Simon (18 page)

The reading went on just as the day before, but when she had finished and closed the book, Mrs Killigrew did not at once get up to go, as she had done yesterday. Instead, she began to question Simon about his home and his family. It was as though, having nursed him, she felt a little responsible for him, and wanted to make sure that he had a good Puritan background to keep him from slipping into evil ways when he was no longer in her care.

Simon answered her questions, about his father with Lord Leven in the north, about his mother and Mouse, about his schooling, about Lovacott. His answers seemed to satisfy her on the
whole, and she sat talking with him while the time drew on to sunset, and the world was flushing pink.

Presently, as she rose to go, she noticed Simon’s uniform coat lying across the press, where it had been put by Susanna after having the rent in the sleeve mended. She picked it up to examine the mend, shaking her head as she did so, over the brilliant hue. ‘An ungodly colour!’ she said. ‘My mind misgave me when first I heard our troops were being put into scarlet; bedizening themselves like the Men of Wrath, who walk abroad in purple and fine raiment.’

‘It’s a good cheerful colour,’ Simon protested, ‘and it makes it easier to tell friend from foe, when you have all your men dressed alike.’

‘They could be dressed alike in good hodden-grey. Scarlet is no fit colour for God-fearing men, said Mrs Killigrew, firmly.

But Susanna, who had sat ever since she entered the room, with hands folded and eyes downcast as usual, most unexpectedly rallied to Simon’s banner. ‘
I
think it is a very valiant colour—and it’s beautiful.’

‘That, Susanna, is sinful folly,’ said her mother. ‘Valour is of the spirit, and not the raiment; and the only true beauty is the beauty of righteousness. Now go and fetch Cornet Carey’s broth; I must be away to your father.’

Susanna followed her mother from the room; dutifully as ever, with downcast eyes and hands folded before her. In a few minutes she was back, carrying the bowl of broth carefully in both hands. ‘I am to wait for the bowl,’ she said, as she gave it to Simon. Then she drifted across to the window, and stood looking out. ‘You wouldn’t think God would make pink sunsets like this one, if He didn’t like bright colours, would you?’ she said rather wistfully, after a while.

Simon looked up from his broth, and saw something as surprising and as lovely as the moment in a fairy-tale when the bewitched Princess is freed from the spell that bound her. For Susanna, standing in the full glow of the sunset, was no longer the little white waif she had been the moment before. The pink light streaming in upon her flushed her pale skin and made her hair under the prim coif flame red-gold, so that you felt you
could warm your hands at it. But it was not that alone which made the change: it was something inside Susanna, shining out to meet and mingle with the radiance of the winter sunset, that made her suddenly beautiful.

‘The sun is going down like a scarlet lantern behind the trees, and all the sky is singing,’ she said. ‘Look! If I hold the curtain back, you can share it too.’

But Simon did not look at the sunset; he was too busy looking at Susanna, his broth forgotten and dribbling gently over the side of the tilted bowl on to his sheet, seeing for the first time the girl who had run to listen to a strolling fiddler on the Sabbath. Suddenly he knew that he could ask this Susanna the question he had not been able to ask her mother. He did not really hope that it would be the least use asking, but still—‘Susanna,’ he said, dropping the formal ‘Mistress’ for the first time, ‘when the Royalists were here, there was one of them called Hannaford; Amias Hannaford. Do you know the one I mean?’

She thought for a moment, still holding aside the curtain. Then she nodded. ‘Yes, a tall one, with red hair that grew like a horse’s crest. I heard him called Hannaford.’

‘That’s the one. Do—do you know what happened to him?’

Susanna shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘Oh.’ Simon’s voice was full and heavy. He looked down at his dribbling brother bowl, and righted it, very carefully.

‘I do know that the Royalist garrison were given a pass to Exeter,’ said Susanna’s voice above him, ‘because I heard Father and Mother talking about it. Mother said Sir Thomas Fairfax was being too gentle in his dealings with the enemy in these parts; and Father said that was maybe because of the Cornish Levies—and the General having orders to—to pacify the West Country as well as conquer it.’

Simon had the oddest feeling that she was talking on like this to give him time to have his own voice under control. But that was ridiculous, because she couldn’t know about him and Amias; and when he looked up, she was still gazing out of the window, with the same winged and shining look upon her . . . ‘So I expect he’s safely in Exeter by now,’ she was saying.

‘Yes—yes, I expect so.’

Susanna let the curtain fall back into place, and came across to him. ‘Is he a very special friend?’ she asked.

‘M’m.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Susanna, softly. ‘Poor boy! I’m so sorry.’

Simon was not sure whether it was himself or Amias that she meant, or both of them; but her sympathy comforted him, and made him feel less desperately alone.

The sunset light was beginning to fade, and the little room, which had been pink as the inside of a shell, was turning grey. Mrs Killigrew’s step came down the passage, and instantly Susanna folded her hands and cast down her eyes, while Simon began guiltily to sup up the remains of his broth. The footsteps passed without stopping, but neither of them spoke again until Simon gave her back the empty bowl. When he looked up at her, he saw that her little changeling’s face was white and pinched, just as it had been before. But quite suddenly, they had begun to be friends; and they smiled at each other, because they both knew it.

‘I must go now,’ Susanna said, but at the door she hesitated and looked back. ‘You know my name,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know yours—your Christian name, I mean.’

‘It’s Simon.’

‘Can I call you Simon?’

‘Well, of course you can. I call you Susanna.’

‘Yes, but that’s different. You are properly grown up.’

‘I shall be seventeen in February.’

‘And I shall be fourteen on Christmas Eve.’

‘You are just the sort of person who would have a birthday on Christmas Eve,’ Simon told her, gravely, and she evidently took it as a compliment, for she gave him a quick glimmering smile. Then she slipped out like a little grey ghost.

She must have been kept busy at other tasks all evening, for Simon did not see her again until next morning when he was being carried downstairs in a blanket, by two dragoons; and then it was only a glimpse he caught of a pointed, rather piteous face with enormous shadowy eyes, peering down for an instant over the carved balusters. He had no chance to do more than grin
foolishly and make violent signals with his free eyebrow, before a turn in the stairs hid her from view. Then Mrs Killigrew had joined them, and was giving orders to someone about his bundle of equipment.

He was glad to be returning to his own kind, but he had an unhappy sense of leaving something behind, forsaken, and the first faint stirring of a determination to go back for it, one day.

THE NEXT FEW
hours seemed to Simon like whole days and nights of misery. A space had been left for him and his bundle in the back of the wagon, and lying there on a pile of old sacks, between the footboard and the piled salt-beef casks with which the wagon was loaded, he was jolted along the Crediton road. More snow had fallen since the night of the assault; and the glimpses he caught of it when the rear apron of the tilt flapped aside, snow piled in drifts along the hedges and beaten into icy ruts and hummocks in the roadway, explained why the speed of the wagon so often dropped from a walking pace to that of a crawling baby. The wagon heaved and jolted through the ruts, swaying like a ship in a gale, so that Simon felt more sick and dizzy with every mile that spooled out behind the wheels, and his wounded head began to burn and throb as if there was a
forge fire inside it, and somebody was playing the bellows. Once, the wagoner stopped at a wayside tavern for a drop of something to keep out the cold; and sent his boy back to see if Simon was all right and if he would take a drop of anything likewise. But by that time Simon was feeling too wretched to want anything, save to be left alone; and presently the wagoner returned to his place, and Simon heard him cracking his whip and shouting to his team. Slowly, they lumbered forward again.

Gradually, he sank into a sort of doze, in which the noises all around him, the starting and squeaking of the timbers, the ceaseless flapping of the tilt, the rumbling of wheels and clip-clop of horses hooves on the frozen snow, the shouts of the wagoner and his boy, all blended together into an uneasy dream that went on, and on, and on.

But at last he found that the wagon had stopped; and somebody let down the foot-board and said, ‘Here ’e be, Corporal, so safe as a bagged gamecock.’

He opened his eyes, and saw several men who he judged by their tawny coats to belong to the Artillery Escort, then shut them again very tight, because the world was swimming unpleasantly.

‘Looks in pretty poor fettle to me,’ said another voice; and a third retorted, ‘So’d you be, if you’d just done a day’s trip in a ’orrible equipage like that, with yer ’ead busted open. Take his feet and don’t stand there gabbing.’

Simon felt himself lifted out. He had a confused idea that he was being carried indoors, for the bitter cleanness of the open air had changed to a smelly cold fug, and the footsteps of the men carrying him sounded hollow, as though they were in a big building. Then he was set down on what felt like straw, and somebody was unwinding his blankets and putting him to bed as though he had been a baby; someone with large hard hands and a caressing voice, who called him her lamb, her poor honey. He opened one eye cautiously, and found that it was Mother Trimble, the wife of one of the sergeants. Mother Trimble was a veteran or many battles, for she had followed her man through the Swedish Campaigns, and now she was one of the oldest and most respected of the camp-followers, and a well-known figure throughout the
Army. She was an immensely fat woman, and very dirty, but love flowed from her towards anything that was sick or sorry, and the people she tended generally thought ever afterwards that she was beautiful.

‘Hullo, Mother Trimble,’ he mumbled. ‘Nice to see you again.’

Mother Trimble beamed at him, her begrimed face lit with a gigantic tenderness. ‘Hark to the pretty dear,’ said she. ‘Do ’ee go to sleep now, my lamb. Sleep be what you needs, sure-ly.’

And Simon obediently went to sleep.

Space was limited in Crediton, for by this time upwards of half the New Model Army was centred in or around the town, and every house, every barn and church and market-hall was bulging with quartered men. There were a fair number of wounded, for although there had been no large-scale action since the fall of Tiverton, the scattered fighting had been constant, as one by one the great houses around Exeter were taken, and the City more closely encircled. And besides those of the New Model, there were a good many wounded Royalist prisoners. Fever was still rife in the Army too, and sick and wounded, Royalist and Parliamentarian alike, had been housed in the grouped barns and outhouses of a couple of farms close behind the church. It was in one of these barns that Simon found himself when he awoke.

He was wrapped in blankets and lying on a straw pallet, and when he turned his head carefully he could see other blanket-wrapped figures lying side by side all down the long building which reminded him of the nave of a church. It was night time, and he saw them faintly, by the light of a lantern a long way off, which was moving slowly nearer, sometimes stopping by one of the figures, and then advancing again. A soldier was carrying the lantern. Simon caught the gleam of scarlet; and there was another man beside him, one of the surgeons making his night rounds. He lay watching, until the yellow light flooded into his eyes, and the surgeon was bending over him.

‘When was he brought in?’ asked the surgeon of a frowsy woman who appeared out of the shadows.

‘This afternoon as ever was, your honour,’ said she. ‘And so pale as a larded fowl when they carried him in; give me quite a turn it did, and me with my weak inside—’

‘Yes, never mind that; has his head been seen to?’

Nobody, including Simon, seemed to know the answer to this, until a voice with a strong Cockney accent informed them sleepily from the next pallet, ‘Muvver Trimble cast ’er peepers over it, s’arternoon.’

‘Might as well leave it alone, then,’ said the surgeon. ‘All right, carry on, Corporal.’ The lantern moved on to the owner of the Cockney voice, and almost at once, Simon was asleep once more.

It was towards evening of the next day when Lieutenant Colebourne appeared in the entrance of the great barn, where the double doors were always kept ajar, partly to let in a little air and partly because it was too much trouble to keep on opening and shutting them. He looked along the rows of pallets, then spoke to a Sergeant of Fortescue’s, who was lounging against one of the roof-trees with a wounded foot stuck straight out in front of him. The man turned and pointed to where Simon lay, and Barnaby came swaggering down the barn to join him.

Simon, who had been watching a beetle in the straw of his neighbour’s bed, looked up to see his visitor standing over him, and let out a pleased croak.

Barnaby folded up beside him, and slid into a comfortable position with his knees under his chin. ‘Been beating up a couple of deserters. Not ours, thanks be! So here I am,’ he said. ‘How’s the old cock-loft?’

‘It’s mending,’ Simon told him. ‘But it still feels twice its usual size.’

‘Aren’t you a pest!’ remarked Barnaby amiably. ‘Now here am I left without a cornet until you get it mended.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Yes, so you ought to be. How long are they going to keep you in this flea-pit?’