Horse and rider were both tired, but Scarlet pricked his ears and started forward to the sudden glorious memory of the home stable, and Simon lifted his head and gazed about him hungrily. The muddied snow still lay drifted along the hedge-bottom, but already the withies were flushed with rising sap. Salutation was down to winter wheat, and as Scarlet’s hoof-beats disturbed them, a flock of green plover rose from the bare plough-land, their pied wings pulsing and flickering against the dun woods beyond. Then the track rounded the spinney where the white owl lived, and Simon reined back an instant by the gate and looked across the home paddock to the warm and welcoming huddle of the house and outbuildings. Always, in the old days, he had paused like this when he arrived back from school, for his first glimpse of home. But this time surely there was something different about the steep lift of the orchard beyond; a bareness about the crest where the old cider trees had always stood against the sky.
However, he had no time to notice what the difference was; scarcely time to notice that it was there at all; for at that instant Tom appeared from among the farm buildings, carrying a huge forkful of hay. He halted at sight of the rider in the lane, and then dropped the fork and shot back towards the house. ‘Missis!’ Simon could hear him roaring. ‘Maister Simon’s back! ’Tis Maister Simon, my dear souls!’
‘We’re home, Scarlet!’ Simon said, drawing a hand down the horse’s neck, and urging him on up the lane, the difference in the orchard quite forgotten. ‘We’re home again, old lad.’
Late that night three very contented people were still sitting round the fire in the parlour, where the firelight was reflected dancingly in the sheeny depth of the panelling, and the wintry darkness was shut out by drawn curtains of faded damask that seemed to fold the little room in warmth and shelter as though they had been wings folded close around it.
All the excitement of home-coming, the joyful astonishment and the breathless questions and answers, the supper with Mrs Carey’s storeroom raided in honour of the occasion, were over. There had been so much to say, so many things to tell, after almost a year of being apart; but for the moment they had talked themselves out, and now they were sitting quiet, with the dogs dozing at their feet.
Then Mouse, who was sitting on her heels before the fire, with one of Jillot’s latest puppies asleep in her lap, looked up at Simon, and sighed. ‘I wish you were in uniform,’ she said. ‘We heard that the soldiers of the New Model Army all wear scarlet—I should like to see you in scarlet, with your sword.’
‘Why, a scarlet coat, or a buff one for that matter, would be likely to land one in trouble, in these parts nowadays.’
Mouse’s eyes suddenly grew round and solemn. ‘Oh, Simon, is it safe for you here? I hadn’t thought—’
‘Safe as houses,’ Simon reassured her. ‘Should I have been sent home on sick leave if it wasn’t safe, you goose? The village won’t talk, and if we should get Royalists round the place, how are they to know I didn’t cut my head open falling off a haystack?’
‘On to the edge of a scythe,’ added his sister, with a sudden glint of laughter in her eyes that had been so startled the moment before. ‘Yes, I see.’
‘This Mistress Killigrew who tended you when you were wounded,’ said his mother, looking up from the ancient damask cloth she was mending, ‘what is she like?’
Simon considered. ‘She’s a good woman,’ he said at last. ‘But not comfortable. Now, you are comfortable as well as good, Mother; it makes a lot of difference.’
Mrs Carey smiled at him fondly. ‘At all events, she seems to have been very kind to you. I shall write and thank her, when there’s any likelihood of a letter getting through again.’
‘Umm,’ said Simon, and smiled back at her. He leaned down to put some more wood on the fire; then paused, looking at the lichened log in his hand. ‘Hullo, have we had a tree blown down?’
There was a little silence, then Mrs Carey said, ‘Not blown, my dear—cut. A party of Lord Goring’s troopers passed this way in the early winter.’
Simon felt a small chill shock, and the sense of Sanctuary faded a little from the firelit room, and he heard the strident call of a hunting owl in the bitter darkness outside. ‘Have they cut down much of the orchard? The Old Warden?’
‘No, only the cider trees at the top. They were ordered on before they had time to start on the rest.’
‘And the Spinney close at hand, with enough dead wood in it to cook for an army after the autumn gales,’ said Mouse, in a small grim voice, playing with the puppy’s ears so hard that it woke and whimpered. ‘Well, the green wood made them very poor fires; that’s one consolation. Even now we can only burn what was left a bit at a time, when the fire is hot.’
‘Have you had much trouble, these past months?’ Simon asked.
Mrs Carey was beginning another darn. ‘Not really. A few sheep stolen, and the granary fired by deserters—but we managed to put that out—and the apple trees. There are scars; but I doubt if you’ll find many houses quite unscathed that lie in the path of the war.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Simon said slowly. He looked at the log in his hand, with its delicate tracery of grey-green lichen; thinking of the autumn cider-making, and the beauty of white blossom in the springtime, that would not come again. It seemed so wanton, so stupid. He put the log gently on the fire, and watched it flower for the last time into petals of saffron flame that scented all the room with aromatic sweetness.
XIV
Of Cocks and Fiddles
ON THE SURFACE, the next few weeks were very peaceful ones for Simon. There was plenty of work for him on the demesne, with the lambing season in full swing, and the farm men away at the war, and old Diggory, who had been laid up with the rheumatics most of the winter, still in bed. And he worked hard, beside Tom, and came in tired at nights, with a deep quiet tiredness, and slept in his chair after supper, with weary legs stretched to the fire.
But he never for an instant felt that he had come home. He was no more than a passage-hawk: here under orders, to carry out a certain task; and it was as though Lovacott, grown wise with centuries of being lived in and loved, knew it, and did not try to claim him. Presently, when the war was over, he could come home, knowing that he had earned his heritage; and Lovacott would take him back. But that was not yet.
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.’