‘All right,’ said Colonel Ireton abruptly. ‘We’ll trust you.’
‘I’ll go and fetch my horse from the smithy, sir.’
The other gave his quick pecking nod, and turned to issue orders for the bestowing of such of the wounded as must be left behind, while Simon made his way back to the smithy. There was no sign of the smith, but Scarlet was still secured to the ring in the wall, and greeted him with a shrill whinny when he appeared in the doorway. The horse was still shivering and sweating, his ears pricked and the whites of his eyes showing, and Simon talked to him, drawing one hand again and again down his nose while with the other he freed the headstall.
A few minutes later he was back in the churchyard once more, leading Scarlet with him, and talking to him still, softly and encouragingly.
The troopers were already swinging into their saddles; the order to march was given, and before the dusk had quite yielded to the friendly darkness, Simon found himself riding beside Colonel Ireton, at their head, as they defiled out through the churchyard gate and down the village street, where faces dim-seen in the light of open doorways strained to watch them go by. There were close on six hundred men behind him, and it was his responsibility to get them safely to Barnstaple before dawn, and as he settled his feet in his stirrups and bent his head into the soft rain, he was filled with a queer quick excitement.
Presently the villagers of Langtree roused from their sleep to hear horses trotting through the dark. Later, a miller woke to hear the splashing of a multitude through the ford below his mill. He went to the window, but could see nothing for the darkness and the driving rain, and after he had heard the last horse away down the Weare Giffard road he went grumbling back to bed.
Simon had been worried about Weare Giffard, for the Hall was a Royalist stronghold, and a brush with the troops there might bring reinforcements from Torrington down upon them; but there was no possible way of avoiding the village. He had explained this to Colonel Ireton, who replied that since there was no help for it, the risk must be taken. But the deep mud muffled their hoofbeats, and riding on the verges of the lane, and the soft ground between the cottages and the river, they got through safely, and took to the steep coombs beyond.
In more than one lonely farm, strung in a wide curve about Torrington, people woke and listened anxiously before going to sleep again, and in the morning pointed out to each other the tracks and drove-roads churned to a quagmire by the passing of many horses.
It was a hard ride for men who were already exhausted, and many of them wounded besides; but in the first sodden cobweb light of dawn, Simon brought his scarecrow army over the brow of the last hill and down towards the pale glint of the river and the thickly manned breastworks on Barnstaple Bridge.
‘There’s Barnstaple,’ he said, in a kind of weary croak. ‘I think I’d best be getting home now, sir,’ for he had suddenly remembered that his mother might be worried about him.
‘You’ve done a good night’s work, lad,’ Colonel Ireton said, and put his hand into the pocket under the skirt of his buff coat. Then he hesitated, looked at Simon in the growing light, and changing his mind, took it out empty. ‘When next you write to your father in Lord Leven’s army, tell him that you helped to save Essex’s Bodyguard from being wiped out.’
They shook hands, and Simon, wheeling his horse clear of the column, sat to watch them go by, looming up in the grey light, mired leg-weary horses, and men blind with fatigue, who looked as if they kept in the saddle more by instinct than any power of their own. One or two of them turned their heads to glance at him in passing; the rest were too exhausted even for that.
If he had been a few months older, Simon thought, he might have been one of them.
Almost at the rear of the column, the young officer he had tended in the smithy looked round as he passed, and made him a wide cheerful gesture of farewell; but he was rocking in the saddle. Simon waved back. He sat watching until the town barriers had been dragged aside and the last rider had straggled through; then he turned Scarlet’s weary head towards home.
A few days later Barnstaple was in Royalist hands again, after a five-day siege by Lord Goring. But long before that, Colonel Ireton and his tattered squadrons had got safely away over Exmoor, to rejoin the forces of Parliament.
V
Fiery Tom
TOWARDS EVENING OF a day some months later, Simon came riding into the Royal town of Windsor, where the great New Model Army was being built. While the last stragglers from Lostwithiel were yet coming in, old Sir William Waller had warned the Committee of Both Kingdoms. ‘Sirs, I tell you fairly that unless you form a properly unified army, you will not win this war,’ and the Committee had at last, now that it was almost too late, taken his advice. The army that he had demanded was being formed, and Simon had come to join it. More than a week had passed since, having turned sixteen, he had said good-bye to his family and Lovacott and set out, but he had ridden Scarlet all the way, and that had meant a slower journey than if he had ridden post. However, here he was, with a pair of long horse-pistols in his holsters that had been a parting gift from his mother—flint-lock pistols, the very latest thing—and he and the new Model Army were beginning together. The thought made him sit very upright in his saddle and look about him with bright, eager eyes.
It was yet early in February, and the poplars and elms of the river-meadows were bare, while the flickering water of the Thames reflected back a thin sunshine that had no warmth in it; but already the crimson flush of the willows told of rising sap, and there was that faint quickening in the air which is the first sign of spring while it is still a long way off. And high above the bare trees and the steep russet roofs of the town rose the great round Keep of Windsor Castle, grey, and somehow triumphant as a fanfare of trumpets, looking as though it had not been built by hands, but had grown out of the very stuff of England.
Simon had been watching the Keep ever since it first came in sight, but as he turned into the narrow street, it was hidden from his sight by the crowding roofs and overhanging upper storeys of the houses. Not that he would have had leisure for looking at it now, anyway, when all his attention must be given to getting Scarlet safely through the crowds that thronged and jostled up and down the crooked ways. Country folk and townsfolk, rich merchants in well-cut doublets, and beggars showing their sores in the kennel, a street-corner preacher in black gown and Geneva bands, a vendor with caged linnets for sale, a group of laughing girls with market-baskets on their arms; and everywhere, soldiers and yet more soldiers. Simon looked at them all, but particularly at the soldiers, because soon he would be one of them.
They were a motley crew, some in rags, some in scarlet coats stiff with newness; some gaunt and toughened with long campaigning; many still ruddy from the plough or pale from the counting-house desk, for the new Model Army was as yet only an army in the making.
Stopping to ask his way from a small wizened man whose scarlet coat was faced with shrieking yellow, Simon rode on until the high curtain-wall and ancient towers of the Castle began to peer over the gables and down into the thronged streets, and he came to one of the gateways. There was no ditch on this side of the Castle, for it had long since been filled in, and crowding hovels grew right to the curtain-wall as toadstools crowd against a tree-trunk, and a lane simply turned between two houses and led straight in through Henry VIII’s gate. Simon followed the lane, and reining up, appealed to the sentry on duty. ‘I want to see the colonel.’
‘Which colonel?’ demanded the sentry.
‘Any colonel of Horse.’
‘Sergeant!’ shouted the sentry.
The sergeant appeared from the guard-room, and looked at Simon hard.
‘Cove here wants a colonel of Horse—any colonel of Horse,’ said the sentry.
‘What for, sir?’ demanded the sergeant, doubtfully.
‘I want to join the Army,’ said Simon.
A young officer in the usual scarlet coat, who chanced to be passing, swung round at
the sound of his voice, and letting out a yelp of surprise, came striding to join the group. ‘You!’ he cried. ‘Well, of all the—’
Simon looked at him blankly for an instant, and then suddenly the gay freckled face under the jaunty feathered hat seemed to alter, and he remembered it as he had seen it last, grey and haggard and stained with blood. It was the man he had pulled from under the hooves of a Royalist horse at Little Torrington!
‘You!’ echoed Simon, and bent down from the saddle to wring his hand. ‘How’s your neck?’
‘Sound as a bell, and right as a blazing trivet! You’re a good surgeon.’ The young officer’s eyes were dancing up at him, his huge mouth curling almost into his ears. ‘You’ve come to join us?’
‘Yes.’ Simon nodded. ‘Where and how do I find a colonel?’
‘Oh, to hell with colonels! It’s the General for you, my lad—and he’s down here today too. come along and we’ll catch him before he starts back again. All right, sergeant, a friend of mine; I’ll see to this.’
With a breathless sense of being caught up and hurried along by a wave against which it was useless to fight—not that he had the least desire to fight—Simon abandoned himself to whatever might happen next, and dismounting, obediently led Scarlet back into the main street.
‘I say, this is luck! A timely meeting!’ his companion was saying. ‘My name’s Barnaby Colebourne. What’s yours?’
‘Simon Carey,’ said Simon, slightly dazed. ‘Who did you say we were going to see?’
‘The Lord-General, Sir Thomas Fairfax. You know.’
Yes, but surely we don’t need to bother him!’ Simon protested, as they shouldered back into the shifting crowds of Thames Street.
Barnaby Colebourne explained rapidly and at the top of his voice, as he pushed forward across the street. ‘We do if you’re going to join my Regiment. Fairfax’s Horse, we are, and so the General is our Colonel, if you see what I mean.’
Simon saw, rather hazily, and was just opening his mouth for another question, when they arrived before the courtyard arch of a great inn, over which hung a brilliantly coloured sign showing the blue-and-gold insignia of the Garter.
‘Here we are,’ said Barnaby Colebourne, and with Simon and Scarlet at his heels, turned in through the dark tunnel of the archway. They emerged in a cobbled courtyard where two horses were being walked up and down before the house door; and after handing Scarlet over to the care of an hostler, Simon followed his new friend into a shadowy hall where several soldiers were standing about, and up a broad flight of stairs, past the doleful-looking sentry on duty at its foot.
‘Of course we could have gone to Major Disbrow,’ said Barnaby casually. ‘Most of the Colonel’s duties fall on him really, but the Lord-General is more likely to listen to reason.’
There was another man on duty before a door at the end of the long upstairs gallery, and a young officer of the Staff, a Galloper, kicking his heels by the window. Barnaby spoke to him, and he disappeared into the next room, and after a few moments came back and left the door open for them.
They went in and the door shut behind them, and Simon found himself in a panelled room where a low fire was smoking badly on the hearth. A man writing at a table in the middle of the room glanced up for an instant at their entrance, and then went on writing; while another man in the dark clothes of a secretary sat by him, ready to take the finished paper.
After the noisy streets, it seemed very quiet here, with no sound save the faint, harsh scratching of the quill pen over the paper; and Simon had plenty of time to take stock of the writer, who he supposed must be General Sir Thomas Fairfax. The Commander-in-Chief was dark; that was the first thing one noticed about him: dark as a gipsy, and gaunt as a scarecrow under the gay scarlet of his uniform coat, with black unruly hair hanging about his cheeks and neck. With nothing of his down-bent face visible save the frowning black brows and great beaked nose, he had a most forbidding aspect; and seeing his gloves and riding-whip beside him on the table, and remembering the horses being walked up and down in the courtyard, Simon began, first to feel that they had not chosen a very good moment to bother him, and then to wish fervently that they had not come to bother him at all, but gone to Major Disbrow, whoever he might be, instead.
The great man finished his writing and laid down the pen, sanded the sheet and handed it to the man beside him, saying in a slow very pleasant voice, ‘Three copies, John—no, four. Colonel Pride had better have one.’ Then he turned his attention to the pair waiting before him. Now that he was looking up, his dark face no longer seemed forbidding, for the eyes did much to redeem its harshness. Also, Simon saw to his surprise that he was quite young—not more than two or three and thirty. The scar of an old wound showed livid on cheek and temple, and he put up one hand for an instant to cover it, as though he was still very conscious of the disfigurement; then let his hand fall back to the table.
‘Yes, Colebourne? You wished to see me?’
Barnaby stepped forward, doffing his hat in salute. ‘Yes, sir. This is Simon Carey, a friend of mine, and he wants to join the Regiment; so I brought him along to you, sir.’
The General turned his head in the quick alert way he had, and studied Simon in silence for a few moments. Then he nodded, as though satisfied with what he saw. ‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen, sir.’
‘You have seen no fighting before, I take it?’
‘Only as an onlooker, sir,’ said Simon.
Barnaby made a quick movement forward, and Fairfax turned to him. ‘Yes, Colebourne?’
‘He’s the guide who got us safely through to Barnstaple, after Lostwithiel, sir.’
Fairfax studied Simon again. ‘That was a good night’s work,’ he said slowly. (Indeed, all through the interview Simon found the slowness of the General’s speech an odd contrast to the quickness of his looks and movements.)
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I haven’t got a cornet, yet, sir; beg pardon, sir,’ said Barnaby, insinuatingly.
‘What about Cornet Wainwright?’
‘He—’ Barnaby hesitated, and then plunged on. ‘I know he thinks he has a right to the post, but seniority isn’t everything, and—do you think he’s quite the man for the job?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Frankly, no, sir.’
The General’s left brow shot up, and he leaned forward, arms folded on the table. ‘Tell me why,’ he suggested.
‘Well, sir, he’s too touchy about his dignity, for one thing, and he’s got a sarcastic way with him that doesn’t go down well.’
‘He has the makings of a good officer, none the less.’
‘But not for the Second Troop, sir.’ Barnaby was speaking quickly, and very much in earnest. ‘My men are mostly old Ironsides, and a good many of them are Anabaptists and so on, too, and that doesn’t make them any easier to handle. They’re the salt of the earth, sir, but they’re a pretty hard lot, and if Cornet Wainwright started his airs and graces on them, they’d—they’d be more inclined to spank him than salute him!’
The General’s dark face kindled suddenly into a smile that made him seem for an instant like an eager boy; then it was gone, and only a trace of it lingered in his eyes. ‘That sounds like indiscipline, Captain-Lieutenant Colebourne.’
‘No, sir; human nature,’ said Barnaby with a grin.
‘And you think Carey, here, would have a better chance of success with these ravening wolves of yours?’
‘Yes, sir—and Colonel Ireton would speak for him, I’m sure. So would Richard Cromwell.’
‘You have met him only once before?’ mused Fairfax. ‘Ah well, the circumstances of the meeting being what they were, that might be enough. We won’t trouble Colonel Ireton or Captain Cromwell.’ Turning back to Simon, he began to question him closely: of course he could ride? Had he ever used pistols? . . . Simon’s answers to these and sundry other questions evidently satisfied him, for finally he pushed back his chair and got up, saying, ‘Very
well, Colebourne. I bow to your judgement. John Rushworth, see to it. You have the details correctly?’
The grey-haired secretary glanced at a slip of paper on which he had been writing and read out, ‘Simon Carey, to be commissioned as Cornet of the 2nd Troop, Fairfax’s Horse.’
Fairfax nodded, then turned to Simon again. ‘You will receive your Commission from the Committee of Both Kingdoms in the course of a day or two. In the meanwhile, get your equipment and report to Major Disbrow.’
Simon drew himself up even straighter than he had been standing before and said rather breathlessly, ‘Thank you, sir! I—I’ll do my level best to be worthy of it.’
‘I know that.’ Fairfax picked up his gloves and moved toward the fire. ‘I wish you a good evening, Colebourne. Good evening, Carey.’
A few moments later they were outside the door again, and clattering downstairs.
‘A friendly soul, the Lord-General,’ said Barnaby with satisfaction, as they crossed the courtyard where the horses were still being walked up and down before the door. ‘Never too busy to talk to small fry man-to-man and listen to what one has to say. Now for the Quartermaster; I’m off duty, so I’ll come too. We’ll leave your horse here and pick him up later on the way back to Quarters. Oh, but wait a moment—’
They had just emerged into the street, when he stopped in his tracks and turned to point upward. ‘Look up there.’
Simon followed the line of his pointing finger, and saw a mass of drooping Colours that hung motionless in the quiet air, brilliantly, glowing blue and gold and white in the fading light of the February afternoon, from the open oriel window above him. ‘Those are our Regimental Standards,’ Barnaby was explaining. ‘The big ones on the left are the Colours of Fairfax’s Foot, and the smaller ones on lances are the Standards of Fairfax’s Horse; one for each Company and Troop, you see. That’s ours, second from the left, and the black leopard above is Sir Thomas’s personal Standard. They are always housed where everyone can see them, partly to show where Regimental Headquarters is, and partly because—well, because they belong to each one of us, and so we all have the right to see them, not only in action and on parade, but all the time.’
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