Simon (30 page)

But Amias, who had command of himself once more, shook his head. ‘If anybody’s going to hold my arm steady, I want Simon.’

So Simon gave the rushlight to Pentecost, and knelt down beside his friend. Dr Hannaford showed him how to hold Amias’s arm, twisted outward so as to keep the wound in his shoulder open. Then he gave Amias a soft leaden bullet to bite on, and taking up the first of his battery of probes and lancets, set to work.

The wind and the rain sounded very loud in the time that followed, as the wild wings of the rising storm beat against the thatch; but they seemed a long, long way off, and the only sound in the quiet cabin that had any meaning was Amias’s quick, agonized breathing that filled it from wall to wall. Simon knelt rigid, holding his friend’s eyes with his own, giving him the wrist of his right hand to grip, because to let Amias bruise his wrist was all he could do for him, just now. . . .

Time dragged so slowly that it seemed as if it was not moving at all and the beastliness would never be over. But at last Dr Hannaford straightened from his task with a sigh. ‘Four,’ he said, ‘and that’s the last of them.’ And he held up a jagged splinter of metal.

After that everything was quick and easy and light of heart. The wound was bathed and dressed and presently, having been dosed with the Doctor’s favourite evil-smelling cordial, Amias was grinning at them again, with a little colour beginning to creep back into his face, propping himself on his sound elbow to gulp down oatmeal gruel that had been warming for him. ‘I shall turn into a calf,’ he said, grimacing. ‘That’s the second lot of gruel Pentecost has poured down me tonight. Anybody’d think I was a puling brat.’

‘’Twill put new strength into ’ee,’ Pentecost told him. ‘And you’m like to need it.’

Amias’s eyes grew sombre on the instant, and he said quickly, ‘Yes, I’m like to need it. I must be away from here by morning.’

‘You’ll lie up for several days, with that shoulder,’ said his father, busily cleaning stained instruments before the fire.

‘Don’t you believe it, sir. I’ll be away into Cornwall after the others, and get the Colours back to Lord Hopton.’

‘The Colours?’ said Simon, who was squatting at his side. ‘There were no Colours with you when I found you.’

‘Down a foxhole,’ Amias told him briefly.

Simon looked at him, and saw that he was like an over-stretched wire that might snap at any moment. With an instinct that it might do him good to talk he said, ‘See here, suppose you tell us what really happened.’

‘Not much to tell. We made a last stand on the Castle Green; us and the Prince’s Guard and the ravellings of a couple more companies. We were just about done by the time the powder went up, and soon afterwards somebody’s musket blew up too, and I got the bits in my shoulder and was knocked out for a while; and when I came to, the fighting was pretty well over, and there I was, with the Company Colours crumpled under me. I lay perdue for a bit, and when the coast was clear I managed to get the Colours off their pike and bind them round me. Then I took the coat and steel cap from one of your men who wouldn’t be needing them any more, and got away down Castle Hill; that was when I ran into your nosy friend. I hoped to join up with the rest, but I couldn’t stop my shoulder bleeding, and in the end I only just managed to stuff the Colours down a foxhole before I crumpled up completely—and the next thing I knew I was lying here, and Pentecost was pouring gruel down my throat, and telling me ’twas you who’d brought me in.’ He shifted a little to ease the pain of his shoulder, and added, almost humbly, ‘I say, Simon, haven’t you ever got tired of digging me out of scrapes?’

It was not like Amias to be humble, and it bothered Simon, but before he could reply, the shrill whinnying of Scarlet brought them all to their feet, facing the door, while Amias sat up with a stifled gasp.

‘Douse the lights,’ said Dr Hannaford.

‘Douse it is, Captain.’ Pentecost reached out a long arm to the rushlight, and instantly the cabin was plunged in darkness, save for the red glow of the sinking fire.

‘What startled him?’ whispered Amias.

‘Maybe nothing more than a fox. Quiet, now,’ answered his father.

The slow minutes crawled by, while the four within the hovel listened, breath in check, for any sound through the moaning wind and the swish and spatter of rain against the walls. Simon had drawn Balan, and stood with the long blade ready in his hand; but it had been only long habit that made him draw, and he did not know that he had done so. Minute followed minute, tense, twanging with expectancy, and then, as nothing happened, slowly the tension relaxed, and breath began to come more easily.

‘Must have been a fox,’ murmured Amias.

But it was not a fox. Even as he spoke, Scarlet whinnied again. There came a sound of movement from outside, a voice snapped an order; then the door was kicked open, and the golden radiance of a lantern flooded into the cabin. By its light they saw Parliament troopers, and the gleaming barrels of a pair of levelled horse pistols.

‘Don’t move,’ said a voice. ‘We have you all covered.’

Simon was the first to speak, slamming his sword home into its sheath as he did so. ‘Denzil Wainwright,’ he said.

Denzil entered the cabin, followed by two troopers, one with levelled pistols, the other carrying the lantern, by the light of which they could see more troopers outside. ‘The virtuous Hodge,’ said Denzil coldly. ‘Busily engaged in helping the enemy. I guessed that was it. We’ve had rather a job tracking you down, Hodge, though the ground holds a track like butter along the stream-side after this rain. I don’t think we’d have found you at all if that red brute of yours hadn’t so obligingly given us your whereabouts by whinnying.’

The place was now flooded with a yellow radiance, and as it fell full on Amias’s beaked nose and flaming hair, the trooper holding the lantern gave a yelp. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but that’s the man as blowed up the powder store; I’d know him anywhere!’

And Simon saw with a sinking heart that it was Trooper Pennithorn.

‘
Is
it,’ said Cornet Wainwright, obviously enjoying himself. ‘General Fairfax will be interested to know that.’ Then his voice changed and sharpened. ‘Get up and dress, you.’

Dr Hannaford said, ‘I am a surgeon; I have just removed several metal fragments from this lad’s shoulder, and I assure you that he is in no fit state to move.’

‘I am sorry, sir,’ Denzil told him, courteously enough. ‘I am not particularly interested in the welfare of Royalists and I must do my duty.’

‘A fine thing is duty, when it don’t look uncommon like spite,’ said Pentecost, backed into the corner beside the little
Destiny
, and looking on with a shade more mockery than usual in his strange face. But no one paid any heed to him.

‘Simon’—Amias’s nose was in the air, and his voice at its most drawling—‘give me a hand with my clothes,’ and he began painfully to slip his arm out of the sling. Suddenly he gave a little broken laugh. ‘Some vixen will have a fine nest-lining for her cubs, in the spring! I daresay she’ll not mind a few stains on it.’

Dr Hannaford had stepped forward as though to help him, and then drawn back and left it to Simon. In grim silence, under the levelled pistols of the trooper, Simon helped his friend to drag on his still wet clothes. No one spoke again, until he picked up the stained and tattered doublet, and as he did so, something fell out of the inner pocket. He stooped for it, but one of the troopers was before him, and catching it up, gave it to Cornet Wainwright, with a meaning look.

It was a kinked and tangled length of oiled bed-cord; the usual makeshift for slow-match or fuse when the real thing was not to be had.

Every eye in the cabin was fixed on the deadly piece of evidence, as Denzil took and examined it, with raised brows. ‘This also will interest the General,’ he said softly, and slipped it into the breast of his buff coat.

‘Then be sure to give it him,’ drawled Amias. ‘Hand over my doublet, Simon.’

Simon helped him settle his arm back in its sling, and pull the wreck of his doublet over it. But when he reached for the dead pikeman’s coat, Amias shook his head. ‘Nothing doing. I’m through with borrowed plumage,’ he said, and then, with a very set mouth, ‘Help me up.’ When Simon had done so, he staggered clear of his supporting arm, and took up Balin, which was propped in the corner.

Cornet Wainwright moved forward to take it, but Amias rounded on him with blazing eyes and his most insulting sniff. ‘I may be your prisoner,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be hanged before I give up my sword to anyone save your commander. Belt it on for me, Simon.’

Denzil shrugged. ‘As you will. It makes no difference.’

So Simon belted the old sword on for him, while he stood glaring at his captor, with his sound hand against the wall to steady himself.

‘It seems that we are ready,’ Amias said, when the buckle was secure. He looked at Simon, with a small crooked smile. ‘This is once too often you’ve tried to pull me out of a scrape, old lad.’

‘Snuff!’ said Simon, and put a steadying arm round him as he lurched towards the door. ‘Put your good arm round my neck. That’s better.’

‘I am allowed to go with you?’ demanded Dr Hannaford.

‘As you please, sir,’ Wainwright told him formally. ‘As a surgeon you have, of course, the usual immunity. I have no orders concerning you.’

‘Thank you.’ The Doctor picked up his cloak and swung it round his shoulders.

Simon looked round at his brother officer, addressing him directly for the first time. ‘No, nor have you any orders concerning
me
, my dear Denzil; you merely thought how pleasant it would be to see me disgraced.’

‘My dear Hodge, how intelligent you have grown in these last few weeks,’ said Denzil Wainwright. ‘I said I’d square the account with you, for that night in Mess, didn’t I?’ And he drew back from the door to let them through.

So the grim little company passed out into the wild February
night, leaving Pentecost Fiddler still standing against the wall of his deserted hovel. A few minutes later they set out for Torrington, Amias drooping on Scarlet’s back, and Simon following with his hands bound behind him.

‘I can’t bear the thought that I might lose you in the dark,’ Denzil had said, when his bonds were being tied, and Simon had choked on his furious retort. One of the troopers walked beside Amias to steady him in the saddle, and Dr Hannaford, who had been refused leave to walk with the prisoners, tramped grimly in the rear.

And as they went, there rose suddenly behind them the wailing notes of a fiddle, playing, not a tune, but simply an accompaniment to the wind in the trees.

To Simon, stumbling down, pinioned, through the storm-lashed woods, that march was a nightmare. The lantern jigging ahead like some hateful will-o’-the-wisp, the troopers all around him—several of them men of his own Regiment—Amias slumped on the back of a weary horse, and at the end of the march? But it did not do to look so far ahead.

They passed the picket on Rotherne Bridge, and straggled up the hill to the town. The Square was emptier now, but still the lanterns shone on wet cobbles and gilded the mizzle as it drove by them; and still the sentry marched up and down before the door of the Black Horse. He called over his shoulder to a comrade, as they halted. Amias half slid, half tumbled from the saddle into the arms of the nearest trooper, who steadied him with rough kindness, saying, ‘Hold up, lad; thee’s as groggy as an hour-old calf.’

Simon was already being urged into the taproom, but he contrived to call back to the troopers remaining outside, ‘Will one of you see to my horse? He’s not had his evening feed yet, and he’s just about foundered.’

The huge begrimed face of Mother Trimble appeared round the door of an inner room as they entered, and crumpled into relief at sight of Dr Hannaford. ‘Oh, Doctor, thanks be you’ve come! Surgeon Morrison do be away somewheres, and there’s a poor lamb just brought in as is beyond my skill!’

For an instant, the Doctor did not answer; and his eyes were on
Amias. Then he said, ‘I’ll come at once,’ and disappeared after her, without a backward glance.

Simon and Amias were hustled into the far end of the taproom, where they were kept under guard of Trooper Pennithorn and an orderly, while Cornet Wainwright spoke aside with one of the General’s staff. After a few moments he returned to them, and perched himself sideways on a barrel, swinging one foot and examining his nails, while the Galloper went tramping upstairs. Simon had been unbound by now, and stood rubbing the crimson weals on his wrists, where the bonds had cut into the flesh, and feeling rather sick. He watched Denzil; watched his guards; watched Amias standing propped against the panelling, and noticed anxiously a small bright stain that was beginning to spread through the shoulder of his sling. Behind the door through which Dr Hannaford had disappeared, a man cried out suddenly and sharply, in pain.

After what seemed a very long time, a door opened somewhere above stairs; voices sounded, and several officers came down, still talking together.

‘You can go up now,’ said the Galloper, who had followed them, and Simon found himself stumbling upstairs with Amias behind him. Another sentry stood aside from an open door, and the two of them were thrust into the upper room where Simon had handed over his dispatch only that morning, into the presence of the very weary man who stood with his arm along the mantel; staring down into the sea-coal fire.

‘Cornet Wainwright, sir,’ said the Galloper.

Fairfax turned slowly. ‘Thank you, Peter,’ he said. ‘Is John Rushworth on hand?’

‘Below stairs, sir. You wish him here?’

‘No. Tell him, my compliments to Colonel Walley, and will he favour me as soon as may be with the list of casualties in his Regiment? If I need you again tonight, I’ll send for you.’

‘Sir,’ said Peter, and departed.

‘Yes, Cornet Wainwright?’

Cornet Wainwright drew himself up, doffing his steel cap in salute. ‘I would not have troubled you but that Major
Disbrow is wounded. Sir, I have to report the capture of a Royalist officer, suspected of being responsible for the explosion in the church; also of Cornet Carey, taken in the act of harbouring the same.’