Sam just stood where he was, showing his yellow and brown teeth in a pant. “The Scotsmen are getting near,” he said.
Betty turned her neck stiffly to look at Greybeard. Towin Thomas arranged his crafty old wolf’s visage over the top of his cudgel and looked at Sam with his eyes screwed up.
“Maybe they’re after your job, Sammy, man,” he said.
“Who gave you that bit of information, Sam?” Greybeard asked.
Sam came slowly into the room, sneaking a sharp look at the clock as he did so, and poured himself a drink of water from a battered can standing in a corner. He gulped the water and sank down on to a wooden stool, stretching his fibrous hands out to the fire and generally taking his time before replying.
“There was a packman skirting the northern barricade just now. Told me he was heading for Faringdon.
Said the Scotsmen had reached Banbury.”
“Where is this packman?” Greybeard asked, hardly raising his voice, and appearing to look out of the window.
“He’s gone on now, Greybeard. Said he was going to Faringdon.”
“Passed by Sparcot without calling here to sell us anything? Not very likely.”
“I’m only telling you what he said. I’m not responsible for him. I just reckon old Boss Mole ought to know the Scotsmen are coming, that’s all.” Sam’s voice relapsed into the irritable whine they all used at times.
Betty turned back to her stove. She said, “Everyone who comes here brings rumours. If it isn’t the Scots, it’s herds of savage animals. Rumours, rumours… It’s as bad as the last war, when they kept telling us there was going to be an invasion. I reckoned at the time they only done it to scare us, but I was scared just the same.”
Sam cut off her muttering. “Rumours or not, I’m telling you what the man said. I thought I ought to come up here and report it. Did I do right or didn’t I?”
“Where had this fellow come from?” Greybeard asked.
“He hadn’t come from anywhere. He was going to Faringdon.” He smiled his sly doggy smile at his joke, and picked up a reflected smile from Towin.
“Did he say where he had been?” Greybeard asked patiently.
“He said he had been coming from up river. Said there was a lot of stoats heading this way.”
“Eh, that’s another rumour we’ve heard before,” Betty said to herself, nodding her head.
“You keep your trap shut, you old cow,” Sam said, without rancour.
Greybeard took hold of his rifle by the barrel and moved into the middle of the room until he stood looking down at Sam.
“Is that all you have to report, Sam?”
“Scotsmen, stoats – what more do you want from one patrol? I didn’t see any elephants, if you were wondering.” He cracked his grin again, looking again for Towin Thomas’s approval.
“You aren’t bright enough to know an elephant if you saw it, Sam, you old fleapit,” Towin said.
Ignoring this exchange, Greybeard said, “Okay, Sam, back you go on patrol. There’s another twenty minutes before you are relieved.”
“What, go back out there just for another lousy twenty minutes? Not on your flaming nelly, Greybeard!
I’ve had it for this afternoon and I’m sitting right here on this stool. Let it ride for twenty minutes. Nobody’s going to run away with Sparcot, whatever Jim Mole may think.”
“You know the dangers as well as I do.”
“You know you’ll never get any sense out of me, not while I’ve got this bad back. These blinking guard duties come round too often for my liking.”
Betty and Towin kept silent. The latter cast a glance at his broken wrist watch. Both he and Betty, like everyone else in the village, had had the necessity for continuous guard drummed into them often enough, but they kept their eyes tracing the seamed lines on the board floor, knowing the effort involved in thrusting old legs an extra time up and down stairs and an extra time round the perimeter.
The advantage lay with Sam, as he sensed. Facing Greybeard more boldly, he said, “Why don’t you take over for twenty minutes if you’re so keen on defending the dump? You’re a young man – it’ll do you good to have a stretch.”