‘Simon,’ she said after a few moments, ‘what is Susanna Killigrew like? You’ve never really told us. Is she good but not comfortable, like her mother?’
‘No,’ Simon said, ‘she’s not a bit like her mother.’
‘Then what is she like?’
Simon cudgelled his brain. He really wanted to answer Mouse’s question, but he was no hand at describing people.
‘She’s a little pale wispy thing,’ he said at last. ‘But just once, she seemed as if—as if she had lit all her candles; and then she was quite different.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do better than that. But I think you’d like her. Maybe if Mother strikes up a friendship with her mother, you’ll be able to see for yourself one day—when the war is over.’
‘When the war is over,’ echoed Mouse; and she sighed. ‘Everything is always “When the war is over”, and it has such a far-off sound, like “when my ship comes home”.’ She was still holding milky fingers to the lamb’s muzzle as she spoke, and suddenly it sneezed; its sprawling legs woke into vague scramblings, and it began to suck. ‘There!’ she said. ‘That’s the way. Why couldn’t you have done that before, silly-billy?’ She dipped her fingers in the milk once more, and gave them to the lamb, then put the nozzle of the baby-bottle into its small sucking mouth. The lamb sprawled forward, half standing; its tail began to wag.
She was still feeding it a few minutes later, and Simon was still watching the two of them, when a sudden turmoil arose in the courtyard: Ship the cattle-dog baying his head off, Diggory’s voice upraised in furious protest, and a heavy and confused trampling. The doves burst upward on drumming indignant wings. Simon got up quickly, and as he did so, Mouse set the lamb back in its nest of sacking, and rose quietly beside him, shaking out her grey skirts. Their eyes met for an instant. Another Royalist foraging party! Well, there had been plenty such in the last few days, and there was little more that they could take. Only this time there was no chance for Simon to avoid them, as he had mostly contrived to do before; no time to gain the stairs; and he felt the dispatch in the breast of his doublet burning a hole through the cloth. Still, there was no reason why they should suspect him, and certainly none why they should search him. With some show of annoyance at being disturbed at his breakfast, he swung round to the door, just as it burst open and several men crowded into the hall.
Then Jillot, who had been sitting on watchful guard among her puppies, growling softly in her throat, suddenly let out a pleased whine and abandoning her family went squirming and waggling forward to greet the tatterdemalion officer at their head.
The officer was Amias.
Amias, gaunt as a scarecrow and almost as ragged, with bruise-coloured shadows under his eyes that were partly weariness and partly dirt. The startled unbelief broke over Simon like a wave, and ebbed away, leaving a cold quiet hopelessness behind it. No use putting up any sort of pretence, then. He must find means to slip the dispatch to Mouse before they took him; that was all.
Then something clicked in his brain, and he saw the look in Amias’s eyes. It had been as startled as his own in that first instant, but now it had changed to a clear hard warning.
And at the same moment, out of the tail of his eye, he saw Mouse gather her wide grey skirts and move forward. ‘I beg your forgiveness that no one opened the door to you,’ she said. ‘We did not hear you knock.’
Amias turned to her, pulling off his battered beaver hat.
‘Touché,’ he said quickly. ‘I apologize. The war has made us forget our manners, Mistress Mouse. Your father is—away from home?’
‘My father is with Lord Leven’s Army,’ said Mouse steadily. ‘And my mother is out. Unless you wish to wait for her return, will you tell me what it is that you want?—I suppose cattle and fodder, but there is not much left for the late-comers. We have been overrun with foraging parties, these last few days.’
‘Alas, Mistress Mouse, even your enemies must eat now and then. But we are a search-party, not a foraging party.’
Simon, standing by like an onlooker at a play, was warned by some instinct to leave the acting to the other two, and take his cue from them, when the time came.
‘Oh?’ Mouse said. ‘You want to search for something, or someone, here?’
‘For a Parliament spy who escaped from his guard in Torrington, two days ago; and for one of our own men who is in league with him. We have orders to search all houses of known Parliament sympathies in these parts.’
‘You won’t find them here,’ Mouse said. ‘But we can’t stop you pulling the house about our ears if you want to. Lovacott has Parliament sympathies.’
All this while the men of the search-party had been staring about them and muttering among themselves; and at this moment the sergeant, a bearded giant with a sullen honest face and uncomfortably keen eyes, who had been staring at Simon with a puzzled frown, turned and whispered something to his officer. Simon could only guess what it was, but Mouse, who was nearer, rounded on him, saying very clearly, ‘That is my brother. He is—’ she made a quick gesture touching her forehead, ‘not quite ’zactly.’
‘As mazed as ever?’ asked Amias, with deep sympathy.
Simon had his cue now, and he was not sure whether he most wanted to laugh or to shake Mouse until her teeth rattled. Instead, he sat down on his heels, seeming to lose interest in the whole proceedings, and picking up the nearly empty baby-bottle, began feeding the already full lamb. It seemed somehow to fit in with the part allotted to him, but he hoped the lamb would not burst.
But the sergeant was not yet convinced. ‘He looks sensible enough to me,’ he growled, ‘and he’s had a woundy great gash on his head, what’s more! ’Twouldn’t surprise me if he was the knave we’re looking for.’
‘Be quiet, you numskull,’ said Amias sharply. ‘I’ve known him all my life. He’s as mazed as a March hare.’
‘Well, if you says so, sir, far be it for me to say contrariwise, but a gashed head be a gashed head, and apt to mean a cove’s been fighting, and—’
‘My brother fell off a hayrick just before Christmas, and cut his head on the edge of a scythe,’ Mouse said. ‘I trust that you are satisfied.’
‘Well it looks to me a deal more like somebody laid it open wi’ a musket stock,’ began the other stubbornly. ‘I seen a many heads laid open wi’ a musket stock in my time, and—’
‘We are perfectly satisfied,’ Amias said, with a quelling look at his sergeant. ‘All right, take over, sergeant. Search the house and outbuildings. I shall remain here in the hall.’ He turned the quelling look on to his men. ‘And remember, I said search, not loot and break up. If I hear the slightest sound of wanton damage, you’re for it, all of you. Understand?’
A mutter of agreement came from the men as they split up. Several of them looked thoroughly ill-contented, but Simon could not help noticing that Amias seemed to have his disreputable band under better control than most of the King’s troops he had seen lately. Mouse had drawn back to the hearth again, and stood there, very straight in her grey gown, her head up and a queer brightness in her eyes. Amias crossed to the table and perched on it, swinging one dusty foot and looking down at her.
‘Mistress Mouse,’ he said soulfully, ‘pray believe me to be truly desolated that we should meet now as foes, when we have so often met in the past as friends.’
‘I am sorry too,’ said Mouse, with no softening in her voice.
But Simon, glancing up, could have sworn that the brightness in her eyes was laughter. Suddenly it dawned on him that they were enjoying themselves hugely, those two, like a pair of well-matched fencers playing a bout with unbuttoned foils. That Amias should find pleasure in playing with danger did not surprise him in the least; but Mouse was a different matter. It just showed how little you really knew of people.
‘May I go to the maids? They will be frightened.’ Mouse was saying, as a scared squealing sounded from the kitchen quarters.
Amias shook his head. ‘I regret
infinitely; but you and your brother must remain here, and the maids in the kitchen. Only my men may move about the house at the moment. You will see that there is a guard on the doors.’
Simon caught the warning note in his voice, and out of the tail of his eye saw the lounging soldier in the house-place doorway.
‘So I see,’ said Mouse coldly. ‘We are your prisoners, it seems.’ Then she turned to Simon, saying in a very sweet and gentle tone, ‘Simon, you have fed that lamb enough. Put it back in its nest, dear, before it is sick.’
Simon obediently dumped the sprawling lamb back on to its sacking, from which it instantly staggered forth again, bleating shrilly. He let it go, and sat idly on his heels, watching it as it made unsteadily for Jillot, who had returned to her puppies under the table. Amias had suddenly bent sidewise and picked up the letter which Mrs Carey had left for the carrier.
‘Cock and Pie! What a trick of chance!’ said Amias, laughing. ‘I was quartered in Okeham Paine, last autumn.’
There was an instant’s silence, which seemed very long to Simon, who was wishing desperately that he had told Mouse about his encounter with Amias.
Then Mouse said, ‘Were you? It is not really such a trick of chance; Mistress Killigrew is a very old friend of my mother’s.’
Amias sniffed, the old insulting sniff, and laid the packet down. ‘So? Well, everyone to their own choice of friends. But a most sour good woman. I was glad to be out of her house.’
‘How did you come to leave it?’ inquired Mouse, with a gleam in her eye.
‘You know, you should be called Mistress Spit-cat, instead of Mistress Mouse,’ drawled Amias. ‘We left with colours flying, and the Psalm-smiters in possession behind us, if you want to know. And in recognition of the noble defence we put up we were provided with a pass into Exeter, so that we could be besieged in comfort, with the rest of the Garrison.’
‘You don’t seem to be besieged?’ Mouse pointed out.
‘No. The prospect did not appeal to us. We took a vote on it, and made tracks across the Moor to join the Prince at Tavistock.’
It was said to Mouse, but Simon knew that the message was for himself. Amias wanted to tell him how he came to be with Hopton’s force, and what had happened since their last meeting; and this was his only way of doing it. The sentry on the door was craning his neck after a comrade in the courtyard, and for the moment no one was watching them; and Simon looked up full into the other’s face. Amias’s eyes were dancing, as he had expected them to be, but there was a kind of bitter brightness in them too; and he realized for the first time what it must be like to serve in a beaten Army, to belong heart and soul to a lost cause. For one long moment their gaze met, and Simon knew that the old friendship was strong as ever it had been, perhaps stronger.
Then Amias pushed off from his perch on the table, and, turning, crossed to the door. He did not come back to the two before the hearth, but stayed there in the doorway until his men had returned from their fruitless search with a grudging ‘Nothing to report, sir,’ from the sergeant. Then he bowed with a flourish to Mouse, clapped his battered beaver hat very much on the back of his head, and marched his band of brigands away.
Simon got up. He stood quiet in the chimney corner, hearing their voices and the ragged tramp of feet across the courtyard. It passed out through the gatehouse, and died away. The doves were settling again already. Only Ship had started baying once more, and the shrill scared chittering of Meg and Polly in the dairy went on—and on.
Then Mouse went down the hall with a whisk and rustle of skirts, and disappeared through the door into the kitchen quarters; and the frightened voices rose to a clamour and then grew quiet. Simon still stood in the chimney corner, quite unmoving, until, realizing that he still held the baby-bottle, he set it down on the table, arranging it with great care exactly half-way between the loaf and his mother’s letter, and crossing to the window, stood looking out into the wintry garden.
Then Mouse came back. ‘That was—queer, wasn’t it, Simon,’ she said, coming to join him.
‘Ye—es.’ He swung round from the window, and put both hands on her shoulders. ‘What do you mean by telling that crew I wasn’t quite ’zactly?’ he demanded.
‘Well, it seemed the best thing to do. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it, Simon, but you weren’t being very helpful, and I couldn’t think of anything else. I was rather surprised, you see.’
‘You didn’t show it. Anyhow, thanks, Mouse.’
Mouse showed the unexpected dimple, just as she had been used to do when she was small, and anything she did found favour with the two boys. ‘Do you know where they are, the men they were looking for?’ she said.
‘I can’t tell you that, Mouse.’
‘Not here, anywhere?’
‘No, not here.’
‘I was dreadfully afraid they might be.’
‘You didn’t show that either,’ Simon said.
The dimple deepened, if that were possible, but she only said, after a few moments, ‘You never told me that Amias was in the Okeham Paine garrison when you took the house.’
‘Didn’t I? I must have forgotten,’ Simon said. He smiled at her, and turned back to the window. The night encounter at Okeham Paine did not matter any more! Suddenly he noticed that the buds were swelling on the quince tree, and the brown bed under the window jubilant with snowdrops. Suddenly, from beyond the war-scarred orchard, the first curlew of the year was calling. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘The curlews are coming up from the Estuary.’
A few moments later Tom stuck his head round the house-place door. ‘There’s a chap outside says a’ has a message for ’ee, ’bout a litter of pigs,’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Proper disreputable character, if you asks me, and so I telled ’en, but a’ says there’s many a good cock come out of a tattered bag, and so I was to tell ’ee.’
Simon had only just finished with the man about the litter of pigs, when the carrier arrived. Mouse gave him Mrs Carey’s letter, took in various packages he had brought, and when he was gone, returned to Simon, holding something in triumph.
‘Look! This is one of those days when everything happens at once. Here’s a letter from Father.’
There had been no word from Simon’s father for a long time, and the arrival of his letter now seemed to set the crown on this oddly joyous morning. They put it on the table, and waited about, to make sure their mother got it the moment she returned and that they themselves were present to hear what was in it.
They had not long to wait before she came in, slipping the grey cloak from her shoulders, and glancing about her.
‘Meg says the King’s men have been ransacking the house,’ she said, a little wearily. ‘What have they taken this time?’
‘Nothing this time,’ Simon told her. ‘They were hunting somebody, but with any luck he’s away by now. Look, Mother, here’s a letter from Father at last.’
Mrs Carey cast her cloak on the side chest, and went quickly to pick up the long-hoped-for packet. Her face had grown soft and sparkling as she broke the seal and opened the crackling sheet. Then quite suddenly the sparkle was gone; she gave a little cry, and put one hand on a chair back as though to steady herself.
Simon had rounded the table to her in an instant. ‘What’s wrong, Mother?’
She looked up, her face grown small and pinched. ‘Father—he’s been wounded.’
‘Badly?’ Simon asked, but he knew it must be badly, or his mother would not look like that.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Carey. ‘Yes.’ She looked from Simon’s anxious face to Mouse’s, then down again at the letter in her hand and began to read aloud, quite steadily. “I would have written before but that I have been laid by, nursing sundry wounds gained when my Troop was ambushed on patrol some three weeks ago. A small affair, but ’twas well done. The Royalists mined a bridge by which we were to pass, and fired the charges when our foremost Horse were actually upon it, myself included. A brilliant piece of timing. We be
at them off, though hardly, and ourselves suffered fewer losses than might be expected: five men killed and a round dozen wounded. The affair has cost me a leg. My left. That leg was always unlucky—I broke it climbing after an eyas when I was a boy. Hector was killed under me, but save as an old friend, he is no loss to me, since I shall not ride again. The surgeons here in Newark have done their work well, and, save for sundry rents in my left side which are slow to heal, such as is left of me begins already to grow strong once more, but it may be some time before I can come home to you, for the war continues, and the Army authorities have other matters to attend to than the transporting of one crippled soldier. In the meantime, it is useless to bid you not to worry, but worry as little as may be, beloved, and—”’ Mrs Carey faltered for an instant in her reading: ‘“and the Lord of Hosts give you courage, as I pray He may do me, for I—”’ she broke off, and finished the last few lines in silence, while the other two watched her. Then she refolded the sheet and stood for a few moments, very still, looking down at it.
‘If only he was not alone. It—must be harder to bear—all alone.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ said Mouse, in a small clear voice of utter conviction. ‘You can trust Father; he’ll be all right.’ It seemed a queer thing to say, but Simon knew what she meant, though he could not have put it into words.
He slipped a hand under his mother’s elbow. ‘Come and sit down for a little while.’
But Mrs Carey shook her head. ‘No, my dear, I won’t sit down. I want to tidy my store cupboards this morning, and I think I’ll go and do it now.’ And putting the letter very gently into her hanging pocket, she went. Mouse followed her, and Simon watched them go, and then, deciding that it would be best to leave his womenfolk to themselves for a bit, went and hung over the orchard gate, and thought. He had a good deal to think about. Over the hill-crest the curlews were still crying, and the snowdrops in the half-frozen borders had not lost their joyousness. Life looked good, for Simon, only—what must it look like for Father, now?