Simon (17 page)

‘W-where—what—’ stammered Simon, finding the words thick and heavy on his tongue.

‘No, you are not a prisoner, if that is what troubles you. This house is once more in the hands of Parliament, and the Men of Blood have been driven forth from it.’

Simon gasped with relief. ‘What—happened after—’ he began.

‘After you fell beneath the musket-stock of the man of wrath? The Royalist Captain cried quarter, his position being hopeless and many of his men slain; he and his troops were ordered out and, praise the Lord, General Fairfax’s men entered into possession. This house has been too long an abode of the wicked; but now, righteousness is again within its walls.’

Simon squinted at her, trying to get her face into focus and not
quite succeeding; trying to understand what she said, and scarcely succeeding in that either, for his dazed mind was straining after other things he wanted to know. ‘How long have—I been here?’ he mumbled at last.

‘A night and a day. It is ten of the clock now.’

‘And is—my Troop still here?—Disbrow’s Troop?’

‘Only the dragoons are left. The rest have marched back to where they came from.’ The tall woman had set down the candle, and now she began to measure something from a flask into a glass she took from the table beside the bed.

Simon ploughed on. ‘Were there—many wounded?’

‘Upward of a score, beside the Men of Blood. The Army surgeon came this morning and took them in to Credition in two baggage-wagons, but you, he said, the jolting would most likely kill, if he were to move you for two or three days.’ She turned to him, the glass in her hand. It was big and globed, and caught the light like a bubble. ‘Now I have answered enough questions, and you must sleep. Are you thirsty?’

‘Very thirsty.’

Simon found that she had slipped an arm under his head and raised him against her shoulder. ‘Drink this. Not too fast, now.’ He gulped the cool herb-smelling brew, while she held him with unexpected gentleness, taking the glass from his mouth when he drank too quickly, exactly as though he were a small child. When the glass was empty, she laid him back on his pillows. ‘Now you will sleep; and I shall sit here for a while at the foot of the bed. And in the morning, by God’s mercy, you will feel better.’

She moved the candle so that it would not shine on his face, wrapped herself in a dark cloak, and drawing a tall-backed chair to the foot of the bed, sat down and opened a book which hung from her girdle. Simon, watching her as she read, was reminded of Zeal-for-the-Lord. It was a friendly memory, and in a few minutes he was asleep.

When he next woke, the small room in which he lay was filled with the grey light of a winter’s morning, and there was a small rhythmic clicking sound in his ears that he did not understand. There was a good deal that he did not understand; what was the
matter with his head? for instance. He edged a hand free of the bed-clothes, and put it up, clumsily, to find out: bandages, and a thick pad over his left temple that hurt horribly when he pushed at it with fumbling fingers. Then it all came back: the assault, the red spurts of fire, and the fight milling through the candle-lit hall. And this time the picture was complete, and he remembered Amias.

He drew a deep shuddering breath that was almost a whimper, and found that there was a woman bending over him; not the tall woman of last night, but a little stout one with broken veins in her cheeks like a withered apple.

‘There now, lie still, my poor dear soul,’ said she. ‘Lie still and give thanks to the Lord who gave you a thick skull—if so be as the lengthening of one’s days in this vale of tears be a matter for thanksgiving, which I doubts. And I’ll get you nice broth that has been keeping warm for you beside the hearth this half-hour or more.’

Simon protested weakly, but his protests were of no avail The little fat woman fetched the broth from its place beside the low fire, and Simon drank it because he had not the strength to rebel.

‘’Tis as sinful to repine at good broth, as ’tis to bewail the lack of it,’ said she, as she ruthlessly tipped the last spoonful into his mouth. ‘Broth when you don’t want it, and no broth when you do; that be the way of life in this wicked world.’ And she went back to her chair beside the bed-foot, and took up again the knitting with which she had been busy when Simon awoke.

‘Click-click-click,’ went her needles. Faintly, from the outside world, came the sound of the dragoons at morning stables. Left to himself, Simon lay very still, with his face turned towards the whitewashed wall. Amias. What had become of Amias? Where was he now? Living or dead? Captive or free? And weren’t there enough men in the two armies, without himself and Amias needing to draw swords on each other? Why did it have to be Amias in the hall that night? Why? Why?

But despite his utter misery and the questions that dinned themselves over and over in his throbbing head, he was presently asleep once more; and the next time he woke, an hour or two
later, the tall woman was beside him again. Before he went to sleep he had meant to ask her about Amias, but now he found that he could not. It was queer, stupid, but the words stuck in his throat, and he couldn’t speak about Amias; not to her, at all events.

When she saw that he was awake, she put down on the table the bandage linen that she had been holding. ‘Good morning to you, friend,’ she said. ‘I have come to dress your head.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Simon, dutifully.

She began to undo the bandages; her hands were quick and sure, not fumbling, as the hands of people who are afraid of hurting so often do, but going straight ahead with the work. ‘It is an ugly wound,’ said she, when she had uncovered it. ‘Eight stitches scarce seem enough to me, but the chirurgeon should know his own trade. I must clip away some more of this hair. Am I hurting you?’

‘A bit. But you’re a very good surgeon, ma’am.’

‘I have had enough practice,’ said she, clipping. ‘We had many wounded here during the first siege of Exeter. Men of both armies, and I tended the goats with the sheep, bidding them repent of their evil ways, as I did so, and leave off following after the Man of Blood, Charles Stuart.’

She finished her task, and re-bandaged Simon’s head. Then, dropping to her knees beside him, and bidding him repeat the words after her, folded her hands and gave thanks to Almighty God, who had spread the shelter of His wings over His unworthy servant, saving him from being cut down with all his manifold sins still upon his head and consigned to the fiery furnace. Simon did as she bade him, very devoutly. He was perfectly conscious of his own shortcomings, and because he was rather a humble-minded person, it never occurred to him to wonder how the tall woman came to be so sure of them.

When she left him, he went to sleep again, and slept off and on through most of that day, save when he was woken up to drink more broth or warm milk with herbs in it. But even in his deepest sleep the throbbing of his head was still with him, and so was Amias’s face, white and set, and bright-eyed above his leaping sword blade. The mistress of the house and her little
round henchwoman seemed to come and go about him a good deal; and towards evening the dragoon Captain looked in on him, and in reply to his anxious questions, told him that Scarlet, with the other horses whose riders had been killed or wounded, had been taken back to Broad Clyst. But about Amias, Simon found that he could not ask him. Once, waking suddenly from an uneasy doze, he thought he caught sight of a girl’s face—a little white pointed face, all eyes, like a changeling’s—peering at him from the darkness of the open doorway; but it was gone so quickly that it might have been only the ravelled end of a dream.

Next day the surgeon came; not old Davey Morrison, but a younger stouter man, kindly but harassed, with heavy hands that hurt Simon a good deal when he examined the wound. ‘Yes, yes, we shall be able to take him off your hands quite safely tomorrow, Mistress Killigrew,’ he said, when he had felt Simon’s pulse and peered into his eyes.

‘In my opinion, he had better stay until the day after,’ said the mistress of the house.

‘No need—not the least need in the world, I assure you, ma’am. A thick skull and a strong constitution.’

Mrs Killigrew drew herself to her full height, which made her taller than the surgeon, and faced him across Simon’s bed. ‘This young man has been set in my charge by Providence,’ said she. ‘The Lord has seen fit to deliver him alive out of the fighting in my hall; and do you think that I shall allow the Lord’s work to be undone by a meddling and probably inefficient army surgeon who orders his untimely remove from under my roof?’

The surgeon, not liking to be called meddling and probably inefficient, began to splutter. ‘May I remind you, ma’am, that this house has been taken over by the forces of Parliament?’

‘I am aware that the ground floor and outbuildings have been so taken over, but this room happens to be in the part of the house reserved to the use of myself and my family, and if you come upstairs after your patient tomorrow, I warn you that you will find the door locked against you, and myself, my maids and my daughter on guard before it,’ said Mrs Killigrew, with the air of one speaking what she knows to be the final word.

The indignant surgeon also knew that it was the final word. He snatched at the last shreds of his dignity, and bowed. ‘I must accept your ruling, since I can scarcely order an attack on a party of wilful women, and have Cornet Carey taken by force. I will arrange for a wagon passing this way the day after tomorrow to pick him up.’

After he had gone, Mrs Killigrew came back, carrying under her arm a huge Family Bible with brass clasps. She made no reference to what had just taken place, but told him, ‘At some time in every day it is my custom to read a chapter from the Scriptures. This afternoon I shall read it here in this room, that your spirit may be refreshed thereby.’

Someone else had stolen in behind her, and now stood, with demurely folded hands and downcast eyes, just within the door; a girl of about the same age as Mouse, or perhaps a little younger, with a white face, and pale reddish hair strained back under her coif, and Simon knew that the girl he had seen peering at him yesterday had not been a dream, after all.

‘This is my daughter Susanna. You have not seen her before, for she has been repenting her sins, locked in her own room these two days past,’ said Mrs Killigrew.

The pale girl raised her eyes suddenly, and Simon found them fixed upon him; enormous dark eyes that seemed to shadow all her face, filled with an agonized appeal.

‘No, I have not seen Mistress Susanna before,’ he said.

But Mrs Killigrew was not listening.

‘However, since she has come to a proper state of repentance, we will say no more of the matter,’ she said. ‘Draw up that stool, child.’

She seated herself in the straight-backed chair, while Susanna, with one quick look of gratitude at Simon, pulled up a small joint-stool and settled herself at her mother’s feet, folding her hands in her lap and once more gazing downward.

Mrs Killigrew opened the great Bible, lifted out the pressed moss-rose bud that marked her place, and began to read. It so chanced that she had reached the first chapter of the second book of Samuel: the chapter which holds David’s lament for Jonathan. Mrs Killigrew had a beautiful voice, deep and throbbing; and
as she read, the little whitewashed room seemed to fill with the tearing pain of the King’s lament for his dead friend.

‘“How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou was slain in thine high places.

‘“I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been to me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman.

‘“How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”’

To Simon, sick with anxiety, it seemed like an ill omen that she should have reached that particular chapter. The beauty of it hurt him intolerably, making his stomach ache with misery, and he lay rigid, with his hands clenched under the blankets, hating every moment of it, until she had made an end. He only just remembered to thank her politely, when she closed the great book and rose to her feet.

‘I am glad to find that you appreciate the Scripture,’ she replied. ‘It is not every young person of whom one can say the same. Come, Susanna.’

And she went from the room, with the pale girl moving soundlessly behind her.

Presently, when the shadows had begun to gather in the corners of his room, Susanna returned to mend the fire and bring him a candle. She stole in as silently as before, and having done what she came to do, was stealing out again without a word, when Simon, desperately needing someone to talk to, called to her.

‘Mistress Susanna.’

She turned and came to his bedside. ‘Is there something you want—a drink?’ It was the first time Simon had heard her speak. Her voice was husky, rather like a boy’s, and he liked it.

‘No, I don’t want a drink,’ he said. ‘But, I say—what did you do, that you had to repent of for two whole days locked in your room?’

Susanna never raised her eyes nor unfolded her hands. ‘I went down into the stable yard to listen to a strolling fiddler that the soldiers had there,’ she said, and added with bated breath, ‘it was on the Sabbath too.’

‘Oh!’ said Simon. ‘How did you come to be out of your room yesterday?’

‘Old Jinny forgot to re-lock the door after she took away my supper plate. Thank you for not telling Mother,’ and almost before he realized what she was about, she had stolen from the room.

Simon gazed after her with surprised and puzzled eyes. Who would have thought that such a spiritless-seeming little creature had it in her to steal off to listen to a strolling fiddler on the Sabbath.

Next day, the last of those he was to spend at Okeham Paine, Simon saw quite a lot of Susanna Killigrew, for it was her mother’s still-room day. But she stole in and out of his room like a sad little grey ghost, with her eyes cast always on the ground; and he had to work hard to get an occasional word out of her when the apple-cheeked Jinny was not there. Little by little, in answer to determined questioning, she told him that her father was confined to bed with the gout; that she was the youngest of three, but her sisters were both married; that her mother did not mind having troops quartered there—Parliament troops, that was—though she had been anxious on the night of the assault, when it had looked as if the house might be fired, and all the maids were frightened and Father threatening to get up, gout or no gout. But all the while she never raised her eyes nor volunteered a remark of her own accord; and by the time her mother appeared, late in the afternoon, with the great brass-bound Bible, Simon had given the pale girl up as a bad job.