The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Someone came round the screens and cried out, and then they once more fetched William. He picked her up and this time she could not resist because she had no more strength. She was put to bed with a hot brick at her feet and given a hot posset and for most of the day she dozed exhaustedly, and Nan-Nan sat by her darning the boys’ stockings, and now and then her mother came. But whenever she woke she heard John Shepherd saying, “With all my sins upon me,” and by the time the evening came she knew what he had meant. Busy with the sheep he had had no time to repent of his sins as Old Parson did, weeping and praying and going on pilgrimage. Death had come suddenly while he was still wearing them all like a dirty old coat. He would, she knew, be washed and wrapped in a shroud and go clean into his coffin. But not entirely clean if he still had those dirty sins. She must fetch the sin-eater.

  When Nan-Nan was putting the twins to bed and Elizabeth had gone to her bower Lucy got up and dressed. The rescued seamen, none of whom had been seriously injured, had gone now to Solva and quietness had fallen on the castle. The day was turning westard as she ran through the garden and out to the lane, with an almost transparent veil of silver cloud spread thin as cobwebs over the golden sky. The mist lay like lamb’s-wool in the hollows and there was no wind any more, only the boom of the waves along the coast, because the sea was not yet as quiet as the land. But the little birds would all have gone away, she thought. If she had been out on the cliffs she might have seen them coming out from the sheltered places, spreading their wings and spiring up to the unseen roads of the sky that went she knew not where. If any of them could look down upon her they would not know where her road went either, as she ran down the hill and was lost in the white lamb’s-wool that filled the hollows of Brandy cwm.

  The mist hid her from the eyes of the mill as she climbed up through the trees. It was almost dark under their branches and she found her way more by instinct than by sight. She did not doubt that she would find the scapegoat and just beyond the big rock she saw his dim figure, sitting with his hands dropped between his knees and his head upon his breast. She gave her clear bird call and he lifted his head but he did not move. It was as though he knew her purpose and was not now trying to escape from her. She came and knelt down beside him almost as though he were John Shepherd himself, and she said carefully in Welsh, “John Shepherd is dead,” and she laid her clasped hands upon her breast and then upon his breast, to tell him of the load that must be lifted from one to another, and he sighed and got slowly to his feet. At the sound of the sigh she would have cried if she could, for its weariness was so great, but she had no tears left. She took his hand and they went together down through the wood and up the hill. They went slowly as though they were trying to make each moment together last as long as possible. All the burden of human parting was upon them, of human longing for complete understanding, and the failure of it, of shared sorrow in the sorrow of a bent world, of grief for impermanence and death. They understood none of it; only that this was the last time they would be together. He could not know how deeply he had touched the springs of compassion in her, for the benefit of other men rather than himself, nor did she know the value to him of her brief kindness. In the mystery of things it had been necessary that they should have been together. They only knew that to cease to do so was hard.

  There was a door leading directly into the kitchen and they did not need to climb the steps to the hall. Gwladys was busy by the fire and several of the servants were there too, preparing the evening meal. Shadows and firelight chased each other over the high ceiling and there was laughter and talk, which dropped to instant horrified silence as Lucy and the sin-eater came in. The servants shrank back in loathing and the sin-eater in fear. Lucy, holding his hand firmly, kept close to him in protection.

  “Where is John Shepherd?” she asked in a clear high voice. “This man has come to take away his sins.”

  Gwladys, whitefaced, came forward. “Thinking myself I was we should have the sin-eater,” she said. “Come this way, cariad.”

  She took up a lump of barley bread and a piece of cold meat from the table and led the way to the archway at the corner of the kitchen. Beyond it was a little round room from which a stone staircase led to the servants’ sleeping-quarters above the kitchen. John Shepherd lay here on a trestle-table with a sheet over him, waiting for his coffin. Gwladys turned down the sheet and laid the bread and meat upon his breast and then stood at his feet. The sin-eater stood on one side of John Shepherd and Lucy on the other, her back to the archway, looking down on John Shepherd’s face that had become unrecognizable, frozen and profoundly quiet, but nothing to do with John Shepherd. The servants, huddled together, watched from beyond the archway. The sin-eater opened his slack mouth and strange sounds began to come out of it, rasping sounds at first, then words half-choked in his throat, as though he had no control over his voice. He spoke in an unknown tongue, Welsh perhaps, but a Welsh older than anything Lucy knew, an incantation that had come from so long ago that it brought the stench of old evil with it, a whiff of vileness more horrible than the smell of the man’s unwashed body and rags of clothes. The sin-eater beat his breast as he spoke and his whole body trembled, and his eyes were as bright as though he had a fever. The incantation ceased as it had begun and he began to wolf the food, stuffing it into his mouth and choking it down in a manner so horrible that Lucy felt sick. She also felt extremely frightened, for this creature was no more her scapegoat than the corpse on the table was John Shepherd. It seemed as though there were two sorts of death and they had taken her two friends.

  Then one of them was alive again, for there was no more evil. As Gwladys pulled up the sheet the sin-eater looked at Lucy and gave her what he had never given her before, the ghost of a wintry smile, as though he was glad he had done her will. His eyes were no longer bright but the trembling continued, and after he had smiled at her he shrank back against the wall, looking towards the archway with terror. Lucy turned round and saw the servants. They had come nearer to the archway and already they were beginning to mutter angrily. Lucy had a sudden panicky feeling that they had got the sin-eater cornered as though he were a badger or fox. If he tried to leave the little room they would do him some harm. Gwladys seemed to feel the same for she cried out sharply, “Now then! Now then! Let the poor man go.”

  Rage fell upon Lucy. She ran out of the archway like an angry swan whose cygnet has been threatened and fell upon them. “Get back!” she cried, striking at them with her fists. “If you hurt him I will tell my father.”

  Then she darted back to the scapegoat, seized his hand and ran with him across the kitchen, and the servants drew back and let them go. They came out into the garden and to safety, but a few moments before William and Elizabeth had come down from the hall to walk a little in the quiet garden before supper. Seeing them the scapegoat wrenched his hand from Lucy and ran as though for his life, brushing against Elizabeth’s skirt as he fled past her. Lucy never forgot her mother’s scream.

  4

  In the days that followed Lucy felt like a small distracted furious toad living at the bottom of a turgid pond. For one thing the bad weather came back again, no more storms but ceaseless rain or drifting mist, cold, dark and clammy. And inside the castle things were not much better, with Elizabeth alternately crying on her bed or arguing with William behind the locked door of her bower. The servants were morose and insolent, left too much to themselves by a mistress who no longer cared what they did, and the twins caught colds in the head and were irritable and grizzly. Only Nan-Nan was herself, loving and gentle with them all, but she had aged, and Lucy was haunted by a remark of hers that she had overheard. “Yes, madam love,” Nan-Nan had said, “I think as you do now.” What did Nan-Nan think? Lucy’s intuition told her that Nan-Nan had somehow turned against her and was not protecting her from some threatening danger. It was this that made her feel like the toad, flapping around in blinding mud with a weight of dark water over his head and no fr
iend to help him out.

  Richard, Lucy and Justus drew together. This was to Lucy the one ray of light that came down to the mud; that Richard was now close to her and Justus. One day the three of them ran out together through the rain and sat in the arbour and he told them what he had discovered. Their parents now spent much of each night talking within the curtains of the fourposter, and sometimes, forgetting the children, they raised their voices. Lucy wriggled down under the blankets when she began to hear what they were saying but Richard had no compunction in getting out of bed and listening behind the curtain. In this way he had pieced it together. “Our mother says she will not have the new baby here. The sin-eater has overlooked it and if she has it here it will die like the other two. She says the castle is haunted and full of evil. She says we must all go to London for a year and live close to her mother and she will have the baby there. Our father says she can have it at Haverfordwest or Golden Grove or anywhere near at hand that she likes, or she can go to London without him, but he won’t go to London.”

  “What does Nan-Nan say?” asked Lucy under her breath.

  “Nan-Nan is on our mother’s side. I think she is frightened of the sin-eater too. I heard our mother tell our father that Nan-Nan thought a year in London would be good for you. Stop your running wild. Turn you into a young lady.” He kicked her good-humouredly but for once she did not kick back. Nan-Nan to try to take them from Roch! The hurt was so great she could not speak.

  A few days later, just before they went to bed, William called them to come and talk to him in the hall. Elizabeth was in the nursery with Nan-Nan and William and his three eldest were alone. He sat with Justus on his knees and Lucy and Richard beside him on the settle that he had pulled in front of the fire. It was raining as usual and the sad drops hissed in the flames. He told them what they knew already, but other things too. They would be leaving in a few weeks. They would go first to Golden Grove, and the children and their mother and Nan-Nan would stay there while he went on to London to find a house that he could rent for the winter. When he had found it they would follow him to London. He said heavily that they would like it in London. Richard and Justus would be able to go to a good school. Lucy would learn many feminine accomplishments from her dear grandmother, and others, and would become a little lady. They would see the sights of London, the King and Queen and the lions at the Tower, and so on. Above all it would be good for their dear mother’s health, and that was the chief consideration just at present. The castle would not be left empty and the servants without work for their other grandmother, his mother, who after his father’s death had married again, would come with her husband Nicholas Chappell and live here until they all came back again. The work of the farm and estate would go on as usual with Howel Perrot in charge. Yes, it would be a nice change for them all, William concluded wretchedly, and the time would pass, and now they had better go to bed. The boys, feeling already a pleasurable excitement, were kissed and blessed and went to bed, but Lucy refused to budge. She took Justus’s place on her father’s knee.

  “Let them all go to London,” she said. “You and I will stay here.”

  “But your mother tells me that you told her, some months ago, that you would enjoy a visit to London,” said William.

  “I said I would not mind seeing the King and Queen and lions,” said Lucy. “But I would just like to see them and then come home again.”

  “It’s only for the winter,” said William.

  “If we once go to London will my mother ever want to come home again?” asked Lucy.

  Her intuition matched his own. They had the same fear. There was a silence and then Lucy flung her arms round his neck. “Do not go!” she pleaded. “Stay here with me!”

  “Lucy,” he whispered, “I am in debt. I owe a lot of money. Nicholas Chappell, God bless him, will shoulder the expenses of Roch while he is here. In London we can live very cheaply.”

  “That’s not why you are going to London,” she whispered back. “You are going to please madam my mother.”

  “She’s a sick woman,” he said, “and she is frightened here. More frightened than ever since the sin-eater. That was your fault, Bud.”

  “Yes,” Lucy agreed. “It was a pity, and my mother should go away, but not you and me.”

  “She will not go without me, Bud. Nan-Nan says we must all keep together.”

  “Nan-Nan is wrong,” she said. “You and I should stay here.”

  “We all stick together, Bud,” he said with finality and she accepted the decision. They clung together in silence until the fire died down, and then he carried her to her little room, helped her to bed with clumsy tenderness, kissed her and blessed her. She lay awake for a long time listening to the rain sighing and rustling round the castle tower. Beyond their sorrow she could just hear the boom of the sea. How did one live away from the sound of the sea?

  5

  Elizabeth was not herself. The storm and then the sight of the sin-eater in the garden had caused deep shock and she could scarcely wait to get away from Roch. William’s temper was continually cracking beneath the strain and one wet afternoon, when the children were roasting nuts before the fire, the door of the bower burst open and he came storming down the hall in a flaming temper, his face scarlet and tears on his cheeks. He strode past the three children without even seeing them and they heard the hall door crash behind him as he went out into the rain with neither cloak nor hat. Lucy would have flown after him but for Richard’s restraining hand. “Let him go,” said Richard. “He’s drunk.”

  “He’s not!” said Lucy.

  “He has been drunk for three days,” said Richard. “Ever since our mother told him.”

  “Told him what?” demanded Lucy.

  “Never you mind,” said Richard in his maddening way. “I heard them talking. I know but I’m not going to tell you. Ask Nan-Nan.”

  Lucy leapt to her feet and ran to Nan-Nan, who was packing gowns and linen in the big bedchamber. She had not been well for three days and she had not been able to eat. Absorbed in her packing she did not hear Lucy come in and the child stood for a moment watching her in dismay. She looked smaller than ever and she was weeping. Never before had Lucy seen Nan-Nan cry. “Nan-Nan!” she gasped.

  The old woman looked round and tried to smile but her control broke. She struggled to a stool and sitting down she rocked herself, crying out her grief in the Welsh tongue, lamenting as her forbears had lamented in centuries gone by when a sorrow had been too fearful to be borne. Lucy shut the door of the bedchamber and ran to Nan-Nan, flinging her arms round her and begging her to stop. “What is it, Nan-Nan?” she cried. “What is it?”

  “Dewi and Betsi,” sobbed Nan-Nan. “My lambs, my lambs!”

  “But their colds are well now,” said Lucy.

  Nan-Nan shook her head helplessly. She was still rocking herself but no longer lamenting and presently she could speak coherently. “When I heard your father go down the hall I knew your mother had won her way,” she said at last. “My lambs will be taken from me.” Now that she had put it into words she was quiet and composed again and wiped her eyes on her apron.

  “Taken from you?” gasped Lucy. “But we are all going to London together. My father said so.”

  “No,” said Nan-Nan. “Not Dewi and Betsi.”

  Lucy could not understand it. “Not Dewi and Betsi?” she repeated stupidly.

  Nan-Nan looked anxiously at Lucy. From her earliest childhood the adventurous little girl had been running away from the nursery whenever possible, making friends with the servants in the kitchen and the men and animals on the farm, and that she had painlessly absorbed the facts of life at an early age Nan-Nan was well aware, from a few carelessly dropped remarks of Lucy’s which at the time had caused her acute dismay. But now she was glad. It was possible now to speak openly to a child too honest to be deceived by lies.

  “Lucy fach, your
mother will not take Dewi and Betsi to London, nor will she ever have them with us again. She does not love them at all. Have you noticed that?”

  Lucy went white. Two years ago she and Richard and Justus had been sent to stay with their grandmother Madam Chappell and when they came back the babies had been in their cradles. She had wondered sometimes that her mother never took them in her arms or rocked the cradles. William often played with them, but not Elizabeth. But then her mother was never as openly affectionate as her father and it had not bothered her. “Why does my mother not love them?” she asked.

  “Because they are not her children, Lucy fach.”

  “They are my father’s children?”

  “Yes, cariad.”

  Lucy was silent for a long time and Nan-Nan wondered anxiously just how far the child’s comprehension went. Then Lucy said, “Dewi and Betsi are bastards.”

  “Yes, cariad. But none the less my sweet lambs for that,” and she began to cry again, but quietly now.

  Lucy shook Nan-Nan, her cheeks flaming. She was over the shock now and more angry than she had ever been. “What is to happen to Dewi and Betsi?” she demanded.