Simon (25 page)

A few moments later Tom stuck his head round the house-place door. ‘There’s a chap outside says a’ has a message for ’ee, ’bout a litter of pigs,’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Proper disreputable character, if you asks
me
, and so I telled ’en, but a’ says there’s many a good cock come out of a tattered bag, and so I was to tell ’ee.’

Simon had only just finished with the man about the litter of pigs, when the carrier arrived. Mouse gave him Mrs Carey’s letter, took in various packages he had brought, and when he was gone, returned to Simon, holding something in triumph.

‘Look! This is one of those days when everything happens at once. Here’s a letter from Father.’

There had been no word from Simon’s father for a long time, and the arrival of his letter now seemed to set the crown on this oddly joyous morning. They put it on the table, and waited about, to make sure their mother got it the moment she returned and that they themselves were present to hear what was in it.

They had not long to wait before she came in, slipping the grey cloak from her shoulders, and glancing about her.

‘Meg says the King’s men have been ransacking the house,’ she said, a little wearily. ‘What have they taken this time?’

‘Nothing this time,’ Simon told her. ‘They were hunting somebody, but with any luck he’s away by now. Look, Mother, here’s a letter from Father at last.’

Mrs Carey cast her cloak on the side chest, and went quickly to pick up the long-hoped-for packet. Her face had grown soft and sparkling as she broke the seal and opened the crackling sheet. Then quite suddenly the sparkle was gone; she gave a little cry, and put one hand on a chair back as though to steady herself.

Simon had rounded the table to her in an instant. ‘What’s wrong, Mother?’

She looked up, her face grown small and pinched. ‘Father—he’s been wounded.’

‘Badly?’ Simon asked, but he knew it must be badly, or his mother would not look like that.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Carey. ‘Yes.’ She looked from Simon’s anxious face to Mouse’s, then down again at the letter in her hand and began to read aloud, quite steadily. “I would have written before but that I have been laid by, nursing sundry wounds gained when my Troop was ambushed on patrol some three weeks ago. A small affair, but ’twas well done. The Royalists mined a bridge by which we were to pass, and fired the charges when our foremost Horse were actually upon it, myself included. A brilliant piece of timing. We beat them off, though hardly, and ourselves suffered fewer losses than might be expected: five men killed and a round dozen wounded. The affair has cost me a leg. My left. That leg was always unlucky—I broke it climbing after an eyas when I was a boy. Hector was killed under me, but save as an old friend, he is no loss to me, since I shall not ride again. The surgeons here in Newark have done their work well, and, save for sundry rents in my left side which are slow to heal, such as is left of me begins already to grow strong once more, but it may be some time before I can come home to you, for the war continues, and the Army authorities have other matters to attend to than the transporting of one crippled soldier. In the meantime, it is useless to bid you not to worry, but worry as little as may be, beloved, and—”’ Mrs Carey faltered for an instant in her reading: ‘“and the Lord of Hosts give you courage, as I pray He may do me, for I—”’ she broke off, and finished the last few lines in silence, while the other two watched her. Then she refolded the sheet and stood for a few moments, very still, looking down at it.

‘If only he was not alone. It—must be harder to bear—all alone.’

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Mouse, in a small clear voice of utter conviction. ‘You can trust Father; he’ll be all right.’ It seemed a queer thing to say, but Simon knew what she meant, though he could not have put it into words.

He slipped a hand under his mother’s elbow. ‘Come and sit down for a little while.’

But Mrs Carey shook her head. ‘No, my dear, I won’t sit down. I want to tidy my store cupboards this morning, and I think I’ll go and do it now.’ And putting the letter very gently into her hanging pocket, she went. Mouse followed her, and Simon watched them go, and then, deciding that it would be best to leave his womenfolk to themselves for a bit, went and hung over the orchard gate, and thought. He had a good deal to think about. Over the hill-crest the curlews were still crying, and the snowdrops in the half-frozen borders had not lost their joyousness. Life looked good, for Simon, only—what must it look like for Father, now?

THREE DAYS LATER,
Simon had gone down after the midday meal to see that all was well in the lambing-pens. Sanctuary was very full of new life, and the air shrill with the babble of newborn lambs and the song of a triumphant blackbird in the topmost branch of the budding spinney; and Simon, turning to look for the singer, saw a tall, fantastic figure with a fiddle under one arm, leaning on the gate into the lane.

He flung up his arm in greeting, and whistling Ship to heel, headed for the gate where the other waited for him very peacefully, leaning on the top bar. ‘Pentecost! What are you doing up this way?’

‘Come looking for you,’ Pentecost Fiddler said. There were a few pale dog-violets stuck in his battered hat, and he stooped to fondle Ship’s woolly head.

‘But how did you know I was here? I haven’t exactly shouted it from the tree-tops, like the blackbird yonder.’

‘There’s precious little happens a’twixt Beaford and Hartland that I don’t know about,’ said Pentecost, simply. ‘And I’ve got some news for ’ee.’

‘Yes?’

‘Parlyment troops gathering in Stevenstone Park.’

Simon, who had opened the gate and joined the fiddler in the lane, closed it behind him and dropped the iron pin into place, because it had been inbred in him, as in all countrymen, that one does not leave field gates open, though the heavens fall.

‘Horse or Foot?’ he demanded as they turned towards the house. ‘You’re sure they
are
Parliament men? When did they get there, Pentecost?’

‘Horse,’ said Pentecost. ‘But there’ll be Foot to follow, or I’m a Don; and they’re Parlyment all right, leastwise they drove
out Hopton’s Dragoons that were holding the house. Not much above an hour gone, that were, and I come straight to tell you.’

‘What were you doing in Stevenstone?’ asked Simon, when they reached the gatehouse and came to a halt before it.

‘Playing me fiddle.’

‘To the Royalist Dragoons?’

‘They pay,’ said Pentecost, with his old mocking smile curling his long mouth. ‘Sometimes they pay, anyhow.’

Simon laughed. ‘You’re a disgrace. Come in and have something to eat.’

‘No. I’ll be on my way back. You’re off at once, I reckon?’

There was an instant’s pause, while Simon made his decision. He had received no recall, but it was not at all likely that he would, and he could do no good by remaining here any longer. Major Watson had said that in such a case he was to make his own decision. ‘Yes, I’ll be off at once,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the news, Pentecost.’

The fiddler’s mocking smile narrowed his eyes. He turned away, calling back over his shoulder, ‘Good luck to ’ee. You’re going to have fine weather for your battle, seemingly,’ and he pointed up at the clear milky blueness of the February sky.

‘Oh, aye; heron was flying downstream this morning,’ Simon called after him. Then he turned into the courtyard, shouting for Tom to get Scarlet saddled up; and went indoors, to be met by his mother coming from the still-room with Mouse behind her.

‘Was that Pentecost Fiddler I saw you talking to just now?’ asked his mother.

‘Yes, he came to tell me our Horse are gathering at Stevenstone. Tom is saddling Scarlet for me now, and I’ll be off as soon as he’s done,’ Simon said, and ran upstairs without waiting for any reply.

A few moments later he came clattering down again, carrying his pistol-holsters in one hand and his spurred riding-boots in the other. Mouse and his mother were awaiting him in the hall, Mouse holding his grandfather’s sword, and his mother in the act of setting a well-filled wallet on the chest by the door.

‘You’ll need some food, my dear,’ she said.

‘Thanks, Mother.’ He sat down on the chest to pull his boots on. ‘Oh, Jillot, go
away
!’

‘There’s Scarlet. Tom’s bringing him round now,’ said Mouse, who had gone to the door; then, as Simon got up, ‘Here’s your sword—stand still and I’ll put it on for you.’

In an unbelievably short time he was ready to go, and had turned about beside Scarlet to take his leave of them. ‘Good-bye, Mother, good-bye, Mouse.’ He hugged them both, and his mother drew down his face and kissed him on the forehead.

‘God speed you, Simon,’ she said. ‘We shall be praying, Mouse and I, for you, and for our Army’s victory.’

‘Yes, do,’ Simon said eagerly. ‘Pray for all you’re worth; we shall need it. The Royalists haven’t much discipline, but there are a lot of them, and they’re in a strong position. Bless you, both of you.’ He turned away, and taking the reins from Tom, swung into the saddle. ‘If Father gets home before I do, give him my love and my duty; and tell him—and tell him I’m hidjus proud of him,’ he called.

Scarlet, not having been out that day, was only too eager to start, and sprang forward as soon as he was given his head, sidling and prancing like an unbroken colt. Simon swung him out through the gatehouse, turning in the saddle to wave to the two in the doorway, who waved in return. Then he sent Scarlet at a canter up the wagon-way, and never looked back. The queer quiet-surfaced weeks were behind him, and he was riding out into the open storm again; and in time to the beat of Scarlet’s flying hooves, his heart seemed to quicken into a jumping expectancy.

Up on the high moors, when he reached them, the light wind came soughing in from the sea, cold and thin, smelling of bog and wet moss and the thin February sunshine. From the edge of the ridge-road, the land dropped away, rising and falling in moor and coppice, brown plough and green fallow, to the
ten-mile-distant sea. And looking seaward, as he always did when he passed that way, Simon saw the whole sweep of the bay from Morte Point round to Hartland, and Lundy floating cloud-wise, dream-wise, where sea and sky came together. He wondered when he would see that sweep of coast again.

After half a mile he turned off down a by-lane, and the distant bay dropped away behind the skyline, and the moors were left behind. Presently he turned in between the granite gate-posts of Stevenstone Park, and instantly ran into a vedette of Ireton’s Horse posted just inside. He reined in, as one of the two men wheeled across his track and demanded his business.

‘I am an officer of Fairfax’s Horse, returning to duty. But first I have to report to Major Watson. Can you tell me where I shall find him?’

The man looked him up and down, taking in the homespun doublet, and the ancient sword at his hip, and said doubtfully, ‘That may be, sir; but you don’t look much like it.’

‘Look.’ Simon pulled off his hat. ‘I have been recovering from this gash, at my home near here, and now I am returning to duty. I was wounded at the assault on Okeham Paine, on December the twelfth. Now will you tell me where I can find Major Watson?’

The second man urged his horse a pace nearer. ‘What was the watchword for that night, sir?’

‘The Lord shall deliver Israel,’ said Simon, ‘and the sign, a white kerchief round the left arm.’

‘He’s all right, Jerry,’ said the second man. ‘I’d go straight up to the house, sir, if I was you, and ask again. He’s bound to be about there somewheres.’

The two men reined back into the shadow of the oak spinney beside the gate, and Simon rode on. He had never been in Stevenstone before, for Lord Henry Rolle was an ardent Royalist, and even in the days before the war he had had no truck with the Puritan gentry of the country round. But the paths were clear to follow, and he had not gone far when he came upon two troops of Walley’s Regiment, and a few yards farther on, rounding a dark mass of holly and ilex, he saw the great house before him, its mellow red brick warm as a ripe apricot against the darkness
of the trees, and the sloping turf round it alive with men and horses under the great oaks of the deer park. Evidently the Foot had begun to arrive, for their red coats flecked the wintry turf with colour, among the drab masses of the Horse. He rode on, followed here and there by a glance of curiosity or recognition; and asking his way again, first from a passing commissariat sergeant and then from a dragoon, finally ran Major Watson to earth in an outhouse, where he was questioning a prisoner about the town defence.

He raised his brows and blinked mildly at Simon when he appeared. ‘Yes, Cornet Carey?’

‘I had word an hour ago that you were here, sir,’ Simon said hurriedly. ‘So I came to report, and for your orders.’

‘So I see. Well, you have done the job I sent you to do, and done it efficiently. I’ve no further use for you, and your report can wait a fitter season. Get along back to your Regiment.’

‘Where shall I find them, sir?’

‘Half a mile west of here, towards the townward gate.’

Simon collected Scarlet from the dragoon in whose charge he had left him and set out once more. He was thankful not to have to make his report until Podbury had had time to make his. Until that happened, he was not sure what to say; and it might even be that Zeal would change his mind and come in with the scout, after all. But he knew in his heart of hearts that that would not happen.

The General’s Horse, when he found them, were bivouacked in the lea of a great curve of ilex, and looked as if they had been there for some time, for the horses were picketed and cropping contentedly at the grass which belonged by rights to Lord Rolle’s deer; and each troop, gathered about its own Standard set upright in the ground, was checking equipment in readiness for action.

Simon picked out Disbrow’s Troop easily enough, and dismounting, saluted his Lieutenant. ‘Cornet Carey, reporting back for duty, sir.’

Barnaby Colebourne swung round on him. ‘What the—Simon!’

‘Reporting back for duty, sir,’ Simon repeated.