The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “Leave him be,” said Parson Peregrine to his more sober pupil, who walked beside him carrying his books. “But as for you, young jackanapes, you could have done better and you’ll come home with me to give another hour to your Latin.”

  “Sir!” gasped poor Richard, for it was a long time since breakfast and his belly ached for a bit of bara ceich and a drink of buttermilk to bridge the void between now and dinner. But he knew it was no good for his tutor’s hand was on his shoulder, hard and inexorable. He yielded but with an arrogant lift of his fair head. Parson Peregrine smiled grimly. He was not so fond of this boy as of the other. There was a coldness in him and the sort of ambition that might twist learning into a means of personal advantage, a defamation of the Word that to Parson Peregrine was sacrilege. But for this very reason he took infinite trouble with Richard, trying to set him alight so that his devious mind would know the warmth of dedication. He was the heir and what he thought and did would have importance in the days to come.

  Parson Peregrine was extremely anxious about the future. These new men, these detestable Puritans, were setting themselves up against law and order in Church and State, refusing to use the prayer book or to venerate the tradition of the Church, preaching and praying as they pleased. True, they venerated the bible, Parson Peregrine would say that for them, but not so much as they venerated hearing themselves preach, and praying as they pleased. Inflating themselves up, that was all they cared about, inflating themselves against their God and King, whose direct appointment by God himself they were now daring to call in question. Resistance to the lawful prince and to the Church of the land as by God established was no longer called sin but liberty of conscience. Parson Peregrine growled in his red beard and propelled Richard up the weedgrown path into his cottage. A Latin lesson gave him plenty of opportunity for speaking of these things to Richard. What he did not know, for he was a man who neither considered nor cared what others thought of him, was that Richard was growing to hate him; consciously for this merciless instruction and unconsciously for the selfless enthusiasm that was a reproach to Richard’s own cold and introverted mind and heart. Parson Peregrine was unable to realize, as he looked at the beautiful boy with his cavalier curls lying on his shoulders, that he was giving to Richard’s mind the very bias that he was trying to avoid. He would have done better to concentrate on Justus who loved more easily than he hated.

  At the moment Justus loved his morning bara ceich and buttermilk with passion and was making for it at the double. He caught up with it on fine mornings in the arbour. The garden door crashed behind him, he raced round the sundial and bounded into the cool greenness of the arbour and the arms of Nan-Nan, who was sitting there with Lucy and the twins, the buttermilk and the bara ceich.

  Nan-Nan was tiny as an elf-woman, one of the Tylwyth Teg, the fairy people whose stories she delighted to tell the children. She never raised her voice, and had a step as light as a falling leaf, yet her power was such that the life of Roch Castle radiated from her like spokes from the hub of a wheel. She never left the castle, unless it was with the children, and if she had any living relatives she never spoke of them. She lived her life in entire dedication to those she worked for but at the same time had every one of them completely under her thumb. In after years Lucy used to try and think what Nan-Nan had looked like and found it difficult to get a clear memory of anything except a voluminous grey gown, snowy-white apron and big mob cap invisibly animated by a bright-eyed spirit of love who comforted not so much with arms and a smile, though there was a smile somewhere in the memory, as by an envelopment of warmth that sent a glow of healing through the whole being of the afflicted child. So Justus now, though he scarcely felt the physical touch of her thin arms, and sitting on her knee was like sitting on a bodiless grey cloud, felt a glow in his empty stomach even before the nourishment had reached it, and his whole person, sorely wearied by education, relaxed in the comfort and was at rest.

  “There, there now, bachgeni,” she comforted, for she privately had a low opinion of intensive education for the very young. “Here’s your buttermilk. Sit up now, cariad, and do not trouble your head with anything more at all. Lucy, pass the bara ceich.”

  Lucy passed the oat cake. She too, sitting close to Nan-Nan on the bench, was feeling warm and comfortable after an exhausting time with her sampler. The twins, Dewi and Betsi, were sitting on the grass just outside the arbour, towels round their necks, absorbing buttermilk loudly out of their mazers. All the children had these little wooden bowls, graduating in size according to their age. Each had a silver lip-band and was decorated at the bottom with the family crest. The fun was to get down to the bottom of the mazer and find the silver heron, who would come flying to them through the milk or gruel, as though winging his way up through the white mists that hang sometimes over the low waters where the herons nest.

  The twins emerged from their mazers breathless, milk-bespattered and jubilant, Nan-Nan coaxed Justus down on to the bench beside Lucy and going to them wiped their faces with the towels, which she then removed and placed in the large basket which was her inseparable companion. The twins, two years old, were dressed in ankle-length dresses, with little aprons and close-fitting caps that covered their cropped hair. They were very alike and only those who loved them best, their father, Nan-Nan and Lucy, could tell at first sight which was the boy and which the girl. One told, Lucy thought, by the fact that Dewi’s face was squarer and slightly more determined. Also he had more physical strength than his twin and his attitude towards her was already protective. Nan-Nan loved these two, with their black hair and eyes, no less than the other children, a love deepened by her compassion; though indeed she felt compassion for all five for where all is not well between the father and the mother the children cannot fail to suffer. She denied even to herself that she could have a favourite among her nurselings, but if she had it was Lucy.

  “Look at the bees!” cried Lucy and in a moment she and Justus were out of the arbour and watching the bees in the flowers. This balmy warmth had come after a spell of cold wet weather and they were out in full force today, apparelled in velvet and gossamer, their humming harp music a glory and wonder after the silence of the winter. Unhurried but unresting they mined for their wealth, thrusting to the heart of the honeysuckle trumpets and the foxglove bells, and coming out gold-dusted with the pollen and with their treasure sacs growing heavier and heavier. They went away when they could carry no more but others took their places, citizens of many cities but with no hatred of each other, no envy and no greed.

  “Old Parson will be happy now,” said Lucy. “He’ll be alive again now he’s got his bees.”

  She did not mean Parson Peregrine but the queer old priest who lived at Brandy Mill. Everyone called him Old Parson because they did not know his name. Neither did he, though he sometimes called himself Jonah because he said he had been cast out of the boat, and at other times Saul because he was sorely troubled by a devil of misery. Many of the bees that came to the castle garden were his. He had four hives in the mill house garden and they were his life. He was not without intelligence and knew exactly what to do for his bees, but he could no longer manage the practical affairs of life and he could not remember what had happened to him before the winter day when William, riding home, had found him kneeling in the snow outside the castle, soaking wet and with the wound of a great blow on his head, dressed like a seaman but with the torn remnants of a priest’s cloak hanging about his shoulders. William had brought him in and taken care of him for a while, and then had arranged comfortable lodging for him with Howel Perrot and Damaris his wife at Brandy Mill. He loved the old man and often went to see him. So did Lucy and Justus, but always when they were thought to be doing something else because their mother disliked and feared Old Parson and had forbidden them to visit him, and Nan-Nan always upheld their mother on principle. They looked at each other now, one of those quick glances by which, because of their love, they could co
mmunicate without words. This afternoon, now that he was alive again, they would go and see Old Parson.

  2

  After dinner Richard went riding with his father, and Lucy and Justus, who had been sent out to play in the garden, were seen by Nan-Nan, watching from the nursery window, to enter the arbour. Lucy was carrying a chap-book, a story with pictures bought from a travelling pedlar the week before, and Nan-Nan gave a sigh of relief. They would sit there now for hours and she would be able to watch over the sleeping twins and get on with her pillow lace. Lucy could scarcely be said to read aloud, being no scholar, but with the help of the pictures and a word here and there she was able to spin marvellous tales out of the chap-book for the delight of Justus. He, actually, could read a good deal better than she could but refused to do so out of school hours. But today they did no more than turn over the pictures for ten minutes or so and then, knowing that by this time Nan-Nan would no longer be watching, ran to the door in the wall, opened it noiselessly in that special way they knew and escaped up the lane to the road.

  Here they turned right and ran fast until the road suddenly plunged down hill, towards the hidden cwm where the mill was built beside the Brandy Brook. Then they walked, hand in hand, for this steep narrow lane was too precipitous for running. It had very high banks, buried now in foxgloves and honeysuckle.

  The coast of Pembrokeshire was full of hidden places. The gaunt windswept cliffs would suddenly open, like two hands parting to show the treasure they hold, and there inside would be a secret world, sometimes a narrow cwm, at others a broader valley, but always a world to itself with its own beauty and its own atmosphere. One of the loveliest of these hidden worlds was the Valley of Roses, where the parting hands held the cathedral of St. Davids. Brandy Cwm was a small place compared with the Valley of Roses but in its own way it was as beautiful.

  As the children went deeper its special music came up to meet them, the murmur of water and the ringing of birdsong, for the trees that grew down there were wonderful nesting-places for the birds. The lane took a final precipitous plunge and they were there, standing on the old stone bridge, looking down into the clear water of the brook below, and upstream to the mill with its slowly turning wheel on the left bank. Another bridge connected the mill with the mill house on the right bank, with its farm buildings and garden. The mill was old and so was the house. They seemed to rise up from the irises and lush green grass of this watered place as though they had always been here.

  When the children turned their backs on the mill and leaned upon the opposite parapet they looked down into the steep little wood through which Brandy Brook tumbled to the sea, running out across the sands of Brandy Bay where the fishermen’s cottages were. A cuckoo was calling not far away and when the children turned back again to the other parapet they saw a solitary heron standing in meditation by the mill pond. For fear of disturbing him they climbed very quietly down the steps that led to the mill house garden and went gently up the path that led to the house door. But quiet though they were he sensed their presence and rose up in clumsy flight. They watched him fade away up the cwm with great wings spread and long legs trailing behind him. He was returning to his nesting-place below the other old bridge, among the reeds down below the castle.

  They knocked at the house door and Damaris opened it to them, a dark-eyed smiling woman, her hands floury because it was a baking day. Damaris was friendly, for her husband Howel was the second church­warden and his bachelor brother Owen, who lived with them, was William’s bailiff, but being much occupied today she was not inclined for much conversation. Old Parson, she said, was with his bees.

  They ran round the corner of the house to the part of the garden where, well out of sight of the lane and the bridge and the watching eyes that scared him, Old Parson had his hives among the flowers that he tended himself for his bees. The little room that he inhabited led straight out into his garden and was like a hermitage with its white-washed wall. It was not untidy like Parson Peregrine’s living room for Old Parson possessed nothing at all except his bed, a table and chair and a small chest which held his few garments. Damaris brought him his food from her kitchen so he needed no cooking utensils. Parson Peregrine sometimes brought him a book or two and he courteously accepted the loan, but it was doubtful if he read them for he never spoke of them. Parson Peregrine thought that he shunned any aptitude that connected him with his past. Yet he did keep two links with it. He insisted on wearing a cassock and priest’s cloak procured for him by Parson Peregrine out of money supplied by William, and he possessed a worn silver crucifix which hung round his neck, under his cassock, on a piece of knotted string. It appeared to Parson Peregrine, the only person who ever thought about him deeply, that perhaps a sub-consciously self-induced forgetfulness embraced not the fact of his priesthood but the manner of it. The fact of it, Parson Peregrine thought, was his life, for although he would not receive the sacrament he attended the services, hidden in a corner, and he prayed for hours alone in the church, and occasionally he cried when he prayed. Yet he looked a good old man and Parson Peregrine gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  Lucy and Justus had no doubts. They never tried to separate sheep from goats. The vile platform in the heart which accommodates the self-conscious judge, separating himself in judgment, was empty in their hearts, as it was in William’s. That was why Old Parson loved them.

  He was sitting just inside his open doorway, and lost in shadow he saw them before they saw him. His eyes, today, were without their usual vacancy. He had occasional days when he could think and even, in disconnected flashes of anguish, remember. They were, he supposed, his good days but he did not welcome them for they brought a sense of hopeless dilemma. Without the lightning flashes he did not know of what he was repenting, but while they lasted he was too transfixed with horror, too paralysed, to be able to repent, and so he could never believe himself forgiven. But he tried not to despair for all summer long he had his bees and by some miracle of God’s mercy he was always, whatever his state, aware of their wants and able to supply them.

  “Lucy,” he called from the shadows. “Justus.”

  They had been running down towards the bee hives but they turned and came back. Old Parson with his pink face and blue eyes, nodding and smiling at them from his dark doorway, had something of the look of an overgrown baby smiling from the shadows of the cradle, or a pink sea anemone peering from a hidden rock pool, something very innocent and gentle and withdrawn. It was only when one came nearer and saw his long wispy white hair and poignant mouth that one realized he was old. The hands that he held always clasped in front of him, as though in supplication to God to have mercy and to the world to leave him alone, were knotted with rheumatism. His feet hurt him when he walked and so did his knees, so that his gait was crab-like. It was his intention to walk now and the children pulled him up from his seat.

  “I will show you my bees,” he said.

  It was what he always said to those of whom he felt no fear, a mark of his especial favour and he had said it to the children many times. But they were never bored by bees for like the white seal pups and the kingfisher they were one of the wonders of the world. The four round hives stood just where the garden ended and the ash and sycamore trees started to climb up the cwm. There was a wooden fence behind the hives with a gate in it so that Damaris could get up into the wood and gather firewood. For a little while the three of them watched the traffic of the brown multitudes, weaving their lines of communication between the flowers in a score of gardens and the fragrance of the cliff tops and the hidden woods. Lucy thought of them as a honey-scented web of gold threads too fine to see and she asked Old Parson if one broke the web as one ran about the world. He gravely inclined his head, as a wise baby does when his understanding has outstripped his power of speech. “But they repair it again as a spider does,” she said, and he smiled. Justus never understood these one-sided conversations that Lucy and Old Parson had togethe
r. “There’s a honey pot and a bit of barley bread by the gate,” he said, pointing with the index and little finger of his right hand, the thumb and the two middle fingers tucked down, so that his fat brown hand looked like a horned enquiring snail. “What for?”

  “I have a few pots left,” Old Parson said, “and I thought my friend would like some honey with his bread. When I have a gift for him I hide it in a place up in the wood.”

  Old Parson spoke with great deliberation, feeling for each word and testing it carefully like a man crossing a stream on wobbly stepping stones. Impatience in the hearer, even politely suppressed impatience, plunged him into instant confusion, but with the children who took no account of time he was able to reach the other side of his stream of thought with considerable success.

  “By the gate is not up in the wood,” Justus said with gentle kindness, and raising the horned snail he indicated a rock which showed among the trees above them. “Up there is up in the wood.”

  “It is my knees and my feet,” Old Parson said.

  “We will take it for you,” said Lucy. “Where is the place?”

  “Behind the rock,” said Old Parson.

  “Who is he?” asked Lucy.

  “A noble man,” said Old Parson. “A scapegoat.”

  They did not understand this but as asking Old Parson to explain himself only worried him they let it pass. But Justus, burning with curiosity, asked, “When does your friend come to fetch the gifts from behind the rock?”

  “Most days,” said Old Parson vaguely. “He is always hungry. A scapegoat.”

  Old Parson’s eyes clouded and his chin began to wobble in a way it had when he was distressed. “Look at that bee!” cried Lucy. “He is the biggest bee I ever saw in my life.”