The earls Warwick and Essex had always been competitors in courtly society, and though they were cousins with many relations through marriage, Essex treated Warwick like an interloper. Warwick's grandfather had been a commoner who was elevated to the peerage, whereas Essex claimed to have the blood of kings running in his veins. With one now appointed Lord Admiral, and the other Lord General this old competition was now becoming belligerent, especially as the admiral would not trust the general to run a chicken coop, never mind the army.
Tempers hissed and whistled as the belligerence came to a boil over Britta. Not in public, of course, for it would never do for the officers and men to see those in high command snorting at each other like bucks in rutting season. Much of it was nothing to do with the fair lady, though she was the only other person present and could do nothing but stand aside while the men exchanged their threats.
"Come within an arms length of her again and I will spit you through that fat belly of yours," Warwick hissed as he picked up his dress sword and hooked its scabbard over his belt. All of this was done at the level of whispered hisses, because there would be ears at every keyhole of the king's chamber where Warwick was now packing up his things at the same time that Essex was unpacking his.
"Hah, will you listen to him brag. Clubfoot Robert who could never best me at sword practice, not even as teens together," Essex replied, while changing his mind and not removing his own scabbard from his belt.
"Aye but you were five stone lighter then, and could reach an arm out further than your belly."
"Spoken like a pirate trained in slashing and backstabbing. You always were a pirate Rob. You were a cutthroat when you ran off to the Caribbean to escape the tedium of running your grandfather's ill gained properties, and a cutthroat you remain. How dare you rally the rabble against gentlemen." He glanced over at Britta, splendid in her mauve gown. "I can't fathom why she stays with you. You must hold her mother captive for how else could you force her to bend over for you."
"At least my grandfather earned his properties by faithful hard work and foresight. He wasn't handed them all just because he was related to someone who claimed to have invaded with William the Conqueror. She'll never bend over for you. She's knows from your daughters how you fart with every hump."
The last was too much. Both men were reaching for their hilts. Britta pulled her wheellock out of her pocket, and she flipped off the safety. Calmly she aimed it at Essex's crotch. "Draw that sword, my lord, and I will turn you from a stud into a gelding. I will not be brawled over like a doe. I refuse to keep your company for a moment more, either of you. I am leaving Windsor to return to London."
Essex still had not pushed the hilt back down. He was staring hard at the small gun in her hand. "This is a Dutch wheellock, your grace," she told him. "It does not need to be cocked against a spring. One hard pull of the trigger will spin the sparking wheel." She tipped it slightly to the left to show him that she knew enough to make sure the breach vent was filled with flash powder.
Essex slammed his hilt back down in his scabbard and then so did Warwick. Warwick gave her a big grin and began to tell her... but was interrupted by her clipped orders. "Take your things and be gone you bragging fool, while I keep Lord Devereaux from trying to slice you open." Luckily he did not argue but grabbed up his satchel of papers and maps and his writing set, and backed out of the door. She backed out behind him, but at the door blew Essex a kiss just to take the sting out of his fuming cheeks.
Once they were striding down the main upstairs hallway to the front staircase, Warwick asked, "And just how do you expect to return to London if I don't wish you to leave my company? I am on my way to Farnham, and I would dearly love your company there."
"Why? So you can flaunt me to your pet colonel, William Waller. So you can be envied by every cockerel in his command. So I must continue to walk about with a loaded pistol in the pocket of my cape. I don't need any help from you to see me safely to London."
"You forget where you are, my girl," he argued. "Between the king's army, my army, Essex's army, the militia, the clubmen and other mobilized mobs you are surrounded by fifty thousand armed and dangerous men, any one of whom would love to rip those clothes off you if he thought he could get away with it."
"An escort has already volunteered for the duty of taking me safely home. My kitchen staff."
Warwick laughed aloud and his words were mocking, "Your kitchen staff. You trust your life to a handful of cooks and waiters."
"They are what is left of Denzil Holles' regiment so don't you dare belittle them. They are the ones who were vicious enough to survive the front line at Edgehill and after that, the retreat through Brentford. They have friends in the very mob you spoke of. Mostly butchers and slaughterhouse men from Smithfields, just down the road from my house. With them at my side I will arrive home safely, have no fear." She didn't mention that she would also take Daniel with her to command them.
At the description of her escort, all of Warwick's arguements dried up on his tongue. These were the very men that Essex had come to him to complain about, which had eventually lead to their arguement. Men who weren't afraid to carve up Lords and gentlemen and who had proven that to all of the armies by doing exactly that to Rupert's chosen men at Turnham Green. "Well I refuse to have you walk like an infantry camp follower," he told her. "Will you do me the great favour of returning my grand carriage to Warwick House for me."
"Why thank you Robert," she said and then hooked her arm into his just as they descended the grand staircase into the crowd of officers who were handing off duties and preparing to leave. They circulated amongst them while Warwick shook hands, until a dour looking officer wafted his hat to them and did a slight bow and then ushered them away from the other officers and into a small parlour.
"Britta dear, may I present Colonel Waller," Warwick did the introductions, "an old friend and long time business partner. William, this is my wife's niece. Now just why have you brought us into this room?"
"I have never seen Essex so furious, that is why. He refuses to allow me to join with your forces to lay siege to Farnham. Either I go without you to Farnham so that he is seen to be still in command, or I will be sent to Henley to deal with the royalists there."
"And what am I to do?"
"Leaving out certain of Essex's words out of respect for the lady, you are to go and play admiral and leave the soldiering to him. I suggest that you return to London until he calms down."
"The fool, the absolute fool. We have the king on the run but we cannot chase him unless we defeat the garrisons he has sprinkled about that could attack our supply lines. Essex cannot do both."
Waller softened his voice. "He is still willing to follow your plan Robert, just not with you taking any part of it. I am to proceed but without you."
Britta saw a look on Robert's face that could only mean trouble, bad trouble. He was going to be stubborn and have it out with Essex here and now. Without excusing herself she left them and slipped out through the door in search of John Hampden. Hopefully Hampden could make him see sense. She found Hampden with Daniel on the far side of the hall, and was forced to dance an alewenches jig through a crowd of officers to reach them. A few moments later, after she had described the problem, she led them to join Waller and Warwick in the parlour.
Daniel stayed well out of the conversation and went and sat in an overstuffed chair while Britta, Hampden and Waller tried to convince Warwick to see reason. Each in their own way was trying to tell him that this was not the time to cause a rift in the Reform Party. That a rift was sure to happen if the lord Admiral and the lord General tried to depose each other. They achieved nothing other than to make Warwick even more stubborn. Eventually Warwick told them all, quite brusquely, to leave him alone to think. At first Britta thought that he didn't mean her, but even she was waved away.
Warwick watched them leave, and then banged his fist hard against a cluttered table and all the costly china ornaments jumped up. Daniel leaped out of his chair and caught one just before it would have become worthless shards on the floor. "What are you still doing here," Warwick growled at him.
"Cause I didn't get my say yet," Daniel replied brashly, "your grace."
Daniel's use of the honorific was like a splash of cold water across the earl's face. He well knew that this freeborn Anglo-Frisian peasant from the Fens had no time at all for the platitudes expected by nobility, so the use of the word forced him to clear his mind. "Say what you must and then leave me be."
"You invited me to Windsor so we could discuss the situation in Holland where Queen Henrietta is gathering an army to invade England, and we have barely spoken two words about it. It seems to me that instead of you trying to show Assex how to do his job, you should be doing your own. Why aren't you with your navy organizing patrols of ships to watch out for the queen's invasion. Why aren't you organizing the defense of the ports?"
Warwick stared back at him in silence, and then sat on a chair with a thump that almost broke the thing. "I have played the fool," he said and then sighed. "Worse, Britta has seen me play the fool. That woman. The more she is angry with me, the more I am captivated by her."
"I know the feeling," Daniel agreed.
"You would think that my giving her a house would make her more patient with me."
"I think she is wise enough to know the difference between giving her the use of a house and giving her a house," Daniel pointed out.
"But she knows that I will give her the title eventually. I have promised that to her enough times."
Daniel's neck flushed in anger at these words and he forced himself not to lash out. Britta had been right about the way these Lords controlled people. They controlled them by promising rewards rather than by giving rewards. Britta with her house. Him with the governorship of Bermuda. "Try giving her the title."
"If I give her the title, then I would just have to find something else to dangle in front of her."
"She wants a child, a child who will have an easy life."
"A truer word was never spoken," Warwick said softly. "She is so fertile that all I must do to arouse her is to suck on her nipples. It is a wonder that she is not yet with child, for I hear that my other womenfolk have her teaching my grandson about women. I am a dry old stick, but he is a teen with a fountain of seed. I see the women's hands in it. If she grows large with child, then their men will stop sniffing around her."
"My clanswomen all know how to delay pregnancy," Daniel told him. "They pick and choose both the seed and the time."
"Truly," Warwick looked aghast, "why that is a most sinful knowledge, bordering on witchcraft."
"Witchcraft," Daniel hissed. "Sinful? Can it be that you look but do not see what goes on in the back alleys of London. I doubt that one in ten children born to the unwed girls of the city survive their birthing. Do you really think the deaths of so many nearly-borns is from accident or lack of birthing knowledge? Which is the more awful sinful, stopping the seed or stopping the birth. Would that all girls were taught what my clanswomen know."
Warwick was taken aback by the vehemence of Daniel's reply. "I, I, ... I suppose I must agree. I detest that London has become such an immoral place under the Stuarts so I would be a bigot not to agree. It sickens my soul when I ride through the streets knowing that almost every young woman I see can be had for a few coppers. That even a few coppers are a blessed windfall to them."
"Then give Britta the house," Daniel said softly.
"Don't be absurd. You leap from speaking of a few coppers to the equivalent of thousands."
"Look beyond the difference in price. What Britta tells you is straight and true, whether what she says pleases you or not. Not like others around you."
"You speak in riddles," Warwick replied. "Do you mean to say that I should demand rent from Britta each week so that each week she must please me as payment?"
Daniel panicked at his words. Somehow in trying to help her he had just done harm to her. How could he respond so he would not make things worse. Eventually he laughed and told him, "Perhaps it would be best not to anger her, not with Warwick House being so close to Smithfield's butchers."
"Point taken," Warwick said, and then he snickered, and the snicker turned to laughter. "That could work to my advantage. If she can call out the lads of Smithfields to protect her, and if she were to move back into Warwick House, then all of my women would be as well protected as she will be."
"As would the Islands of Bermuda when I become the governor. How can you trust the governorship to Captain Chaddock when he has such close ties to the king's slavers in Virginia. Can you afford to trust him when so many of your overseas enterprises depend on Bermuda being a safe haven on the way to the New World."
"I was wondering when you would bring that up again," Warwick replied, his laughter now stifled. "The company has sent my uncle, Thomas Chaddock to Tortuga to arrange with the Brethren of the Coast to join us in preying on the Spanish treasure fleet. In Bermuda the governorship is in rotation between the local captains until he returns. Captain Sayer is the current one, but I have never met him."
"So a man you have never met is the governor rather than me?" Daniel was so angry he felt like punching the man, but that would never do.
"Vice Governor and Chaddock had the right to appoint one. I know I promised you the governorship. I promised it to you after you took Dover fortress for me, but you are here and Sayer was there already. . Unfortunately the decision of replacing Chaddock is not mine alone to make. I am but one of the shareholders in the Somers Isles Company, and we are all so busy that we haven't had time to discuss it."
Daniel seethed but bit his tongue. The earl was lying to him. The shareholders in the Somers Company virtually the same as the shareholders of the Providence Company, which was virtually the same as the Reform Party. The leaders of the Reform party owed him their freedom, if not their lives. If Warwick granted him governorship, the other shareholders would not even argue it. Britta was right. These lords controlled people by promising rewards, not by giving rewards. "I have spoken with John Hampden about it and he will support my appointment."
"Ah but while John is an officer of the company, he owns no shares so he has no direct vote. Now if William Waller owed you a favour, that would be different. He is a shareholder, and therefore has a vote. Together, he and I could swing any vote your way."
Daniel waited for it, silently. One, two, three...
On queue Warwick said, "You are right that my place right now is with the navy. Thank you for pointing it out to me. I will return to London with Britta. Meanwhile I need a confidant to ride with Waller to keep me informed of what Assex is ordering him to do. If you were that confidant, then you could make your own case to Waller about the governorship of Bermuda."
Daniel walked to the window and stared out and then down into the courtyard where Warwick's carriage, and two others were being packed for the journey back to London. Britta, exquisite in a white fur cape and a riding skirt, was walking from man to man of her personal guard, her kitchen worker guard, tying pink ribbons to their arms. He felt Warwick come up behind him to see what he was looking at.
"What are the ribbons for?" Warwick asked.
"To mark her chosen men. They will not be stopped from packing anything she wants out of the palace. They have already begun. See the stack of boxes."
"The long flat boxes I know are gown boxes. So she is taking the queen's old wardrobe for the cloth. What is in those chests? They look like treasure chests, except that I know that any treasure left by the king was claimed by the garrison and sent to Parliament's treasury."
"They were fools. They were looking for jewels, silver and gold. They missed what was lighter and costlier ... the royal spice cupboard." Daniel turned to Warwick and smirked. "Those rough men worship her. Even Essex won't cause trouble by trying to stop her from taking whatever she wants. She arrived in a blood stained rag of a dress, and she is leaving with a fortune in silk and spice. Once she gets them to the London merchants, she will be able to buy her house off you, ten houses off you."
"The treasury will allow her a tenth, perhaps more, ... if I speak out on her behalf," Warwick said softly, and almost as if it were a threat.
There was a decanter standing on a small table and Daniel turned and took a step towards it. Carelessly he slopped the last of the fine Genever into two gold rimmed Venetian glasses and handed one to Warwick. Just before he took a sip of his own, he asked, "Tell me more about Waller. He's your business partner. Together you laid siege to Portsmouth, and then took it. So why do I have the feeling that you don't quite trust him? You don't, do you? You don't quite trust him so you want me by his side."
"Waller is independently wealthy," Warwick told him cautiously after a pause to allow the burn of the Genever to leave his throat. "So much wealth that two years ago he acquired Winchester Castle and all of its estates just to buy his way into parliament. He's a knight but not a Lord, and he lives in hope of being made an Earl. I fear that if the king offers him a title, that he will change sides. That would be a disaster."
"The same is true of most of the gentlemen officers that you depend on. The knights could be tempted by a title, and the rest could be tempted by a knighthood. Tell me more about Waller."
"He is a solid Presbyterian but not on the fringe like the rest of us. He believes in the separation of church and state but he is not an independent or a congregationalist, though he is married to one. It was likely her doing that swayed him to our side."
"Blah, blah, blah ... tell me some hard facts." Daniel had to hide his smirk at the effect such a rude interruption had upon this man. A Lord Admiral is fawned over by naval captains. He was obviously out of the habit of the straight talking merchant captains.
"Faithful Fortescue was in his command at Edgehill," Warwick told him. Faithful had switched sides at the beginning of the battle and had taken hundreds of sorely needed heavy cavalry with him over to the king. "Ralph Hopton is one of Waller's best friends. They served together in the expeditionary force that rescued the king's sister, Rupert's mother, from Bohemia." Hopton was one of the worst enemies that the Reformers had, and was in command of the king's forces from Somerset to Cornwall.
"I remember Hopton," Daniel replied, "from the first time you and I ever rode together, or sailed together. So what is your worst fear about Waller?"
"That he will pretend to be defeated at Farnham Castle and instead join with them and attack Essex's flank. He leads the strongest of our horse regiments so if he does a Faithful it will strengthen the king's flying army some what, but the loss of them will be a disaster to our army. Enough to turn the tide against us."
"So what would keep him loyal?" Daniel asked.
"Well, if the king defeats us, then his shares in our companies would become worthless, and much of his income comes from company business. Other than that, only the men who follow him. He must be seen to be trying to win, else his men will desert him."
"I really don't know how you Reformers ever expect to beat the king when you have so many in command of your forces that are actually just sitting on the fence waiting to back the winner," Daniel said with a sigh. "All right, I will ride with Colonel Waller."
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The Pistoleer - Brentford by Skye Smith Copyright 2014