Pistoleer: Slavers by Smith Skye

Author:Smith, Skye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: civil war, caribbean, morocco, slaves, pirates, best, paradise, pistol, bishops war, john pym
Publisher: Skye Smith

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The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

Chapter 12 - From the mouths of babes in September 1640

The five parliamentarians sat together on the same long bench, with their back to the wall of The George and their faces in the sun. Oliver sat in the middle, for he was the local member, and he knew all of the people they were watching. After a frantic Saturday preparing for the rally at Sidney Sussex College, and a frantic Sunday while holding the rally, just sitting peacefully in the fall sunshine was a luxurious gift to themselves.

After the attempted fire bombing late last night, both Daniel and the innkeeper had demanded that none of the politicians leave the grounds until they had found some guards for them. The small ship Freisburn that was now tied up at the river bank in front of them was unloading these guards. The guards were its oarsmen, dangerous men with strong backs and shoulders.

"If those men had dark hair and beards they would look just like pirates,” John Hampden observed. There were women stepping ashore, and unlike the men, who were dressed for hard labour, the women were all wearing their go-to-town clothes. "And why did they bring their women with them? Would you bring your wife to a place that was almost firebombed?"

They watched as the inn wife ran out to greet the four women walking away from the ship. She curtseyed to the old woman in the lead. "That must be the Lady of their village,” Arthur Haselrig observed. "She must be fifty if she is a day."

"Try eighty,” Oliver whispered. "And she is not the Lady of Wellenhay, but the Seer of Wellenhay. And by that I do mean Seer and not witch. Her name is Oudje, and she is the keeper of the clan's chronicle. The last time I spoke with her I said a prayer that some literate person would soon sit with her and record all that she knows before her passing robs the world of such knowledge."

"Of what church are they?" Haselrig asked. He was a devout Puritan, so was openly suspicious, if not antagonistic towards all those who were not.

"Anabaptists, like most Frisians,” Oliver said quickly. "Their community is similar to those of the Mennonites, but with fewer mustn'ts and shouldn'ts." The clan always professed to being Anabaptists to those who were not close friends. Only recently had he come to realize that they were crypto-pagans pretending to be Christians.

"Hrumph,” Haselrig snorted. "Frisian, eh? Foreigners."

"Anglo-Frisian,” Oliver corrected. "That clan has lived in the Fens since a time before the Vikings. Look at the lines of the ship. The Frisians have been making beauties like that for at least five hundred years. They use it to trade with the Netherlands."

"They crossed the North Sea in that? Surely not. It is too small and it is mostly open to the weather."

Oliver had once said the same thing to Daniel and now he quoted him.

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