As he followed Barnaby, Simon felt the familiar quick expectancy that always came to him in the moment of going into action, and with the Standard of Disbrow’s Troop held aloft, and the troopers of his Standard Escort on either side of him, he headed downhill to the ford. The General’s Troop were already half-way up the slope beyond as Simon and his Troop splashed through. As they did so, a puff of hot wind stirred the reeds, lightning flickered for an instant in the still water above the ford, and a low peal of thunder rumbled across the marsh. Then they were across, and Mostyn’s men were threshing and splashing after them, as they headed for the crest of the ridge. Bethel’s and Walley’s squadrons, after being once forced back, had spread out across the solid turf of the higher slope, and were charging again; and with a wild yell, and a slipping and scrambling of hooves on the steep verge, Disbrow’s were out of the lane after them. Following his Lieutenant, Simon swung Scarlet in a sharp curve, out over the verge and ditch, and up against the Royalists, his Standard Escort pressing at his flanks, the Standard whipping out on the wind of his going, and the solid phalanx of Ironside troopers drumming up behind with drawn swords on which the lightning flickered.
In place of the roar of the barrage, there was now the pealing thunder, distant still, but drawing nearer, the rattle of musketry and the shouting of close conflict. The Parliamentary Foot, pressing up behind the Horse, were spreading out to face the Foot of the King’s Army; already the skirmishing parties were met and falling back, and the pikes were going into action.
Simon never remembered very much of that fight. It was a wild flurry of charge and counter-charge, a great yelling and the scream of smitten horses, a whirling of clumped Cavalry that split and re-formed and split again, while overhead the lightning danced in a sky the colour of a day-old bruise, and the thunder boomed and crackled along the marshes. Presently they had cleared the ridge, pressing the Royalists back over the teazle fields beyond, despite all their resistance. Royalist Horse and Foot were no longer separate forces, but a confused and reeling mass being slowly forced back and back into the home-fields of Langport.
On the rising ground at the very edge of the little town, Goring’s forces made one last desperate stand; and Simon, charging at the head of a clump of troopers, had one of his Escort shot beside him. In the gap, a Royalist dragoon sprang forward with clubbed musket, his other hand grabbing at the Standard lance. Simon wrenched Scarlet round and up, up until the fore-hooves of the big sorrel were lashing the air and the man’s hold was broken, while with his free hand—for he had shifted the Standard to his left—he whipped the long dag from its holster, and fired. The Royalist’s musket arm dropped to his side, and clutching at it he reeled back into the mêlée. Simon thrust on grimly, into a sea of battling figures and clubbed muskets, while his troopers closed up behind him, yelling like triumphant fiends.
Within the hour Fairfax’s Army was hunting the beaten troops of Lord Goring through the narrow streets of Langport, where red flame leapt from roof to roof, and flakes of burning thatch dropped like petals of fire upon pursued and pursuers alike. Simon never knew whether it was lightning, or misguided zeal, or some accident of battle that had done the mischief; he only knew that as they rode through, the streets were filled with dismay, and the whole town seemed burning. But already, as they gained the open country, the rain was beginning to fall, straight heavy thunder-rain that hissed and splattered on the hard ground, lozenging the road with wet, and raising the unforgettable smell of summer rain on parched earth. The flames they had left behind them would soon be quenched.
My Lord Goring got away to Dunster Castle, and two days later was back in Barnstaple with the remnant of his men, while Fairfax sat down in front of Bridgwater, which fell before the month was out. Cromwell had meanwhile gone off to subdue the riots which were breaking out in Dorset, taking with him, amongst others, several Troops and Companies of Fairfax’s Regiments. Disbrow’s Troop, however, was not one of them; and so, still under the command of Fiery Tom, Simon saw the fall of Bath and Sherbourne in the golden harvest weather; and then sat down before Bristol, which Prince Rupert, who had taken over the command from Hopton, was holding with only three thousand Horse and Foot.
Cromwell had rejoined the main Army by that time, and there was a general assault on 20 September, a desperate affair which ended the siege, and the Prince was forced to yield. Simon saw the Royalist Garrison march out with full honours of war, Colours flying, drums beating, every musketeer with slow-match lit and bullet in mouth; and the Prince himself, riding at their head, a man with a pale masterful face, and the first autumn rain dark on the shoulders of his scarlet cloak.
Early in October, Simon and the New Model crossed the Devon border, and headed for Tiverton, in rain that was already turning the lanes to mud channels. Tiverton was ill-prepared for a siege; and Fairfax took the outer defences without much trouble, and pitched his headquarters at Blundell’s School, while he made plans for taking the Castle.
It was a wild autumn afternoon when Simon rode with his Regiment into the town, where they were to take up their quarters; shrivelled golden leaves whirling down before every gust of wind, the bitter blue reek of bonfires, the last ragged marigolds and Michaelmas daisies falling into brown rain-sodden ruin in small town gardens. Tiverton had always been staunch for Parliament, and despite the fighting which had wrecked several houses only a few hours before, the townsfolk turned out almost under the walls of the Royalist-held castle, to cheer for the New Model troops as they rode in.
It seemed very strange to Simon, this return to a place he knew so well; he looked about him eagerly, as he rode up the familiar street. Everything was much as he remembered, and everywhere he saw familiar faces in the crowds thronging the way: Mr Yeo the Chandler, a little stouter than of old; Nick Veryard of the Hand-in-Glove standing in his doorway. The Hand-in-Glove’s windows were all broken, but Nick Veryard was quite unchanged. The butcher’s wife, who, way back at the beginning of the troubles, had thrown all the sheep’s horns in the shop at Lord Bath when he came to read the King’s Summons to Arms in the Market Place. Old Mother Tidball, who sold gingerbread and peppermint lozenges to the Blundell’s boys, and had been a great friend of Simon’s. But none of them knew him.
It was not surprising, for Simon the inky schoolboy with a cudgel under one arm was very far removed from Simon the Cornet of Parliamentary Horse, in worn buff and steel, with a season’s hard campaigning behind him. He knew that, yet it made him feel rather like a ghost. Also the old familiar scenes made him think of Amias, who had been a part of them; Amias in the far-off days before the King came between them. Amias would have loved this triumphal entry into a town, under the walls of an enemy fortress, Simon thought; it would have appealed to his sense of the dramatic. And suddenly his heart ached and Tiverton put on the face of an unfriendly stranger.
The Castle fell two days later, almost by accident. A stray shot from the bombardment cut the main drawbridge chain, so that it came down with a crash; and the Governor, in consternation, gave up the struggle at the first assault that poured over it.
For the next month, Tiverton and the villages round about became the headquarters of the New Model Army. It was pleasant for weary men, after the stress of the last few months, to sleep in quarters again, and eat hot meals. There was even leisure for amusements. Cock-fighting and bull-baiting were forbidden; but there was always wrestling and cudgel-play, and the inns and taverns where you could meet friends and spend a cheerful evening. For the officers there was a little rough shooting and coursing over the land of the neighbouring gentry, who were mostly for Parliament, while the troops, not having been invited, went poaching every moonless night. Lieutenant Colebourne brought forth his beloved boots from the baggage-train, and waddled about Tiverton in them like a self-satisfied duck. The Commander-in-Chief disappeared from view for a while to have an old and troublesome wound in his shoulder re-dressed; and Lady Fairfax arrived from London, a little thing, as fair as Fiery Tom was
dark, but with a valiant carriage of her small plain head that was what one might expect from a young woman who had travelled across England at war, to be near her husband.
There was still fighting, of course, outpost skirmishes for the most part, but the wet autumn that turned the roads and tracks to quagmires put a stop to anything more serious. So for a while the two armies remained bogged down, each in their own territory, the New Model around Tiverton, and Lord Goring’s forces spread over the country between Exeter and the South Coast. By this time the Royalist Army in the West was beginning to be in a bad way. It was made up mostly of Devon and Cornish levies without much heart for their business, a fair sprinkling of wild Irish, and the rogues of every nation; but there was still a hard core of veteran fighting men; and the Royalist force was larger than that of Parliament. It looked as though the struggle, when it came, would be a hard one, and whichever way it ended, it would be the last struggle of the war, for the armies elsewhere did not amount to much, and the King was once again shut up in Oxford.
Midway through November, Sir Richard Grenville—that black disgrace of a proud name, hated for his cruelty almost as much by his own men as by his enemies, and certainly as much of a menace to his own cause as to the cause of Parliament—who had been encamped at Okehampton to guard the way to Plymouth, suddenly withdrew his three regiments without orders into Cornwall. And Simon, returning to quarters from an afternoon’s shooting, with a brace of mallard swinging from his hand, was mournfully told by his superior officer, ‘We’re through with the fleshpots for a while.’
‘What?’ said Simon.
‘Marching south at dawn. General advance on Exeter.’
Advance they did, save for a few regiments left in Tiverton; and before the end of the month, despite the state of the roads, they had taken up their new positions. Fairfax made his headquarters at Ottery St Mary, a brigade under Sir Hardress Waller was stationed at Crediton, and regiments at Powderham and other points held the city secure on the west. On the east, Great Fulford was taken and occupied by Colonel Okey’s dragoons; Eggsford House followed, and then Ashton; and Fairfax had a complete ring of fortified points round Exeter.
But strung between these great houses were others that must be occupied before the City could be quite enclosed; big farms and lesser manor houses for the most part. Sometimes it was simply a matter of moving into an undefended homestead, with, or if needs be without, the leave of its master; but others were Royalist outposts from which the troops must be driven out at the pike’s point; and for some, a battle of attack and counterattack lasted for days.
One of these small manor houses was Okeham Paine, a low-set grey house, at the curve of a shallow valley, down which its garden and demesne sloped to a cluster of cottages and a bridge. Because of its position, commanding the road to Exeter, the place had been fortified and garrisoned by Royalist Foot, and because of its position, it was needful that the troops of Parliament should occupy it as soon as might be.
The attack was ordered, and in the pitch darkness of the mid-December night, the attacking force set out from Broad Clyst. It was made up of two dragoon companies, a troop of Waller’s Horse, an officer and two privates of the Pioneers in charge of the powder-keg for blowing up the main door, and Disbrow’s Troop of the General’s Own. None too many for the job, but men were short, for fever, bred in the Ottery Marshes, was rife in the Army, and there were no men to be spared for the taking of one small fortress.
It had been snowing off and on for days past, and the thick fall muffled their hoof-beats, so that the column moved in eerie silence, save for the occasional jingle of a bridle-rein. It was very dark, with a loaded sky that seemed to press upon the tree-tops, and a chill, moaning wind blew the snow-scurries in their faces as they rode. Like a cavalcade of ghosts they passed, by lanes and bridle-paths and over untracked open land, following the scouts who had covered the ground in advance; and like a cavalcade of ghosts they came at last down through a belt of hanging oakwoods, to the verge of open land above Okeham Paine. Here, where the snowy pasture glimmered white between the trees ahead, they dismounted. The troopers, like the dragoons, linked their mounts together by slipping each bridle over the head of the next horse, every tenth bridle being taken by a man who was to remain behind. Then, as a whispered order passed along the lines from the senior dragoon captain, who was in command, they started forward again on foot, still following the scouts, down the woodshore.
It was snowing hard again; all the better, for the drifting flurries would help to conceal their advance, while the moaning wind covered any chance sound. The dragoons, usually armed with matchlocks, as befitted Mounted Foot, carried flintlock cavalry pistols tonight, that no glimmer of a slow-match should betray them in the darkness; and the jingling spurs had been stripped from the heels of the troopers for the same reason.
At the lower end of the wood, where the oaks gave place to birch and hazel, the whole party halted. There were no whispered orders now, for they had their orders in advance; and in utter silence they divided, Waller’s and one company of dragoons melting off to the right, Disbrow’s and the other to the left, towards the place where a long hawthorn windbreak led down towards the home paddocks. After a short distance a stream sunk between deep banks came looping almost to the roots of the windbreak. The dragoons dropped down one by one, and disappeared along the stream side, any movement in the snowy darkness hidden by the willow and alder scrub. Disbrow’s stole on, the advance-guard scouting ahead, the rest following after a space, in single file, with the Pioneers and their powder keg bringing up the rear. Simon only knew when they reached the first guard-point by a faint scuffle and a grunt far ahead that might well have been made by a rooting badger; and a little farther on he saw the dark shapes of the sentries, lying where they had been dragged aside from the way. To judge by the number of them, the watch had been doubled.
The windbreak grew thin here, where newly-planted thorn saplings gave poor cover, and it was a case of crawling from now on. On the edge of the home paddock they came upon another sentry post, and here the guard were on the alert, and there was a scuffle and the beginning of a cry followed by the crack of a musket-stock on somebody’s head; then a long prickling silence in which the men, crouching in the black gloom of the paddock trees, waited with straining ears for any sound of an alarm. None came. Evidently the sentry’s quickly silenced cry had been blanketed by the falling snow, or, if it had been heard, had been taken for the cry of some night bird. The attackers crept on.
They encountered no further sentry-posts, and in a few minutes more they were in their places along the eastern verge of the garden. A long wait followed. Crouching under a yew hedge, Simon was filled with a tingling expectancy. There was shelter from the wind here, and behind and on every side of him he fancied he could catch the faint breathing of hidden men. Away in front of him the whitened lawn dipped and rose to the dark bulk of the house itself. The windows had been barricaded against assault, but here and there a spangle of yellow light shining through a loophole told where men were wakeful and standing to arms. A little scurry of snow fell from the yew branches on to Simon’s shoulder, and the chill of the ground on which he crouched seemed to strike upward, a sodden creeping cold, through all his body. But still the waiting-time crawled. Surely, surely the other companies must be in place by now! They had farther to go, but they could not have run into any trouble, for there had been no outcry, no sound of shots.
Simon did not dare to shift from one chilled knee to the other, lest the movement should bring down a heavier fall from the yew branch, and so catch the notice of the sentries who must be on duty at the house. The snow had stopped, he realized, and the loophole lights shone clear.
Then a faint glow sprang up for an instant in the darkness of the bushes opposite, carefully screened from the house. Walley’s Troop was in position, and signalling the fact by the smuggler’s method of a shielded lantern. From the far end of Disbrow’s sector, Simon knew, the same glow
would be signalling across the corner of the kitchen garden, to the remaining company of dragoons.
So far, everything had gone without a hitch. The next move was for the dragoons behind the house; and almost at once, they made it. There was the sudden, sharp challenge of a sentry, followed by a pistol-shot, and then a whole volley; and a swelling uproar as if hell had broken loose in the kitchen garden. The dragoons were staging an attack in force, to draw the enemy’s fire. In the house and outbuildings drums were beating the alarm; and the golden spangles of the loopholes darkened one by one. Under his yew hedge, Simon drew himself together like a runner before the start of a race, waiting—waiting, while the defenders had their attention fully taken up by the mock attack in the rear. Then the voice of the dragoon Captain, raised in a staccato yell, gave the word of command, and like a dark wave the hidden men broke from cover, cheering as they did so. From all sides of the garden the attack swarmed in. Simon was up and running for the house, his long pistol in his hand. He was half-way across the lawn when fire spurted from the darkened loop-holes, and the rattle of musketry rose above the uproar on the far side of the house and the drums beating to quarters. He flung himself down like the rest, but in the pitch dark, firing was wild and most unlikely to do much harm, and an instant later he was up and racing forward again. The ranks grew thicker as the circle narrowed; one section was heading for the stables and outbuildings, another swerving left round the house to make common cause with the dragoons in the kitchen garden. Simon and his Troop, following Lieutenant Colebourne, held straight on to make a direct assault against the front of the house; and with them went the Pioneers who were to blast in the door.
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