Free Simon by Rosemary Sutcliff

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 andled 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