Simon (24 page)

Simon sprawled sideways in his chair, and in doing so, noticed for the first time a sealed packet lying on the table. ‘Hullo, what’s this?’

Mouse had taken the pipkin from the fire, and was pouring the warm milk into the feeding bottle. ‘Oh, Mother wrote to Mistress Killigrew last night while you were out. She said to give it to the carrier if he comes before she’s back. She put in your message about begging to be remembered to Mistress Susanna.’

‘Oh,’ said Simon.

Mouse gathered the lamb on to her lap, and began coaxing it to feed, dipping her fingers into the warm milk and holding them to the little thing’s mouth, making small sucking noises to encourage it.

‘Simon,’ she said after a few moments, ‘what is Susanna Killigrew like? You’ve never really told us. Is she good but not comfortable, like her mother?’

‘No,’ Simon said, ‘she’s not a bit like her mother.’

‘Then what
is
she like?’

Simon cudgelled his brain. He really wanted to answer Mouse’s question, but he was no hand at describing people.

‘She’s a little pale wispy thing,’ he said at last. ‘But just once, she seemed as if—as if she had lit all her candles; and then she was quite different.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do better than that. But I think you’d like her. Maybe if Mother strikes up a friendship with
her
mother, you’ll be able to see for yourself one day—when the war is over.’

‘When the war is over,’ echoed Mouse; and she sighed. ‘Everything is always “When the war is over”, and it has such a far-off sound, like “when my ship comes home”.’ She was still holding milky fingers to the lamb’s muzzle as she spoke, and suddenly it sneezed; its sprawling legs woke into vague scramblings, and it began to suck. ‘There!’ she said. ‘That’s the way. Why couldn’t you have done that before, silly-billy?’ She dipped her fingers in the milk once more, and gave them to the lamb, then put the nozzle of the baby-bottle into its small sucking mouth. The lamb sprawled forward, half standing; its tail began to wag.

She was still feeding it a few minutes later, and Simon was still watching the two of them, when a sudden turmoil arose in the courtyard: Ship the cattle-dog baying his head off, Diggory’s voice upraised in furious protest, and a heavy and confused trampling. The doves burst upward on drumming indignant wings. Simon got up quickly, and as he did so, Mouse set the lamb back in its nest of sacking, and rose quietly beside him, shaking out her grey skirts. Their eyes met for an instant. Another Royalist foraging party! Well, there had been plenty such in the last few days, and there was little more that they could take. Only this time there was no chance for Simon to avoid them, as he had mostly contrived to do before; no time to gain the stairs; and he felt the dispatch in the breast of his doublet burning a hole through the cloth. Still, there was no reason why they should
suspect him, and certainly none why they should search him. With some show of annoyance at being disturbed at his breakfast, he swung round to the door, just as it burst open and several men crowded into the hall.

Then Jillot, who had been sitting on watchful guard among her puppies, growling softly in her throat, suddenly let out a pleased whine and abandoning her family went squirming and waggling forward to greet the tatterdemalion officer at their head.

The officer was Amias.

Amias, gaunt as a scarecrow and almost as ragged, with bruise-coloured shadows under his eyes that were partly weariness and partly dirt. The startled unbelief broke over Simon like a wave, and ebbed away, leaving a cold quiet hopelessness behind it. No use putting up any sort of pretence, then. He must find means to slip the dispatch to Mouse before they took him; that was all.

Then something clicked in his brain, and he saw the look in Amias’s eyes. It had been as startled as his own in that first instant, but now it had changed to a clear hard warning.

And at the same moment, out of the tail of his eye, he saw Mouse gather her wide grey skirts and move forward. ‘I beg your forgiveness that no one opened the door to you,’ she said. ‘We did not hear you knock.’

Amias turned to her, pulling off his battered beaver hat.

‘
Touché
,’ he said quickly. ‘I apologize. The war has made us forget our manners, Mistress Mouse. Your father is—away from home?’

‘My father is with Lord Leven’s Army,’ said Mouse steadily. ‘And my mother is out. Unless you wish to wait for her return, will you tell me what it is that you want?—I suppose cattle and fodder, but there is not much left for the late-comers. We have been overrun with foraging parties, these last few days.’

‘Alas, Mistress Mouse, even your enemies must eat now and then. But we are a search-party, not a foraging party.’

Simon, standing by like an onlooker at a play, was warned by some instinct to leave the acting to the other two, and take his cue from them, when the time came.

‘Oh?’ Mouse said. ‘You want to search for something, or someone, here?’

‘For a Parliament spy who escaped from his guard in Torrington, two days ago; and for one of our own men who is in league with him. We have orders to search all houses of known Parliament sympathies in these parts.’

‘You won’t find them here,’ Mouse said. ‘But we can’t stop you pulling the house about our ears if you want to. Lovacott
has
Parliament sympathies.’

All this while the men of the search-party had been staring about them and muttering among themselves; and at this moment the sergeant, a bearded giant with a sullen honest face and uncomfortably keen eyes, who had been staring at Simon with a puzzled frown, turned and whispered something to his officer. Simon could only guess what it was, but Mouse, who was nearer, rounded on him, saying very clearly, ‘That is my brother. He is—’ she made a quick gesture touching her forehead, ‘not quite ’zactly.’

‘As mazed as ever?’ asked Amias, with deep sympathy.

Simon had his cue now, and he was not sure whether he most wanted to laugh or to shake Mouse until her teeth rattled. Instead, he sat down on his heels, seeming to lose interest in the whole proceedings, and picking up the nearly empty baby-bottle, began feeding the already full lamb. It seemed somehow to fit in with the part allotted to him, but he hoped the lamb would not burst.

But the sergeant was not yet convinced. ‘He looks sensible enough to me,’ he growled, ‘and he’s had a woundy great gash on his head, what’s more! ’Twouldn’t surprise me if he was the knave we’re looking for.’

‘Be quiet, you numskull,’ said Amias sharply. ‘I’ve known him all my life. He’s as mazed as a March hare.’

‘Well, if you says so, sir, far be it for me to say contrariwise, but a gashed head be a gashed head, and apt to mean a cove’s been fighting, and—’

‘My brother fell off a hayrick just before Christmas, and cut his head on the edge of a scythe,’ Mouse said. ‘I trust that you are satisfied.’

‘Well it looks to me a deal more like somebody laid it open wi’ a musket stock,’ began the other stubbornly. ‘I seen a many heads laid open wi’ a musket stock in my time, and—’

‘We are
perfectly
satisfied,’ Amias said, with a quelling look at his sergeant. ‘All right, take over, sergeant. Search the house and outbuildings. I shall remain here in the hall.’ He turned the quelling look on to his men. ‘And remember, I said search, not loot and break up. If I hear the slightest sound of wanton damage, you’re for it, all of you. Understand?’

A mutter of agreement came from the men as they split up. Several of them looked thoroughly ill-contented, but Simon could not help noticing that Amias seemed to have his disreputable band under better control than most of the King’s troops he had seen lately. Mouse had drawn back to the hearth again, and stood there, very straight in her grey gown, her head up and a queer brightness in her eyes. Amias crossed to the table and perched on it, swinging one dusty foot and looking down at her.

‘Mistress Mouse,’ he said soulfully, ‘pray believe me to be truly desolated that we should meet now as foes, when we have so often met in the past as friends.’

‘I am sorry too,’ said Mouse, with no softening in her voice.

But Simon, glancing up, could have sworn that the brightness in her eyes was laughter. Suddenly it dawned on him that they were enjoying themselves hugely, those two, like a pair of well-matched fencers playing a bout with unbuttoned foils. That Amias should find pleasure in playing with danger did not surprise him in the least; but Mouse was a different matter. It just showed how little you really knew of people.

‘May I go to the maids? They will be frightened.’ Mouse was saying, as a scared squealing sounded from the kitchen quarters.

Amias shook his head. ‘I regret infinitely; but you and your brother must remain here, and the maids in the kitchen. Only my men may move about the house at the moment. You will see that there is a guard on the doors.’

Simon caught the warning note in his voice, and out of the tail of his eye saw the lounging soldier in the house-place doorway.

‘So I see,’ said Mouse coldly. ‘We are your prisoners, it seems.’ Then she turned to Simon, saying in a very sweet and gentle tone, ‘Simon, you have fed that lamb enough. Put it back in its nest, dear, before it is sick.’

Simon obediently dumped the sprawling lamb back on to its sacking, from which it instantly staggered forth again, bleating
shrilly. He let it go, and sat idly on his heels, watching it as it made unsteadily for Jillot, who had returned to her puppies under the table. Amias had suddenly bent sidewise and picked up the letter which Mrs Carey had left for the carrier.

‘Cock and Pie! What a trick of chance!’ said Amias, laughing. ‘I was quartered in Okeham Paine, last autumn.’

There was an instant’s silence, which seemed very long to Simon, who was wishing desperately that he had told Mouse about his encounter with Amias.

Then Mouse said, ‘Were you? It is not really such a trick of chance; Mistress Killigrew is a very old friend of my mother’s.’

Amias sniffed, the old insulting sniff, and laid the packet down. ‘So? Well, everyone to their own choice of friends. But a most sour good woman. I was glad to be out of her house.’

‘How did you come to leave it?’ inquired Mouse, with a gleam in her eye.

‘You know, you should be called Mistress Spit-cat, instead of Mistress Mouse,’ drawled Amias. ‘We left with colours flying, and the Psalm-smiters in possession behind us, if you want to know. And in recognition of the noble defence we put up we were provided with a pass into Exeter, so that we could be besieged in comfort, with the rest of the Garrison.’

‘You don’t seem to be besieged?’ Mouse pointed out.

‘No. The prospect did not appeal to us. We took a vote on it, and made tracks across the Moor to join the Prince at Tavistock.’

It was said to Mouse, but Simon knew that the message was for himself. Amias wanted to tell him how he came to be with Hopton’s force, and what had happened since their last meeting; and this was his only way of doing it. The sentry on the door was craning his neck after a comrade in the courtyard, and for the moment no one was watching them; and Simon looked up full into the other’s face. Amias’s eyes were dancing, as he had expected them to be, but there was a kind of bitter brightness in them too; and he realized for the first time what it must be like to serve in a beaten Army, to belong heart and soul to a lost cause. For one long moment their gaze met, and Simon knew
that the old friendship was strong as ever it had been, perhaps stronger.

Then Amias pushed off from his perch on the table, and, turning, crossed to the door. He did not come back to the two before the hearth, but stayed there in the doorway until his men had returned from their fruitless search with a grudging ‘Nothing to report, sir,’ from the sergeant. Then he bowed with a flourish to Mouse, clapped his battered beaver hat very much on the back of his head, and marched his band of brigands away.

Simon got up. He stood quiet in the chimney corner, hearing their voices and the ragged tramp of feet across the courtyard. It passed out through the gatehouse, and died away. The doves were settling again already. Only Ship had started baying once more, and the shrill scared chittering of Meg and Polly in the dairy went on—and on.

Then Mouse went down the hall with a whisk and rustle of skirts, and disappeared through the door into the kitchen quarters; and the frightened voices rose to a clamour and then grew quiet. Simon still stood in the chimney corner, quite unmoving, until, realizing that he still held the baby-bottle, he set it down on the table, arranging it with great care exactly half-way between the loaf and his mother’s letter, and crossing to the window, stood looking out into the wintry garden.

Then Mouse came back. ‘That was—queer, wasn’t it, Simon,’ she said, coming to join him.

‘Ye—es.’ He swung round from the window, and put both hands on her shoulders. ‘What do you mean by telling that crew I wasn’t quite ’zactly?’ he demanded.

‘Well, it seemed the best thing to do. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it, Simon, but you weren’t being very helpful, and I couldn’t think of anything else. I was rather surprised, you see.’

‘You didn’t show it. Anyhow, thanks, Mouse.’

Mouse showed the unexpected dimple, just as she had been used to do when she was small, and anything she did found favour with the two boys. ‘Do you know where they are, the men they were looking for?’ she said.

‘I can’t tell you that, Mouse.’

‘Not here, anywhere?’

‘No, not here.’

‘I was dreadfully afraid they might be.’

‘You didn’t show that either,’ Simon said.

The dimple deepened, if that were possible, but she only said, after a few moments, ‘You never told me that Amias was in the Okeham Paine garrison when you took the house.’

‘Didn’t I? I must have forgotten,’ Simon said. He smiled at her, and turned back to the window. The night encounter at Okeham Paine did not matter any more! Suddenly he noticed that the buds were swelling on the quince tree, and the brown bed under the window jubilant with snowdrops. Suddenly, from beyond the war-scarred orchard, the first curlew of the year was calling. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘The curlews are coming up from the Estuary.’