Simon (22 page)

And underneath the quiet surface there was the job he had come to do; and a certain secret coomb screened round by hazel and crack willow through which the little stream, Jewel Water, splashing down toward the parish boundary might have told a tale of disreputable characters who came and went in the darkness, and an occasional scrap of dirty paper passed from hand to hand or a message taken down by the shielded light of a lantern. The turn of the little-used chapel path above Lovacott Moor might have told another, of a messenger waiting in the ditch, while his horse grazed beside him, to whom the message would be passed on before the following dawn. The lambing season was very useful to Simon, for it gave him a good reason for his night-time comings and goings; and if he chanced to meet anyone, he was looking for a ewe who had strayed, as ewes often will at lambing time.

Upward of a fortnight went by in this way; the after-dark
visitors came and went, sometimes from as far away as the Cornish border, and several routine messages had passed through safely to Major Watson; but so far there had been no sign of a Royalist advance.

Then one evening Simon called in to see old Diggory, and found him downstairs for the first time, and sitting wrapped up and smoking his pipe by the fire in the little dark gatehouse kitchen.

‘Good to see you down at last,’ said Simon. ‘You’ll be out again soon, Diggory.’

‘Oh, aye, now that the spring be coming,’ said Diggory. ‘And you, my dear—I reckon you’ll be off back to your sojering any day now? Bain’t much the matter with ’ee now, as I can see.’

Simon stooped to roll a fat tabby kitten on to its back. ‘Any day now.’

‘This ’ere war, now,’ the old man said wistfully, after a few puffs at his pipe, ‘do ’ee reckon ’tis going to last much longer? Maister bad for the crops a war be.’

‘Not so much longer,’ Simon said. ‘There’s a rough bit coming, though, before it’s over.’

‘So long as they keeps their ’oofs offen my winter wheat,’ said Diggory.

And somehow the war was forgotten, and they were discussing the winter wheat and the lambing season, and what was to be done with the boggy bit down by the stream.

They were deep in plans for draining the boggy bit, when hurried footsteps came sludging down the lane, and the door flew open to reveal Jem Pascoe, the hurdle-maker, crimson-faced and obviously bursting with important tidings. ‘Yer, neighbour Honeychurch, ’ave ’ee ’eard the noos?’ he demanded; and then, seeing Simon, put up a grimy forefinger. ‘Yer, young Maister, ’
ave
’ee ’eard the noos?’

‘Come in and shut thicky door, Jem Pascoe,’ said Diggory, crushingly, ‘or us’ll all be froze afore ’ee can tell us.’

Jem Pascoe came in and shut the door. ‘Oh, my dear souls! I been travelling that fast, my legs do be proper used up,’ he said, and sank on to a stool, panting loudly.

‘Niver mind ’bout your legs, Jem. What about thicky noos?’

‘Well, I be coming to that, bain’t I? Lord Hopton, it be, and a hugeous gurt army!’

‘Where?’ Simon was on his feet on the instant.

‘In Torrington; leastways, a’ will be by nightfall. Some on ’em’s there a’ready, for I seed en with my own eyes, when I were visiting my sister’s man this afternoon; every inn in the town be spilling over wi’ ’em, so familiar as if they’d been there all their lives! Up from Launceston, ’tis said they’m come, and driving half the cattle in Cornwall wi ’em, to feed Exeter! Yiss!’

Old Diggory turned to Simon, and remarked very quietly between puffs at his pipe, ‘Seems like this be the rough bit you said was coming.’

Simon nodded. He was thinking furiously, his eyes fixed on the pot of herbs which Phoebe always kept in the window; and as soon as Jem Pascoe had stumped off to spread his news through the village, he took his leave of Diggory, and went hurriedly out into the drizzling twilight.

His first thought was to go straight into Torrington and find out for himself the truth or otherwise of Jem’s story; but after a moment he realized that he could not leave his post. The Torrington end of the job was Podbury. He went down to the agreed meeting-place beside the Jewel Water, but it was deserted, save for a fox who slunk off into the darkening coppice at his approach. There had not really been time for Podbury to get there, he supposed, as he went back to supper. In a few hours he would certainly come. Anyhow, careful plans had been laid for just such an emergency, and if the news was correct, the scout whose territory was the Cornish border would be well on his way to Tiverton by now with the first news of the Royalist advance.

The news had reached the household by the time he got back, and supper was a silent, uneasy meal. After it was finished they gathered in the firelit parlour as usual, and outside the curtained windows the waiting night was as silent as they. Simon had taken down his grandfather’s rapier from its place above the mantel, and sat with the double sheath at his feet, polishing the long keen blade across his knees. He might have need of a sword soon, in place of his own left behind in Tiverton, and if so,
Balan would serve him as Balin served Amias. But as he worked he was listening for sounds from the outside world, for it had been settled at the outset that, in case of need, any scout was to come up to the house on the excuse of having lost his way; and every instant he expected the sound of such an arrival. But he heard only the white owl’s eerie hunting cry, only the distant call of a vixen, and the whisper of the rain. And his womenfolk tried to sew, stealing glances at him between every stitch.

At bedtime he returned Balan to its sheath and hung the worn crimson slings from the back of his chair, then strolled over to the door with pretended unconcern. ‘Going to say good night to Scarlet. Don’t wait up for me. I’ll be taking a look at the lambing pens before I come in.’

But still there was no sign of Podbury in the secret hollow, and though he waited a long time, staring with anxious eyes into the rainy darkness, until he was chilled to the bone, the scout did not come.

He returned to the house at last, relit the candles in the parlour, and getting out writing materials, sat down at the table. ‘Sir,’ he wrote, ‘I have heard this day that the Lion is come out of his thicket, and is now descended upon Torrington with both Horse and Foot, and with him a large herd of cattle for the feeding of Exeter. More, I do not know, nor even if this be true, for no word has come to me out of the town, and I heard of it only by chance.’ He added the number seven, sanded and sealed the message, and stowed it in the breast of his doublet. If no news came by dawn, he would send it south by the usual messenger.

He spent what was left of the night in a chair before the banked fire in the hall, with Jillot and her puppies in their flannel-lined box for company; and long before dawn he was out again, and heading back to the meeting-place.

As he came down into the coomb, something moved beside the stream; a tall shape of darkness against the lesser darkness of the hazel scrub: taller, it seemed to Simon, than any of the three scouts who came there. He checked an instant, and then went on. Probably it was only a poacher.

‘Is that Bill Darch?’ he demanded.

The tall figure moved again. ‘No. Is that Cornet Carey?’

The voice was very quiet, but perfectly familiar, and Simon caught his breath sharply. ‘Zeal-for-the-Lord! What in Heaven’s name are you doing here?’

‘There’s many a good cock come out of a tattered bag,’ said the dark shape, slowly.

There was an instant of utter silence, and then Simon said, ‘And a good tune played on an old fiddle.’

‘I have a dispatch for the Lord-General.’

A piece of limp paper changed hands, and Simon stowed it inside his doublet, with the message he had written himself, earlier that night. As he did so, he demanded with desperate urgency, ‘What crazy game are you playing? Where is Podbury?’

‘If Podbury be the name of him you were expecting—in Torrington lock-up, suspected of spying for the Parliament,’ said Zeal-for-the-Lord briefly.

‘What has happened, Zeal?’

‘An ale-house brawl, that’s what’s happened. There was a good many such last night. What else can you expect from a godless rabble such as follow Lord Hopton? Your man got caught up in it; talking very wild, he was, and fought like a tiger when some of Webb’s Dragoons went to take him. I was there.’

What an appalling mischance! Simon thought. But aloud he said only, ‘What do we do now, Zeal?’

‘You don’t do nothing, sir; you’re too well known in the town, and I reckon you’ve orders to stick fast at your post here. He’ll be brought up for questioning in the morning, and I’ll find means to get him away before they hang him. But he’ll have to lie hid for a while in the town; he got mauled in resisting arrest—a wrenched knee amongst other things, and he’ll never get past the guard in his present state without rousing suspicion.’

‘Do you know of any such place—where he could be hid—I mean?’ asked Simon, his thoughts racing ahead to odd holes and corners of the ruined castle, familiar from the days when he went to school in its shadow.

‘There’s one place in Torrington where they’ll never think to look for him,’ said Zeal, with a certain grim satisfaction.

‘Where?’

‘Above the powder store.’

Simon made no protest. It was a hideously dangerous hiding-place, but its very danger made it completely safe from search. Zeal was right: it was the one place where no sane man would think of looking. ‘Can you get him there?’ he demanded.

‘Aye, with the Lord’s help.’

‘Zeal, how did you get hold of him—and the paper?’

‘Told you he was talking pretty wild, didn’t I? I had my suspicions before ever the trouble started; and the Lord of Hosts granted that ’twas me as searched him. Also there’s a little barred squint at the back of the lock-up, as two men can talk through while the guard on the door knows nothing of it. It weren’t hard to convince him I was a friend, for he was knocked silly, and a man’s apt to be either extry suspicious or so trusting as a new-born babe, in that condition. He telled me what must be done with the paper, and how to find this place. Have you any orders for me, sir, beyond saving Podbury’s neck for him?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘Tell me the exact strength of Hopton’s force, what artillery he has with him, and what his plans are.’

‘I don’t know, sir, but I’ll find out.’

‘Good man! Now that Podbury’s out of the game, you’re got to take over. I shall be here at dusk each evening, and I’ll wait until eight o’clock. If you need to get hold of me in a hurry, come to the house; you’ll see the light in the window from the top of the rise yonder.’

‘Sir.’ The old Ironside turned on his heel, then checked and swung back, saying with an obvious effort, ‘You don’t ask how I come to be in—my present company.’

‘I don’t need to. I was in hospital at Christmas with a certain Captain Weston, a Royalist prisoner. He told me a queer story.’

‘The ways of the Lord are unaccountable strange,’ said Zeal heavily. ‘I have followed James Gibberdyke these many months, and never caught up with him until last evening. That will show you what a scattered Army ’tis. And now, he’s dead.’

‘You—had your revenge, then?’ Simon said, and the sickness rose in his throat.

‘No, sir. That was Podbury.’

‘You mean, last night?’

‘Aye. Telled you he resisted arrest, didn’t I?

‘Yes,’ said Simon dully. ‘Yes, you told me. Zeal, I would to Heaven it hadn’t worked out like this—but at least I’m glad it wasn’t you that killed him.’

Zeal-for-the-Lord was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘So am I. Queer, that, isn’t it? Seems like the last few years have been wiped out. But just at first, a man feels a bit lonely and lost-like without his vengeance, when it was the closest thing he had. Good night, sir.’

‘Good night,’ Simon returned. There seemed nothing else to say.

As he cut back across the fields towards the place where, by now, the messenger should be awaiting him, Simon’s mind and heart were so full of the encounter that was just over, and the strange trick of fate that had brought his old Corporal back from the unknown, that he did not notice a faint rustle behind him, which was not made by the wind. Nor did he turn his head to see the flitting figure that stole after him through the thinning darkness of the misty February dawn. He crossed the lane and turned into the chapel path that he had followed so often on his way to school. At the bend above Lovacott Moor, a horse was tethered under the dripping hawthorn trees, and a man loomed out into the path.

The scrap of paper changed hands with a few muttered words; the man remounted his horse, and Simon turned back down the bridle-path, his own dispatch still in the breast of his doublet, since it was not needed now. Behind him, as he went, he heard the soft drumming of hooves, growing fainter up the track.

A few moments later he had all but blundered into a figure that rose from the shadow of the hedge-tangle, right into his path; a grey shapeless figure that seemed oddly hazy.

His heart gave a sickening lurch, and instinctively he sprang forward and grappled with the thing; conscious of a queer relief when his hands caught heavy rain-wet cloth, instead of sinking into mist. Not a ghost then: a spy! He shifted his grip, and swung his captive out to face the growing light. As he did so, a breathless but laughing voice said, ‘Simon, don’t. Ow!’ and he found that he was grasping Mouse. Mouse in her grey hooded cloak that blended ghost-wise into the grey dawn.

‘Mouse!’ he said furiously. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Following you.’ Mouse sounded quite unabashed.

Simon released her. ‘I might have known it! You always were a Paul-pry!’

‘I don’t think you ought to say that, Simon, just because I was always interested in the things you and Amias did.’

‘
Interested
!’ snapped Simon. ‘We never did a blessed thing that you didn’t find out about!’

‘But I never told anyone, did I?—Even when you dug a mine under the pigsty and the wall collapsed. I never told a soul how it came to happen.’

Simon did not answer for a moment. It was quite true: Mouse had always known their secrets, but their secrets had always been safe with her. ‘No,’ he admitted at last, ‘you didn’t. Look here, Mouse. How much do you know about all this?’