1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC by Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis

earl.
    “The sign on the riverbank says yesterday afternoon, if there wasn’t rain overnight, so I fancy they’re after moving as quick as they can with that wagon. Will we go straight after them?”
    Finnegan thought about it. In their boots he’d have kept moving into the night and looked for a change of horses somewhere, which would cost them given the cheap nags they’d had, and that in turn would leave a trace. Also in their boots he’d have taken a few roads off the line they wanted and come at their intended target—either Ely, for Cromwell’s kin and children, or a cut west at some convenient road to get back to the Great North Road and the way to Scotland. It’d be slow work picking up some sense of where they were going, and at this point a wrong guess would be disastrous. Whatever else might befall, a company of stout lads with plenty of cash and remounts could be halfway to Scotland by this time on the morrow, so as soon as their quarry—only probably Cromwell, remember—settled on a destination then a short, hard ride would see them in a proper ambush position. Making that ride too soon would cost them the chase entirely.
    “We will not. Find us a farrier in your town, there, and we’ll see the horses’ feet are good while I talk to whoever knows the roads here. We’ll have a plan, so, and not go at the thing like a bull at a gate. Tully, see to it while Mulligan here shows me the tracks on this riverbank.”

Chapter 8
    “Top of the morning!” Finnegan knew as well as any man how to come the cheery Irishman. It certainly did better than what most of the folk here across the water thought about his countrymen. In a lot of cases, of course, they were right, but letting that get in the way while he was about his chief’s business was not to be borne. “And how might you be this fine morning?”
    “Right enough,” said the thatcher whom they were overtaking. The fellow had a cart full of rushes, which apparently was the thing for roofs hereabouts. To Finnegan they looked odd; he was used to seeing straw, both at home and in the parts of England he’d seen so far. English roofs looked a little different without the layer of turf scraw he was used to seeing, but that was about the limit of it. The reed roofs were somehow less bulky and looked like they’d not be as warm in bad weather. It was a measure of how tedious the last week of riding up and down every bastard road in eastern England had been that he was thinking about roofs, of all things.
    “Can ye say what town is that, up ahead?” Finnegan asked the man.
    “Bishop’s Stortford, but there’s no market there today, if it’s horses you’re after. Some good inns, though.”
    “That’ll do,” Finnegan said. “We’re well found for horses. Do you know how much further Ely is from there?”
    “Ely? Can’t rightly say. It’s over past Cambridge, if I do recall rightly, but Cambridge is as far as I’ve been that way, and that when I were but a boy. Ask in town for Cambridge, and ask in Cambridge for Ely, would be my advice to you, sir. Have you room to pass, there?”
    “Sure we’ve enough, and it’s a fine day for a slow ride. One more thing, mind. Have you seen a lot of travelers, maybe a dozen, perhaps less, traveling with a four-horse wagon?”
    “No, sir. If I had I’d ask you for a penny for the tale, but I don’t even know anyone who owns such a wagon that’d be about with it at this time of year. Not a lot going even to the small markets about now, let alone up to London such as you’d take a wagon for. Now, I know a squire over by Much Hadham, he’d a fancy to go to Parliament and nothing would do but he got a two-horse coach to go in.” The thatcher laughed uproariously. “Bless the poor fellow, the year after he came back down from Parliament, there’s never been another one since, and he’s never used his coach again but to go to church of a Sunday.”
    “Ah, but there’s no rare ould fool like a fool