Simon (26 page)

A broad smile spread on the other’s face. ‘This beats cock-fighting! I hoped you’d turn up, but—’ Then he too looked Simon up and down. ‘You look like Guido Fawkes, or Don Quixote! You can’t go into action like that; you’ll be cut to pieces, or shot by one of our own men, and I wouldn’t blame them.’

Simon grinned. ‘It can’t be helped.’

‘Yes, it can, though. Nothing is going to happen for hours yet, and you’ll have plenty of time. Trooper Wagstaff was hit in the leg this morning, and he’s out of the fight. Go up to the house and take over his equipment. We’ll see to Scarlet.’

So back to the house went Simon, hotfoot, and mounted the steps of the terrace, where the winter jessamine sent a cascade of yellow stars over the low stone parapet, and Fairfax himself with a group of senior officers stood talking earnestly and watching the mustering troops in the deerpark below. A sentry passed him through, and told him where the wounded were bestowed; and a few minutes later he was out again, wearing Trooper Wagstaff’s buff coat, luckily not much too big for him, and steel cap, and knotting a borrowed crimson sword-scarf about his middle as he went.

By the time he had rejoined his Troop, where Scarlet was now unsaddled and picketed, and enjoying his measure of corn with the rest, most of the troops had arrived, and were making an evening meal of the usual hard biscuit and strong yellow cheese which each man carried in his knapsack. Simon, investigating the wallet his mother had given him, found two large pasties in it; and he and Barnaby ate them, standing under a group of slender birch trees that were already flushed with the purple bloom of rising sap.

‘What about Exeter?’ Simon asked.

‘Siege abandoned for the moment,’ said Barnaby, with his mouth full, ‘except for a few regiments left to watch like a terrier at a rabbit-hole.’ He took another large bite of pasty. ‘We marched from Chulmeligh at four o’clock s’morning, and there hasn’t been much time for eating since.’

Simon had laid down his pasty and was fastening into his steel cap the sprig of furze which one of his troopers had given him.
‘Why furze?’ he demanded. ‘A kerchief round one arm shows up better and doesn’t—make one’s fingers bleed,’ for one of the sharp prickles had stuck into him.

‘Question not the wisdom of your superiors,’ Barnaby told him. ‘We might have had to go into action with our shirts hanging out behind. I did that once. The idea was that if you turned round, your white scut didn’t show any more, and your own men shot you in mistake for one of the enemy. Ingenious, that.’

They finished their meal in leisurely fashion talking over the prospects for tomorrow’s engagement. They were sure that it
would
be tomorrow’s, for at four o’clock on a winter’s afternoon, with an Army tired after a full day’s march, it did not seem likely that the General could have planned anything more than an advance skirmish for that night. The whole Army was mustered by now, and all across the deerpark the regiments were bivouacking, drawn up in battle order; and as the light thickened and faded, and the cold increased, many watch-fires began to glow, sending up great plumes of smoke into the sky, that was now clear and colourless as crystal above the bare trees. Here and there a man laughed or called to a comrade, or a horse whinnied. The rooks were flying home, cawing as they flapped overhead on lazy wings.

It was a peaceful scene, and nobody, looking out over it as Simon and Barnaby were doing, could have guessed that within a few hours one of the last battles of the Civil War would be raging round the barricades of Torrington.

In the first stage of the fighting, when it came, the General’s Horse had no part. About five o’clock some scouts—a Forlorn of Foot—was sent out towards the town to reconnoitre and were met half-way by Royalist Foot. There was a sharp skirmish across the fields in the deepening twilight, and Lord Hopton, finding he could not hold the outposts, ordered his men closer in to the town defences.

Fairfax, judging that nothing more was needful for that night but to strengthen the positions gained, moved his men down into the townward end of the deer park, and stationed them in readiness for a general assault at dawn. Quietness settled down over the park and fields, save for the regular coming and going
of the sentries between the watch-fires, and the low exchange of the watchword, ‘Emanuel, God with us,’ when patrols met.

But an hour later, through the frosty quiet, came the distant sound of a tattoo beating in the town. Attack, or retreat, which did it mean? Fairfax ordered a company of dragoons forward to the barricades to find out. The dragoons advanced down the road to the first barriers, and were met by a sharp volley from the Royalist musketeers lying in wait for them. Two more dragoon companies galloped down to their support, and the reserves of Foot, without waiting for orders, charged cheering after them. It was a valiant charge, but quite hopeless; and if more help did not quickly reach the troops at the barricades, they were going to be cut to pieces.

All this Simon heard afterwards, but at the time he knew only that something unexpected was happening; that dark regiments had gone past him at the double heading for the town, and that now the whole Army had been stood to arms. The quietness over the deerpark had frozen into a tense waiting silence, broken from time to time by the faint rattle of musketry from the town defences. And Simon, standing beside Scarlet in the midst of his Troop while the slow minutes crawled by, heard his own heart drubbing slowly, and the silken whisper of the Standard above his head as the light wind stirred it. It was very cold, with a bitter smell of frost in the air; overhead the sky had changed from crystal to a wonderful clear green, splintered with stars, and in the east the pearly glimmer of moonrise was spreading behind the black shapes of the trees.

‘Parish Lantern’s getting up. We’ll have plenty of light presently,’ Barnaby muttered over his shoulder.

‘Yes,’ Simon murmured back. ‘Hullo! what’s that?’

‘Only an owl. Call yourself a countryman and don’t know an owl when you hear one!’

‘No, not that—it’s a horse—someone in a hurry. Listen!’

They listened, and a few moments later they could all hear it: the sound of a horse being ridden at a furious gallop. They heard the hoof-beats ringing nearer and nearer up the frost-hardened bridle-way, until the wild rider swept past them on towards the house. Silence followed, a tingling silence that
ended in another burst of hoof-beats, this time from the direction of the house, and a knot of horsemen loomed up through the darkness. One of the riders gave an order; and at the sound of his voice, the General’s Own knew that Fiery Tom himself was at their head. Next instant the trumpets sounded
monte cavalo
!

Moving as one man, the troopers swung into the saddle. Simon felt the familiar balance of the Standard in his hand, and settled his feet into the stirrups, conscious of Scarlet’s excitement thrilling through them both, as the troopers of his Standard Escort closed up on either side of him. Then the trumpets sang again, and five troops of Horse, with Fairfax at their head, were sweeping down at a purposeful trot towards the town, while three regiments of Foot, their drums rolling, swung forward to join them.

The park palings had been levelled on either side of the townward gate, making a wide gap for the advance of troops, and in a few minutes the whole force was out into the road and the open fields on either side. The moon was clear of the trees now, and sailing up into the glimmering sky, and hedge and tree sparkled with thickening hoar-frost, and the shadow of every man’s head was blotted darkly on the moon-silvered shoulders of the man before him. A clear white night, and a moon that seemed disdainfully remote from the battle which was now raging all along the town defences, where King’s man and Parliament’s man struggled for every fortified hedge.

And into the conflict plunged the three regiments, with Fairfax at their head, the Cavalry wings spreading out on either side. Simon, in the main Cavalry wing, swung north to engage Lord Wentworth’s Horse, which had swept round the town from the Commons; and for a while he knew nothing but a wild wheeling and flurry of Horse across the moon-drenched field, and the shock of charge and counter-charge, and had no idea how the main battle was going.

But after a time it seemed to him that the whole fight was drawing inward; and he realized that the Royalists were being driven back. Slowly, from hedge to hedge, from barrier to barrier, fighting for every yard of ground, they were falling in on
their last lines of defence. The final barricades were reached at last, and without any clear idea how he got there, Simon found himself and most of his troop caught up in a fierce struggle for the barrier of piled tree-trunks across the mouth of Calf Street. The moonlight here was quenched, and the sky above the roof-tops darkened by contrast with the leaping light of flames, for somebody had fired the barricade, and the faces of defenders and attackers alike were lit by a fiendish red glare. The fighting was too close and quick for shooting now, and the men surging to and fro fought with their musket-butts, which rose and fell club-wise among the thrusting pikes.

Simon saw a surging mass of distorted faces, and in his ears was the roar of the password ‘Emanuel, God with us!’ answered and flung back by the defenders beyond the barricades. Then a fiercer yell went up, as the piled tree-trunks collapsed. For a moment the flames shot up in a wavering sheet, and a shower of sparks burst skyward, drifting away on the light cold wind; then the flames sank and were beaten out by a rush of feet, as the Parliament Foot surged forward, cheering. Simon saw a drummer leap upon the glowing remains, and then plunge down among the defenders, shouting to his comrades to follow the drum. Then above the uproar rose the brazen yelping of trumpets sounding the Charge, and the Horse were plunging forward into the
mêlée
through the gap that the Foot had made for them, scattering red embers from their horses’ hooves.

With one roar of ‘Emanuel, God with us!’ the advance troops of the New Model poured into Calf Street, sweeping the enemy before them.

‘Emanuel, God with us!’ Simon’s voice cracked at the full pitch of his lungs, and he stuck his heel into Scarlet’s flank, and followed the Standard of the General’s Troop to meet the desperate counter-charge which, led by Lord Hopton, came sweeping down upon them at that moment. The two squadrons came together with a crash and shock, in the narrow street, where scared faces peered from upper windows. For a while the struggle hung in the balance, and then Simon realized, with helpless fury, that Fairfax’s squadron was being pushed back! They steadied, and pressed forward again, following the General’s Standard;
then, as another Royalist charge crashed into them, they gave ground once more, and could not check, until the still-smouldering barricades were reached. But there the Foot were closing in again with pikes levelled; and by their aid the Horse steadied once more, closing their thinned ranks.

It was a case of hanging on now, for once driven back into open country, it would be all to do again. Both Horse and Foot had lost heavily in storming the barricades, and to retake it was beyond those that were left. They must hang on, somehow, until reserves reached them or the attackers at some other point broke through and could take the enemy in the rear. The light was reddening again, for the sparks had caught the thatched roof of an outhouse; and full in the glare, Colonel Hammond, his sprig of furze burnt to a crisp, with his eyebrows singed off and his teeth grinning white in a blackened face, was encouraging his men at the top of his voice; while Fairfax’s Cavalry strained heart and soul to fling back the Royalist Horse, who were making valiant efforts to break through into the open.

Minute by minute they held them, but only just. There were not enough men for the task. Simon, his Standard held high in the mingled light of fire and moon, snatched one glance behind him up the Stevenstone road, when the shifting
mêlée
opened for an instant, but saw it white and empty in the moonlight until it ran into the shadow of the trees. He had no leisure to look behind him again.

Would those reserves never come?

Then suddenly there was the thunder of a squadron’s hooves behind him, and a sense of strength and increase that ran like heath blaze through the hard-pressed companies. ‘Noll’s here! Noll! Old Noll!’ The reserves had arrived.

Simon heard the strident challenge of the trumpets, and with a roar like a bursting dam, the charge went home. Once again he was sweeping down the street, this time in the wake of Cromwell’s leading troop. The Royalists broke back, Lord Hopton’s Blue Coats, caught up in the retreat, were swept away like flotsam on a dark flood. Simon saw their Standard waver and go down. He saw Lord Hopton standing in his stirrups as he strove to rally his men, his face white in the moonlight and puddled with blood
where a pike had torn his cheek open. Then the
mêlée
closed between them and he did not see Lord Hopton again.

How long the battle raged through Torrington, as one by one the defences went, Simon never had the least idea. He only knew that the moon was still high in the glimmering sky when the last desperate resistance of the main Royalist Horse swung into South Street, with Cromwell pressing after. Behind them the Square was in Fairfax’s hands, and the Foot were coming up, and already the roar of battle was sinking. The trumpets were yelping like hunting-horns at the kill, and Cromwell charged again. The Royalist’s defence had had the stubborn desperate courage of an animal when it turns at bay; but now, quite suddenly, it broke, and became a running fight that streamed away down the narrow street, past the old house that had been a second home to Simon when he and Amias were small.

All night long Simon had been looking for Amias, with a queer certainty that after their two encounters would come a third. He was still certain; but it was no use looking any more. Only backs to look at now, anyway. He settled down grimly in the saddle.

The pursuit down Mill Street was a nightmare, for in the light of the moon the cobbled street seemed to drop like a silver plummet to the dark valley below; and down it swept hunters and hunted, streaming out raggedly in dark skeins of horsemen, with the silver road between. Down and down, hooves slipping on the steep cobbles, and now and then the crash and flame-spit of a pistol as a hard-pressed Royalist turned in the saddle to fire his last shot, or a Parliament trooper fired into the flying shapes ahead. Simon was holding Scarlet well together, as they hurtled forward and down; once the horse slipped sickeningly, but he contrived somehow to steady him from a headlong fall. Other riders were less fortunate: a trooper just ahead of him came down with a slithering crash, the man was flung clear, and the mount lay kicking in the roadway. There could be no waiting to see what became of them: that must be left for others coming after. Simon plunged on. The dark woods of the valley seemed rushing up to meet him, and the moon was glinting on the swift water of the Torridge, flowing between the huddled cottages of Taddiport.