Simon (4 page)

So when Amias began to work out a brilliant plan for blowing up the enemy with their own gunpowder, he gave him a violent push and said, ‘Yah! You’ve got gunpowder on the brain! What happened when you tried inventing that new kind, last year?’

Amias shoved back. ‘’Twas proper fine gunpowder! The best gunpowder ever was—as sure as unicorns!’

‘Yiss! And it blew your eyebrows off and set fire to the study table, and I had to use all the stock-jar of dill-water to put it out—
Yow! Get off my innards!’ for Amias had hurled himself upon him with a war-shout.

They tumbled over and over like puppies in mock fight, until there was no more breath left in them, and then rolled apart, laughing and gasping, and lay quiet. Simon had forgotten the solemn feeling in his stomach.

At that moment, round the corner of the farm buildings appeared the little bent figure of Diggory Honeychurch. Diggory lived in the gatehouse, with his pippin-round wife Phoebe, and was steward, horseman, and friend to the Careys. It was his proudest boast that so long as there had been a Carey at Lovacott, there had been a Honeychurch to serve him. And indeed, to look at him, one might have though that it had been the same Honey-church all that time, for he was as gnarled as any thorn root, and skin, hair and clothes alike were the colour of drought-parched earth. Chancing to look up into the orchard at that moment, he caught sight of the two boys and waved, shouting something.

Simon cupped his hands and shouted back, ‘Can’t hear!’

‘Rizpah!’ bellowed Diggory, also making a trumpet of his hands. ‘Foal!’

‘It’s
come
?’ yelled Simon.

‘Yiss!’

Simon was afoot in an instant and racing down the hill. ‘It’s Rizpah’s foal!’ he shouted over his shoulder to Amias, who came hurtling after him. ‘It’s come, after all!’ and he flung himself down through the russets and mazard cherry trees of the lower orchard, and through the wicket gate into the garden close.

Rizpah was his father’s sorrel mare, and his father had promised him the expected foal to replace the odd-job pony for which he would soon be getting too big. It would be the first horse of his own that he had ever possessed; and he had hoped, and prayed and wished on the new moon that it might arrive before he had to go away to school. He had almost given up hope; and now Rizpah had done it for him, after all. With a triumphant shout he hurtled in at the open kitchen door, across the hall and out into the courtyard, with Amias racing at his winged heels; and the startled doves exploded upward in a flurry as he swerved stableward, skidding on the cobbles.

Diggory was there before them and holding the half-door shut, having scuttled back from the farmyard for the purpose. ‘Softly now!’ he scolded, as they came to a panting halt before him. ‘Do ’ee want to startle the poor li’l toad from here to Kingdom Come?’

‘Is it a filly or a colt?’ demanded Simon, edging round him.

‘Proper fine li’l colt. Yiss, ’ee can go in now—like Christians, mind!’ and the old man let go of the half-door. The two boys went in like Christians. ‘There!’ said Diggory. ‘You won’t see a finer foal nor that in a month of Sundays! Will ’em, Rizpah, my maid?’

Rizpah stood where the last rays of the westering sun, slanting into her stall through the doorway, fell full on her satiny rust-red flank: not for nothing had she been named Rizpah, which means a hot coal. Her long neck was curved as she nuzzled at the newborn foal standing on tottering legs beside her, and her eyes were huge and soft.

‘’Oppin’ about and suckin’ already!’ said Diggory, with a satisfied chuckle, as the foal butted against his mother, tail awag like a brown feather behind his narrow little rump.

‘Rizpah,’ said Simon, ‘he’s a beauty!’

The mare swung her gentle head towards him, nickering softly with pleasure as he drew his hand down her nose; then she turned her attention to her son once more.

Simon did the same, surveying the little creature with the warm pride of ownership. Only one thing disappointed him. ‘I hoped he’d be really red, like Rizpah.’

Diggory snorted. ‘Now did ’ee ever see a foal borned the colour ’twas going to be when ’twas growed?’ He put his old gnarled hands on either side of the little thing as it drew back from its mother, and turned it into the light, while the two boys crowded closer and the mare looked on anxiously. ‘Look at the red glint in his coat. He’m be so red as his dam in a few months—redder. He’m be so red as any fox that ever stole a goose, by the time he’m growed, sure ’nough. Look close—there where the light ketches ’un.’

Simon and Amias looked, and saw that sure enough there was a red glint in the soft apricot-buff of the foal’s coat. His muzzle
was like dark velvet, white-flecked just now with his mother’s milk; his eyes were dark and scarey, and the long lashes that shadowed them were gold-tipped in the sunset light. He blinked, standing insecurely on wide-planted legs; and Simon’s heart went out to him.

‘I say, he
is
a beauty!’ said Amias. ‘What are you going to call him?’

‘I don’t know yet. What do you think?’

‘If you gave him a very
red
sort of name—’ began a small voice behind them, and looking round they saw Mouse hovering on the outskirts of the group.

Nobody had heard her come, but it was always like that with Mouse, hence her name, though she had been christened Marjory. It was infuriating, this silence of hers, and made it almost impossible to keep anything secret from her; but both boys were bound to admit that whatever she found out about them and their affairs she never told to anyone else.

‘Hullo! Where did you spring from?’ demanded Simon, rather ungraciously.

Mouse advanced into their midst, and stood looking at the foal. ‘From the house,’ she said. ‘I heard you go through and I thought it must be Rizpah’s baby, so I came to see. His tail’s just like a feather.’

‘What did you say about calling him a red sort of name?’ demanded Amias, who hated people to wander from the point and leave their sentences unfinished.

‘If you gave him a very red sort of name, perhaps it might help him to grow red. Simon was saying he
wanted
him to grow red.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ nodded Simon. ‘You’ve hit on a sensible notion for once, Mouse. Amias, what’s the reddest name you can think of?’

‘Scarlet,’ said Amias promptly, while Mouse, pleased at the unwonted praise, smiled at both boys until a large dimple which she very seldom showed appeared in her left cheek.

‘All right,’ said Simon. ‘We’ll call him Scarlet. I say, Diggory, when can we begin breaking him?’

But it was another voice that answered, and turning quickly
they saw Mr Carey in the stable doorway, with a couple of field spaniels at his heels. ‘Not until he’s rising three years old,’ said Simon’s father. ‘A horse broken younger than that is too often a horse spoiled.’

They faced him respectfully, hands behind their backs. ‘He’s simply splendid,’ said Simon, ‘and, Father, we’re going to call him Scarlet.’

‘That seems quite a reasonable name.’ Simon’s father studied the little group with cold light-grey eyes that always made Amias remember his latest evil-doings. ‘Does it seem to you that Rizpah may be feeling a little crowded, with quite so many admirers in her stall? Suppose you three come outside. Oh, and, Marjory, your mother wants you in the still-room.’

They trooped after him; and Mouse scurried away to her mother, while old Diggory remained behind to make much of Rizpah, who was his darling.

Outside in the courtyard, Simon said in an eager rush, ‘Thanks for giving him to me, Father. He’s—he’s
splendid
!’

‘I am glad he comes up to your expectations. You realize you will have to help break him when he’s old enough,’ said Mr Carey, closing the half-door of the stable. ‘Amias, your pony is ready for you, as you see, and it is time that you were on your way home. Your father will want to see a little of you, I imagine, on this last evening before you go to school.’

‘Yes, sir, I’ll go now,’ said Amias, who was much more in awe of Simon’s father than he was of his own; and crossed to where his fat pony stood with its bridle looped over the hitching-post. He mounted into the saddle and wheeled the fat little creature towards the gateway. ‘Good night, sir. ’Night Simon. See you tomorrow.’

‘Wait for me by the market,’ Simon called.

Pony and rider disappeared under the arch of the gatehouse, and Simon heard the hoofbeats tittupping up the rutted wagon-way. The sky above the roofs of Lovacott was deepening to lavender, and the wings of the wheeling doves were no longer gilded, as they had been a while back, but grey. Soon the candles would be lit in the deep mullioned windows: and when they were lit tomorrow evening, Simon would not be there to see. Another
stab of homesickness pierced him through and through. ‘Oh, I
wish
tomorrow would never come!’ he burst out. ‘If only you
knew
—’

John Carey’s stern manner and cold grey eyes made people think him a hard man, and so he was, but he and Simon had always understood each other. ‘Believe it or not, Simon, I do know,’ he said. ‘I remember quite distinctly wishing desperately that I might wake up with the smallpox, the last evening before I went away to school.’ Then, as Simon looked up at him miserably, he added, ‘It isn’t really so unberarable, you know, once you get used to it.’ He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and they went indoors, followed by the spaniels Jillot and Ben.

ALL THROUGH THAT
winter and the spring that followed, the wildest rumours were rife in the West Country. The Irish Papists were coming to join their English fellows and the Protestants were to be massacred: another St Bartholomew’s Eve. There was a plan to blow up London. There was a French fleet in the Channel, waiting the King’s word to attack. Worst of all, in the eyes of Devon men, who had greater cause than the rest of England to remember the Inquisition, Charles was in league with Spain.

Simon and Amias contrived not to think about all this. They both knew in their heart of hearts that there was going to be civil war—one day. But it might not be yet awhile, and it did not bother them much, not while the summer lasted and there were so many other things to think about. Now and then Amias would speak of some new rumour, especially the one about blowing up London, for mines and explosives always interested him intensely;
but when that happened, Simon would say, ‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about it,’ and they would forget again. It was better so.

They had forgotten more completely than usual, one afternoon, half-way through the summer holidays. It was a burning blue-and-golden afternoon, after a week of storms, and they had been up-river all day simply messing around, watching for a certain otter of their acquaintance, bathing in the dark pool under the hanging oakwoods where the leeches fastened on to you no matter how careful you were, and had to be pulled off afterwards; and now they were going home for supper.

The furze was a blaze of gold, bean-scented in the August sunshine, as they climbed by their usual paths up Castle Hill, and the sheep lay in every patch of shade, too hot even to graze. Nothing stirred among the furze but a darting goldfinch or a linnet. The boys were hot too; their shirts stuck to them, and their arms and legs were flecked with horsefly bites, which in some odd way seemed only to add to their contentment, their sense of a day well spent. They were drenched with sunshine, half asleep as they walked. They had seen the otter and there was nearly a fortnight of the holidays left. Tomasine had promised damson tarts and gingerbread for supper, and afterwards, if no one was taken unexpectedly ill, Dr Hannaford, who was no mean swordsman of the old school and had given them lessons in the noble art of fence ever since they were big enough to hold a foil, had promised to show them a certain deadly thrust in tierce which he now considered them skilled enough to be trusted with. Altogether, life seemed very good, and if they had been cats they would have purred.

The study, when they entered it by way of the window, seemed very dark after the golden dazzle of the world outside, where the peonies and late roses of the untidy garden burned like flowers of coloured flame; and it was a few seconds before they saw that Dr Hannaford was there already. He was standing at the side chest, with his back to them, and he could only just have arrived, for he was emptying instruments from the deep pockets of his riding-coat. Next instant he swung round on them, and even through the green-and-crimson cloud that the darkness after the sunshine had spread before his eyes, Simon
knew that the Doctor was in a state of blazing excitement, and his own heart gave an odd lurch.

‘Have you heard the news?’ Dr Hannaford demanded.

‘What news, Father?’

The doctor’s bright blue eyes were shining like a boy’s, and his big voice was bigger than usual. ‘The King has raised his standard, two days ago, at Nottingham!’

There was a long silence, and then Amias let out a triumphant whoop. ‘That’ll finish Parliament’s nonsense! I say, Father, it’s simply splendid!’

‘Splendid? Aye, it’s that,’ Dr Hannaford said, and suddenly his voice grated, ‘but Devon will have no part in the splendour.’

‘Why not? What d’you mean?’

‘Parliament has levied an army of ten thousand men—that news came this morning also—and Sir Samuel Rolle is at this moment raising the Militia to join it. Didn’t you hear the uproar in the town?’

‘We came up over the Common. Father—it’s not true, is it? It
couldn’t
be!’

Dr Hannaford flung his gloves on the chest top as though he were flinging them in Sir Samuel’s face. ‘Ah, but it is,’ he said bitterly. ‘No matter, the King’s Majesty will hold his own against such mealy-mouthed gentry, yes!’ Then, with a sudden change of manner, he turned to the carved wall-press in which he kept his more precious drugs: litharge of gold and silver, ground sapphire, crystal and topaz, and the like; and unlocking it with a curiously fretted key, set the door wide. A pungent smell of the contents floated out, and reaching up to the top shelf while Amias watched him, he brought out a flask which he set on the table. A strangely shaped flask with a long slender neck and fat shoulders, which cast a wonderful quivering stain of greenish golden light on to the leather table-covering, where the sun shone through it. Returning to the press, Dr Hannaford brought out three glasses, tall and slender, of blown glass that was faintly golden, opening at the lip like the trumpet of some fragile flower. ‘These originally came from Venice,’ he said, handling the lovely frail things as Pentecost Fiddler handled the little
Destiny
, as he set them on the table. ‘And this’—he picked up the flask and set to work
on the cork, talking the while, his big voice sunken to a reflective rumble—’ is from Tuscany; the last of three that I brought home with me from my student days at Padua University. There’s all the gold of a Tuscan summer in this flask, and something of my own youth too. One day, when you’re old, you two, you’ll understand that. I had meant to broach it on the day that Amias passed out of his apprenticeship; but we’ll put it to a nobler use, a use worthy of it.’ He poured the thin golden wine into his own glass, and a little into the other two; then straightened, holding his glass aloft so that the sunlight burned in it like some great jewel.