Simon (15 page)

Barnaby called back to him over his shoulder, ‘Going to be a storm, by the looks of it.’

‘By the feel of it too,’ Simon said, wiping his forehead again. ‘You could fry an egg in my skull,’ and turned in the saddle to take the Standard with due formality from his new Corporal. The man was an Essex schoolmaster’s son, a steady and dependable soul: and Simon liked him well enough, but he knew that there would never be between him and his new Corporal the real working friendship that had been between him and his old one.

As he settled the Standard lance in position, the heavy stillness that hung over the land trembled to a distant mutter of thunder, and then settled down again. Simon saw the shallow dip of marsh before them, the reed-beds and the standing water utterly still in the sultry air; and drawn up on the crest of the farther rise, the Royalist Army, guarding the road to Langport. There could be no broad advance here, for the only way across the marshy valley was one road fording the stream, with Lord Goring’s troops massed at the head of it. A battle without a battle line. Simon wondered what it would be like. But he had little time to spare for wondering in the next few minutes, for Scarlet, made fidgety by the thunder in the air, was shivering and sidling, tossing his head and flinging this way and that; and
hampered as he was by the Standard, Simon had all he could do to keep him from falling foul of the horses on either side.

Then suddenly the stillness was gone, as, with a roar like the breaking storm, the guns went into action. First the deep thunder of the culverin boomed and echoed away over the fens; then the sharper crack of the drakes and sakers. A moment’s ringing silence, and then again the roar of the culverin, blending raggedly into the saker’s yapping, and swelling until earth and heaven seemed to hum like a giant gong.

From the opposite side of the valley, the Royalist artillery had opened up in answer, but Goring had sent many of his guns to Bridgwater in readiness for a siege, as the New Model scouts had reported; and the King’s troops could not make an equal return for the bombardment that was harassing them so sorely.

Simon’s ears were so dulled by the guns that he scarcely heard the trumpets when they sounded the charge. But away on the right, Major Bethel’s Troop swung forward into the Langport road, followed by Captain Evanson’s and Captain Groves’s. Simon knew them by their Standards carrying the gold and crimson of the Second Regiment, and a wave of cheering ran through the Army as they went down the narrow way. The light guns were firing steadily, holding the enemy back from the lane-head and covering the advance of the Parliamentary Horse. Major Bethel’s Troops were through the ford now, and the squadrons of Walley’s Regiment were going down towards it. The guns fell silent, and another cheer broke from the watching ranks, as the leading Troop drew out of the lane where the high ground gave firmer foothold, and charged the enemy on the ridge, driving them back to gain space for Evanson’s and Groves’s to draw out beside them. Next instant the trumpets of Fairfax’s Horse sang through the din of battle, and the General’s Troop swung forward after the rest, with Major Disbrow’s at their heels and Captain Mostyn’s last of all.

As he followed Barnaby, Simon felt the familiar quick expectancy that always came to him in the moment of going into action, and with the Standard of Disbrow’s Troop held aloft, and the troopers of his Standard Escort on either side of him, he headed downhill to the ford. The General’s Troop were already half-way
up the slope beyond as Simon and his Troop splashed through. As they did so, a puff of hot wind stirred the reeds, lightning flickered for an instant in the still water above the ford, and a low peal of thunder rumbled across the marsh. Then they were across, and Mostyn’s men were threshing and splashing after them, as they headed for the crest of the ridge. Bethel’s and Walley’s squadrons, after being once forced back, had spread out across the solid turf of the higher slope, and were charging again; and with a wild yell, and a slipping and scrambling of hooves on the steep verge, Disbrow’s were out of the lane after them. Following his Lieutenant, Simon swung Scarlet in a sharp curve, out over the verge and ditch, and up against the Royalists, his Standard Escort pressing at his flanks, the Standard whipping out on the wind of his going, and the solid phalanx of Ironside troopers drumming up behind with drawn swords on which the lightning flickered.

In place of the roar of the barrage, there was now the pealing thunder, distant still, but drawing nearer, the rattle of musketry and the shouting of close conflict. The Parliamentary Foot, pressing up behind the Horse, were spreading out to face the Foot of the King’s Army; already the skirmishing parties were met and falling back, and the pikes were going into action.

Simon never remembered very much of that fight. It was a wild flurry of charge and counter-charge, a great yelling and the scream of smitten horses, a whirling of clumped Cavalry that split and re-formed and split again, while overhead the lightning danced in a sky the colour of a day-old bruise, and the thunder boomed and crackled along the marshes. Presently they had cleared the ridge, pressing the Royalists back over the teazle fields beyond, despite all their resistance. Royalist Horse and Foot were no longer separate forces, but a confused and reeling mass being slowly forced back and back into the home-fields of Langport.

On the rising ground at the very edge of the little town, Goring’s forces made one last desperate stand; and Simon, charging at the head of a clump of troopers, had one of his Escort shot beside him. In the gap, a Royalist dragoon sprang forward with clubbed musket, his other hand grabbing at the Standard lance. Simon wrenched Scarlet round and up, up until the fore-hooves of the big sorrel were lashing the air and the man’s hold was broken, while with his free hand—for he had shifted the Standard to his left—he whipped the long dag from its holster, and fired. The Royalist’s musket arm dropped to his side, and clutching at it he reeled back into the
mêlée
. Simon thrust on grimly, into a sea of battling figures and clubbed muskets, while his troopers closed up behind him, yelling like triumphant fiends.

Within the hour Fairfax’s Army was hunting the beaten troops of Lord Goring through the narrow streets of Langport, where red flame leapt from roof to roof, and flakes of burning thatch dropped like petals of fire upon pursued and pursuers alike. Simon never knew whether it was lightning, or misguided zeal, or some accident of battle that had done the mischief; he only knew that as they rode through, the streets were filled with dismay, and the whole town seemed burning. But already, as they gained the open country, the rain was beginning to fall, straight heavy thunder-rain that hissed and splattered on the hard ground,
lozenging the road with wet, and raising the unforgettable smell of summer rain on parched earth. The flames they had left behind them would soon be quenched.

My Lord Goring got away to Dunster Castle, and two days later was back in Barnstaple with the remnant of his men, while Fairfax sat down in front of Bridgwater, which fell before the month was out. Cromwell had meanwhile gone off to subdue the riots which were breaking out in Dorset, taking with him, amongst others, several Troops and Companies of Fairfax’s Regiments. Disbrow’s Troop, however, was not one of them; and so, still under the command of Fiery Tom, Simon saw the fall of Bath and Sherbourne in the golden harvest weather; and then sat down before Bristol, which Prince Rupert, who had taken over the command from Hopton, was holding with only three thousand Horse and Foot.

Cromwell had rejoined the main Army by that time, and there was a general assault on 20 September, a desperate affair which ended the siege, and the Prince was forced to yield. Simon saw the Royalist Garrison march out with full honours of war, Colours flying, drums beating, every musketeer with slow-match lit and bullet in mouth; and the Prince himself, riding at their head, a man with a pale masterful face, and the first autumn rain dark on the shoulders of his scarlet cloak.

Early in October, Simon and the New Model crossed the Devon border, and headed for Tiverton, in rain that was already turning the lanes to mud channels. Tiverton was ill-prepared for a siege; and Fairfax took the outer defences without much trouble, and pitched his headquarters at Blundell’s School, while he made plans for taking the Castle.

It was a wild autumn afternoon when Simon rode with his Regiment into the town, where they were to take up their quarters; shrivelled golden leaves whirling down before every gust of wind, the bitter blue reek of bonfires, the last ragged marigolds and Michaelmas daisies falling into brown rain-sodden ruin in small town gardens. Tiverton had always been staunch for Parliament, and despite the fighting which had wrecked several houses only a few hours before, the townsfolk turned out almost
under the walls of the Royalist-held castle, to cheer for the New Model troops as they rode in.

It seemed very strange to Simon, this return to a place he knew so well; he looked about him eagerly, as he rode up the familiar street. Everything was much as he remembered, and everywhere he saw familiar faces in the crowds thronging the way: Mr Yeo the Chandler, a little stouter than of old; Nick Veryard of the Hand-in-Glove standing in his doorway. The Hand-in-Glove’s windows were all broken, but Nick Veryard was quite unchanged. The butcher’s wife, who, way back at the beginning of the troubles, had thrown all the sheep’s horns in the shop at Lord Bath when he came to read the King’s Summons to Arms in the Market Place. Old Mother Tidball, who sold gingerbread and peppermint lozenges to the Blundell’s boys, and had been a great friend of Simon’s. But none of them knew him.

It was not surprising, for Simon the inky schoolboy with a cudgel under one arm was very far removed from Simon the Cornet of Parliamentary Horse, in worn buff and steel, with a season’s hard campaigning behind him. He knew that, yet it made him feel rather like a ghost. Also the old familiar scenes made him think of Amias, who had been a part of them; Amias in the far-off days before the King came between them. Amias would have loved this triumphal entry into a town, under the walls of an enemy fortress, Simon thought; it would have appealed to his sense of the dramatic. And suddenly his heart ached and Tiverton put on the face of an unfriendly stranger.

The Castle fell two days later, almost by accident. A stray shot from the bombardment cut the main drawbridge chain, so that it came down with a crash; and the Governor, in consternation, gave up the struggle at the first assault that poured over it.

For the next month, Tiverton and the villages round about became the headquarters of the New Model Army. It was pleasant for weary men, after the stress of the last few months, to sleep in quarters again, and eat hot meals. There was even leisure for amusements. Cock-fighting and bull-baiting were forbidden; but there was always wrestling and cudgel-play, and the inns and taverns where you could meet friends and spend a cheerful evening. For the officers there was a little rough shooting
and coursing over the land of the neighbouring gentry, who were mostly for Parliament, while the troops, not having been invited, went poaching every moonless night. Lieutenant Colebourne brought forth his beloved boots from the baggage-train, and waddled about Tiverton in them like a self-satisfied duck. The Commander-in-Chief disappeared from view for a while to have an old and troublesome wound in his shoulder re-dressed; and Lady Fairfax arrived from London, a little thing, as fair as Fiery Tom was dark, but with a valiant carriage of her small plain head that was what one might expect from a young woman who had travelled across England at war, to be near her husband.

There was still fighting, of course, outpost skirmishes for the most part, but the wet autumn that turned the roads and tracks to quagmires put a stop to anything more serious. So for a while the two armies remained bogged down, each in their own territory, the New Model around Tiverton, and Lord Goring’s forces spread over the country between Exeter and the South Coast. By this time the Royalist Army in the West was beginning to be in a bad way. It was made up mostly of Devon and Cornish levies without much heart for their business, a fair sprinkling of wild Irish, and the rogues of every nation; but there was still a hard core of veteran fighting men; and the Royalist force was larger than that of Parliament. It looked as though the struggle, when it came, would be a hard one, and whichever way it ended, it would be the last struggle of the war, for the armies elsewhere did not amount to much, and the King was once again shut up in Oxford.

Midway through November, Sir Richard Grenville—that black disgrace of a proud name, hated for his cruelty almost as much by his own men as by his enemies, and certainly as much of a menace to his own cause as to the cause of Parliament—who had been encamped at Okehampton to guard the way to Plymouth, suddenly withdrew his three regiments without orders into Cornwall. And Simon, returning to quarters from an afternoon’s shooting, with a brace of mallard swinging from his hand, was mournfully told by his superior officer, ‘We’re through with the fleshpots for a while.’

‘What?’ said Simon.

‘Marching south at dawn. General advance on Exeter.’

Advance they did, save for a few regiments left in Tiverton; and before the end of the month, despite the state of the roads, they had taken up their new positions. Fairfax made his headquarters at Ottery St Mary, a brigade under Sir Hardress Waller was stationed at Crediton, and regiments at Powderham and other points held the city secure on the west. On the east, Great Fulford was taken and occupied by Colonel Okey’s dragoons; Eggsford House followed, and then Ashton; and Fairfax had a complete ring of fortified points round Exeter.

But strung between these great houses were others that must be occupied before the City could be quite enclosed; big farms and lesser manor houses for the most part. Sometimes it was simply a matter of moving into an undefended homestead, with, or if needs be without, the leave of its master; but others were Royalist outposts from which the troops must be driven out at the pike’s point; and for some, a battle of attack and counterattack lasted for days.