A Gentleman Adventurer

A Gentleman Adventurer


By Andrew K Harvey












Chapter 1

“Give fire!”
A puff of smoke, as the match touched the pan, and then the deafening report of three hundred musketeers firing. My horse jumped nervously beneath me.
“Steady boy, steady.” I whispered and patted his neck.
The Dutch demi-culverin roared to my right. I watched as the advancing Spanish line was rent asunder; but as many as fell were replaced by yet more yellow clad soldiers.
Our musketeers fell back to be replaced by the bristling points of the Dutch pikemen.
A horseman rode up, a young man, my age, but with a certain poise I would never posses. He wore a stylish tall crown hat, stopped beside me. His cuirass of burnished steel decorated with fighting cocks, shone in the summer sun.
“Master Wetherby,” he said and nodded to me.
“Sir William,” I replied, “you’re late.”
“On the contrary Thomas, I believe I’m right on time.”
I grunted and turned in my saddle, 50 harquebusiers, lightly armed cavalrymen, waited impatiently behind me.
The Spanish line stopped. Their musketeers ran forward, set down their stands, took aim and fired. Smoke billowed across the battlefield, their musketeers retreated and their pikemen started to come forward, then our cannon roared once again. The 10lb iron cannonballs bounced through their ranks knocking men down like ten pins, breaking their formation apart.
Sir William pointed.
“There, there is our chance.”
I nodded in agreement, and pulled my basinet down. I started to draw my sword, but Fitz-Warren was already gone, charging head long into the disordered Spanish ranks.
“Damn you William,” I breathed, then spurred my horse forward.
“Charge,” I shouted, and our company burst from the stand of trees we’d been hiding in.
It was perfect timing. The Spanish musketeers were still reloading and their pikemen hadn’t managed to reform. Within seconds we were amongst them. We slammed into the musketeers trampling several down. One turned toward me blowing on his match, I cut him down before he had time to aim. I tried to spot William in the melee but smoke obscured my vision.
A group of pikemen started to advance upon us. I pulled a Wheelock pistol from my saddle and fired. A pikeman fell screaming. A volley of shots rang out as my company pulled out their snaphaunce pistols and opened fire on the reforming pikemen. Men died.
Another musketeer tried swinging the butt of his weapon at me, using it as a club but I side swiped him with my horse and he fell sprawling. I then leant from my saddle and stabbed him in the throat. I regained my seat only to see a Spanish officer resplendent in gold and crimson charged his horse toward me, waving his sword wildly, shouting his war cry.
I pulled my second Wheelock, and cocked it but I was too late, he was upon me. He took a wild swing at my head, I ducked and I felt his blow glance off my basinet. As he passed me, I turned in my saddle and fired, he rode on for a few paces, then wheeled to face me, sword still in hand and fell.
By now the pikemen had finished reforming and again they advanced upon us. I looked around for the bugler.
The scared looking boy sat on his horse just a few paces behind me.
“Sound the retreat.”
He looked at me uncomprehending.
“Quick, boy, quick.”
He put the bugle to his lips but only a rasping sound emanated from its mouth.
“Spit, spit.”
He spat and tried again. This time the retreat sounded loud and clear.
“Fall back,” I shouted, “fall back.”
Quickly the men began to stream away. Some of the musketeers fired at our retreating backs but we were soon swallowed up by the smoke. The Dutch lines parted and we cantered through to safety.
The Dutch musketeers let off another volley and the Spanish line began to fall back.
I looked around, where was William?
My Muster Sergeant approached me.
“Who did we lose Smyth?” I asked.
“Beerheeder, Van den Boer, Hess, and we have another 4 injured sir.”
“What about Fitz-Warren?”
The Sergeant shook his head.
“I don’t know sir; he got too far ahead of us.”
“Damn you William, damn you.”
Then I heard scattered shots from the Spanish lines and I saw a horseman riding hell for leather towards us. The Dutch lines parted and the men began to cheer. It was William. He passed through the cheering soldiers and pulled up in front of me. He tipped his hat to our cheering company. He then turned and threw open his cloak producing a very fine Spanish sword.
“Complements of the Duke of Parma.”
I shook my head and took the sword.
“Fine sword Fitz-Warren.”
“Thank you Wetherby.”
“For the sake of my nerves, don’t do it again. I swore an oath to your father I’d keep you safe, don’t make my job any harder.” He said smugly.
“Wouldn’t dream of it Thomas.”
That night we got roaring drunk down the Earl of Leicester an English drinking establishment in the south of Amsterdam.

“You should have seen the fellows face.”
William puffed out his cheeks, clutched his belly and started to waddle around with an exaggerated look of surprise on his face.
“Mon seigneur, mon seigneur! I think he thought I was Spanish, well I dress as well as one of them.”
He flourished his cape, we all roared with laughter.
“I soon disabused him of his misapprehension, when I pulled my pistol and shot him.”
Men fell off their chairs, tears rolled down their faces.
“He sounded like a pig, no, like a girl. God’s eyes, I think I might have had him, yes, yes,” he grabbed Gisele, one of the local whores and pulled her to him. “Yes, those eyes, that soft girlish laugh. Oh mon seigneur!”
“Captain Fitz-Warren, leave me be sir, I beg of you.”
She struggled from his grasp. He chased after her shrieking, “Oh mon seigneur, oh mon seigneur!” but she evaded him so he gave up and collapsed into his chair next to me. I watched her from the corner of my eye as she slid from the room. I clapped William on the back.
“You go too far William. One of these days you will get yourself into trouble and I won’t be there to save you.”
He laughed.
“My dearest friend Thomas, you will always be there to save me. Brothers forever remember?”
I did indeed remember.

“William, Thomas get back here at once.”
It was my father calling us from the parsonage. “You haven’t finished your lessons.” But we were gone running madly through the undergrowth and away, away from Haversham Hall, the parsonage and most particularly our fathers. Sir Edmond Fitz-Warren and Parson John Wetherby were not bad fathers but they were fathers with particular ideas for their younger sons. I was to follow my father into the clergy and William was to enter the Bar, neither of us viewed our destined occupations with a great deal of enthusiasm. But fleeing our destiny was not foremost in our minds today.
“I have to show you something,” William had whispered as my father attempted to force Latin irregular verbs into our resisting brains.
Now we crept quietly through the shady woods. Up ahead ran a shallow brook, mayflies dancing over the babbling waters. I could hear a cuckoo somewhere far away.
William grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said. I followed the line of his pointing arm. There stood an ancient oak tree.
“What?”
“Behind the tree, you bodkin.”
I looked again and this time I saw a boot sticking out, two boots, a man, lying leaning against the tree. The man lay very still, unnaturally so. I began to get a bad feeling.
William started over the stream.
“No William,” I hissed, “we should get back. My father will be looking for us.”
“Damn your father,” William shot back.
I was shaken by his venom. I couldn’t have imagined such anger directed at my affable father. I wanted to return, I’d had enough of this game, but William spun on his heel and glared at me.
“Thomas, come hither.”
Still I hung back.
“Are you scared Thomas? Do you want to go home and play with my sisters dollies?”
He taunted me.
Slowly, reluctantly I followed, splashing through the stream. He now stood on the far side of the tree, smiling triumphantly.
I came around the other side. It was indeed a man, a dead man. A cloud of flies circled his body. A bloody hole in his stomach showed where his life had run out. His eyes gazed lifeless at the branches above, his mouth hung open.
The man was dressed in the manner of a Gentleman but poorly so. An empty scabbard hung at his side. One hand rested on his lap a Rosary wrapped around his fingers.
“Papist,” William spat. “Probably discovered and shot by the militia.”
All this was by the by for the real treasure was clutched in the man’s other hand. A pistol. William knelt down to examine it.
“A snaphaunce,” he announced confidently, “cocked to, see how the hammer is pulled back and the powder pan is open?”
I nodded dumbly.
William reached out to touch it.
“No William, don’t.” I warned but he continued anyway.
He tried to pry the man’s fingers away, but there was a snap and the hammer fell. We both leapt back expecting an explosion of fire and smoke, but nothing came.
“Wet powder,” William determined. He resumed trying to extricate the weapon but the man’s dead hands would not release their charge. William pulled out his belt knife and I saw his purpose.
“No William, it’s wrong. It’s desecrating the dead.”
“He is a Papist, it is no sin.”
He brought the knife to the man’s skin and hesitated.
“You do it,” he said presenting the knife to me, “It is not Gentleman’s work, but the son of a clergyman, tis fair.”
I stepped back in horror.
“No William, I cannot.”
“You can and you will. Your superior commands it.”
I shook my head firmly.
William smiled thinly.
“I will tell Elizabeth of your feelings toward her.”
I started to say something but he cut me off.
“Do not deny it, I have seen how you dote on her.”
Elizabeth was William’s older sister; she was beautiful with long auburn locks and a gentle manner that endeared her to everyone’s hearts. She was at 13 almost a woman and I did love her more fiercely than Paris did Helen.
I blanched.
“You would not?”
“I wouldn’t want to, but in all good conscience, how could I recommend a man who is not only her inferior in rank and station, but a coward?”
“I am not a coward.”
He presented the knife again.
“Then do it sir.”
With trembling hands I took it and knelt beside the man. I laid the blade against his skin and pressed. It made a furrow but did not cut.
“Press harder,” William commanded.
I closed my eyes and pressed. The flesh parted.
“Good, good, that’s it.”

Afterwards he held the pistol triumphantly.
“A fine weapon indeed, well done Thomas.”
He shot me a look.
“This is to remain our secret, you must not tell anyone, not our fathers, not even,” and he smirked slyly, “not even Elizabeth.”
I nodded mutely, too exhausted to disagree. He slid the snaphaunce into his belt, then bent and picked up the bloodied knife. He went and cleaned it in the stream then returned and stood over me gazing at the blade thoughtfully.
Quicker than I could react he grasped my wrist and slit it. I cried out in pain and pulled my arm away.
“Why did you do that?”
He then made a nick in his own. He jammed his bleeding wrist against mine.
“Blood brothers,” he stated fiercely. “Swear it, Blood brothers, forever.”
I looked into his dark ferocious eyes and duly swore.
“Blood brothers, forever.”
“Forever!”


“Have we not remained true to that oath even these ten years? Now Thomas, cease your fretting. It was a good day’s work; we put those Spanish cowards to flight.”
The men cheered again.
“Indeed.” I agreed grimly.
I stood up and raised my tankard. “A toast!” I announced and turned toward the small painting of the Queen we kept over the fireplace.
“To Sir William, our brave boys, and our esteemed patron Francis de Vere, God save the Queen!”
“God save the Queen!” Everyone chorused.

The next morning the young Ensign Wickham shook me. He was the newest edition to our company, only sixteen years old and as green as they come.
“Lieutenant, Lieutenant, wake up, the English Regiments are marching south.”
I rubbed my eyes blearily.
“Where to now?”
“We’re going to burn Dunkirk sir.”
“Burn Dunkirk?”
“Yes we’re going after those damn Dunkirker pirates, sir.”
I rolled over.
“Don’t be a damn fool Wickham, Prince Maurice would never agree to such an expedition.”
“It is true, I swear. Sir Francis is mustering outside of town as we speak. The stadtholders have over ruled the Prince.”
I sat up.
“God’s eyes, the stadtholders? What do the stadtholders know of prosecuting a war? They are merchants, bankers. How are we to cross the Scheldt?”
“A flotilla is being amassed, sir.”
“And the Spanish will just let us float across the river I suppose?”
Wickham shrugged.
“I do not know sir.”
I shook my head.
“This is madness, a madness which none of us may survive. Where is Fitz-Warren?”
“I don’t know sir.”
“Well go and find him boy!” I roared.
“Yes sir, certainly sir.” He stammered, he bobbed his head and retreated rapidly.
I disentangled myself from Gisele and rolled out of my bed and started to clothe myself.
“Where are you going Thomas?” Gisele asked sleepily.
“On a fools errand,” I told her as I pulled on my breeches.
“Not time for one more?” she asked and threw the blanket back revealing her soft body.
“Well maybe one more,” I said and climbed back into bed.
Gisele was French; a Protestant Huguenot. Her mother died of a fever when she was young and her father, a mercenary, had sold her to cover his gambling debts when she was 15. She was 17 now. She was beautiful with long golden hair, the bluest of blue eyes, and skin the color of amber. I quickly became her only client and now she shared none but my bed of a night.
We made love, softly, urgently till at last we lay in an exhausted tangle. She turned her head to me, her blue eyes brimming with tears.
“What’s the matter Gisele?” I asked suddenly concerned.
“Do you have to go Thomas?”
“You know I do.” I told her gently.
“What will I do when you are gone?”
“Don’t worry I will leave you enough money to get by.”
She sat up suddenly angry, the tears now pouring down her face.
“It is not the money; I do not care about the money. Dunkirk is many miles inside Spanish territory, it is too dangerous.”
“I know,” I said turning my head away, “but it is my duty.”
“What if you do not come back? What will become of me?”
“You are still young, still beautiful, you will find another.”
She wept harder.
“No, no, no, you do not understand Thomas. I am with child.”
“With child?” I could barely comprehend her statement.
My head burned, I gripped her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Whose?”
“Yours Thomas, yours.”