Simon (7 page)

Simon knotted off the makeshift bandage and, getting up, crossed to the doorway and made his way round to the corner of the smithy, from which he could get a clear view of the church. He had been longer than he knew, tending the hurt of the man behind him, and the running fight had become a grim and desperate struggle for the churchyard. The King’s men seemed everywhere, pressing in from all sides against the churchyard wall, behind which the defenders, some afoot, some still on horseback, were battling stubbornly for the makeshift breastwork. Some of the horses had been tethered among the dark yew trees close in to the church, and stood quiet, too spent to resent the uproar all around them. From the bell-slits in the tower an occasional crack and a puff of blue smoke, whipped away by the September wind, told where a marksman was at work; but on both sides the shooting was dying down, mainly, Simon guessed, from lack of powder and ball; and it seemed that the fight was going to be finished hand-to-hand with the sword.

All this he shouted back as well as he was able to the wounded man; and a short while later he caught his breath in a gasp of excitement, as, without any warning, the fight began to break up once more. He could not see what had happened, but suddenly the Royalists round the gate swayed back. They rallied, pressing fiercely in once more, and once more gave ground. A hoarse cheer went up from the churchyard, and the defenders hurled themselves against the weakened place in the attack. The grey light glinted on many leaping blades; and Simon found himself yelling, he didn’t know what—and beside him, someone else was yelling too. He glanced round and saw the young officer clinging to the rough stone wall, and rocking on his feet. ‘Done it! Done it, by the Lord Harry!’

In other places now, all round the churchyard, the Royalists were being forced back; and the men of Essex’s Horse were swinging into the saddle once more. For a few wild minutes of charge and counter-charge, victory seemed to hang in the balance;
then another yell burst from Simon’s companion. ‘They’re running! Praise be! They’re finished!’

It was quite true. Hurled back by a grim, exultant wave from the churchyard, the King’s troops were falling back upon each other, streaming away in confusion; and after them poured the men of Essex’s army, cheering as they spurred their weary horses.

The time that followed seemed to Simon a wild dream of men and mud and horses, and a score of separate skirmishes wheeling and whirling through the village and across the fields; and a turmoil that grew fainter and fainter in the distance, until it was gone. He found that his companion was wringing him violently by the hand, and then sitting down suddenly on a convenient baulk of timber, and sliding quietly from it to the ground in a dead faint.

By the time Simon, with the smith’s help, had contrived to bring him round again, the whole thing was over and the Parliamentary troops beginning to gather once more round the church. Like gnats in the first sunshine after a storm, the villagers were appearing from their cottages, and the young officer staggered to his feet and demanded his steel cap, which still lay where it had fallen, against the smithy wall. Simon brought it, and he clapped it on with a flourish, and set out to rejoin his comrades, without more ado. ‘Though I do say I’m a bit weakly,’ he said cheerfully, zigzagging like a snipe in the general direction of the church.

Simon grabbed him from the edge of a headlong fall, and put a steadying arm round him. ‘Well, you’ve had a good crack on the head,’ he said, ‘and you’ll get another if you go falling over your feet like that.’ Together they crossed the open ground, where men and horses lay crumpled on the hummocky turf or among the Good-bye Summer in little ruined gardens.

‘Up there, towards the door—that’s Colonel Ireton,’ directed the other, as they reached the church, and Simon obeyed.

There were a good many wounded already in the churchyard, and others being brought in by their comrades, and nobody took any particular notice of them as they made their way up the rough path. A knot of officers were standing in the west door of the church, talking earnestly together, and Simon’s fugitive staggered clear of his arm and joined them. A ruddy hawk-nosed man
swung round to him, exclaiming, ‘Colebourne! I imagined you were dead.’

‘No, sir. Reporting back for duty,’ grinned the other, doffing his steel cap in salute.

Colonel Ireton nodded, and turned away to give some order to a grizzled corporal, while the young officer sat down thankfully on a tombstone, and called to a passing trooper, ‘Jenks, have you seen anything of my horse?’

‘Tethered round the north side of the church, sir,’ said Trooper Jenks; and then, his eye falling on Simon: ‘Hi, you! Come and give a hand here.’

It was falling dusk by now, and with the food and clean rags which the Colonel had ordered to be brought from the cottages, some of the villagers were bringing up lanterns to light the tending of the wounded, who had mostly been gathered in the church. The lights came jiggiting up between the tombstones and the dark yew trees, turning the scarlet yew berries to strung jewels, making the soft rain shine as it fell, and filling the church, when they reached it, with a golden radiance that seemed more fitted to a festival than to the grim business in hand. Simon worked hard, that evening, among the wounded of both armies, while outside the church, and at the Sanctuary door and the windows, the troopers stood with drawn swords, in grim readiness for an attack. But no attack came. Evidently Sir Francis Storrington’s men had had enough for one night. The food had been issued and eaten, and most of the wounds tended, and presently, as Simon knelt in the porch, steadying someone’s forearm while somebody else got the bullet out, he realized that the hawk-nosed officer was standing by, in earnest talk with a younger man.

‘If we can reach Barnstaple, we can get rations and fresh horses, or at least bait these, Richard.’

The other shrugged. ‘And get away over Exmoor afterwards. Yes, but how in the Lord’s name are we to get to Barnstaple?’

Colonel Ireton swung round to the knot of villagers who yet hung about the church door. ‘Is there any man here able and willing to act as our guide to Barnstaple?’

There was no answer, and after a few moments he spoke again.
‘It is needful that we should reach Barnstaple before down. Do any of you know the way, or know anyone who
does
?’

A long silence, and then someone suggested, helpfully, ‘’Twould be easy enough, maister, but the road goes through Torrington, and Torrington be in the Cavaliers’ hands, do ’ee see?’

‘I know that, you fool!’ Colonel Ireton’s voice was biting. ‘It is precisely because Torrington is in enemy hands, that I need a guide for the cross-country journey.’

Another silence. The village people seldom travelled more than a few miles from their own homes; Torrington was their market town, and Barnstaple quite beyond their ken. Then Simon, having finished his task, rose slowly. He knew the Barnstaple road, since he had travelled it several times when his father was in the garrison, and when the direct road from Heronscombe was closed by spring floods; and with Amias in the old days he had explored every mile of the country round Torrington. He said, ‘I’ll take you. We can fetch a half-circle round Torrington, and join the ridge road farther on.’

Colonel Ireton looked him up and down in the lantern-light. ‘You are sure of the way? We cannot afford to be led into a bog.’

‘I know the way well, sir,’ Simon said. He saw that the soldier was searching his face to make sure that he was trust-worthy, and he returned the look, levelly. ‘I’ll not lead you into a bog—or a trap.’ By way of giving some proof of good faith, he added, ‘My father served in the Barnstaple garrison until the capitulation. He’s with Lord Leven and the Covenanters now.’

‘All right,’ said Colonel Ireton abruptly. ‘We’ll trust you.’

‘I’ll go and fetch my horse from the smithy, sir.’

The other gave his quick pecking nod, and turned to issue orders for the bestowing of such of the wounded as must be left behind, while Simon made his way back to the smithy. There was no sign of the smith, but Scarlet was still secured to the ring in the wall, and greeted him with a shrill whinny when he appeared in the doorway. The horse was still shivering and sweating, his ears pricked and the whites of his eyes showing, and
Simon talked to him, drawing one hand again and again down his nose while with the other he freed the headstall.

A few minutes later he was back in the churchyard once more, leading Scarlet with him, and talking to him still, softly and encouragingly.

The troopers were already swinging into their saddles; the order to march was given, and before the dusk had quite yielded to the friendly darkness, Simon found himself riding beside Colonel Ireton, at their head, as they defiled out through the churchyard gate and down the village street, where faces dim-seen in the light of open doorways strained to watch them go by. There were close on six hundred men behind him, and it was his responsibility to get them safely to Barnstaple before dawn, and as he settled his feet in his stirrups and bent his head into the soft rain, he was filled with a queer quick excitement.

Presently the villagers of Langtree roused from their sleep to hear horses trotting through the dark. Later, a miller woke to hear the splashing of a multitude through the ford below his mill. He went to the window, but could see nothing for the darkness and the driving rain, and after he had heard the last horse away down the Weare Giffard road he went grumbling back to bed.

Simon had been worried about Weare Giffard, for the Hall was a Royalist stronghold, and a brush with the troops there might bring reinforcements from Torrington down upon them; but there was no possible way of avoiding the village. He had explained this to Colonel Ireton, who replied that since there was no help for it, the risk must be taken. But the deep mud muffled their hoofbeats, and riding on the verges of the lane, and the soft ground between the cottages and the river, they got through safely, and took to the steep coombs beyond.

In more than one lonely farm, strung in a wide curve about Torrington, people woke and listened anxiously before going to sleep again, and in the morning pointed out to each other the tracks and drove-roads churned to a quagmire by the passing of many horses.

It was a hard ride for men who were already exhausted, and many of them wounded besides; but in the first sodden cobweb light of dawn, Simon brought his scarecrow army over the brow
of the last hill and down towards the pale glint of the river and the thickly manned breastworks on Barnstaple Bridge.

‘There’s Barnstaple,’ he said, in a kind of weary croak. ‘I think I’d best be getting home now, sir,’ for he had suddenly remembered that his mother might be worried about him.

‘You’ve done a good night’s work, lad,’ Colonel Ireton said, and put his hand into the pocket under the skirt of his buff coat. Then he hesitated, looked at Simon in the growing light, and changing his mind, took it out empty. ‘When next you write to your father in Lord Leven’s army, tell him that you helped to save Essex’s Bodyguard from being wiped out.’

They shook hands, and Simon, wheeling his horse clear of the column, sat to watch them go by, looming up in the grey light, mired leg-weary horses, and men blind with fatigue, who looked as if they kept in the saddle more by instinct than any power of their own. One or two of them turned their heads to glance at him in passing; the rest were too exhausted even for that.

If he had been a few months older, Simon thought, he might have been one of them.

Almost at the rear of the column, the young officer he had tended in the smithy looked round as he passed, and made him a wide cheerful gesture of farewell; but he was rocking in the saddle. Simon waved back. He sat watching until the town barriers had been dragged aside and the last rider had straggled through; then he turned Scarlet’s weary head towards home.

A few days later Barnstaple was in Royalist hands again, after a five-day siege by Lord Goring. But long before that, Colonel Ireton and his tattered squadrons had got safely away over Exmoor, to rejoin the forces of Parliament.

TOWARDS EVENING OF
a day some months later, Simon came riding into the Royal town of Windsor, where the great New Model Army was being built. While the last stragglers from Lostwithiel were yet coming in, old Sir William Waller had warned the Committee of Both Kingdoms. ‘Sirs, I tell you fairly that unless you form a properly unified army, you will not win this war,’ and the Committee had at last, now that it was almost too late, taken his advice. The army that he had demanded was being formed, and Simon had come to join it. More than a week had passed since, having turned sixteen, he had said good-bye to his family and Lovacott and set out, but he had ridden Scarlet all the way, and that had meant a slower journey than if he had ridden post. However, here he was, with a pair of long horse-pistols in his holsters that had been a parting gift from his mother—flint-lock pistols, the very latest thing—and he and the new Model Army were beginning together. The
thought made him sit very upright in his saddle and look about him with bright, eager eyes.

It was yet early in February, and the poplars and elms of the river-meadows were bare, while the flickering water of the Thames reflected back a thin sunshine that had no warmth in it; but already the crimson flush of the willows told of rising sap, and there was that faint quickening in the air which is the first sign of spring while it is still a long way off. And high above the bare trees and the steep russet roofs of the town rose the great round Keep of Windsor Castle, grey, and somehow triumphant as a fanfare of trumpets, looking as though it had not been built by hands, but had grown out of the very stuff of England.

Simon had been watching the Keep ever since it first came in sight, but as he turned into the narrow street, it was hidden from his sight by the crowding roofs and overhanging upper storeys of the houses. Not that he would have had leisure for looking at it now, anyway, when all his attention must be given to getting Scarlet safely through the crowds that thronged and jostled up and down the crooked ways. Country folk and townsfolk, rich merchants in well-cut doublets, and beggars showing their sores in the kennel, a street-corner preacher in black gown and Geneva bands, a vendor with caged linnets for sale, a group of laughing girls with market-baskets on their arms; and everywhere, soldiers and yet more soldiers. Simon looked at them all, but particularly at the soldiers, because soon he would be one of them.