Simon

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Next instant, as it seemed to Simon, the darkness exploded into a fitful red glare in which the flashes of discharged weapons were myriad points of flame. There was shooting enough now on both sides. The rooms beyond the barricaded windows were in darkness, that the light might not silhouette the men at the loop-holes; and they had flung down firebrands among the attackers to make them a possible target; but these quickly fizzled out in the snow, save a few which the dragoons had caught up and were using to fire the barricades, ripping out the blazing wood as it scorched and twisted. Again and again Fairfax’s troops were driven back, again and again they rallied and pressed forward once more. The fight was swirling like an angry flood through stable yard and outbuildings; and crouched against the stout main door, out of the line of fire, three dark shapes made hasty but careful preparations with powder and fuse. Inside the house the Royalists stood to their posts, the marksmen firing steadily while their comrades loaded for them; but this was to be a hand-to-hand fight in the long run, and as the shutters and barricades went down, window after window became the centre of its own fierce struggle, where battling figures reeled to and fro with clubbed muskets; and the fitful red light flashed on leaping sword blades.

  In the midst of one such mêlée, Simon was slowly but surely forcing his way inward. He had emptied both pistols, and was fighting now with his sword, his men pressing at his heels. It was a cut-and-thrust affair of random blows, like a fight in a dream, and in the course of it he had lost his steel cap, but would not have noticed it if he had lost everything except his sword; for suddenly the press against him was slackening, the defenders of the window were giving way! And with a yell he and his men poured across the shattered sill.

  ‘First in! By the Lord Harry!’ His voice was drowned by the roar of an explosion, and he knew that the main door had gone.

  It was a small room in which they found themselves, and the light of a burning shutter showed them a door in the opposite wall. Shouting in triumph, they hurled themselves against it. More and more men were crashing in behind them, as they burst it open and stormed through into a yellow radiance of candles that almost blinded them.

  They were in the main hall of the house, lit by candles guttering wildly in sconces against the damaged walls; the place was reeking with the fumes of burned powder, which hung like swirling fog in the air, and a desperate struggle was going on for the splintered doorway. A great staircase curved out of the murky shadows, and half-way up it stood a woman in a dark gown, a tall woman, standing with arms spread as though to make a barrier, and looking down with no shred of fear on the wild scene below her. Simon saw all this in a confused flash, before a band of the defenders came charging down upon him, led by a slight figure whose wild red hair shone like flame in the guttering candlelight.

  The two bands came together in a reeling clump of men and clubbed muskets and leaping steel; and as the two leaders sprang to meet at the foot of the stairs, and their blades rang against each other, Simon saw that the red-haired man was Amias.

  Amias recognized him in the same instant, and laughed. ‘Well met, brother sober-sides!’ His eyes were full of the old dancing fire, and his blade—it was Balin, Simon knew instinctively—never wavered out of line. Simon said nothing. He pressed grimly forward, full of a queer cold feeling of unreality. This could not be really happening! It was something so horrible, so much against the nature of decent things, that it simply was not possible. But it was possible!—It was happening!

  There, at the foot of the wide staircase, Simon and Amias fought, forgetful of the struggling figures all around them; seeing nothing but each other’s eyes filled with deadly purpose above their leaping blades; while the woman on the stairs, standing coldly remote from the turmoil below her, looked down upon them.

  The whole affair lasted only a few moments, then the resistance about the door broke suddenly, and the dragoons came flooding in. The mêlée in the hall was forced towards the stairs, and Simon, springing back from a lunge that had ripped his sleeve, glimpsed for a split second the menacing outline of an up-swung musket-stock above his head. It came whistling down, and he staggered sideways, not realizing that he had been hit. There was a wild sea-roaring in his ears, and something hot trickled down his forehead and cheek; for an instant he saw Amias’s face, with a look on it that he did not understand. He saw it very clearly, but as though from a long way off, and then the floor tilted under him and he plunged downward into a great darkness.

  XI

  Susanna

  A GREAT WHILE later, as it seemed, Simon began to float up through the darkness, rather as one might float up through murky water towards the light and air above. Indeed, it was so like that, that he had a vague idea he had been swimming with Amias in the pool below the oak woods at home, and had somehow got stuck at the bottom. He kicked out strongly to come to the surface, but the nearing light beat on his head like a hammer, and he must have swallowed a lot of the muddy river water to make him feel so sick. . . .

  Some sort of frightful upheaval took place inside him, and somebody said, ‘There, he’ll be better after that.’ And the dark waters closed over him once more.

  But he did not sink as deeply as before, and it was not so long before he began to come up again. This time there was a kind of wavering leaf of light far ahead and, little by little, a blurred halo began to spread round it, a golden glow, very comforting, like the glow of candle-light in a window when one has been out a long time in the darkness and the cold. And suddenly Simon knew that that was exactly what it was; a candle, or two candles, he was not sure which, for sometimes there was only one flame, and sometimes two, with a possible third. It seemed to waver about, growing sometimes very large and blurred, sometimes very small and sharp. Then, as his sight began to clear, he saw that it was only one candle, and that it was held aloft in the hand of a woman who was regarding him fixedly by its light. A tall woman in a grey gown, with her hair showing smoothly dark under the edge of her white Puritan coif. He seemed to remember that he had seen her somewhere, a long while ago, but where?

  Next instant a small clear picture sprang out of the darkness in his head, and he saw her standing in the curve of a wide staircase, looking down with a kind of rigid calm on the fighting men below her. Memory of at any rate part of the night’s work flooded back to him, and with a choking cry he tried to struggle to his elbow. The world tilted and swam, and the hammer in his head nearly deafened him, and next instant the woman was beside him, with her free hand in the middle of his chest, pushing him firmly back on to soft pillows. ‘Lie still,’ she commanded. ‘God has seen fit to preserve your life, and will you undo His work?’

  ‘W-where—what—’ stammered Simon, finding the words thick and heavy on his tongue.

  ‘No, you are not a prisoner, if that is what troubles you. This house is once more in the hands of Parliament, and the Men of Blood have been driven forth from it.’

  Simon gasped with relief. ‘What—happened after—’ he began.

  ‘After you fell beneath the musket-stock of the man of wrath? The Royalist Captain cried quarter, his position being hopeless and many of his men slain; he and his troops were ordered out and, praise the Lord, General Fairfax’s men entered into possession. This house has been too long an abode of the wicked; but now, righteousness is again within its walls.’

  Simon squinted at her, trying to get her face into focus and not quite succeeding; trying to understand what she said, and scarcely succeeding in that either, for his dazed mind was straining after other things he wanted to know. ‘How long have—I been here?’ he mumbled at last.

  ‘A night and a day. It is ten of the clock now.’

  ‘And is—my Troop still here?—Disbrow’s Troop?’

  ‘Only the dragoons are left. The rest have marched back to where they came from.’ The tall woman had set down the candle, and now she began to measure something from a flask into a glass she took from the table beside the bed.

  Simon ploughed on.
‘Were there—many wounded?’

  ‘Upward of a score, beside the Men of Blood. The Army surgeon came this morning and took them in to Credition in two baggage-wagons, but you, he said, the jolting would most likely kill, if he were to move you for two or three days.’ She turned to him, the glass in her hand. It was big and globed, and caught the light like a bubble. ‘Now I have answered enough questions, and you must sleep. Are you thirsty?’

  ‘Very thirsty.’

  Simon found that she had slipped an arm under his head and raised him against her shoulder. ‘Drink this. Not too fast, now.’ He gulped the cool herb-smelling brew, while she held him with unexpected gentleness, taking the glass from his mouth when he drank too quickly, exactly as though he were a small child. When the glass was empty, she laid him back on his pillows. ‘Now you will sleep; and I shall sit here for a while at the foot of the bed. And in the morning, by God’s mercy, you will feel better.’

  She moved the candle so that it would not shine on his face, wrapped herself in a dark cloak, and drawing a tall-backed chair to the foot of the bed, sat down and opened a book which hung from her girdle. Simon, watching her as she read, was reminded of Zeal-for-the-Lord. It was a friendly memory, and in a few minutes he was asleep.

  When he next woke, the small room in which he lay was filled with the grey light of a winter’s morning, and there was a small rhythmic clicking sound in his ears that he did not understand. There was a good deal that he did not understand; what was the matter with his head? for instance. He edged a hand free of the bed-clothes, and put it up, clumsily, to find out: bandages, and a thick pad over his left temple that hurt horribly when he pushed at it with fumbling fingers. Then it all came back: the assault, the red spurts of fire, and the fight milling through the candle-lit hall. And this time the picture was complete, and he remembered Amias.

  He drew a deep shuddering breath that was almost a whimper, and found that there was a woman bending over him; not the tall woman of last night, but a little stout one with broken veins in her cheeks like a withered apple.

  ‘There now, lie still, my poor dear soul,’ said she. ‘Lie still and give thanks to the Lord who gave you a thick skull—if so be as the lengthening of one’s days in this vale of tears be a matter for thanksgiving, which I doubts. And I’ll get you nice broth that has been keeping warm for you beside the hearth this half-hour or more.’

  Simon protested weakly, but his protests were of no avail The little fat woman fetched the broth from its place beside the low fire, and Simon drank it because he had not the strength to rebel.

  ‘’Tis as sinful to repine at good broth, as ’tis to bewail the lack of it,’ said she, as she ruthlessly tipped the last spoonful into his mouth. ‘Broth when you don’t want it, and no broth when you do; that be the way of life in this wicked world.’ And she went back to her chair beside the bed-foot, and took up again the knitting with which she had been busy when Simon awoke.

  ‘Click-click-click,’ went her needles. Faintly, from the outside world, came the sound of the dragoons at morning stables. Left to himself, Simon lay very still, with his face turned towards the whitewashed wall. Amias. What had become of Amias? Where was he now? Living or dead? Captive or free? And weren’t there enough men in the two armies, without himself and Amias needing to draw swords on each other? Why did it have to be Amias in the hall that night? Why? Why?

  But despite his utter misery and the questions that dinned themselves over and over in his throbbing head, he was presently asleep once more; and the next time he woke, an hour or two later, the tall woman was beside him again. Before he went to sleep he had meant to ask her about Amias, but now he found that he could not. It was queer, stupid, but the words stuck in his throat, and he couldn’t speak about Amias; not to her, at all events.

  When she saw that he was awake, she put down on the table the bandage linen that she had been holding. ‘Good morning to you, friend,’ she said. ‘I have come to dress your head.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Simon, dutifully.

  She began to undo the bandages; her hands were quick and sure, not fumbling, as the hands of people who are afraid of hurting so often do, but going straight ahead with the work. ‘It is an ugly wound,’ said she, when she had uncovered it. ‘Eight stitches scarce seem enough to me, but the chirurgeon should know his own trade. I must clip away some more of this hair. Am I hurting you?’

  ‘A bit. But you’re a very good surgeon, ma’am.’

  ‘I have had enough practice,’ said she, clipping. ‘We had many wounded here during the first siege of Exeter. Men of both armies, and I tended the goats with the sheep, bidding them repent of their evil ways, as I did so, and leave off following after the Man of Blood, Charles Stuart.’

  She finished her task, and re-bandaged Simon’s head. Then, dropping to her knees beside him, and bidding him repeat the words after her, folded her hands and gave thanks to Almighty God, who had spread the shelter of His wings over His unworthy servant, saving him from being cut down with all his manifold sins still upon his head and consigned to the fiery furnace. Simon did as she bade him, very devoutly. He was perfectly conscious of his own shortcomings, and because he was rather a humble-minded person, it never occurred to him to wonder how the tall woman came to be so sure of them.

  When she left him, he went to sleep again, and slept off and on through most of that day, save when he was woken up to drink more broth or warm milk with herbs in it. But even in his deepest sleep the throbbing of his head was still with him, and so was Amias’s face, white and set, and bright-eyed above his leaping sword blade. The mistress of the house and her little round henchwoman seemed to come and go about him a good deal; and towards evening the dragoon Captain looked in on him, and in reply to his anxious questions, told him that Scarlet, with the other horses whose riders had been killed or wounded, had been taken back to Broad Clyst. But about Amias, Simon found that he could not ask him. Once, waking suddenly from an uneasy doze, he thought he caught sight of a girl’s face—a little white pointed face, all eyes, like a changeling’s—peering at him from the darkness of the open doorway; but it was gone so quickly that it might have been only the ravelled end of a dream.

  Next day the surgeon came; not old Davey Morrison, but a younger stouter man, kindly but harassed, with heavy hands that hurt Simon a good deal when he examined the wound. ‘Yes, yes, we shall be able to take him off your hands quite safely tomorrow, Mistress Killigrew,’ he said, when he had felt Simon’s pulse and peered into his eyes.

  ‘In my opinion, he had better stay until the day after,’ said the mistress of the house.

  ‘No need—not the least need in the world, I assure you, ma’am. A thick skull and a strong constitution.’

  Mrs Killigrew drew herself to her full height, which made her taller than the surgeon, and faced him across Simon’s bed. ‘This young man has been set in my charge by Providence,’ said she. ‘The Lord has seen fit to deliver him alive out of the fighting in my hall; and do you think that I shall allow the Lord’s work to be undone by a meddling and probably inefficient army surgeon who orders his untimely remove from under my roof?’

  The surgeon, not liking to be called meddling and probably inefficient, began to splutter. ‘May I remind you, ma’am, that this house has been taken over by the forces of Parliament?’

  ‘I am aware that the ground floor and outbuildings have been so taken over, but this room happens to be in the part of the house reserved to the use of myself and my family, and if you come upstairs after your patient tomorrow, I warn you that you will find the door locked against you, and myself, my maids and my daughter on guard before it,’ said Mrs Killigrew, with the air of one speaking what she knows to be the final word.

  The indignant surgeon also knew that it was the final word. He snatched at the last shreds of his dignity, and bowed. ‘I must accept your ruling, since I can scarcely order an attack on a party of wilful women, and have Cornet Carey taken by force. I will arrange f
or a wagon passing this way the day after tomorrow to pick him up.’

  After he had gone, Mrs Killigrew came back, carrying under her arm a huge Family Bible with brass clasps. She made no reference to what had just taken place, but told him, ‘At some time in every day it is my custom to read a chapter from the Scriptures. This afternoon I shall read it here in this room, that your spirit may be refreshed thereby.’

  Someone else had stolen in behind her, and now stood, with demurely folded hands and downcast eyes, just within the door; a girl of about the same age as Mouse, or perhaps a little younger, with a white face, and pale reddish hair strained back under her coif, and Simon knew that the girl he had seen peering at him yesterday had not been a dream, after all.

  ‘This is my daughter Susanna. You have not seen her before, for she has been repenting her sins, locked in her own room these two days past,’ said Mrs Killigrew.

  The pale girl raised her eyes suddenly, and Simon found them fixed upon him; enormous dark eyes that seemed to shadow all her face, filled with an agonized appeal.

  ‘No, I have not seen Mistress Susanna before,’ he said.

  But Mrs Killigrew was not listening.