Not a yard off, quite undisturbed by his thunderings, Mother Trimble sat on her immense haunches, tenderly spooning broth into a wounded Royalist. Friend or foe meant little to Mother Trimble, if he were but hurt or sick.
At the far end of the room, Dr Hannaford was bending over one of the blanket-muffled figures, which lay very still.
Behind Fairfax Simon made his way towards him, and found himself looking down at Zeal-for-the-Lord. Zeal-for-the-Lord, not much marked by the explosion, but most cruelly changed by the months before it that had turned his hair from black to white. Meeting him only in the dark, for the light of the shielded lantern had never reached his face, Simon had not realized the change in him, and it was a few moments before he knew him. Then the dreaminess that had seemed to clog his brain burst like a pricked bubble, and everything became very real again, with clear hard edges. He saw that General Fairfax had not recognized the man at all; there was no particular reason why he should. In the same instant he saw the appeal—no, it was a command—in the eyes of his old Corporal, fixed on his, and he did not betray him.
‘You’re almost too late,’ the Doctor muttered.
Fairfax bent over the still figure, saying quietly, ‘You know what caused the explosion in the powder magazine?’
Zeal did not answer at once. It seemed as though his clear command to Simon had taken all the life that was left in him. ‘We made a clatter getting down from—the bell-tower. The Guard—came in on us,’ he said at last, in a harsh whisper, so faint that it was hard to catch his words. ‘Slow-matches alight, and there—must have been—loose powder.’
The dry whisper trailed into silence; and for a few moments Sir Thomas Fairfax stood looking down at the dying man, with the look of someone trying to lay hold of a half memory. ‘What is your name?’ he asked.
A shadowy smile fluttered for an instant on the other’s cracked mouth. ‘Ishmael Watts.’
‘Watts,’ said the chaplain, who had closed his Bible and joined the group. ‘And a desperate villain, sir, by the look of things.’
‘We do not know that,’ said Fairfax. Then, very slowly and clearly, ‘What were you doing, above the magazine?’
No answer.
Joshua Sprigg, convinced that he had to deal with a villain, and bent on bringing him to repentance, far more than on finding out the cause of the explosion, had dropped on his knees beside him. ‘Sinner!’ he thundered. ‘Through you, two hundred souls have gone untimely to their Maker!’
‘A heavy harvest from—a small sowing.’
‘Sowing? What sowing do you speak of?’
Zeal’s lips were scarcely moving. ‘Thirty pounds, all in silver,’ he said. ‘And a white—just thirty pounds.’
‘O vile and wretched man—’ began Joshua Sprigg.
Dr Hannaford looked round with the beginning of an angry protest; but Zeal-for-the-Lord was beyond any reviling now. He turned his face to Simon’s, and it was peaceful as the boy had seen it only once before, on that spring day beside the river, when he had talked of his little holding and the breeding of flamed and feathered tulips. He stretched himself out with a long quiet sigh, as though he were very weary. And Simon knew that, in this world, it was all over for his old Corporal.
‘Poor devil,’ said Dr Hannaford; and got up, dusting the sand from his knees.
‘A most hideous mishap,’ said Fairfax.
The chaplain turned to him in surprise. ‘You believe that cock-and-bull story, Sir Thomas?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the General. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ll notice he refused to say what he was doing in the magazine, at all?’
‘In the bell-tower above it, rather. He may have been hiding for some cause. Does it matter, now?’
‘Would any sane man hide over a powder-store? For my part, I believe him to have been some rogue left behind by the Man of Wrath, Hopton, to destroy the magazine. The thirty pounds were obviously his fee for doing it.’
‘Joshua, Joshua, men risk their lives for many things, but would you or I, or any sane man face almost certain death for a fee that we should not have the spending of? There is some mystery about all this, that we shall not find the answer to.’
Simon said nothing. That was the one last thing he could do for Zeal, to obey him, and say nothing. The old Ironside had paid his debt, and the fact that it had all been in vain could not alter that. He had made peace with his own hard unbending conscience in his own way, and it was not for Simon to meddle.
Fairfax had turned to leave the room, and Simon, once more following him, missed the anxious question in Dr Hannaford’s eyes, and blundered against the doorpost as he passed, because he was not seeing very clearly. For the first time since he was nine years old, when his dog died, he was crying; crying for an unknown man called Ishmael Watts, who had once been Corporal Zeal-for-the-Lord Relf, of the General’s Horse, and erstwhile of Cromwell’s ‘Lovely Company’.
He shook his head angrily to clear his sight as they remounted the stairs and turned once again into the panelled parlour. Cornet Wainwright, who had been leaning against the table, straightened hurriedly as the General entered; while at the same moment Amias got unsteadily to his feet.
General Fairfax crossed to the hearth and stood looking down into the flames, frowning a little; then he seemed to make up his mind and turned to face the three pairs of eyes fixed on him. ‘Ensign Hannaford,’ he said, ‘it seems that the matter of the magazine explosion is closed. You are no longer under suspicion.’
‘I’m—relieved to hear it, sir.’
‘Tomorrow I shall offer to take into the New Model Army any of the Royalist prisoners who care to change their allegiance. Quite a large number will probably accept.’
‘Those who do will do no credit to their new Colours,’ said Amias.
‘Privately, I am inclined to agree with you; but like the Centurion, “I also am a man under authority”. I am not going to make the offer to you, because I think you would refuse it.’
‘I should.’
‘Instead, I am going to release you on parole into your father’s care. I take it that Dr Hannaford now tending the wounded below stairs is your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. Then I suggest you join him. He will be anxious about you.’
Amias stared at him for an instant, then drew himself up. ‘Sir,’ he said, as though to his own Commander, and turned to the door.
Fairfax halted him. ‘You are forgetting your sword.’
Amias looked from the dark scarred face of the Parliament General to the long rapier on the table, and back again. ‘You’re—you’re going to let me have it back?’ he stuttered, quite forgetting his formal manner.
‘I do not release a man on parole and keep his sword.’
‘I—’ began Amias, and broke off. He picked up Balin, and made for the door once more. The orderly who had been half his guard opened it for him. But on the threshold, Fairfax halted him again.
‘Oh, and Ensign Hannaford, touching the matter of your Company Colours.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It is of course your duty to keep them out of enemy hands; and while I naturally regret that you have so completely forgotten where you hid them, I don’t quarrel with any man for carrying out his duty.’
Amias grinned from ear to ear, and suddenly his eyes were dancing in his grey face. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, and disappeared unsteadily into the passage.
When the door had closed behind Amias and the orderly, Fairfax turned to the two who remained. ‘Cornet Wainwright, your conduct in this affair has been most praiseworthy, if perhaps—somewhat over-zealous.’
Denzil flushed crimson. ‘Sir?’ he said.
And Simon noticed that the General’s eyes were uncomfortably deep-seeing.
‘A few weeks ago,’ said Fairfax, ‘there was, I believe—I ask no questions—a trifle of unpleasantness in Mess one night.’
‘That wasn’t my doing, sir,’ said Den
zil deliberately.
A shadow of distaste crossed Fairfax’s face, and he was silent a moment, as though waiting for Simon to speak; but Simon said nothing, and he went on: ‘I do not ask whose doing it was. I merely say, there was a trifle of unpleasantness—and now this. Gentlemen, we are at war, and it is no time for schoolboy games of tit-for-tat. I say this to both of you: I will not have feuds among my officers.’
‘No, sir,’ said Denzil.
‘No, sir,’ said Simon.
‘Very well. Good night, Wainwright.’
The crimson flush had drained away from Denzil’s face, and he was almost as white as Simon had been on the night Fairfax had just spoken of. ‘Good night, sir,’ he said, and stalked from the room.
The door closed again, and Simon was alone with his General. He had begun to hope a little, in the last few minutes, but as he met Fairfax’s bright compelling gaze, he braced himself for what might still be coming. ‘So, Carey, we now have only your part in all this to bring to a satisfactory conclusion.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Simon met his gaze steadily, but his mouth felt dry.
‘Do you remember the Covenant that you took when you became an officer of this Regiment?’
Simon said, ‘I do, sir.’
‘Yet you forgot it, today,’ said Fairfax, in a quiet voice that fell like splintered ice into the silence. ‘What am I to do with one of my officers who forgets his duty to the cause he serves, for the sake of a private friendship?’
Simon said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. The silence dragged on, while, facing the cold accusation in the General’s eyes, he had time to think of all the things that Fairfax intended him to think of. Those moments were some of the worst that he had ever known.
Suddenly and most surprisingly, the General’s dark harsh face lit into his rare smile. ‘I shan’t hang you, this time,’ he said.
‘No, sir,’ said Simon, standing rigidly to attention.
The General made a small gesture of finish, with his open palms on the back of the chair. ‘In fact, I suggest that we consider this matter closed. Go back to your quarters, get yourself a meal, and turn in. You must make your own peace with the Regiment.’
Simon drew a quick deep breath, dizzy with relief. ‘I’m—I’m to return to the Regiment, sir? I mean—you’re not going to—’ His voice stumbled away into silence.
‘Since we enlisted the South Devon levies we have scarcely enough officers to go round. We certainly cannot afford to hang or cashier any of them. Furthermore, though it is no shadow of an excuse, I do not suppose you are the first to act as you did today, since Jonathan stole out the of King’s Camp to comfort David in the wilderness of Ziph.’ Fairfax was gazing down into the red heart of the fire, as he spoke. After a moment he added, ‘If the fortunes of war had gone otherwise, I might have sorely needed a friend to forget his duty for me. Pray God I should have found such a one.’
There was a little silence, and then he turned back to his chair beside the littered table. ‘Good night, Carey.’
‘Good night, sir,’ Simon said fervently. ‘And thank you, sir.’
And somehow he got himself out on to the stairhead.
The fog inside his head was gathering thick and fast again, as he stumbled downstairs into the taproom on his way to the street door; and it was a few moments before he realized that the voice shouting after him ‘Simon! Simon!’ meant himself, and that it was Amias’s voice. Then the fog cleared a little, and looking round, he saw Amias wrapped in a blanket lying on the deep settle beside the fire; Amias straining up on one elbow to look after him with very anxious eyes.
‘Amias!’ he exclaimed, and was across the room to his side on the instant, heedless of the soldiers who glanced at him curiously as he passed. ‘I thought you’d have gone home by now.’
‘I’m to stay here for the night. Father and a long-legged Scotsman who came in just now have decided it between them. But anyway, I couldn’t have gone home till I knew how things went with you.’
‘My orders are to go back to my quarters, get a meal and turn in,’ Simon told him.
‘Not a stain on your good Roundhead character?’
Simon considered. ‘I don’t think so. No, not a stain,’ he said.
‘A great man, your General.’
‘Yes,’ said Simon.
Amias dropped flat on his back, and thrust his free hand out from the blanket. ‘Oh, curse you, Simon, you’re the best friend a graceless numskull like me ever had,’ he said ruefully.
Simon shook the hand warmly. ‘You’ll not be feeling so humble when your shoulder stops hurting.’
‘Of course not,’ Amias grinned. ‘Who did blow up the church?’
‘Oh, it was an accident—a stupid accident. Your father knows the story. Look, old lad, I’ve got to be marching. See you again when—’ He broke off. He had almost said, ‘when the war is over’, but that was not a thing you could say to a friend on the losing side.
A sudden gust of wind, higher than any that had gone before, dashed the rain against the broken shutters and swooped rumbling down the chimney, driving a stinging cloud of smoke into the room. When it cleared, the two were still looking at each other, with no trace of laughter left between them.
‘When the war is over; that’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?’ Amias said. ‘That won’t be long now. The King’s cause is finished; the Army is a rabble.’ Suddenly his voice cracked a little. ‘We had such high hopes.’
There did not seem to be anything that Simon could say. He touched Amias’s sound shoulder for an instant, a poor sort of comfort, but it was the best he could do and Amias would understand. Then he turned away. Old Davey Morrison was at work in the next room, and softly whistling his one tune as he cleaned instruments. Passing the open door, Simon caught the slow-falling melody; and it seemed to him that the ‘Flowers of the Forest’ was a lament, not for Flodden alone, but for all lost causes since the world began; for all lost causes, and for all broken men, even for Zeal-for-the-Lord.
Then he went out past the sentries into the wild February night, hunching his shoulders against the driving rain, with only one thought left in him, that soon he would be able to lie down and sleep.
Next day Cromwell returned with his squadrons from Woodford, and that afternoon, it being Sunday, Pastor Hugh Peters preached a thanksgiving sermon to the assembled Army from a balcony in the Square. And Simon, still rather gummy-eyed and unsteady on his feet, was back with his Troop, carrying the gay silken Standard that stirred like a great flower-petal in the light February wind.
That day almost half of the Royalist prisoners accepted Fairfax’s offer, and enlisted in the New Model Army; and the remainder he discharged, each man with two shillings to get him to his own home.
Eight Colours and Standards had been taken, among them Lord Hopton’s own, with its scroll bearing the words, ‘I will strive to save my Sovereign King’, and several bare pikes, broken across, from which the Colours had been stripped by the men who carried them back into Cornwall to the last rally of a lost cause. But the stained and shot-torn Colours of Amias’s Company remained undisturbed in their foxhole, which chanced to be a deserted one; and the spring rains washed it into the ground, and next autumn a squirrel made a store in the folds, and then, after the way of squirrels, forgot the place. One of the nuts sprouted and took root, and presently there was a fine hazel sapling growing through the old Royalist Colours.
During the five days that the Army remained in Torrington, Simon worried ceaselessly about his report to Major Watson. He would have to tell the truth, and he would have at the same time to keep faith with his old Corporal, and he did not quite see how he was going to do both. But he was never called on to make that report at all. Major Watson’s methods were rough and ready: if the job was done, he seldom asked for details afterwards. He did make a few inquiries about his missing scout, and pieced together the facts that he had been taken as a spy, and had escaped; and when the man did not return to du
ty, he simply assumed that he had got tired of the service—not at all an unusual thing to happen among the scouts.
During the time, also, Simon had to make his peace with the Regiment, as Fairfax had said; for the whole story was public property within a few hours. But he did not have very much difficulty. Denzil, on the other hand, had rather a lot. The General’s Own felt a good deal more sympathy with a man who had risked everything to stand by a friend in the wrong camp, than they did with one who, out of malice, had seized quite so zealously on the chance to break a brother-in-arms. Denzil, who had spent so much time and care in trying to make life unpleasant for Simon, now found himself cold-shouldered, and, worse still, slightly ridiculous. Within a few weeks he obtained a transfer to another regiment; and the General’s Own did not grieve to see him go.
But that was still in the future when Fairfax marched his troops west once more, in drenching rain that had turned the deep lanes to running torrents.
At Stratton, Lord Hopton had been rejoined by the shreds of his Army, but judging it useless to try to hold a place so near the Devon border, he retreated to Truro. There, he would have made a last stand, but his ragged troops were beyond any more fighting, and at Truro, on a gleamy March day, he laid down his arms. The Prince of Wales had already fled to the Scillies on his way to France, and Lord Hopton, refusing the offer of a Command in the Parliamentary Army which was accepted by many of his officers, followed him overseas, a very faithful servant. Simon watched him board the ship which was to take him into exile, and wondered whether Prince Charles, who seemed by all accounts to be a wild and rather unpleasant youth, deserved the loyalty of such a man.
Exeter fell, and then Newark. By early May nothing was left to the King but Oxford, and he, vainly trusting in the Scots as his last hope, had already slipped out of the city, and was heading northward in disguise, with his little beard shaved off.
Simon Page 25