Episode 6: The Road to Paris
As Bill tied the loose noose to go over the makeshift ball at the back of one of the wagons, he wished he had asked the clerk how many days by wagon to Bern, Switzerland. And whether it was better to go up the Rhone or around through Monaco and Italy. Then say, no matter what the clerk thought that you are having trouble making up your mind. That way the King would have to split his pursuit. Bill was sure of a pursuit, 50,000 ducats would have any man sending men after the money. Besides the Captain had implied he could kill Bill another day without official interference. The money went in the first wagon with Bear driving and Klondike riding next to him. Bill wasn’t that anxious to ride with Klondike with all that belching from Death. Bill followed with eight horses pulling two wagons he had connected to allow the second to follow.
The wagons were slow and it gave Bill plenty of time to decide on the best route to Paris to minimize effective pursuit. He choose the slightly longer way to the west to avoid the Alps on the East and river travel due North. It would take longer but once over the Massif Central narrow strip of crossing, it would be flat lands all the rest of the way, with rivers to cross and few of those. The other decision he made was to get rid of at least one of the three wagons and two of the three guards.
By the time they reached the convent it was early morning and just a couple nuns were up. Bill asked for Aphra and was shown to her room. She was a beautiful girl even before fixing herself up. Bill told her of the previous night and the need for haste in their departure. Bill and Aphra decided to leave the chests behind to be picked up on the way back to Philadelphia. Much of the space was devoted to water and food storage and would be cumbersome on the road. Effa was allowed to keep her sparing mate who by this time had become her companion as well. The other guards were paid a month’s wages and released to head back to sea, they were told nothing of the plans even though their loyalty wasn’t questioned. The largest wagon was chosen for the trip to Paris and six of the twelve horses to pull it. The other two wagons and remaining four horses were given to the convent. They were given robes and other objects to help in appearing to be priests and nuns on the road to Paris for High Mass at Christmas. Bear’s robe was sewn quickly as there were no robes that size anywhere in Europe. Supplies for the journey were available and quickly stored on the wagon. Maps were given to them showing back roads most of the way to Paris. And most important a letter of introduction to all Catholic settlements on the way. A young nun, Sister Guinevere, asked to come along to visit her sister in Paris she hadn’t seen since they were small children. Bill said absolutely not, it would be too dangerous. At which Sister Francis and Sister Guinevere started laughing, and when Bill asked what was so funny they said he should throw a small apple from the wagon as far as he could. Bill went over to the wagon, there near the back, was a basket of small apples. He took one and in an obvious attempt to show off, threw it in an attempt to clear a stream some 300 feet distant. Half way down from the apex of the throw when it was barely visible, Guinevere pulled a bow and arrow out of nowhere and let fly an arrow that spit the apple in two before the apple was anywhere near hitting the ground. Bill’s eyes went wide with shock that such a small person could put that kind of pull into a shot so fast and be calmly standing there watching his mouth fly open.
So it was that three men, three women, and a huge dog set out for Paris late in ‘26 from a small convent high in the mountains above Nimes. They pulled into Montpellier around midnight. Bear had figured out a way to flatten his Mohawk spikes down so as to fit under the hood of the robe, which was extra long to hide his face from view from all prying eyes. The weary band entered the inn with caution, as it was only fifty miles from Marsielle and barely over a day since the King had forked over 50,000 ducats. Bill ordered quietly and hurried some meat and bread out to Klondike and John Spencer the guard who were still with the wagon. They could ill afford losing a wagon full of money and supplies and Klondike was more than enough protection for any normal band of thieves. And the barking would be the signal for Bear and Bill to go outside. Bear tried to hunch over as much as possible but no matter how he sat he looked oversized for the table and his companions. The innkeeper seemed friendly enough and everyone had plenty to eat and quietly left by a side door. Bandits in France, were not inclined to attack priests and nuns, having been raised Catholic. But there were still ruthless outlaws that were not religious or worried about the consequences of such actions. Toulouse was only a hundred miles as the crow flies but a range of the Massif Central Mountains stood in between the towns that demanded respect. They went south to within five miles of Perignan and cut through a northwest road that was the least amount of elevation. All six horses were needed as they climbed up out of the Mediterranean basin. John drove the team as Bill and Bear worked the big wheels. Bear said he felt they were being watched but Bill said nothing, although he too thought eyes were watching. That night Bill and Bear stayed far from the flames of the campfire while making half circles about hundred feet from the fire. The embers were barely glowing when Bill saw them in the moonlight. Four men creeping forward towards the camp sight. There wasn’t time to find Bear to help with the attack so Bill thought about how he was going to finish all four in a hurry. They were bunched too closely together to pick them off one by one by attacking the trailing one first. He settled on trying to get two with each pistol shot at once. They didn’t look back even once which allowed him to get to within ten feet of them. With two flintlocks over his shoulders and a spare pistol in his belt as back up, his kept changing position trying for the four at once shots. But one of the men kept leading the way making it impossible to line up all four. Finally he gave up and focused on three with two shots. It was easy in a way, one was covered with the left pistol and his right waited until two of them were in line then bang one loud shot rang out. Three men dropped like dead men, no screaming, no twisting, no cursing or returning fire. The man in the lead ran ahead like he was on fire. Bill quickly pulled out the third pistol but the man was out of sight before Bill could squeeze off a shot. Bill fell to the ground and lunged forward to bury the razor sharp bayonet into each of the three on the ground. He had just finished slipping the blade into the heart of the second man when the third man grabbed him from behind. Bill instantly shoved back against the man engaging both of his arms so there wouldn’t be a free hand to wield a knife. As Bill turned he felt the man reach for something in his belt. Bill grabbed the hand with the gun in it and took his free hand and inserted his fingers into the eyes of the struggling attacker. The man dropped the pistol. Then he put both his hands up to protect his eyes, Bill grabbed his head and violently twisted it till the spinal chord snapped. The man went limp, there was no need to use the bayonet. Bill scrambled to his feet and followed where the leader had gone. He didn’t get twenty feet before he stumbled over something in the dark. He felt around to find the leader with an arrow through his nose and out the back of his head. Guin had been busy after the shots. They searched the area for quite some time then let Bear roam the rest of the night while they slept. During the next day Bear was under the tarps in the wagon getting caught up on sleep. There was no mention of the four men the night before since no one was hurt in the party. Bill was glad that Guin was along, there could have been casualties since he didn’t take out all four as planned. Neither Effa nor Seafoam were that good with a gun. And Bear wasn’t at the camp sight and John was asleep having stood guard the night before. He started thinking about shifts after that. If on a forced round the clock run the three women 8am to 4pm then Bill and John till midnight the Bear and Klondike till 8am. It wasn’t like anyone would be alone if attacked just had to be awake to warn the others.
It was two weeks of hard driving to get to Toulouse, a quiet looking town far from anywhere on the south fork of the Garonne River. The Pyrenees towered above the town, made up mostly of Portuguese refugees. Bill and John went into a tavern to find out any news of Marsielle. They walked into a lively discussion among the locals about the Spanish Inquisition. They called themselves Portuguese, but they were also called Melungeons. Between 1492 and 1600 half a million Jews and Muslims had fled Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition. Most Muslims returned to their ancestral homelands of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia. The Barbary Coast Pirates were almost exclusively from this group. The first crossing of the America was reported to be by Azemmouri, a Moroccan Berber Muslim. He was one of only four to survive a 5000 mile trip from Florida to the West Coast back to Texas in a 300 man Spanish expedition of 1527, never mentioned in American history books. The Spanish established Santa Elena in South Carolina in 1566, forty years before Jamestown Virginia. When the English attacked Santa Elena the converted Jews and Muslims ran into the hills and intermarried with the locals. North Carolina had people in the hills that called themselves “Portugals” and Bill remembered they were quite dark, reddish-brown complexioned. The Powhatan Indians described heaven word for word from the Holy Quran. So one of the effects of the Spanish Inquisition was to push Jews and Muslims into the New World ahead of the English. Bill purchased some additional supplies and they group went on their way.
November is not that pleasant North of the Pyrenees Mountains. The nights are below freezing and the days are barely tolerable in the sun. The next two weeks on the road were uneventful. There were occasional villages where the people seemed friendly and the supplies were readily available. No one seemed to question their identity since Guin did most of the talking even when purchasing goods.
Tours was another town altogether. Sitting on the Loire River that supplied the Loire valley with goods from the port of Nantes, second only to La Havre in size. Tours had most of the makings of a wild river town. There were gamblers, thieves, crooks of all sorts. Bill and his little band of “priests” asked an innkeeper if there was a monastery around and was told one in Clermont Ferrand to the Southeast and another in Orleans to the Northeast. Bill thanked him and returned to the group waiting outside. They decided to camp a little ways up the road to Orleans. They got off the main road fifty yards or so under some low hanging trees and pulled up quiet and watched. Soon, thirty men or so rode by at full gallop. They had no sleeping bags or travel packs, just flintlocks and pistols and an urgency to find something or someone. It was decided to go La Mans instead of Orleans since those men would come back once they realize the wagon was not on the road to Orleans. It was the only time the horses were pushed and they performed well by racing down the back roads of France towards La Mans, a farming community in rural France. When they reached a fork that said La Mans left, Versailles right, and Caen straight ahead. Bill flew straight ahead to the least known name. After five miles there was another sign pointing to the Seine River 25 miles. Bill took that road and shortly pulled over to rest the horses that had spent much of the day running with a heavily loaded wagon. They stayed there in a clearing for four days, hidden behind some large boulders and watched as locals went about their business oblivious of the group watching them. Guin and Bill left to go into La Mans to find out what was being said in town. They rode the two fastest horses with them.
It was as Bill suspected, there was a reward of 2000 ducats for the capture and return to Marsielle of Bill Seaworthy of Boston and Big Bear the Mohawk, an extra 1000 ducats for the capture of a dog of enormous size that travels with them. These posters would make it difficult to operate in Paris without worrying about someone trying to apprehend them for the reward. The posters made it clear the money would be paid only if delivered alive. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about being shot in the back with no warning. But Bill will have to get the money inside a bank when they get to Paris.
Bill took another road to Versailles bringing them in from the West instead of the South as before. As they approached the greater Paris area it became clear that any pursuit would be difficult from the sheer numbers of people in wagons as long as Bear kept his robe on. They were still several miles out when they were attacked.
Warning shots over their heads followed by arrows into the side of the wagon. It was obvious that whoever they were they were trying to take the entire group alive, a dangerous thing indeed. Then from around a barn charged six or seven men right into the horses that were spooked by this point. Bill squeezed off two shots and John got one of them. Guin finished the rest quickly, four arrows four bodies flat on the ground. Then fifty or sixty men came from all directions as they closed in thinking a reward was at their fingertips. Swords were drawn and knives at the ready, apparently no more gunplay was in order as captured alive was on everybody’s mind. And behind the original sixty in a circle thirty feet across stood another hundred or so men waiting for orders to move in. A tall, thin rigid man sat on his horses directing the trap. Bill waited till the original sixty were a swords length from the wagon then yelled for Bear to take the side with the army standing at the ready. Bill, John, Effa, Guin, and Seafoam jumped to the other side. Guin was letting fly with an arrow every two seconds and Effa and John were each dropping a man at roughly the same pace and Bill was shooting any man close enough to Seafoam to cause him concern. In less time than it takes to reload a flintlock, there was a pile of dead men neck deep on their side of the wagon. Bill heard the small army ordered to charge Bear’s side of the wagon. Just as the first wave started to climb up the side of the wagon with rows of men following pushing hard from behind, Bear threw off the tarp and jumped into the middle of the bunched up men. The screams were muted by the sheer mass of bodies that pressed against the side of the wagon. Even Bear had difficulty initially clearing enough room to swing the hatchet. He used the spiked ball end on the heads of those closest till he could get it working right. The men closest could see they were in real trouble but they could get back from Bear. It started to look like maybe there were too many men for Bear to handle when Klondike jumped into the fight. Klondike landed on several men taking them all down to the ground where he expertly finished each off with a quick skull crunch and release, crunch and release. Momentarily a man might raise a knife to Klondike, but that only added an extra step of ripping off the arm, then crunch and release. The pile Klondike had created allowed the hatchet to go into full operation. Five or six hundred pounds of enraged Mohawk slicing through the army of men like a sickle on standing wheat. The commander on the horse kept ordering more men into the battle thinking they would overwhelm the giant Indian with numbers. But Bear was a Mohawk chief and any opposing tribe could have told the commander that his plans were doomed to fail. Bear doesn’t get tired and even if you landed arrows in his chest nothing would change the battle scene. So many men had died already it was hard to see Klondike anymore from the high stacks of dead men. And even Bear was only visible from the neck up. Bill and the rest of the company on the opposite side of the wagon stayed put. They could not help Bear much and they were afraid of getting in the path of the hatchet. Finally the commander ordered the remaining men to pull back. Before the leader could gallop off, Bear sent a throwing knife deep into his chest and he slid off the horse onto the ground lifeless. The remaining dozen or so men were picked off one by one by Bill and Guin from on top of the wagon. Not one attacker escaped the slaughter. The twenty or so of the wounded were each sent to join their comrades in the great beyond with little ceremony, mostly Bill’s bayonet through the heart muscle. Two hundred and thirteen men lay in the afternoon dust just outside Versailles that late October day. Bill didn’t say anything to Bear as Bear walked around stringing scalps onto a raw hide belt at his waist. When he was done the belt drug the ground six feet behind him when he walked. No matter how much bonding he felt he had with Bear, Bill was always fearful of the Giant Mohawk that had tribes in all New England willing to surrender rather than go into battle against this man.
The English had started offering 40 pounds for the scalps of Indians to encourage the elimination of natives from farmland the colonists wanted. So the French knew of the practice in the Americas, but no one had actually seen what 200 scalped men looked like. There was plenty of talk in the tavern that night about what they had found out by the old weigh station. Some said wolves ate the tops of the heads off the men. But most knew they didn’t want to know any of the details of what happened and they sure didn’t want what did that to stay in town at all. There was no pursuit from the town and little interest to involve outsiders. So they quietly went about the business of burying the bodies.
The group stopped a little way ahead, near a stream and washed out all the clothing that had been soaked. They put on fresh robes, except Bear there was only one big robe so he settled for two robes loosely sewn together at the back, the sleeves came to his elbows. Klondike took an hour to clean up. He looked like some kind of strange looking Irish Setter with a big chest and giant head. Guin had recovered all her arrows while Bear was trophy hunting and was busy straightening the feathers. Seafoam seemed totally unaffected by the slaughter. She knew her Grandpa was a dangerous man and had heard her mother tell stories of Bill when he was known as Billy Boy. She was surprised Billy Boy stories didn’t crop up in Marseille taverns. Effa was cleaning out a wound John had received in the close fighting early in the assault. Klondike was licking some of Bear’s new wounds. Bill hadn’t noticed it earlier, but there was a throwing knife sticking out of Bear’s back. Bill went over slowly pulled it out and handed it to Bear. Now that Bill was looking there were several new holes in Bear, but the blood flow was minimal. Bill thought it a bit strange since they were exactly how any new wounds would look if he were the one with the new wounds. For that matter, Klondike wasn’t bleeding either, even though Bill could feel new gaps in his body. Bill sat quietly thinking of the three of them with similar blood and all with the condition so rare on the earth. Big Bear, the most frightening man on earth, was now incapable of being mortally wounded. The thought stunned Bill. The thought that he may have changed the colonial balance of power among the tribes with that one blood transfusion left Bill alone with his thoughts the rest of the day. What if history will be changed for the worse? A battle that was supposed to be won by one side is lost because of this mountain of a Mohawk was in the middle of the fighting, turning the tide of battle. Bill was determined to stay with Big Bear somehow to attempt modifying what shouldn’t be. The idea of being responsible for Bear was overwhelming. Bill didn’t answer anyone the rest of the trip to Paris.
TO BE CONTINUED!