Daniel accepted the risks of traveling the main
road in the interests of speed, but he did not catch up to the
troop of marching men before he reached the town of Drayton. It was
too risky to enter the town, for if the king's army was in
Shrewsbury then there would be a garrison stationed at Drayton.
Drayton was but twenty miles from Shrewsbury, so he was running out
of time.
He turned west on a likely looking cart track about a mile before Drayton and followed it hopes that it would bypass the town. It ended two miles further on at another cart track that he assumed led back to the main road. The cart track must have been built along an ancient road because it was absolutely straight and was raised above the land around it on a good road bed. It did lead him back to the main road, but at the crossroad he had the dilemma of which way to turn.
The troop may still be passing through Drayton, or they may be ahead of him towards Shrewsbury. Logic made the decision. If they were towards Shrewsbury then he must find them soon, so that is the way he turned. A mile or a mile and a half later he found them. They were sitting about watching as four men were trying to mend a wheel on the cart.
They were in a clearing of a wooded area just beyond where the River Tern had turned away from the road. Because of the woods and the bushes and the twists in the road as it climbed away from the river bank, Daniel did not known they were there until he rode into the clearing. He was seen before he could backtrack and go around to get in front of them. There was nothing he could do but to carry on towards the broken cart in hopes of bluffing it out.
Some of the men immediately recognized him and he gave them a signal of a finger across his throat to warn them not to call out. They nudged the men beside them to pass on the warning. Their wrists were bound and they were guarded by a similar array of men as those that had guarded the Fishtoft troop. A captain with a horse was in charge with three seasoned musketeers to back him up, and six volunteer pikemen to make the pressed men behave. The musketeers and the pikemen were in a ring around the men, while the captain was dismounted and supervising the four pressed men who were trying to refit the wheel on the axle.
Daniel rode straight up to the captain, who on seeing him straightened up and turned around to face him. As Femke came to a halt a big man came out from under the cart and said, "It's fucked. Both the axle and the hub are charred. Even if we got the wheel back on, it may not last an..." The man stopped talking and stared at Daniel and was about to yell a greeting until Daniel shook his head at him.
The captain made a signal to his musketeers, and then asked Daniel, "Are you Shrewsbury bound?"
It was such a silly question that Daniel should have realized that the captain was stalling for time. He turned his head slightly. The three musketeers were coming up behind him. Good. Same plan as last time then. Blind the musketeers with his dragon and then kill the captain. He willed Femke to turn her left flank towards the captain and moved his right hand slowly to the butt of his dragon.
The word bugger went through his mind a dozen times. These musketeers were armed differently than the last lot. They didn't just carry clumsy muskets, but also dragons, and their three dragons were cocked and pointed at him. What made it worse is that he recognized the dragons. They were part of a consignment he had shipped in from Holland. He had given six of them as wedding presents to the six Freiston men who had married into his clan.
"Calm yourselves, lads,” he told them, even though the men were older than he was. "I just came to do some business with your captain."
"And just what business would that be?" the captain asked.
Daniel was thinking fast. If deadly force wouldn't work, what about bribes. "My regiment needs more men. These ones will do nicely. If you take them all the way into Shrewsbury, they won't be given to my regiment."
"They are the Earl of Lindsey's men,” the captain told him, "the ruddy captain-general. Damn rights you won't get them."
"Can I speak freely in front of your men?" Daniel asked while nodding towards the musketeers.
"Yes, but move closer to me and speak softly so the troops don't hear." They all moved further away from the cart and the pikemen.
"I'll make it worth your while. Name your price to have them escape, accidental like."
"What? And look incompetent to my general,” the captain sneered.
At least this captain spoke English, though his accent was strongly Tyneside so he may as well have been speaking Scottish. "Then your price be in coins of gold, rather than silver,” Daniel told him. That got the man thinking.
"Sergeant,” the captain called out, "keep him covered. Shoot him if he moves. I'm going to search his saddle bags. This is all too suspicious. If he came to buy these men then where is the guard he will need to march them to his regiment."
Bugger was the word that went through Daniels mind a dozen more times for he was about to be robbed and forced into service with the Freiston men. He glanced around at the musketeers. So did Femke. She must have sensed he was in trouble. Femke, of course, ... Teesa's trained trick horse that knew word commands, word commands in Frisian. While the musketeers came closer he patted her on the neck and then told her "Spurna!"
Femke did exactly what she had been told to do. She kicked out, front, back, all around. The musketeer standing behind her got her shoes in his chest. The one beside him got a hoof in the groin and third dived and rolled away. Of course this meant that she bucked a bit so Daniel had to hold on to the saddle with both hands, and couldn't reach for his pistols. The best he could do was to kick the captain in the face, but then there was a fierce bark of a dragon from behind him so he yelled out "Runnen!" to Femke.
As Femke sprinted passed the broken cart Daniel yelled out, "I'll find you,” hoping that the captain would think it a curse of revenge rather than a message to the men. There was another roar of a gun, but if it was from another dragon then he was already out of range, and if it was from a musket ... well best of luck hitting a fast moving target with a musket.
He slowed Femke as soon as they were out of range and were hidden by the bend in the road. There was a game trail to the north of the road that angled up. That was what he need, high ground. The game trail took him along the slope and climbed up behind the woods. He let Femke pick her own way for she was already breathing hard either from a hard days ride, the sprint, or from the excitement.
They stopped when they reached a ridge with a faint path running along it. From here he could not see the clearing where the wagon and the men were, but he was right above where the road left the woods on its way to Shrewsbury. He was glad of the stop, for his back and his bum ached from the days ride, and he was thirsty. The hand that he used to reach behind him for his water skin came back bloody.
"Bugger, what else can go wrong. They've hit you Femke. Sorry girl." He scratched at her ears and made soothing noises and then dismounted. As soon as his right foot touched the ground and took his weight a pain shot the full length of his body. He stared at the hindquarters of the mare, and there was a lot of blood but it wasn't hers. It was his. He tenderly touched his right side and bum. There was a lot of blood just beneath where his armour ended. The bloody musketeers were definitely experienced men.
Sounds of men and commands were drifting up from the clearing. For now he had more important things to do than worry about his wound. It would have to wait. Right now he was angry with the captain for trying to rob him, for wounding him, for stealing the cart from an old man, and most of all, for stealing the men of Freiston. Six feet of deer rifle wrapped in sacking was hung by a strap in the front and in the back of the left side of his saddle. Why else had he carried the clumsy thing all this way?
Hurriedly he unwrapped the long rifle. Originally it had been a full length matchlock musket that some Spanish gunsmith had grooved with rifling for the last foot of the barrel. Once the hunters in his clan had tried it out, they kept it for themselves and had replaced the matchlock arm with a Jocklock.... an invention of a friend in Rotterdam ... a one legged Scottish gunsmith called Jock. It was a bolt-on flint style lock with a cover that fitted over the existing flash pan and would turn any matchlock into the equivalent of a snaplock.
One look into the barrel told him that it had been put away clean and oiled and ready to load. Good on ya Anso. He measured the powder down the muzzle and then chose his ball from a selection in a heavy purse. He chose one of the largest for when this barrel was very clean you could use a larger ball which allowed the rifling grooves to spin it. When it was dirty you had to use a smaller ball and then it became just another musket. He rammed everything home and then primed the pan making sure that some of the fine priming powder made it down the vent into the breach of the barrel.
This rifle was far too clumsy a weapon for a battlefield but it was exactly what you needed to bag game. A long distance ball heavy enough to down a deer. He stuck the fork pole into the dirt. The barrel was so long and heavy that you had to rest the muzzle in the fork to support the muzzle weight while you aimed it. He put the butt into his arm and then bent over to aim it. Bending over hurt too much so he knocked the fork out of his way and then lay down in the long dry autumn grass.
There was a change in sounds from down below which told him that the troop was on the march. Quickly he built up a mound of dirt to rest the muzzle on and then sighted along the barrel to the iron bead welded to the end. He was trying to remind himself which way to adjust the thumb screw on the sprung sighting notch. Was it out for distance. Yes, that was it. With the notch out the muzzle aimed higher.
This was an extra long shot so he would screw it all the way out.. He cocked it and aimed it and tried to visualize a sapling down by the road as if it were a man. Yes, definitely screw it out for distance. A horse was coming out of the woods. He aimed and put his finger on the trigger. It occurred to him that as soon as the hammer fell he would lose his aim to the flash smoke, so he would have to hold the gun absolutely still during the split second delay while the flash pan ignited the main charge.
At the same time that he squeezed the trigger and the hammer sparked, he realized that the man on the horse was not the captain, and that the horse had no saddle. Luckily he was so intent on the aim that he had forgotten to swing the weather cover off the flash pan. The man on the horse had bound feet. He must be the most crippled of the troop. The limping men would be taking turns on the cart horse. He was having second thoughts about how far he had unscrewed the thumb knurl so he screwed it back in a bit.
Another horse left the woods. He swung the weather cover out of the way and aimed for a body shot for the captain hadn't been wearing his chest armour. He waited impatiently, for the captain was moving too fast. Someone must have called to him because he reigned in the horse and turned to look back. Aim, deep breath, squeeze the trigger. Click, spark, flash, hiss, BOOOM. For a second he could see nothing because of the gun smoke and the ash that blew back into his eyes. This was the problem with all muskets ... to aim them properly along the barrel meant putting your eye and face too close to the flash pan.
When the smoke cleared he could see the captain still in the saddle, but the horse was spinning in circles trying to bite at something on his flank. Of course. The ball had not hit the captain in the body but had dropped lower and had hit the flank of the horse. Bloody hell. He wouldn't get a second shot. By the time he reloaded this monster they would be gone. He hurriedly began cleaning the hot barrel in hopes that he could reload in time for another shot..
As he went thought the steps of loading, the captain leaped from his injured horse and into the bushes for his own safety. Hopefully the bushes were something prickly and thorny. A musketeer had run forward and stopped the lead horse carrying the man with the wrapped feet. The troop must have been told to keep marching along the road, but the captain and the guards were no where to be seen. They must have ducked low to use the bushes as cover while keeping up to the troop.
He never did get another shot off before they were all out of range. One of the pikemen was leading the injured horse, who was wincing at every step and complaining. A walking butcher shop for tonight's cooking fire. Once well away from this hill they would transfer the saddle to the cart horse so the captain could ride again.
As for Daniel, he had to pack up the rifle and find somewhere safe to hide while he checked and attended his wound. He could no longer walk or sit a saddle, so he stood in the stirrup with his good left leg and leaned over the saddle with more weight on his chest and used voice commands to guide Femke. The ridge track bent around and joined a larger trail on a higher ridge which led west away from the road.
It dawned on him that this was not just a ridge of a hill. These were ramparts of some ancient fort. By the sparsity of the trails, the only ones using the ramparts today were sheep, although in truth he could not see any sheep, just sheep droppings. All the sheep trails joined into a larger trail that led down through a wooded gully to a small cottage below. The other way the larger trail led along one side of the rampart. The rampart was very steep and even if Femke could haul him up to the top he would be visible from down below against the skyline, so he followed the main trail along the side instead.
The trail led to a cut through the rampart, a manmade cut through stone so possibly the ancient gate to the hill fort. Femke didn't wait for his instructions, and walked through the cut. Inside the ramparts the ground was level but with some random knolls. This was as good a place as any for him to attend his wound so he told Femke to stop.
She wouldn't. She kept on walking towards the far end of the fort, but then he saw why. There was a small pond and she was on her way to have a drink. The pond was not all scummy so it must have been spring fed rather than rainwater fed. Using only his good leg he hopped down from the stirrup and hopped around in a circle taking a good look at where he was. There were no sheep tracks to the edge of the pond so that meant there had been no sheep drinking at this pond since it had shrunk to its summer size.
Over to one side of the pond there was a sheep pen made out of piled up rocks and earth with a gate made of lashed saplings that still looked useable. On the other side there was a grass covered mound, perhaps a barrow of the ancients. He hopped around the pond to the barrow side of it. There were fresh foot prints in the mud. Footprints of a lad or a woman. He hopped up the slight slope to the barrow. The entrance was blocked by a door of the same workmanship as the gate of the pen.
"Hello?" he called out two or three times. The only answer was that Femke wandered over to him. If the mare thought he was calling her then the place must be empty. He lifted the door out of his way and looked inside. You would have to stoop to enter, and then go down a ramp, and that was as far as he could see by the light of the doorway. He wasn't good at stooping right now, but it was a good place to unload Femke so that is what he did.
When he was down to the saddle and bridle, he paused. Perhaps he should leave her saddled in case he needed to ride out of here fast. Who was he fooling. He couldn't ride. Once Femke was unsaddled, she wandered back to the pond. Now that the mare was unsaddled it was time to unsaddle himself. He stripped himself of armour, and weapons belt, and britches, and everything else until he stood in just the white silk night shirt that Britta had given him. Except that it was no longer white. He had worn it almost non stop for two weeks. It was grimy and stained and the worst stain was his own blood all around his right side and buttock.
He tried to take it off but the blood had stuck it to his wound and every time he pulled at it the pain seared through his body. By hopping, he moved over to his water skin and shook it. If he used his drinking water all up by dampening the silk to free it from the blood, then what would he drink. The pond water may sicken him. There was no obvious sign of where the spring came out of the ground. It was a long way down a steep hill to fetch more drinking water. The nightshirt would have to wait, because what he really needed to do was to sit down and rest before he fell down. He was feeling quite dizzy. The best he could manage without making the pain worse was to lie face down on the cool, damp, sheep sheered grass.
* * * * *
There it was again. Something was moving towards him. Was that the cry of a lamb? Were the moving sounds from Femke or a sheep? He wiped the crust of sleep from his eyes and looked around. How long had he been asleep. The sun was low and the shadows long. A shadow moved. It was erect with arms, so not a sheep or a horse. Slowly he moved his right arm to reach for a pistol, any pistol.
"Move and I will stab you,” said a nervous voice.
"I mean no harm,” he said. Had it been a woman's voice or a lad who had not yet grown into a voice. "I am injured. I need help."
"I can see that. You've lost a lot of blood."
"My problem is that I can't see the wound. Please help me." Keeping his body raised up had sapped his strength and he let him self drop.
"If I come closer to look, how do I know you won't grab me?"
"I'm so weak I can't even twist my body to look at you," Daniel whispered. "At least move forward to where we can speak face to face." It was a woman. She circled him never taking her eyes of him. She carried a baby on her back held to her by a length of cloth tied around her shoulders. In her hand was a stone. She threw it at him. It hurt and he flinched and moaned in pain. Perhaps it was because he didn't have the strength to duck or block the stone that she came closer. He felt her gently tugging at his silk shirt. "Oww!"
"Your shirt is stuck in your wound,” she told him.
"Do you have some clean water to unstick it?" he whispered hoarsely.
"I didn't say stuck to your wound, I said stuck in it. What weave is that. It is like spun spider webs woven together. So tightly woven, so thin, so light."
The woman had never seen silk before, so she had probably never been to a town market or known a manor born woman. "It is silk. A moth makes the thread in the same way that spiders do. If it is stuck in the wound then something pushed it in there. Can you see what it is?"
"No. The blood has dried over it."
"Do you have some clean water to wash the blood away?"
"If I do that then it will start bleeding again. For now it is stopped. There is dried blood all around you. You can't have much left inside you."
Daniel wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but he forced himself to keep his eyes open. If he slept before the wound was clean and staunched he may never wake up again. "Listen to me. I want you to grab the silk around the edges of the wound and yank it out of the wound. One yank, as hard as you can. Then I want you to hold a ball of the shirt cloth firmly against the wound until it stops bleeding. Do you understand?"
"Yank it free then press down. I can do that. Tell me when you are ready."
"I'll never be ready, just do it. Yiiiiiii! Oowwwww! Noooo!"
* * * * *
Was it night or was he dead? Oh the pain. He must be alive to be in so much pain, so it was night.
"I'm sorry,” she told him. " It wouldn't stop bleeding so I had to sew it shut. That was the last stitch."
"Have you pulled it tight and tied it off yet?" He had to get his mind clear. Why did he ask that question? She had said no. Why was the question important? Ah, yes. "Before you tighten it, go to my saddle. There is a flask of aqua vitae there. Fetch it."
"But I'm finished. If you wanted to get drunk to dull the pain, you should have asked me before."
"I want you to use the aqua vitae to flush the wound and the stitches before you close it tight."
"But won't that hurt?" she asked all concerned.
"Oh yes,” he whispered weakly.
* * * * *
He was so cold. So very cold. He opened his eyes. It was still night. She was sitting on a grass mat, leaning against the barrow and nursing her baby. If he hadn't been so bloody cold he would have admired the gentle scene. "Please find my blanket and put it over me,” he whispered.
"It already is."
"Then throw my cloak over it."
"It already is."
"How long until morning?"
"A full night."
"But when I last woke it was almost midnight."
"That was last night,” she told him.
"Then I must have fever chills. Am I dying?"
"No you are just cold. You lost a lot of blood and the nights get cold up here. You would be warmer if I could move you into my barrow, but you weigh too much."
He was so cold he had to do something. He pushed himself up on two hands and one knee and crawled slowly along the ground and down into the barrow.
* * * * *
"My husband and I are cottagers at the foot of the hill,” she told him the next afternoon when he was feeling warmer and well enough to lie on his good side covered only by his blanket. "I go down every morning to work our field and I bring what I have harvested to hide up here and we sleep here where we are safe."
"While your husband sleeps in your cottage?"
"Yes," she said quickly, too quickly. "No. The king's men came to claim our animals and when they left they took him with them. I haven't seen him for weeks. I brought all our things up here for safety. The cottage is empty. Each day I cut and thresh and pick only what I can carry up the slope."
"But don't others see you climbing the slope each day. They must know you are up here."
"The sheep path goes through high bush. No one sees me. No one else comes up here because the fort is haunted." She lifted the harvest sack and carried it to the back of the barrow to a row of large earthenware pots, and lifted one of the lids and poured the barley into the pot.
"Cerys, where did you get those huge pots?" he asked. Her name was Cerys and she was perhaps seventeen. The baby was Nia and perhaps six months.
"They were here already. I was afraid that rats would gnaw through my sacks so I emptied the pots and cleaned them and now I use them for storage."
"Emptied them of what?" he asked more to pass the time than out of interest. His wound was healing quickly. The silk had saved his life. The silk and this woman. He was no longer sleeping all the hours of the day so now he was bored and anxious. Anxious about where the Freiston men were. Anxious that no one knew where he was or how he fared.
"Bones. Old crumbly bones. There were some beads and stone carvings too, and some metal jewelry ... rings, broaches, torques." She pulled a twisted metal bracelet from around her wrist and handed it to him.
As he was staring at the torque he asked. "So what was it that you pulled out of me with the silk?"
"It's there beside your pistol."
Daniel kept holding the torque while he picked up a bent and rusty piece of metal from beside his pistol. "A horseshoe nail. What kind of idiot would risk scoring the barrel of his gun by shooting horseshoe nails?"
"The kind of idiot who almost did for you. The silk not only kept the nail from driving deeper and into an organ, but it kept the rust out of your blood." She moved over to him and pulled back the blanket and touched her hand to his bare bum. "See, the wound is no longer hot. It is healing."
"Any excuse to touch my bum,” he jested. It fell sour on her ears. "Sorry."
"I walked to the hamlet today and bought some cooked meat. You need to eat meat to build up your blood." She handed him a plate with a greasy chunk of something on it.
"They've cheated you love. What is this, the fetlock of a horse?"
"It cost all that I had,” she said with an edge to her voice and then stood and walked away. She was petite enough to stand full height in the low barrow.
He wanted to apologize but that would seem like sympathy and rob her of her pride. "Why didn't you take some coppers from my purse? They are all yours in payment for board and nursing." It was still the wrong thing to say.
"How would I know that you have a purse? I don't snoop in other folk's things."
"This torque,” he held it up hoping to bring her closer. "I think it is valuable. Go over to my saddle and unscrew one of the front posts. It is hollow and inside it there are some coins. Bring one to me." Meanwhile he rolled over to where the sun was shining through the doorway and looked at the metal of the torque in good light.
She handed him a gold eight and he compared its color to that of the torque. "What metal did you think this was?"
"A mix of tin and copper. That is common around here because we are so close to Wales."
"I think it is copper and gold. Here look for yourself. The piece of eight is pure gold. See how the torque is slightly darker than the yellow of the eight. They added some copper to strengthen it." He compared the weight. The torque was much heavier. "If you bring me the rest of the coins then I can guess at its weight which will tell us its worth."
"I have a scale," she told him and fetched it along with his coins. While she held up the balance bar, he carefully added eights until the torque was balanced.
"Your torque is worth a house in the closest village,” he told her.
"I have other ones, larger ones, men's ones."
"Then you are a very wealthy woman. If I were you I would hide them away somewhere. Bury them somewhere away from this barrow and come back for them when your husband returns. You should certainly not be wearing any of it for others to see. They will mark you to the thieves."
"Then you aren't going to take them away from me?" she asked, as she took her torque back.
"I don't snoop in other folk's things,” he echoed her words. "In the inside pocket of my cloak there is a purse of coppers and some silver. Take that with you tomorrow and buy me some liver. Eating young liver is what will give me back my blood."
"When I go will you watch Nia for me."
"I would love to,” he lied. Nia was not a well baby for she always stank of shit and cried a lot. "Buy some cultured milk for her, sheep’s milk. That may sort out her tummy."
"May I take Femke?" she asked.
"Can you ride?"
"I can ride Femke. She has already let me."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14