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"I would aim to relieve you of your purses" said the masked woman. "And how do you intend to go that young woman?" asked Lord Parsimon. "It's a matter of your money or your life, as they say in the parlance " was the woman's reply as she cocked her pistol and pressed it against the fat Lord's head. |
Part 1
The lamps of the coach swung madly as the driver urged his train of horses to extra efforts. Their light briefly invaded the inky blackness, casting strange, short lived distorted shadows of trees and bushes as the vehicle rattled onward.
Lord Reginald Parsimon, held on tight to the arm rest as he was bounced around inside the coach. He consulted his pocket watch for the umpteenth time. His face tightened and he put his head out of the window.
"Hurry up, man," he bellowed," I have an important appointment in my Bath town house in less than an hour!"
"I am sorry your lordship, we are doing our best, the road is very rutted here," replied Thomas Jones the driver.
"I don't care about your excuses, man, it's a penny off your wages for every minute I am late!" the fat lord shouted.
Thomas Jones was shocked by the threat, any such reduction would make it very hard for him and his family to feed themselves for the whole month. He glanced at his fellow servant, John Evans, who mouthed an obscenity back, they knew that their employer was notorious for his cruelty and these were no idle words.
Lord Parsimon sat back and relaxed as the journey became a little smoother. He was a happy man, in a short time he would be pleasuring himself with his mistress, Victoria Swallow, which seemed to him the perfect end to a successful day.
He had spent the morning, in his office in Bristol, finalising plans to increase the loading of his slave ships by a quarter. He had quashed the objections of one of his ship captains that they would be unable to carry enough rations to ensure that all the slaves were fed in the event of the slightest delay. It was a win/win situation as far as he was concerned. If all went well then he would have more, healthy, if hungry, live cargo to sell. Any delay would increase the ratio of dead to live cargo but he would still make very healthy profits. With the correct timing his goods would arrive just in time to be disposed off at the market.
His afternoon had been equally pleasurable as he had arranged for the county yeomanry to accompany his labourers to remove goods in lieu of rent from most of his tenants. He had been surprised that one of his more prosperous farmers had expressed concern for the fate of the poorer ones once their winter grain and other foodstuffs stores had been taken by his men.
"They have brought their plight upon themselves, it is their legal duty to pay their rent and it is my legal duty to enforce this," he had replied to this irritating individual.
All in all Lord Reginald George Parsimon was a very contented man.
The coach lurched to a sudden stop and the comfortable, relaxed fat man was thrown forward onto the opposite seat.
"What the hell is going on, you useless idiots!" he screamed out of the window after he had managed to haul himself back onto his chair.
"Really sorry your Lordship, the horses had reared at an object which seems to be blocking the road, it is probably a tree." replied Thomas Jones with temerity.
"Well get to it the to remove it!" bellowed Lord Parsimon.
"But, sir, it could be a trap, shouldn't one of us stay here to guard while the other ascertains what is necessary?" asked Thomas.
"A trap!," laughed his Lordship," who's going to lay a trap here on the busy Bristol to Bath road?"
"It could happen," ventured John?
"Don't be stupid man, and less of this backchat, do what I tell you to do and remove this tree!"
The two servants jumped down and soon, in the light of one of the lamps, they were straining to move the tree enough to allow them to get the coach past.
Lord Parsimon sat back and amused himself with trying to work out in his head how much he would save by cutting John and Thomas's wages when they arrived late. In some ways it was a good thing if he turned up a little late to see Victoria, in addition to saving more pay. He found that if he arrived too early in the evening his luscious, twenty year old plaything would try and turn the conversation to him possibly marrying her. He usually dumped them when they started wanting some permanence and some public recognition and he felt that maybe that decision was approaching soon.
"Good evening, Lord Parsimon," came a pleasant voice, interrupting his contemplation.
He looked up to see the beautiful masked face looking in through the window. He wondered where she had come from.
"What is your purpose here on this dark Autumn night?" he asked.
"I would aim to relieve you of your purses" replied the masked woman.
"And how do you intend to go that young woman?" asked Lord Parsimon.
"It's a matter of your money or your life, as they say in the parlance " was the woman's reply as she cocked her pistol and pressed it against the fat Lord's head.
"This is very foolish, why should I be afraid of you" he asked with a sneer on his face.
"Because you fat, greedy buffoon," came the reply which startled his Lordship with its vehemence," killing you will be like squashing an ant. This pistol, and the other in my belt have four shots between them. I would welcome the opportunity of ridding the world of someone as odious as you, as painfully as possible"
The chilling but rational nature of the reply shocked Lord Parsimon. He decided to try and continue his bravado.
"You would have the whole of the yeomanry on your heel if you did that," he stated.
"It worries me little," responded the masked woman," it's time for you to choose. Give the purses to me and live as a consequence or die and I shall still take them. I am counting to ten"
One....Two....Three.....Four.....Five...Six....Seven...
"Wait,wait " interrupted Lord Parsimon," you can have the purses, here take them"
He handed them to the masked lady. She took them and then disappeared into the darkness.
"We've moved the tree and we're ready to move off now, sir" said Thomas, a few minutes later, as he resumed his seat
"Yes, well done men," responded Lord Parsimon, quietly.
The shock of being praised by their unpleasant boss was so surprising that John and Thomas sat there stunned for a few seconds. However the bracing wind soon roused them and they started the coach on its journey again.
Meanwhile a lone horsewoman sped away in the opposite direction from the coach, which was rapidly disappearing from sight, despite its lamp illumination.
"Ride on, Prince, take me home," said the masked lady to her horse as he made his way back, by memory, to the stables.
Over two hours later a tiring horse and rider walked into a small stable next to a neat but quite impressive country lodge. The masked lady jumped off and after removing the saddle and saddle bags, opened the door to Prince's stall and left him to rest and refresh himself with hay and water. She started putting her riding equipment away.
"Good evening Miss Genevieve," said the familiar voice of Malcolm, her dark skinned handyman, from the entrance to the stables.
"Hello, Malcolm," Genevieve responded.
"I trust things went as planned?" he asked.
"Perfectly," she replied, smiling at her memory of the terror on the face of the corpulent lord.
"I am truly sorry Miss Genevieve, that I was not here to greet you, Mother Bessie had me finishing some carpentry. She has prepared your bath, so please let me finish stowing everything away," insisted Malcolm.
Genevieve left her trusted handyman to his tasks while she retired to her bathroom. She quickly disrobed and slipped into the warm, reviving water, swirling with oils and flower petals to scent and soften her body. As she rubbed them into her skin she touched gently the source of her differentness that had made a conventional life impossible.
Later, towelled and dried she put on her night dress and lay in her bed that was at the exact level of comfort she desired thanks to Mother Bessie placing a bed warming pan in earlier.
A draught touched her face as the door to her bedroom was opened and closed quickly.
"I have come sweet Genevieve," came the strong masculine voice.
"Oh my brave lover, pleasure me as only you know how to," she pleaded in response.
End of Part One
Comments
Well Alys, You Have Started A New And Interesting Story Here
Is that pompous lord a seller of human slaves? Considering his attitude, quite likely. I guess that this takes place in the Nineteenth Century England.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Alas, the possible times
Alas, the possible times contradict themselves. The bandit refers to twelve cartridges in her pistols. Which sets it in the 1850s or later (possibly much later)
But that scoundrel is running slave ships, which had been outlawed before then.
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
No time contradiction
The repeating pistol was patented in 1818, which means there could easily have been experimental models around before then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver
The slave trade was abolished in the UK in 1807
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism
So it is plausible that the two periods overlapped
Also there are multiple kinds of cartriges.
We as moderns think of a cartrige as the bullet, powder, primer cap and a brass or copper shell casing holding it all together.
There are other less complete cartriges that were used historically. Some were used in single shot muzzle loading weapons and essentially were single serving wax or fat waterproofed paper packets of powder, ball and wadding. You tore open the cartridrige, poured in the powder, rammed down wadding, ball and often more wadding. It simply was all premeasured, a big time saver. Then a percusion cap or priming powder in a flash pan ignited the whole mess. I imagine there were other systems as well. A breach loading gun had been designed and tested by the British commander killed at Kings Mountain in the US Revolutionary War. But the Brit Army stuck to the Brown Bess musket.
A gun collector or history nut would know more.
So good to see your muse is active Alys.
And you'll be glad to note I did not give in to the temptation to ask if she was Dennis Moore's daughter and tried to rob the rich of their lupins.
What, none of you know your Monty Python? Savages!
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Six Cartridges
Might well have been placed in a "Pepper Pot" or "Pepper Box" pistol, invented in the 1930's or possibly before. The idea had been around for a long time. The earliest *known* example of a "revolver" is a revolving arquebus made in 1597, so it's entirely possible that this clever highwayman made the damned thing as an "ace in the hole" and a partiicular invention designed for the robbing trade, in which it would be an invaluable asset. The earliest known cartridge for military small arms dates from 1586, and was made from a tube of paper with bullet and powder preloaded.
The mere fact that a bit of human knowledge hasn't made it into the history books doesn't mean that it's not true, and the slave trade in England was only abolished in reality in 1853, although carrying slaves on British ships had been officially outlawed since 1807 and the Quakers had been agitating against slavery since at least 1783.
We don't know from the story when, exactly, this encounter takes place but the slave ship involved was not necessarily British, the world may lie in an alternate reality, and there are plenty of perfectly plausible reasons why slaves and multi-shot pistols might overlap in time, and indeed they did in our reality. The only "anomaly" lies in explaining exactly what slaves were doing in England in whatever time period the story covers, and even that's not terribly difficult, because they could have been being smuggled into brothels, which is still being done today. There were still legal slaves in the USA until 1863, or somewhat longer until the rebels were defeated, but there are *illegal* slaves in the USA (and England) today, so the story could have happened at any time at all, including yesterday afternoon if one can account for the carriage and horses.
It's actually much cheaper to get into the slave business these days, as you can buy a Thai woman for around a thousand bucks -- or nothing at all if you can trick a poor woman from the Ukraine into paying for her own enslavement in a "housemaid" scam -- whilst a Southern plantation slave owner might have paid the equivalent of $38,000.
Nitpicking about esoteric questions of various historical factoids as predigested by "experts" does little to enhance one's enjoyment of a story. Do we complain that there's no such planet as Tatooine, or argue about when the phaser was invented on Star Trek? Let's see, was that before or after we encountered the Romulans? And what happened when the Borg Cubes met the Death Star?
Where does your body go when you're transported to a planetary surface? Should we worry about the legal implications? Could one argue in court that one's spouse had, in fact, died in the transporter beam and a cunning duplicate fashioned to take his place? Could one collect on the insurance? Golly, now I'm worried. Have I been transported unawares? Am I trapped in a holodeck somewhere? Inquiring minds want to know.
Cheers...
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Anachronism
The 1807 revolvers were flintlocks. Also, at this time, were the pepper-box type, which are the multiple barrel muzzle-loaders. The cartridge type revolver wouldn't be around for about another 30 years.
Hmmmm
at the risk of sounding flip, and mixing universes, maybe she is a Devisor 2 or 3 ?
:-)
Yes it is a joke.
Kim
Revolvers
The various types of pistol refered to as "pepper pots" included variations in which the barrels revolved, much as do the barrels of a gatling gun, each coming before the firing mechanism in turn. In some, the barrels were revolved by hand. In others the revolution was performed by a lever.
People are ingenious, and the era of the mechanical artisan still flourished, so literally anything is possible, including the silenced pneumatic rifle firing standard revolver bullets beloved of Colonel Sebastian Moran. Pneumatic guns have been in existence since the 15th century of the common era, so they've had a lot of time for improvement. They have the advantage of being extremely accurate and relatively silent, since the pressure used to propel the projectile can be very precisely measured these days and there's no explosion, so they were used as specialised sniper rifles during the 1770's and 80's. Colonel Moran's rifle wasn't nearly as far-fetched as he sounds to modern ears.
Cheers...
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
she could have a ray gun
...for all I care, it's a good story!
Hmmmm, ray gun....
If RAINBOW GIRL had a time machine,
what historical injustices might she seek to correct?
I'm more curious as to how a stingy man named Parsimon happens to have a floozy named Swallow...
I'm ready for more swashbuckling by this intriging brigandess!
~~~hugs, LAIKA
"You can either fly Over the Rainbow or Under the Radar but you can do both..."
We're All Aquibble
About the guns. I too would have questioned the use of multi-shot pistols in that era. However I'll turn a blind eye for the sake of a rattling good yarn, with the slightest hint of TG. Watch out Dick Turpin, we're after your spurs!
Joanne
Intriguing
Slavery may well have been illegal but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. As to the gun, I think literary licence covers most things.
Nice start. As I said, intriguing.
Susie
Interesting story so far.
Interesting story so far. From the accompanying picture, I have the main character placed in or near the end of the 1700's/very early 1800's. Highwaymen and maybe some highwaywomen were very prevalent back in that time period. Along with that was the "thinking comments" by the fat lord regarding his slavery business as GB outlawed that practice in the very early 1800's. Should be fun to see how this all turns out. J-Lynn
Hmmmm...
Interesting start. The last few lines DO leave one wondering a bit... One also wonders what will be done with the money in the purses. Time, and hopefully soon to arive chapters will tell. :-)
Thanks for another intriguing start to a story.
Annette
ALys,
Nice start on a new story. I liked the graphic especially...
Hugs
Alexis
Slave Trade Time Line
There's a book on the last shipload of slaves brought to the United States. Here's a quote from the description:
As with any contraband, there is always someone willing to try to make a profit from illegal trade. I further note that the story isn't too explicit as to where the trade is taking place. For those who think that slaving is ancient history, the reality is quite different. In some parts of the world, slavery is still practiced, even though the trade itself might not be as lucrative.
To put it another way, just because manifested cargoes of slaves are not being openly shipped into New York Harbor, doesn't mean slavery is gone. A somber thought for Passover, a holiday that celebrates liberation from slavery in Egypt.
Slavery?
There are probably more slaves in the USA now than there were in the 1850's, although they are now typically women and children, and secretly captive rather than openly flaunted. There are certainly more slaves worldwide, as it's a continuous and growing problem, the essential end point of untrammeled capitalism.
This Passover, why don't we all vow to release ourselves from being slavemasters in our hearts, in addition to an historic or figurative release from an external slavery imposed from without?
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Ripping Yarn!
This is a ripping good yarn, marred by a small anachronism. Colt started the voyage to Calcutta from which he returned with his first wooden model of a revolver in 1827. Slavery was abolished by a series of acts, mainly those of 1807 and the more comprehensive act of 1833. So six-shooters inspired by ship's capstans are out, and cap-and-ball pistols are unlikely—your story would be best if set during the Regency.
Some flintlock pistols and rifles had two barrels—so our heroine could have four shots in hand. That's enough—the FBI statistical gunfight is less than three shots in less than three seconds, half the time from a distance less than five feet, and as less than seven yards 95% of the time. She'd be ready for modern conditions with two double-barreled pistols and a spare in her belt.
Keep on writing!
rg
Thanks for suggestion.
RG
Thanks for the comment, that's a great suggestion, story now amended.
Hugs
Alys
Please maintain...
a willing suspension of disbelief. Many stories will have inaccuracies, errors, and oversights of one nature or another. As for myself, I choose to enjoy that which I read as much as I do to read what I enjoy.
Bien dia!
Hear, hear
Any technical or historical errors are modest at most.
What matter is how competient and entertaining a storyteller Alys is.
John in Wauwatosa
P.S. If I ask alot of questions about your stories ist is only because they capture my interest.
John in Wauwatosa