The Scarecrow and His Servant, Page 7

  Chapter Nine

  The Battle

  Mr. Cercorelli wasn't the only person looking for the Scarecrow. High up above the countryside where the Scarecrow and his servant had been wandering, an elderly raven was gliding through the blue sky. She was a hundred years old, but her eyes were as sharp as they'd ever been, and when she saw a group of her cousins perching on a pine tree near a mountaintop, she flew down at once.

  “Granny!” they said. “Haven't seen you for fifty years. What have you been up to?”

  “Never you mind,” she said. “What's going on over the other side of the hill? There are cousins of ours flying in from all over the place.”

  “The soldiers are coming,” they explained. “There's going to be a big battle. The red soldiers are going to fight the blue soldiers, and the green soldiers are coming along tomorrow to join in. But how are things over in Spring Valley?”

  “Bad,” said Granny Raven, “and getting worse. Have you seen a scarecrow? A walking one?”

  “Funnily enough, we heard a young blackbird complaining about something like that just the other day. Shouldn't be allowed, he said. What d'you want to find him for?”

  “None of your business. Where did you meet this blackbird?”

  They told her, and she flew away.

  That evening, after raiding six farms and commandeering all their food, the regiment camped by the side of a river. On the other side of the river there was a broad green meadow, and it was there that they were going to fight the Duke of Brunswick's army the next day.

  While the Scarecrow joined his brother officers in a high-level discussion about tactics and strategy, Jack went to help the cook prepare the evening meal.

  “Is this how you always get food?” said Jack. “You just take it from the farmers?”

  “It's their contribution to maintaining the army,” explained the cook. “See, if we weren't here to defend them, the Duke of Brunswick would come and take everything from them.”

  “So if you didn't take their food, he would?”

  “That's it.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Jack. “What are we having for supper?”

  They were going to have roast pork, and Jack sat and peeled a mound of potatoes to go with it. When he'd done that, he wandered through the camp and looked at everything.

  “How are we going to get across to the battlefield?” he asked one of the gunners, who was polishing a big brass cannon.

  “There's a ford,” said the gunner. “We just hitch up the guns and drive 'em in the water and up the other side. We'll do it after breakfast.”

  “Where's the Duke of Brunswick's army now?”

  “Oh, they're on their way. Only we got here first, so we got what's called tactical advantage.”

  “But if he gets to the meadow before we're across, then he'll have tactical advantage.”

  “Ah no, you don't understand,” said the gunner. “Now clear off, I'm busy.”

  So Jack went to look at the river instead. It was wide and muddy, and there might have been a ford, and there might not; because normally where there was a ford, you saw a track or a road going down to the river on one side and coming out of it on the other.

  He went and asked the farrier.

  “No, there's no ford,” said the farrier, lighting his pipe with a glowing coal in a pair of tongs.

  “Then how are we going to get across the river?”

  “On a bridge. It's top-secret. The Sardinians have got this new kind of bridge, movable thing, all the latest engineering. When they come, they'll put this bridge up in a moment, well, about half an hour, and we'll go straight across, form a line of battle, and engage the enemy.”

  “Oh, I see. But suppose the Duke of Brunswick decides to fire all his cannons at the bridge while we're crossing it?”

  “He wouldn't do that. It's against all the rules of engagement.”

  “But supposing—”

  “Go on, get lost. Scram. And you keep your trap shut about that bridge. It's top-secret, remember.”

  Jack decided not to puzzle anymore but to collect some sticks instead, so that he could repair the Scarecrow next day if he needed to.

  When it was suppertime, he and the other servants had to wait on the officers in their tent. Captain Scarecrow was behaving with great politeness, engaging his neighbors in lively and stimulating conversation and sipping his wine like a connoisseur. The only thing that went wrong was when the officers took snuff after their meal. The proper way to take it was to put a little pinch on the back of your hand, sniff it briskly up your nose, and try not to sneeze; but the Scarecrow had never come across snuff before, and he sniffed up too much.

  Jack could see what was going to happen, and he ran up with a tea towel—but it was too late. With a gigantic explosion, the Scarecrow sneezed so hard that all the buttons popped off his uniform, his umbrella opened in surprise, and bits of straw flew everywhere. Not only that; his turnip itself came loose and lolled on his neck like a balloon on a stick. If Jack hadn't been there to hold it, it might have come off altogether and rolled right across the table.

  As soon as the Scarecrow recovered his wits, he looked at Jack in horror.

  “Dear me, what a ghastly experience!” he said. “Was that the Duke of Brunswick attacking us? There was a terrible explosion, I'm sure of it!”

  “Just a touch of gunpowder in the snuff,” said Colonel Bombardo. “Better than snuff in the gunpowder, what? Cannons'd be sneezing, not firing. Damn poor show.”

  Presently the sergeant came in and said it was time for all the officers to go to bed. Jack helped the Scarecrow to their tent.

  “It'll be an exciting day tomorrow, Jack!” said the Scarecrow as Jack tucked him up in the camp bed.

  “I'm sure it will, master. I better sew all those buttons on extra tight in case you sniff some gunpowder. Good night!”

  “Good night, Jack. What a good servant you are!” So they all went to sleep.

  When they woke up, there was no sign of the Sardinians, but the Duke of Brunswick's army had turned up during the night and made camp in the meadow across the river. There were lots of them.

  “He's got a big army,” said Jack to the cook as they made breakfast.

  “It's all show,” said the cook. “Them big cannons they've got, they're only made of cardboard. Anyway, the Sardinians'll be here soon.”

  But the Sardinians didn't show up at all. While the Duke of Brunswick's soldiers lined up their cannons pointing straight across the river, the officers of the Scarecrow's regiment rode up and down, waving their swords and shouting orders. Meanwhile, the sergeant was drilling the troops. He marched them along the riverbank and then made them about-turn and march back the other way. Not many of them fell in.

  And while they were doing that, the gunners got their cannons all lined up one behind the other to go across the famous secret bridge that the Sardinians were going to bring. The Duke of Brunswick's soldiers kept looking at them and pointing and laughing.

  “They won't be laughing when the Sardinians come,” said the chief gunner.

  But there was no sign of the Sardinians. Finally, at about teatime, a messenger came galloping up with some shocking news. Jack was close by, and he heard the sergeant telling Colonel Bombardo all about it.

  “Message here from the King of Sardinia, sir,” he said. “He's changed his mind, and he's joining forces with the Duke of Brunswick.”

  “I say! What do you think we should do, sergeant?”

  “Run away, sir.”

  “Just what he'll be expecting. Very bad idea, if you ask me. We'll do just the opposite—we'll go across the ford, and before the Duke of Brunswick knows what's hit him, we'll give him a sound thrashing!”

  “Very good, sir. This ford, sir—”

  “Yes?”

  “Where is it, sir?”

  “In the river, sergeant. Right there.”

  “Right you are, sir. You're going first, are you, sir, to lead the way?”

>   “D'you think I should?”

  “It's the usual thing, sir.”

  “Then charge!”

  And Colonel Bombardo galloped his horse right off the bank and into the water—and disappeared at once. No one else moved.

  No one except Jack, that is. He saw the Scarecrow looking in an interested way at the river, where Colonel Bombardo's shako had just floated to the surface; and he ran through all the ranks of soldiers and past the guns and seized hold of Betsy's bridle.

  It was a good thing he did, because at that very moment there came a terrific volley of firing from the Duke of Brunswick's army across the river, and almost at once there came another volley from the other direction altogether: from behind them.

  “It's the Sardinians!” someone said.

  And then there were cannons going off all over the place. The regiment was trapped on the riverbank with the Sardinians behind them and the Duke of Brunswick's army on the other side, and there was no ford at all.

  The air was full of gunpowder smoke, and no one could see anything. Soldiers were shouting and crying and running in all directions; bullets were whizzing through the air from every side; cannonballs were smashing into the tents and the wagons; and the Scarecrow was waving his sword and shouting, “Charge!”

  Luckily, no one took any notice.

  Then a stray cannonball whizzed past Betsy's flanks, giving her a nasty fright and taking some of the Scarecrow's trousers with it.

  “Whoah! Help!” cried the Scarecrow.

  “It's all right, master, just hold on,” said Jack.

  And then a bullet clipped the Scarecrow's head, sending bits of turnip everywhere.

  “Charge!” shouted the Scarecrow again, waving his sword so wildly that Jack was worried in case he cut Betsy's head off by mistake; but then another bullet came along and knocked the sword out of his hand with a loud clang.

  “Now look what you've done!” cried the Scarecrow.

  He scrambled down from Betsy's back and was about to run straight at the nearest soldiers and join in the fight when Jack saw him suddenly stop and peer into a bush.

  “What is it, master?” he said. “Look, you can't hang around here—it's dangerous—”

  But the Scarecrow took no notice. He was reaching right in among the leaves, and then he very carefully lifted out a nest. Sitting in the nest was a terrified robin.

  “This is quite intolerable,” the Scarecrow was saying to her. “Madam, I offer my apologies on behalf of the regiment. It is no part of a soldier's duty to terrify a mother and her eggs. He owes a duty of care and protection to the weak and defenseless! Sit tight, madam, and I shall remove you at once to a place of safety.”

  Tucking the nest into his jacket, the Scarecrow set off. There was a short pause when a stray bullet shot his leg off, and he had to lean on Jack's arm, but slowly they made their way through the battlefield. All around them soldiers in red uniforms were fighting with soldiers in blue uniforms, waving swords, firing pistols and muskets; and then along came some soldiers in green uniforms as well. The thunder of the explosions, and the groans and screams, and the crack of muskets and the whine of bullets and the crackle of flames were appalling, and the things Jack saw going on were so horrible that he just closed his eyes and kept stumbling forward, leading Betsy with one hand and holding the Scarecrow up with the other, until the worst of the noise had faded behind them.

  There was a bush close by, and before he did anything else the Scarecrow lifted the nest out of his jacket, with the robin still sitting on it, and placed it gently in among the leaves.

  “There you are, madam,” he said politely, “with the compliments of the regiment.”

  Then he fell over.

  Jack helped him up again, stuffing back the straw that was coming out all over the place.

  “What a battle!” said the Scarecrow. “Bang, crash, whiz!”

  “Look at the state of you,” said Jack. “You're full of bullet holes, and you've only got one leg, and part of your turnip's gone. I'm going to have to tidy you up—you're badly wounded.”

  “I shouldn't think anyone's more wounded than I am,” said the Scarecrow proudly.

  “Not unless they're dead. Sit still.”

  Jack took a good strong stick from the bundle of spare parts he'd tied onto Betsy's saddle before the battle began. He slid it inside the remains of the Scarecrow's trouser leg. The Scarecrow sprang up at once.

  “Back to the battle!” he said. “I want to win a medal, Jack, that's my dearest wish. I wouldn't mind losing all my legs and my arms and my head and everything, if only I could have a medal.”

  Jack was busy tying the rest of the sticks together to make a raft.

  “Well, master,” he said, “if you turned up at that farm with no legs and no arms and no head and no sense, but with a medal shining on your chest, I don't suppose the broom would be able to resist you.”

  “Don't remind me, Jack! My broken heart! In the excitement of battle I'd almost forgotten. Oh! Oh! I loved her so much!”

  While the Scarecrow was lamenting, Jack gave Betsy a carrot.

  “Go on, old girl, you can look after yourself,” he said, and Betsy ambled away and disappeared in the bushes.

  “Now, master, you come with me,” Jack went on, finishing the raft, “because we've got a secret mission. It's very important, so just keep quiet, all right?”

  “Shh!” said the Scarecrow. “Not a word.”

  And Jack pushed the raft out onto the water, and he and the Scarecrow scrambled on board; and a few minutes later they were floating down the river, with the sound of battle and the cries of the wounded soldiers fading quickly behind them.

  Chapter Ten

  Shipwreck

  While the Scarecrow and his servant were floating down the river, two important conversations were taking place.

  The first one happened on the riverbank, where Mr. Cercorelli was talking to the sergeant of the Scarecrow's regiment amid the wreckage of the battlefield.

  “The last I seen of him, sir, he was charging into battle like a good'un,” the sergeant told him. “He made a fine figure of an officer.”

  “An officer, you say?”

  “Captain Scarecrow was one of the most gallant officers I ever saw. Fearless, you might say. Or else you might say thick as a brick. But he did his duty by the regiment.”

  “Did he survive the battle?”

  “I couldn't tell you that, sir. I haven't seen him since.”

  Mr. Cercorelli looked at the devastation all around them.

  “By the way,” he said, “who won?”

  “The Duke of Brunswick, sir, according to the morning paper. Very hard to tell from here. It was the King of Sardinia changing sides at the last minute that did us in.”

  The lawyer made a mental note to congratulate his employers. The Buffaloni Corporation had important financial interests in Sardinia; no doubt they had reminded the King about them.

  “Mind you,” the sergeant went on, “we got a return battle next month.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, sir. And it'll go different next time, because the King of Naples is coming in with us.”

  The lawyer made a mental note to tell his employers that as well.

  “If you hear any more of Captain Scarecrow,” he said, “here is my card. Good day.”

  The other conversation took place through a window in a little farmhouse.

  “Hey! You!” called Granny Raven, perching among the geraniums in the window box.

  An old man and his wife were sitting at the table, wrapping their crockery in newspaper and putting it in a cardboard box. They both looked up in astonishment.

  “Here,” said the old man to his wife, “that's old Carlo's pet, the one what escaped!”

  Granny Raven clacked her beak impatiently.

  “Yes, that's me,” she said, “even if you've got it the wrong way around. He was my pet. And I didn't escape, I flew off to find a doctor, only I was too
late. Now stop gaping like a pair of flytraps and pay attention.”

  “But you're talking!” said the old woman.

  “Yes. This is an emergency.”

  “Oh,” said the old man, gulping. “Go on, then.”

  “Not long before old Carlo died,” Granny Raven said, “he asked you both to go over and do something for him. Do you remember what that was?”

  “Well, yes,” said the old woman. “He asked us to sign a piece of paper.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes,” said the old man.

  “Right,” said Granny Raven. Then she clacked her beak again and looked at the table. “What are you doing with that crockery?” she said.

  “Packing,” said the old woman. “Ever since the Buffaloni factory opened, our spring's dried up. We can't live here anymore. They're taking everything over, them Buffalonis. It's not like what it used to be. Poor old Carlo's well out of it, I reckon.”

  “Well, d'you want to fight the Buffalonis or give in?”

  “Give in,” said the old man, and “Fight 'em,” said the old woman, both at once.

  “Two to one,” said Granny Raven, looking at the old man very severely. “We win. Now listen to me, and do as I say.”

  When Jack woke up, the raft was floating along swiftly, together with lots of broken branches and shattered hen coops and one or two dead dogs and other bits and pieces. The water was muddy and turbid, and the sun was beating down from a hot sky, and the Scarecrow was sitting placidly watching the distant banks go by.

  “Master! Why didn't you wake me up before we drifted this far down the river?”

  “Oh, we're making wonderful progress, Jack. You'd never believe how far we've come!”

  “I don't think it's taking us to Spring Valley, though,” said Jack, standing up and shading his eyes to look ahead.

  Very soon he couldn't even see the banks anymore, and the water, when he dipped his hand in, turned out to be too salty to drink.

  “Master,” he said, “we're drifting out to sea! I think we've left the land altogether!”

  The Scarecrow was astonished.