Simon

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  The faint apricot flicker of a firelit window showed ahead of him, and he made his way towards it, up the well-remembered path, and reaching the kitchen door, knocked softly. A sudden scuffle sounded inside, and then all was silent once more, save for the wind and the rain. Simon knocked again; and almost at once came sounds of bolts and bars being drawn. The door opened a little way, and in the gap appeared Tomasine Blackmore, a most valiant figure with a candle in one hand and a poker in the other. Seeing a buff-clad figure on the threshold, she made as though to close the door again, saying in accents of disgust, ‘Roundheads! We’ve had enough of your kind hereabouts.’

  The Roundhead propped himself wearily against the doorpost, with a squelching boot well inside. ‘Tomasine,’ he said, ‘it’s I, Simon Carey. Where’s the Doctor?’

  Tomasine let out a small screech and dropped the poker. Then she flung the door wide and hooked Simon over the threshold, shutting it again behind him, and turned with a hand spread-fingered on her large chest. ‘Oh, my days! ’Tis Maister Simon, sure ’nough!’ she wheezed. ‘What be after, my dear?’

  ‘I want the Doctor,’ Simon said again.

  ‘He’m out. Been out most of the day, a’ has, helping tend the wounded.’

  Simon had expected that, but the house had seemed the best place to start the search for him. ‘Where?’

  Tomasine jerked her head. ‘Up along in the Square, I reckon.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll ask again when I get there.’ Simon turned to the inner door, but Tomasine laid a large imploring hand on his arm, holding him back.

  ‘I—Maister Simon, my dear, is it Maister Amias?’

  Simon nodded, then, seeing her face, added quickly, ‘No, he’s going to be all right, only I’ve got to find the Doctor. And, Tomasine, don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me.’

  ‘I won’t, my dear. Not a soul!’ she said fervently. She pushed by him in the dark passage, and drew the bolts and bars of the front door, as she had done of the back. ‘There, quickly now.’

  ‘Right. Leave the door on the latch,’ Simon said, and went out into the street.

  South Street seemed quite deserted, for most of the troops would be in quarters by now, and it was not a night when anyone would be abroad needlessly. But the Square, when he turned to it, was still full of comings and goings; and the lanterns which must be hung before the principal houses from Hallowtide to Candlemas flung their uncertain wind-swayed light on to wet cobbles and the hurrying figures of soldiers, and made a kind of golden smoke of the rain as it slanted by. Before the door of the Black Horse a sentry was pacing up and down, and two doors farther on some of the search-party were gathered, and something long and muffled in a cloak was being carried indoors. Evidently the wounded were still being brought in. Simon stood aside until they had gone; then turned quickly to the door, meaning to ask if Dr Hannaford was within, and if not, in which of the other houses he might be found. But in the doorway he met the Doctor himself, coming out, and accosted him breathlessly, ‘Dr Hannaford—’

  Dr Odysseus Hannaford swung round on him. ‘Yes, what—Simon!’ His shaggy brows twitched together and his beak of a nose was disdainful. ‘I have nothing that I wish to say to rebels,’ he said, and made to turn away.

  ‘Never mind that now,’ Simon muttered. ‘I must speak to you, sir, but not here. Go home and wait for me, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.’

  His face was clear in the light of the lantern over the doorway, and Dr Hannaford seemed to read the desperate urgency in it, for his manner changed, and he murmured back, his lips barely moving, ‘Is it Amias?’

  ‘Yes. For the Lord’s sake go home, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’ The Doctor turned, wrapping his cloak about him, and set off in the direction of South Street.

  Almost sick with relief, Simon moved into the shadows between two swinging lanterns, pretending, for the benefit of any passers-by who might notice him, to be making some adjustment to his sword-belt, for it seemed to him that, in the circumstances, it might be as well if he were not seen walking with Dr Hannaford. So far, so good. But he did not realize how noticeable he had been, bare-headed (his helmet was back at Solitude) and with the dark stain of blood on his temple, as he stood full in the lantern light with the Doctor, and he had not seen Denzil Wainwright check in passing, to watch him from the shadows, at first with malicious curiosity, and then with sudden hopeful suspicion narrowing his eyes.

  A few minutes later, Tomasine, who had been on watch, opened the Doctor’s door to him, and he slipped inside. As it closed behind him, he turned to the open door of the study through which taper-light shone out into the dark passage. Inside, the heavy curtains had been drawn across the window to cheat any prying eyes in the garden, and Dr Hannaford stood before the hearth, with his head bent and his back to the door. He turned round as his visitor hesitated on the threshold, and Simon saw that he looked suddenly an old man. But his rumbling voice sounded much as usual when he spoke. ‘What about Amias? Is he killed?’

  Simon shook his head, and closing the door, leaned heavily against it. ‘No. He’s at Solitude, in Pentecost Fiddler’s care, and with some splinters of metal in his shoulder. Will you come and cut them out?’

  Before the words were out of his mouth, Dr Hannaford had turned to his instrument cases. ‘Why this so-extraordinary secrecy, may I ask?’ he said, picking out a long bright probe. ‘The houses round the Square are full of Royalist wounded. If your General’s reputation be true, there’ll be no harm come to them.’

  Once again Simon explained the situation, and the Doctor’s face grew more deeply lined as he listened, while all the time he was opening and shutting drawers and cases, and stowing the things he needed in his pockets. ‘I have heard much of that story,’ he said; ‘but I did not connect it with Amias.’

  Simon was looking at the Doctor’s boots, noticing with satisfaction that they were long loose-fitting riding-boots like his own. ‘We shall have to ford the river,’ he said. ‘There are pickets on both bridges. Luckily it’s not coming down in spate any longer.’

  ‘It won’t be the first time I’ve crossed by the stickles, though I’ve not done it for thirty years.’ The Doctor picked up his cloak and swung it round his shoulders. ‘But there need be no “we” about it. There is no call for you to venture yourself farther in the matter. Go back to your fellows.’

  ‘Do you know the way?’ Simon demanded. But he knew that few people save himself and Amias and the Fiddler knew the exact position of Solitude, and those who did would be afraid to act as the Doctor’s guide, especially at night.

  ‘I can find it.’

  ‘I doubt it, in this rain and darkness,’ Simon said flatly. ‘It’s no good, sir; I’m coming with you.’

  ‘So be it, then.’ The Doctor’s voice was tired and heavy, but his face had grown kinder as he looked at Simon. ‘You know what you are doing, don’t you?’ he said, almost gently. ‘You, a soldier—befriending one of the enemy.’

  There was a long silence, while the Doctor clasped his cloak, and Simon stared at the candles. Somehow, until this moment the only thought in his tired mind had been to save Amias at all costs, and he had not had to choose between two loyalties. But now, Dr Hannaford had forced the choice on him. Two loyalties; and to keep faith with one meant breaking it with the other, and who should say which was the blacker treachery? ‘Yes, I know what I’m doing,’ he said at last; and his mouth felt dry. ‘It’s Amias, you see,’ and he opened the door and stood aside for the other to pass.

  ‘I see,’ said Dr Hannaford. ‘Yes, I see,’ and he put a hand on Simon’s shoulder for an instant, as they went out to the darkened kitchen, where Tomasine waited to open the back door for them.

  Upwards of an hour later, soaked to the thigh from fording the stickle, and almost as soaked about the shoulders from the rain, they emerged from the storm-lashed woods, on the edge of Solitude, and saw a faint crack of light shining out through the dripping branches of the wild-fruit trees.

/>   ‘Here we are,’ said Simon.

  Scarlet stood dejectedly with hanging head where Simon had left him under the bird-cherry; he raised his head with a faint nicker at the sound of his master’s voice, but Simon had no time to do more than pat his neck in passing, and an instant later the crack of light widened as the ramshackle door was opened to let them in.

  XIX

  ‘No Man shall Harbour the Enemy’

  THERE WAS A certain rough comfort in the rush-lit cabin, where a red fire burnt on the hearth, and the lovely little Destiny on the mantel caught the light on the winged curve of her sails. Amias’s sodden clothes had been spread before the fire, over which a crock was boiling; and Amias himself, quite conscious now, lay under the old blanket on the bracken-piled bed-place. He had raised himself on his sound arm at their approach, and lay staring at the door with strained eyes; then relaxed with a sigh as they came into the light and Pentecost shut the creaking door behind them.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s only you. I thought for a moment it was the Roundheads. Hullo, Father.’

  ‘Telled ’ee Simon had gone for your father, didn’t I?’ said Pentecost soothingly, as one might speak to a small sick child. Then to the Doctor, ‘There’s water boiling for ’ee, Doctor, if ’ee should want; and a good red fire to heat the knife.’

  Dr Hannaford slipped off his sodden cloak. ‘Aye, thank ’ee,’ he said, and knelt down by his son’s bed, to loosen the stained bandages. ‘Now let’s take a look at this shoulder.’

  Simon had brought the rushlight, and stood holding it while the Doctor uncovered and examined the wound, and Amias looked up at him across his father’s shoulder and said, simply, as though there had been no four years’ rift between them, ‘Simon, your head’s bleeding.’

  ‘Not now,’ Simon said. ‘I got banged on it last night.’

  Dr Hannaford seemed to pay no heed to this, but a few minutes later, getting up, he looked closely at Simon’s head, apparently noticing the blood on his temple for the first time. ‘You did not get that scar last night. No.’

  ‘No, that was way back before Christmas. We took a house that we needed for the siege of Exeter, and in the scrimmage somebody hit me on the head with a musket stock,’ and as Dr Hannaford nodded and turned to the fire, the eyes of Simon and Amias met, and suddenly and most wonderfully, the memory of that wild night at Okeham Paine was become a bond between them.

  The Doctor was setting out his instruments, intent on various preparations, with the help of Pentecost Fiddler; and the other two were left to themselves. Simon had not known that he was going to speak, until he heard the words, and they did not seem to have come from himself at all. ‘Amias, did you blow up the church?’

  Amias looked at him with blank astonishment. ‘Blow up the church? No, of course I didn’t. What on earth put that idea into your addled pate?’

  Relief flooded over Simon, and with relief, he grew exasperated. ‘It’s in more pates than mine,’ he said. ‘What possessed you to talk all that moonshine about a fine night for catching mice, and Fiery Tom not getting the King’s powder, to the corporal you met on Castle Hill? Of course he tumbled to it that you’d touched off the magazine, and he’s spread the story through the whole Army, and what is more, he’ll be able to swear to you again. The moon was full.’

  ‘I suppose it does look a bit black against me,’ Amias said blankly. ‘That was why you came looking for me, and dumped me here on Pentecost?’

  ‘Yes. Keep that shoulder still.’

  ‘I—didn’t do it, you know.’

  ‘I know that now, but we couldn’t prove it,’ Simon said.

  Dr Hannaford had turned back to them, and once more knelt down beside the bed-place. ‘I am, I confess, relieved to hear that you have not the death of a couple of hundred men on your hands,’ he remarked conversationally, producing the horn-rimmed spectacles out of habit, and then absent-mindedly putting them away again.

  Amias looked at him with startled over-bright eyes. ‘A couple of hundred—what do you mean, sir?’

  ‘There were two hundred Royalist prisoners in the church,’ Simon said. ‘You didn’t know that?’

  Amias began to laugh, breathlessly. He looked at the palm of the one hand he could lift. ‘It’s quite clean, sir,’ he said, ‘quite clean; look—’

  ‘Aye, quite clean,’ said his father. ‘Let’s get this scrap-iron out now. Pentecost, here, and hold the arm steady for me.’

  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 s
ay, 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.’