Simon (28 page)

‘Got away with the rearguard of Horse,’ Meredith told him. ‘We had a bit of a brush with them at the lower bridge; that was when Major Disbrow got shot.’

‘Killed?’ Simon asked quickly.

‘No, only flesh wound. Mostyn’s gone, though, and Bennet’s pretty bad.’

No one spoke for a little while, and then a cornet with a bloody rag twisted round one wrist asked abruptly, ‘Did you hear the church blow up?’

‘Yes, just as we were crossing the river. And I saw the wreckage on my way here, just now. The sergeant in charge didn’t seem to have any idea what caused it.’

‘There’s a good many would like to know that,’ said Meredith, ‘and the whole place is buzzing with rumours. I’ve heard the Royalists did it themselves, to prevent their powder falling into our hands. Chaplain Sprigg is the leader of that school of thought; but with two hundred of their own men prisoned inside, it don’t make sense.’

‘I met the worthy vicar standing guard over the ruins this morning,’ put in Cornet Fletcher, ‘and he had the effrontery to tell me that
we
did it, to get rid of the inconvenience of two hundred prisoners.’

‘Well, in that case, why haven’t we blown up the other four hundred that we’ve got spread around the town?’ It was he of the bandaged wrist who spoke. ‘’Sides, it was nearly the end of Fiery Tom. That bit of guttering only missed him by inches.’

‘That last argument leaks like a sieve,’ pointed out a new voice behind them. ‘We couldn’t have known that the General was going to be riding about South Street at that moment, or that a lump of lead was going to drop just where it did.’

They turned, as a muddy figure came in, shaking itself like a dog, for the day was turning wet.

‘Oh, it’s you, Anderson.’ Lieutenant Meredith made room for him beside the fire. ‘How did the search go?’

The other made a wry face, and sank wearily on to a bench. ‘Every ditch in three parishes is choked with wounded. We’ve
brought in a good many—Royalist for the most part, but a few of our men too. Major James is getting together another search-party now, but after a few hours of this rain there’ll not be much point in bringing in any that are still out in it.’

Another silence fell on the company, which was broken by Fletcher, saying in a quiet hard voice, very unlike his usual one, ‘When my brother was wounded and taken prisoner in Cornwall last year, they hanged him.’

‘Rather a habit of Sir Richard Grenville’s,’ said Lieutenant Meredith.

The latest comer looked up. ‘Talking of this magazine going sky high,’ he said, ‘one of my troopers swears he saw the man who did it.’

‘
What
?’ shouted the company.

‘Gammon!’ said Cornet Fletcher.

‘All right; have it your own way.’

‘No, but gammon apart, is it true, Anderson?’

‘How should I know? He told me a long rigmarole about it, just now, when I handed my horse over to him. Wait a moment . . .’ He got up, and crossing to the doorway, stuck his head out and shouted, ‘Trooper Pennithorn!—Oh, Hughes, tell Pennithorn I want him.’ He returned to the fire, and in a few minutes a lanky trooper appeared in the doorway, straightening his coat as he came.

‘Sir?’

‘Pennithorn, repeat the story you were telling me just now,’ his officer commanded.

‘You mean, about you cove—’

‘Yes, that’s the one.’

Trooper Pennithorn drew a long breath, and began, speaking very fast, and staring straight before him with steady, rather stupid grey eyes. Evidently he had told the story a great many times. ‘Well, sir, ’twas like this; I was making my way round below that ol’ ruined castle, looking for any of the Men of Blood as might be in hiding. There was a good many of us beating the furze for ’em. Not long after midnight it ’ud be, and the moon was still high, and that was how I came to see a cove a-scrambling down one of them little sheep paths. A red-headed cove, with
a beak of a nose, and so bold as brass, and never a start when I challenged. “Emanuel, God with us,” he says. “Good evening, Trooper, or should I say good morning? A fine night for catching mice!” he says. I says, “Where might you be going to, sir?” for I took him for one of our officers—him with a sprig of furze in his cap, and knowing the password and all. He says, “Out on the General’s business.” And he laughs a queer choking sort of laugh.
Then
he says, “Fine explosion up yonder. Fiery Tom won’t be getting
this
lot o’ the King’s powder, as sure as unicorns!” An’ off he goes.’

Simon caught his breath, as though he had been plunged into icy water, and yet in some odd way he had known from the first mention of him who the red-haired man among the furze must be. It was so exactly like Amias to walk out like that, exchanging pleasantries with the enemy on the way.

The monotonous voice was going on:

‘Sort of staggering a bit, if ye sees what I mean, like as if maybe he was wounded somewhere, but I didn’t take much notice, not until I remembered something as I hadn’t hardly been aweer on, at the time.’ A dramatic pause. ‘He smelled strong of singeing! Burned powder and singeing! Well, I thought ’twas queer, and ’tis my belief as he
was
wounded, and ’tis my belief as he got that way when he blew up the church. “Fiery Tom won’t get
this
lot o’ the King’s powder,” he says. And ’tis my belief—’

Simon realized that the dark eyes of Denzil Wainwright were fixed on him, rather curiously, and he pulled himself together with a jerk, just as the trumpets sounded in the distance for watch-setting. The group before the fire broke up instantly. Trooper Pennithorn was gone; and Simon heard his own voice, sounding surprisingly normal, asking Lieutenant Anderson, ‘Did you say Major James was forming a relief party to carry on the search for wounded, sir?’

‘I did.’

He turned to Lieutenant Meredith, who had paused in the doorway to speak to a passing trooper. ‘May I report to Major James? I know every inch of this country. I might be of some use.’

‘Yes, of course. He’ll probably be glad of you,’ the Lieutenant told him, and went out, hitching at his sword-belt.

Simon went out, behind the rest of them, into the icy mizzle that was driving across the Commons before a rising wind.

WITHIN HALF AN
hour, having yet again collected Scarlet, Simon had reported to Major James and was once more across Taddiport Bridge, and taking to the woods. The searchers were splitting up, men and horses moving off to quarter the rough country; and Simon found it quite easy, knowing every inch of the land as he did, to lose his comrades and get away by himself on his own secret search.

Now, for the first time, as he wove Scarlet farther and farther into the wet moaning woods, he had a chance to think. What possible good could he do by joining this search? He didn’t know. He only knew that he had had to join it, because it was his one chance of helping Amias: a desperately slim chance, he knew, but the only one there was. Had Amias blown up the
church, blindly obeying orders left by Lord Hopton, or acting on some wild idea of his own? Simon remembered the fascination that mining and explosives had always had for the other boy. But whether or not Amias had engineered this explosion was beside the point; all that mattered was that if he was taken, there would be a black case against him, thanks to Trooper Pennithorn.

By this time, what with the bang on the old wound and his utter weariness, Simon was not thinking very clearly; but he remembered very clearly indeed the stark shapes against the sunrise, of three men hanged by the Lord-General’s orders, for looting, on the road to Taunton; two more gibbeted outside Oxford for burning down the cottage of a wise woman they believed to have overlooked them. Fairfax was completely merciless upon such crimes as damage to property and the wanton taking of life; and would he have more mercy on one of the enemy than on his own men? Also there was the likelihood that Amias was wounded. If that was the case, he might have been brought in already, and if he had been, then he was beyond Simon’s help. But he might not have been brought in. He might be hiding up somewhere—if he was wounded, he was not likely to have got far—and it was the thought of Amias, wounded and hunted, crouching in some ditch, that kept Simon searching through the woods and coppices, in the haunts and hiding-places they had known when they were boys, in the desperate hope of finding him before anyone else did.

Presently the rain stopped, but above the tree-tops the sky was a cold lemon colour, against which clouds like grey snags of sheep’s wool drove before the westerly wind. It was going to be a wild night. And still Simon kept up his search. It was already dusk among the trees, when, leading Scarlet behind him, he forced his way through a tangle of hazel and dogwood into a little clearing, and found himself looking down at a slight figure, lying spreadeagled face downward under the steep lift of a fox-holed bank, where two small boys had often dug for pig-nuts.

With a sickening dread, he dropped on one knee beside the still figure, and turned it over, very gently. The red of Amias’s hair was darkened almost to black by the rain that had soaked
into it, and his face was curd-white in the gathering shadows. In frantic haste Simon pushed back the sodden scarlet cloth of a pikeman’s coat, and set his hand over the other’s heart, giving a gasp of relief as he felt it beating faintly under his fingers. But Amias’s doublet was sodden with something worse than rain, and when Simon withdrew his hand, it was sticky with blood. He opened the doublet, noticing now the spreading stain on it; noticing also, with a dull sinking of the heart, that it was torn and blackened, as by fire. He pulled it back, and the stained shirt with it, and laid bare an ugly wound in the other’s shoulder. One glance told him that it had been made by flying fragments of some sort—shards that might very well have been set flying by an explosion—and they were still there. But getting them out must wait for the moment, and he set steadily to work with the green scarf from the other’s waist, to plug the wound and staunch the blood that still drained sluggishly from the jagged hole.

Meanwhile Scarlet, who had remained close beside him, alternately slobbered at his shoulder and stretched down to nuzzle with soft lips and a kind of troubled bewilderment at Amias’s red hair and white upturned face. Simon, straining the makeshift bandages tight, was talking to him, hurriedly and half under his breath, without knowing that he did so. ‘Yes, it’s Amias. You remember Amias, don’t you? We’ve got to get him away from here—got to get him into shelter, where they won’t find him.’ He knotted off the bandages and drew the pikeman’s coat back over the wound; then set about the next stage of his task. Amias was taller than he, but more slightly built, and Simon had all the strength of the small stocky countryman. Slowly, carefully, so as not to jar the wound, he raised the other across his knee, and then got up, rather unsteadily, braced under his weight. ‘Steady, boy, steady now.’ Scarlet stood like a trained pack-horse to receive his burden, and Simon contrived to get Amias across the saddle-bow; then he mounted himself, and gathering the limp body into the curve of his arm, set out for Solitude as fast as the tired horse could carry them. (“If Sir Walter Raleigh had hidden here, King James would never have found him to cut his head off!”)

It was not much more than a mile to the hidden fastness that
had been the Golden City of Manoa in the old days; but at least until they gained the farther woods, every moment might bring them face to face with some of the search-party; and always there was the possibility that even if they reached their goal, Pentecost might not be there. Simon prayed during that mile ride as he had never prayed before in all his life, that Pentecost might not have been driven away by the fighting; that he might be there to take Amias in and hide him.

Pentecost was there. He was lounging in the doorway of his hovel, when Simon came up through the wild-fruit trees, bending low in the saddle to shield his own face and Amias’s from the wet whipping twigs.

‘It’s only me,’ Simon gasped, as the Fiddler pushed off from the doorpost and came loping to meet him. ‘I’ve got Amias here—wounded. Will you take him?’

A white owl swooped past them in the dusk, making Scarlet snort and side-step; but Pentecost had already put up his ragged arms and taken Amias from him, as matter-of-fact as though they had been two small boys again; and this their usual way of coming to call on him.

‘It’s his right shoulder,’ Simon said, as he dropped from the saddle.

‘I’ll mind it,’ said Pentecost. ‘Hitch the horse to thicky bird-cherry branch yonder.’ And not another word did he speak until they had carried Amias indoors and laid him on the piled bracken of the bed-place. Then, kindling the rushlight on its pricket, he asked, ‘What be you up to, my dear? You bain’t meddling with something ye’d better have left alone, be you?’

The little crocus flame of the rushlight sprang up, and steadied; and Simon, kneeling beside the still figure on the bed-place, began to undo the bandages, hurriedly explaining the state of affairs as he did so. ‘He mustn’t fall into the hands of our men,’ he finished, ‘not until we have found out the truth, anyhow. You see that, don’t you, Pentecost? You must see that.’

‘Aye, he’m better hid for the present, seemingly.’ Pentecost was holding the rushlight close, to examine the wound. ‘You’ve not tried to get out the shard?’

‘No, I simply plugged the hole, and left the rest until I got him here.’

Pentecost Fiddler produced a knife from somewhere inside his ragged clothes. ‘Us had better have a look,’ he said.

But after a few minutes, Simon sat back on his heels. ‘It’s too deep bedded; we can’t take the risk, Pentecost.’

‘You’m right, I reckon. ’Tis too near the vitals for the likes of us to go a-digging and a-delving after it,’ nodded the Fiddler.

‘I’m going for Dr Hannaford,’ Simon said, and got up.

‘Ye’d best let me go, I’m thinking.’

‘No, with things as they are I’m more likely to be able to find him. He’ll be with the wounded, most like.’ Simon stooped and felt for Amias’s heart again; it was beating more strongly now, and he gave a quick sigh of relief. ‘He’s going to be all right.’