to be related to knights and nobles to be a cavalryman, and so the cavalrymen lord it over the infantry. Although we are mounted, we are still infantrymen. Any regular infantryman has a chance of someday becoming a Pistoleer, which means that every musket, every bow, and every pike is willing and eager to protect our backs.
The infantry well know that once we have fired our three shots that we must retreat to reload. They trust that once we have reloaded, we will be back to help them again. It is in their own interest to protect our retreat. Dangerous, yes, but no more dangerous than being an infantryman. At least we are on light fast horses, so we can retreat in a hurry."
Oliver said pensively, "I begin to understand why the little Dutch republics have lasted so long against the massive Imperial armies. Just as the seas protect the English from foreign Papists, modern gunpowder tactics protect the Dutch."
"Aye, well spoken,” Robert nodded. "The safety of the republics depends on each republican doing his duty, and the safety of each republican depends on his weapons. A republican without a pistol is nothing more than lance bait waiting for the aristocracy to finish him. I foresee the day when every good republican will carry a pistol. Whatever his main weapon is, whether he be pikeman or bowman or musketeer, he will also have a pistol in his belt, just in case. One last shot reserved for saving his own life or that of a friend."
"Or,” Daniel interrupted, "for taking the life of their worst enemy."
"So, of the many duties of the Pistoleers, which is the most important?" asked Oliver.
The two Pistoleers looked at each other and shrugged and motioned to each other to speak first.
"Blowing up powder kegs and killing artillerymen,” said Robert. "Fast ambushes to put the enemy's big guns out of the battle. The biggest danger to our brothers in the regular infantry is a cannon shooting grape."
"Bah,” Daniel said while he stroked is now reloaded carbine. "That is important yes, but only after you have killed the elite officers and paymasters. You know, the Empire's chief slave masters. The faster we kill all the aristocrats, the faster we will have a lasting peace for all the folk on both sides. Why bother shooting the gunners when they will all run back to their farms once their paymaster is shot?"
While the two friends argued these points, the small ship turned up the River Cam. Every man, woman and child working in the fields along both banks stood tall and waved to them, for they all knew this ship and the men who rowed her. Between the trees Cambridge's watch tower came into view. By now the watch in the tower would have sent a warning of the ship's approach to the garrison, to the docks, and to the market place.
Cleff now took the tiller, while everyone except Oliver ran out an oar, for they were approaching the fastest currents of the River Cam. After rounding a bend they passed the village of Upware, where the locals had dredged a canal behind their weir to serve as a small harbour for the local barges and coastal ships. Everyone waved to them, and yelled out questions about the cargo they carried. Most of the boats in the small harbour would soon be pulled out of the water to allow their keels to be dried and scraped and resealed during the winter storm season.
Oliver stood beside Cleff at the tiller in case he could help with anything. He had not visited a city for the entire year that he had been sorting out the bookkeeping mess left by his uncle, the previous titheman of Ely. He had lived in a city, Huntingdon, until he had been financially brutalized by the Heaths and had fled to the farming hamlet of St. Ives. In hindsight, it had been a bad choice of a haven, for the common land of St. Ives had already been enclosed and privatized. Without access to grazing and water for their animals, the cottage farmers could no longer support their families.
No matter how hard he tried to make a go of his small farm in St. Ives, he was doomed to fail, and with the ongoing failures had come his bouts of depression. Years of endless depression, until his uncle in Ely had fallen ill and could no longer keep up with his duties as the Abbey titheman. He had been chosen over his oafish cousin to replace his dying uncle, and so he had moved his family from St Ives to Ely.
Now, by borrowing some courage from the company of these dangerous and worldly men, he convinced himself that he was past due a visit to a city, though he was glad that the city was Cambridge and not Huntingdon. Huntingdon held too many bad memories for him. Just seeing his grandfather's George Inn, now owned by the Heaths, would have filled him with grief.
At Cambridge the welcome for the ship and crew began at an inn called The George, but this was the inn at Midsommer Common. Though many that sat at the garden tables of the inn waved to them, those on the oars could not wave back. They were all putting their backs into the oars to make headway against the current. Once through the narrows they were in view of the docks at Monk's Corner, the highest ship's docks on the Cam since the building of the Castle Street bridge.
After so long away from the wantonness of cities, Oliver was shocked at the flurry of publicly sinful activities at the Cambridge docks. Not the sins, so much as them being done in public. The sins of Ely folk were private sins, not public ones. Lechery, adultery, whoring, drunkenness, gambling were not strangers to Ely, but they were done discretely and done under cover and hidden and rarely spoken of.
As the titheman, of course, it was Oliver's job to know about all of it in case there were tithes owing. Know of it but not to speak of it. No one wanted him to report it to the Abbey, not those doing the sinning, not those being sinned against, and certainly not the Bishop, who would then be expected to do something about the sinning.
Here at the Cambridge docks, the ready availability of tempting sins was openly being announced and flaunted. Seamen, whether local or foreign, were a ready source of income for the professional sinners, and the competition for their coins was fierce. It was as if all of the folk of the alehouses and markets had spilled out at once onto the pathways that ran towards the river bank between the docks and the warehouses.
Almost as soon as the ribald crowd of purveyors of fine sins saw the name of the ship, and the fair hair of the crew that rowed it, they lost interest and began to walk away. This was not a crew that would be paid out their wages in Cambridge, but only once they safely reached their own local villages. Wages paid out close to home would be pocketed by their womenfolk and kept safe for the winter needs.
Moreover, this was not a crew that would be searching out loose women, because their own clanswomen were handsome and willing. This was not a crew that tempted the shrewd gamblers, for to cheat one would be viewed the same as to cheat the entire clan, which would end badly for the gamblers. And as for getting them liquored up, hah, they were just in from Holland with a cargo of the finest Genever.
By the time the ship was tied off, and the mast's spar re-rigged as a crane to help unload the casks, the crowds from the inns and alehouses had dispersed and had been replaced by the keepers of the inns and alehouses, all yelling out for samples before the bidding for the casks began. One of the loudest of the innkeeps was invited to choose a cask for the sampling, which he did slowly while tapping and sniffing and pretending he could tell the quality without opening each cask. Eventually he chose one, and Robert stood it on the aft castle close to the dock and tapped it. Men pressed towards it, each holding up a silver cup to be filled.
Meanwhile, old Cleff had walked to the hut beside the dock to show his manifest to the port clerk. Some of the crew were now on the dock and they waded into the crowd of would-be samplers, to give the push to anyone not carrying a silver tasting cup. Robert himself did the pouring by giving a first small taste to everyone close by. This tasting might use up a small cask but it served to delay the bidding until word made it around the city to all the private houses and colleges that there was prime Genever for sale on the docks. Possibly the last fine Dutch spirits that would be sold in Cambridge before winter winds closed the sea and Christmas revelers filled the halls.
The poseurs in the crowd of tasters were sipping and sniffing and smacking their lips and sucking air over the liquor and then describing the sensations in terms of flowers and fruits. The truly serious buyers stood beside Robert and looked at the glass bowl of it that he had drawn so everyone could judge the clarity and pale colour. One of them produced a strange measuring stick that he floated in the bowl and then read off the notches that marked how high it floated.
"It measures the strength of it,” Robert told Oliver over his shoulder as he refused again to start the bidding. Within two hours the crowd of serious buyers had doubled in size, and every cask had been sold. Most of it was bought by the wealthy colleges, though three of the finer inns also bought some. None was bought by the alehouses. Oliver was amazed at the amount of gold changing hands and he mentioned it to Daniel.
"That’s why I have my pistols under my belt,” Daniel replied. "The difference in price between bathtub Genever and the finery we carry is tenfold. The idle rich don't want to learn how to savour good Genever, they just want to know that they are swigging the best, which to them means the most costly."
"They pay through the nose,” Oliver quipped. He had just watched one of the poseurs sniffing his cup and then listened to his fanciful utterances describing the delicate touch of Juniper berry. "May I try some?"
"But Oliver, you are a Puritan, and this is the devil's own drink." Daniel was just poking fun at the Abbey's man, for he motioned Robert to pass Oliver a measure. Only once Oliver was coughing and sputtering as the burn reached his throat, did Daniel remind him that this was the finest of sipping spirits, and therefore not mixed nor watered down.
When he could finally speak again, Oliver made the observation, "A dock filled with people of all walks of life have witnessed a fortune in coin being exchanged to Robert. Surely he will be marked to be robbed. It is a long way to Somerset."
"Aye, it's a problem. Usually he stays in Holland, and I assure the safety of cargo and payment because all of the ship's crew are dangerous men. This time is very different. Robert must go overland to Somerset and the roads and inns are swarming with thieves of opportunity. Meanwhile, my crew are anxious to get to their villages, their homes, and their women's beds. The winter rains are almost upon us, so they have urgent work waiting for them at home, such as putting weaving fresh reeds into their roofs."
There was a long pause, "But,” Oliver said. "There must be a but. You were about to tell me how Robert would make the journey in safety, but then you stopped. Ah, of course. He would be much safer if no one knew his plans or his route, including me." He should have saved his breath for Daniel wasn't paying attention. Instead the tall man was giving hand signals to the crew on the dock who were busy loading casks onto mules and into carts. Oliver looked around to spot the men that Daniel was signaling to.
Two of the crew suddenly pounced upon a man, caught him by both arms, lifted him from the ground and hurried him toward the ship and to Daniel. Oliver was awed by the strength of these men. It was as if the man weighed nothing though his feet were off the ground and kicking. A lifetime of pulling oars would tend to turn muscles into iron.
Daniel stared down at the held man, and said to the two oarsmen, "The man is dipping pockets. Strip him of everything and then chuck him in the river. We'll throw his clothes to him once we've searched them."
The dipper did not protest. A cold swim was kinder treatment than he would have received from any of his victims. He voluntarily stripped and left his clothes in a pile and then leaped naked into the foul and odorous waters of the Cam. The search of his things produced three purses, a jeweled cloak clasp, and a silver dagger, all of which had been stuffed into some inside pockets of his cloak. There were some small copper coins in another pocket, but they left them for the dipper, who was now treading water down below the dock to keep his feet from sinking into the muddy bottom.
"My point exactly,” Oliver said as he watched the dipper catch the clothes that were thrown to him and then make for a ladder with his sodden clothes and boots held under one arm. "Thieves of opportunity are everywhere."
"This is not the place to speak of it," Daniel told him. "Once the cargo is paid for and delivered, the ship will put about and row back down river to Wellenhay. Robert and I will be getting off at the George Inn where my clan keeps some horses. You can stay with the ship back to Ely, or you are welcome to stay with Robert and I at The George for the night. It's your choice."
Oliver scanned the November clouds to measure the height of the sun they hid. Three hours to make a decision. Time enough for a short walk through the city. He said as much to Daniel, and then stepped ashore to go and explore Cambridge. He wasn't a hundred yards from the ship before two doxies showing deep cleavage and bare ankles hooked onto an arm on each side and began to offer him things that quickly reminded him that Puritan morality controlled the farming villages, but not the towns.
No sooner had he sent the two doxies away by mumbling his apologies, than another one hooked onto his arm. A prosperous man was never wanting for company in Cambridge, especially female company. Willing female company. It made him wonder all the more why Edward Heath had bothered to accost Teesa. A good stare at this new doxy answered the question. Teesa was fresh and young and clean.
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THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14