Simon (23 page)

‘I know you met someone down by the Jewel Water, and someone else just back here. But I couldn’t get near enough either time, to hear what you said. You’re passing messages through to General Fairfax, aren’t you? Is that why you came home?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Simon. ‘And if ever you kept a secret, you’ve got to keep this one, even from Mother.’

‘Of course,’ said Mouse.

They were walking back down the bridle-path by now, and after they had gone a little way, Simon asked, ‘How did you guess?’

‘Well, I thought it couldn’t
always
be the lambs; not every time you went out in the night. Mother thought it was just that your head made you worry too much—as people do when they’ve been ill, you know; but somehow I didn’t. And then last night the news came and everything was queer, and you didn’t come to bed. I know that because I always keep my door open a little bit and I always hear you go by; and I listened and listened, but you never came. And then I found I’d been asleep, and I wondered if you
had
come to bed, after all, and I went to look, because I thought you might be having an adventure and leaving me out of it. And there was firelight in the hall, and when I
looked over the balusters, there you were, looking as if you might be going out on an adventure at any moment; so I went back to my room and put on some clothes, and waited till you went out. Then I followed you. It was quite simple.’

‘Yes,’ said Simon, ‘yes, I suppose it was.’

They entered the garden close, and gaining the unbarred back door without disturbing the dogs, slipped inside. Before going upstairs, Simon thrust the unused dispatch into the red embers of the fire, and watched it flame up and then crumble into ash.

At odd times during the days that followed, news reached Lovacott of what was going on in the outside world. Lord Hopton was entrenching Torrington and barricading the roads into the town with felled trees. It looked as if he meant to wait there while his supplies came up, and certainly it was the best place for the purpose in all North Devon: surrounded on three sides by the Castle Hill and the Commons, which fall almost sheer from the town to the Torridge far below. His Foot was quartered in the town itself, and his Horse in the villages round. Heronscombe escaped having troops quartered on it, because it was too far out, but ragged foraging parties swooped on it at all hours of the day and night, so that it was little better off than Huntshaw or Weare Giffard.

Simon stayed very close to the house during those days, to be on hand in case of trouble, or of a message from Zeal or the remaining scout. He kept clear of the foraging parties when he could, and when he could not, he pulled his hat low on his forehead and did his best to blend into the background. He could not afford to catch the notice of the Royalists; and there was nothing that he could do, anyway, to prevent the constant streaming away into Torrington of cattle, fodder and even the preserves from his mother’s storeroom, all carried off by hungry, hardfaced men of an Army that had become a rabble and ceased to care for its officers. After those few days he found it easy to believe the common talk of the New Model, that of all the Army under his command, the only troops Lord Hopton could rely on for loyalty and discipline were his own small Company, and the Prince’s Guard.

The second evening after his meeting with Zeal-for-the-Lord, Simon found his old Corporal waiting for him again in the hollow of the Jewel Water. The password was exchanged in low voices, and Simon asked: ‘Have you found out what we wanted?’

‘Aye, but I’ve had no chance to write it down.’

‘That doesn’t matter. ’Tisn’t the first time I’ve had a word-of-mouth dispatch to deal with.’ Simon was groping under a mass of brambles and alder scrub, and his voice was slightly muffled. A moment later he brought out a small shielded lantern, and striking flint and steel, kindled the candle-stub. The flame sank away to a blue spark, then rose again, guttering in the damp air. Simon closed the lantern, and producing a sheet of paper and a stick of sharpened lead from the breast of his doublet, squatted down to use his knee as a writing desk. ‘Now—carry on, Zeal.’

‘Four thousand Foot, five thousand Horse, mostly in poor condition,’ began Zeal-for-the-Lord, in the manner of one reciting a lesson learned by heart. ‘Of the Horse, six hundred are dragoons, and upward of five hundred cuirassiers. No Artillery, and so far, precious little Train at all. Lord Hopton’s biding where he is until his reserves catch up with him; and that will be all of four days. He’s desperate short of transport. I don’t know nothing about the reserves, sir, save that there’s no guns with them.’

‘Never mind about the reserves,’ Simon said, writing hard ‘The other scout sees to them.’ He finished the message, adding various other details that the old Ironside gave him, and signed it with the number 7. He hesitated over the second number, and finally left the place blank. ‘Thank you, Corporal,’ he said.

The word had slipped out from old habit, and he could not recall it. He looked up quickly, but the light from the shielded lantern did not reach as high as the other man’s face.

Neither of them spoke again until Simon had doused the lantern and returned it to its hiding-place, and risen to his feet once more. Then he asked, ‘What of Podbury?’

‘Got him away yesterday, sir, on the way up to Lord Hopton’s lodgings for questioning. There was only two of us guarding him, and the Lord sent a sleet-scurry at the right moment to hide
our escape after I’d knocked t’other man out. Podbury’s snug enough now above the stacked powder-kegs. Close quarters, but secluded, if you see what I mean. He’s got supplies with him, drinking-water from the waterspout above the window, and all complete, and he can lie up there for a few days, till he’s mended.’

‘I see,’ Simon said. ‘But look here. If you laid out your fellow guard, they’ll know you’re on our side, and you can’t clear off, because of Podbury. What’s to be done?’

‘I’ll contrive somehow, sir,’ Zeal said. ‘If need be I’ll take to the magazine myself. There’s precious little discipline in the camp of the Amalekites, and it’s easy enough to slip by the guards, while this sleety weather lasts.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Simon. ‘It’s not right that I should leave you to bear the brunt of this business—but the devil of it is that my orders are not to stir from Lovacott whatever happens.’

‘Your action station is here, and mine is in Torrington, and us can’t neither of us leave them,’ agreed the other.

And a sudden jubilance swept over Simon, as he realized something that he had not thought of before. ‘Zeal!’ he said, ‘Zeal! You see what this means?’

‘Sir?’

‘Why, man! You’ve earned your return to your old place! When Fiery Tom knows about this business—’

‘No!’ Zeal-for-the-Lord cut in harshly. ‘There is no way back for me.’

‘But there
is
! Don’t you understand, Zeal?’

‘I will have no man say, “He only turned to our Service again, that he might crawl back thereby, like a fawning cur to his old place”.’

‘Who would be fool enough to say that?’ Simon demanded vehemently. He had not thought that Zeal was a man to care what others said of him. ‘And if the whole Army said it, what would it matter, so long as you knew it wasn’t true?’

Zeal’s answer, when it came, was hoarse with intolerable pain.

‘But I should
not
know it! If, through your good report, I was to—find the way back, I should never know it wasn’t true!’

‘It may become known in spite of you,’ Simon said, and he
sounded angry, because suddenly he was desperately miserable. ‘Podbury has a tongue in his head.’

‘He only knows me by the name of Ishmael Watts,’ said Zeal, with a touch of grim amusement. ‘Watts was my mother’s name.’

There was no need to ask where Ishmael had come from. “Henceforth I am Ishmael. There is neither vine nor fig-tree for me.” Simon remembered the words, across the months from that spring morning beside the Thames backwater. ‘I may send in a report,’ he said stubbornly.

‘But you won’t, sir, because if you did that, you’d be destroying the last rags of my own respect that are left to me.’

There was a long, heavy silence. Simon was very sure that there was a kink somewhere in this line of thinking, but he could not see where it was. Corporal Relf had got crosswise with his own conscience, and no one, certainly not Simon, had the right to interfere with his own way of straightening the tangle.

‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I shall not send in a report.’

A church clock in the distance chimed the hour of eight, and Zeal-for-the-Lord moved abruptly. ‘I must be on my way back. Watch-setting is my best chance of getting through.’

‘Yes,’ Simon said.

‘If I shouldn’t see you again, sir—’

‘Well?’

‘I never had no son; I never had but one friend, and he’s dead now. I’m glad you’ll know who ’twas as got you the tally of Hopton’s troops, and God willing, returned your scout to you with a whole neck.’

‘So am I!’ They gripped hands, quickly and silently. ‘Good-bye, Zeal,’ Simon said huskily, ‘and—good-bye.’

He looked back once, as he crested the little rise, and saw by the light of the rising moon, which broke silverly through the clouds at that moment, the dark solitary figure of Zeal-for-the-Lord standing motionless beside the flash and flicker of the Jewel Water. He saw a dark arm raised in greeting and good-bye, and flung up his own arm in return. Then he went on downhill, towards the light in Lovacott windows.

WHEN SIMON REACHED
the turn of the chapel path in the darkness before the dawn, no horse was tethered beneath the hawthorn trees, and no dim figure rose to meet him; only the green plover cried over the moorland and the little bitter wind soughed through the rushes. Evidently the messenger had been delayed. He would be, today of all days, Simon thought, as, after kicking his heels for the best part of an hour, he turned back towards Lovacott. Well, when he did arrive he would come up to the house, according to plan; and there was nothing for Simon to do but keep the precious packet on him until the messenger came for it. It was maddening to have the dispatch that would tell so much to his own side delayed here, and getting no nearer to Major Watson; and as he trudged back through the grey mist that was coming up with the dawn, Simon was filled with a fury of impatience to be astride Scarlet and away down the Tiverton road, carrying the thing himself. But once again he remembered the Major’s clipped voice saying, ‘You will not leave your post
whatever
happens.’

If the messenger had not come within three hours, he decided suddenly he would send Tom. He had no right to do so, he knew, but Tom was a loyal man and no fool, and the dispatch must go through somehow. Meanwhile, making the best of a bad job, he set about the early morning work of the farm which was already waking to life.

It was not a fortunate day. Tom wanted him to come and look at Selina, the cart mare, who had gone lame; and there was trouble at the lambing-pens, so that when at last he went in to his breakfast he was carrying a motherless lamb that hung from his hand, a limp and almost lifeless tassel of damp wool. He was very late, and only Mouse was waiting for him beside the table in the hall.

‘Mother’s gone out to see Grannie Pascoe; the soldiers frightened her yesterday, and the poor old thing is ill again,’ she said, bending over the fire, before which a rather meagre dish of fried ham had been keeping hot.

‘I see,’ said Simon. ‘Here’s a lamb for you. Its mother is dead, and it is pretty weakly too.’

She turned and set the smoking dish on the table. ‘Give it to me. There, that’s right. Now get on with your breakfast, before it gets cold or another foraging party arrives. Oh, just reach me that old sack in the corner, first. No, Jillot, you go and ’tend to your own puppies; this is nothing to do with you.’ Mouse had reared more than one motherless lamb, and before Simon had well begun on his breakfast, the little creature was settled in a nest of sacking in the warm chimney corner, and she had disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later she was back, carrying a pipkin of milk in one hand and the old cloam baby-bottle in the other.

‘I didn’t mean to be so long, but Meg says she’s sure we’re all going to be murdered,’ she remarked composedly, as she settled the pipkin to warm in the hot ash. ‘And Polly has just scat the biggest cream-pan, and
will
not stop crying.’

Simon paused with a piece of ham half-way to his mouth, and looked down at her where she sat before the fire, amid the soft grey folds of her outflung skirts. ‘You’re getting awfully like Mother,’ he said. ‘Nothing ever upsets her either. If one of us came home in two pieces, she’d just stick them together with that herbal paste of hers, and heat up some nice nourishing broth.’

Mouse was working on the limp lamb, and she looked up, laughing, but without stopping work. ‘Well, you see, it isn’t any use getting upset, is it?’ she said. And then, very quietly, her lips scarcely moving, ‘You’ve sent it off?’

Simon shook his head. ‘He wasn’t there,’ he muttered. ‘Have to keep it till he comes.’

‘Where is it?’

Simon touched the breast of his doublet, then went on with his breakfast. It was a much smaller breakfast than he had been used to, for the Royalists had taken most of the winter’s supply of
smoked bacon and as many of the hens as they could catch. Food was running short, and no one knew how long the present state of things would last. Simon was just finishing the last scrap when he had a sudden suspicion.

‘Mouse,’ he said, ‘did you and Mother have as much breakfast as me?’

‘We had all we wanted.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly.’

Simon looked at her for a long moment, very searchingly. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll take care we all eat together in future.’

At that instant the lamb began to twitch its untidy sprawl of legs, and Mouse sat back on her heels to watch it. ‘Look, it’s going to be all right,’ she said.

Simon pushed away his plate and sat with chin between fists, watching her. It was warm and very peaceful in the shadowy hall; the flames fluttered on the wide hearth, and Jillot sat among her squirming puppies, thumping her plumy tail from time to time; while from the outside world came the clatter of the maids in the dairy, and the crooning of the doves in the courtyard, whose wheelings and struttings filled the winter sunshine beyond the windows with the passing shadows of many wings. The war seemed a very long way away.