“They are to go to their mother,” Nan-Nan sobbed. “She did not want them at the time, but now she is married to a man who has a farm at the foot of the mountains and he is willing to have them if your father pays well for their keep. But it is a rough life they will have there. Oh my lambs, my lambs!” and she began to rock herself again.
“Stop wailing, Nan-Nan!” said Lucy angrily. “What use to wail? I hate my mother.”
Dismay seized Nan-Nan. In her weakness and sorrow she had been talking to Lucy as though she were adult. Now what had she done? “Do not say that, cariad,” she implored. “Your poor mother has had more to try her than you know. When you are older you will understand her better. And she is a sick woman now. Oh duwch, duwch! What have I done, setting you against your mother? There now, I should never have told you.”
Her distress was so great that Lucy’s compassion, that was now the strongest thing in her, broke out through her anger. They were both sitting on the floor now and she put her arms round the old woman and pressed her cheek against hers. “Do you remember your ‘seeing,’ Nan-Nan? You said that Dewi would be a happy man and that a king would love him. And you said Betsi belonged with the thrush and the falling dew, and that sounded nice too. So do not cry, Nan-Nan.”
Nan-Nan was a little happier. For a moment or two she clung to Lucy, then turned again to the comfort of work. She knelt upright and continued with her packing, and Lucy helped her. Presently she was so far recovered as to find this an occasion for improving the shining hour, a thing she delighted to do.
“Lucy fach,” she said, “let this be a warning to you. You see the trouble that comes of children born out of wedlock. Never lie with a man, cariad, without your marriage lines.”
It was Lucy’s turn to burst suddenly into a storm of tears. “Never!” she sobbed. “Oh, poor Dewi and Betsi! Poor babies!”
Six
1
The departure of Dewi and Betsi left a scar on Lucy, or something more than a scar, for the wound never quite healed. That good people like her father and mother could throw two babies out of their nest as though they were of no more worth than a couple of sparrows shocked her deeply, and frightened her too. For the first time she was aware of sin as something that tangled up all human life, even the life of her father and mother and their children. She was never entirely a child again after Dewi and Betsi went away.
They did not understand and they laughed with delight when out in the lane Nan-Nan settled them in the panniers one on each side of Jeremiah’s broad back, for they loved riding in the panniers. Jeremiah was going away too for he was to be the twins’ pony at the farm and he seemed to know that he would never come back to Roch. He looked round once, turning his comical face towards Lucy, and his eyes met hers with a sadness deep as his love. Then William swung himself on to his horse and Jeremiah’s bridle was handed up to him by his groom, for he was himself taking the twins to the farm at the foot of the mountain. He did not look at anyone either and his face was tight and hard with grief, but Lucy could not just now be sorry for him. The little cavalcade moved off, the groom riding behind. They turned the corner by the church and Betsi and Jeremiah went out of Lucy’s life for ever. She and Nan-Nan turned and went back to the nursery where Lucy flung herself on the floor and burst into a flood of tears so wild that even Nan-Nan, used to her passions, was taken aback. It was a long while before she could be calmed and when at last she stopped crying she was so exhausted that she had to be put to bed.
The worst being past, Nan-Nan now became outwardly very cheerful and busy. But for her they would never have got away at all, but with infinite tact she persuaded and gently bullied the family and household through the earthquake of packing and leave-taking and then upheld them through the final pulling up of roots. “Only for six months,” they had been saying to everyone else, but when it came to the end they did not believe what they said.
It was a still, grey October day. Lucy, dressed in her travelling clothes, was alone in the garden. The rest of the family were still in the castle with William’s mother and stepfather and outside in the lane the coach and horses waited. The silence seemed the deeper because up in the hall there had been two final disagreements. William had said his wife must travel on horseback, not in the coach, for the jolting of the coach was more likely to bring on a miscarriage than riding. Elizabeth had declared herself far too exhausted to ride. If the events of the last few weeks had not caused her to drop this child, nothing would, and she was going in the coach with Nan-Nan, Lucy, Justus and Jano. Lucy on the other hand had said that whoever was going in the coach she was not. She was going to ride pillion with her father. Elizabeth had said she was to do no such thing. The two allied arguments had raged with fury for ten minutes and then ceased abruptly with victory for Elizabeth on both counts, because Nan-Nan appeared upon the scene and said she was not to be worried.
The quietness in the garden, after the arguments, was deep as the quietness of John Shepherd’s dying. It was a warm day but Lucy was cold from head to foot. The family came down the castle steps, the servants following at a respectful distance, and they all moved silently out to the coach and horses. Gwilym Thomas the coachman, Madog the postilion and the man who drove the luggage cart were going with them to Golden Grove. William was to ride Eve his chestnut mare and Richard was to ride Prince. It was a confusing business getting Elizabeth, Nan-Nan, the children, Jano and the bundles and baskets settled inside the coach, but it broke the spell of silence and when they moved off at last it was to a chorus of goodbyes and good wishes, crunching wheels and the cracking of Gwilym Coachman’s whip.
As they rounded the corner they saw Howel Perrot, who with his wife and brother and Parson Peregrine had come to wave goodbye. Howel had Shôn and Twm on leash, for they were to stay behind. Lucy saw their eyes and knew that they understood as Betsi and Dewi had not been able to understand. And the last thing she saw, as they rounded the corner, was Old Parson standing on a gravestone in the churchyard to wave to them. He waved cheerfully, serene in his new-found peace, confident that the departure was not for long. The coach swayed and rumbled down the road to the bridge and there was a heron standing by the brook. He turned his head and looked at them and Lucy saw in his glance contemptuous reproach, and soon after that she made a dive for the coach window and was sick, and afterwards so faint that the cavalcade was halted; but seeing her father’s anxious face looking in at the window she was immediately much better. “The coach sways too much for my stomach,” she said in a voice surprisingly strong for one so stricken. “I must ride with my father.”
Riding pillion behind William, the easy motion of the horse beneath her and the air blowing about her, Lucy sighed with relief and her spirits rose. The road to Golden Grove by way of Haverfordwest and Carmarthen was one she had travelled before, but she did not remember it clearly. Once their cavalcade had creaked and clattered through the little town of Haverfordwest she was no longer in familiar territory and a sense of adventure came to her. She began to sing a little song to herself and William smiled as the fountain of clear notes sprang up in the small of his back. With Bud turning cheerful once more things seemed not so bad.
Travelling so slowly they took three days to reach Carmarthen, an uneventful journey through misty rain with two stops along the way at uncomfortable inns, coming to the little town just as a lemon-coloured sun shone through the mist. Carmarthen stood at the head of the tide water of the river Towy and was the capital of South Wales and a stronghold of the ancient Welsh blood, especially dear to William because his ancestor, and Elizabeth’s too, Rhys ap Thomas, the greatest Welshman since the days of Owen Glendower, was buried here.
When the exhausted Elizabeth had been deposited in the best inn, with Nan-Nan to look after her, William took his three children swaggering through the streets of the capital to do homage at the great man’s tomb in St. Peter’s Church. Rhys ap Thomas and his lady lay carved in stone a
t the south end of the chancel, and the four of them stood in a row looking down at their ancestors with awe and pride. “Your great-great-great-great-greatgrandfather on my side, your great-great-great-greatgrandfather on your mother’s side,” William told his offspring and they counted on their fingers carefully; five greats on one side and four on the other made the great man very great indeed. “The Welshman Henry the Seventh would never have got to the throne of England without the help of Rhys ap Thomas,” said William impressively. “He struck down the Yorkist king with his own hand and was knighted on the field of Bosworth by Henry himself. He became a Knight of the Garter and governor of South Wales, owning twenty castles.”
“Why don’t we own twenty castles now?” asked Justus.
William sighed gustily. “Great families are beset by many troubles. Financial troubles especially afflict men of noble minds, openhanded, generous men.” He cheered up again. “But do not forget, children, that you have not only your mother’s Plantagenet blood in your veins but also the blood of the Welsh princes. These Stuarts who are now on the throne of England, their blood is nothing to yours. As the years go on you may be poor, you may be despised, but the blood in your veins is royal and you must not forget it.”
They promised him they never would and Lucy in particular never did. They bowed to Rhys ap Thomas and his lady and swaggered back to the inn.
The rest of the journey to Golden Grove was less fortunate. The first morning began well in brilliant sunshine and they travelled along the northern slope of the valley with the river below them running fast over stony shallows, sparkling from pool to pool, turning in great silver loops about green meadows which were a little flooded now after the rain, the flood water reflecting the brilliant blue of the sky and the white clouds that scudded before the wind. William eyed these clouds a little anxiously, for they travelled fast, but down in the valley it was warm and quiet as midsummer. That was a happy day, but it grew colder towards evening and the blue sky was lost in a tumbled darkness of flying clouds. The inn where they stopped that night was not a comfortable one. The mattresses were lumpy and smelled of mice, the rising wind whined in the chimneys and when the rain began it leaked through the thatch and pattered down on top of the fourposters. Elizabeth did not sleep at all and had a sore throat in the morning. So had Nan-Nan but she did not mention it.
William hurried them out and away very early for he did not like the weather at all and said they must reach Golden Grove before dark. He was irritable and would not let Lucy ride with him and Richard. He did not want a drowned little toad clinging round his waist, he said, catching a sore throat and complaining like her mother. She must go in the coach.
“I shall be sick,” she said.
“The world will not end if you are, Bud,” he said heartlessly.
So she went in the coach and did not mind too much for there was nothing to be seen outside now but the driving rain. She and Justus played cat’s-cradle together, Elizabeth lay back with her eyes shut, and Nan-Nan, opposite them with her back to the horses, sat among the bundles wrapped up in her black cloak, with her black hood over her head, and looked like a small black beetle. Her tiny wrinkled face was grey with fatigue, but when either of the children looked at her she smiled her habitual smile of tender loving delight in them and her eyes in the gloom sparkled like diamonds.
The islands of pastureland they had seen yesterday, held in the loops of the river, disappeared as the hours passed and flood-water and river became one continuous lake slowly rising in the valley. The mud of the road grew deeper and stickier and clung like glue to the coach wheels and the hoofs of the horses. William allowed them only the shortest pause to eat the midday meal of cold meat and bread with which the inn had provided them. Nan-Nan handed supplies out to the men on their dripping horses and Lucy and Justus laughed to see the rivulets of water running off their hats and the ends of their noses, but their amusement was not reciprocated. Now that the creaking of the coach was still they could hear a continuous sound of water, the swollen river rushing over its stones and all the brimming streams coming down from the hills to swell the rising lake in the valley. The running water made almost more noise than the sound of the rain drumming on the coach roof and the soughing of the wind in the trees.
The last crumb swallowed, William hurried them on again but the coach went more and more slowly in the mud. The horses had a tough time dragging it uphill, and when they went downhill the whole outfit slithered so alarmingly that Elizabeth was nervous; and more than nervous when at the bottom of one hill they stuck fast with water swirling about the axles of the wheels. They had come to a dip in the road where water crossed it, no more than a quiet stream in normal weather but a swirling torrent now. To guard against flooding there was a raised plank bridge for pedestrians but it was no good for the coach.
“Drive on, Gwilym,” roared William.
“That I cannot, sir,” Gwilym Coachman called back. “The wheels are stuck fast.”
“Whip up the horses,” William commanded angrily.
Gwilym Coachman did so, the horses struggled desperately and with a rending sound the coach heeled over sideways. One of the back wheels, caught between two stones beneath the water, collapsed. Elizabeth gave one sharp cry and then was very quiet, Lucy and Justus rolled to the floor and lay giggling with delight, with Nan-Nan and her bags and bundles on top of them. The coach had not heeled over very far and no water was coming in. “There now,” said Nan-Nan, placidly picking herself up. “Do not be afraid, madam my love, for ’tis steady we are now. We shall be righted in a moment.”
But William and the servants, wading thigh-deep in water, could not get them righted. The coach was too firmly wedged. With great difficulty they got Elizabeth, Nan-Nan and the children out of it and on to the plank bridge and so across to the road, but the coach had to be abandoned.
“How far are we from Golden Grove?” asked Elizabeth, clinging to her husband, white-faced but fairly calm now, for seventeenth-century ladies were fairly accustomed to these mishaps.
“Four miles,” said William. “Bess, girl, shall I leave you here and fetch a coach from Golden Grove or will you ride?”
“I will ride with you,” said Elizabeth. “It would be quicker.”
For a moment, before they mounted, he held her closely, looking down into her face with loving and questioning concern, and she clung to him as though she drew strength from his sturdy figure, and then looked up at him with the ghost of a reassuring smile, Lucy had never seen them like this before, needing each other, for a moment oblivious of everything except each other. She stared at them, bewildered and too young to understand that because they had made a new life between them, and the third life was in danger, they were shocked into the primeval unity. The picture of them locked together in the rain was one that she carried with her until she died.
The coach horses were unharnessed, William mounted his horse and Elizabeth was lifted up to ride behind him. Justus joined Richard on Prince and Lucy and Nan-Nan rode pillion behind Gwilym and Madog. The most vital of Nan-Nan’s bundles were rescued and put in the luggage cart, the rest left in the coach, and the jingling cavalcade of riders started forward again.
They reached Golden Grove without further mishap, rode in through the great gates and saw the green stretches of the park swathed in the light rain that had now succeeded the downpour. Strange beauties were seen, vast tree trunks, a sudden fire of autumn leaves, the lifted head of a deer, a small Greek temple white as ivory. And then at the end of the tree-lined avenue came the far-away vision of a creeper-covered house, and behind it a steep wooded hill, its summit hidden in the clouds.
Then they were at the foot of a flight of steps, getting off the horses, stiff and wet and tired. Somewhere above them doors were flung open and within the doors there was warmth and light. At the top of the steps Lucy lingered for a moment, trying to find the small child who had come here before
in spring sunshine. She felt the roughness of the balustrade under her hand, and heard doves cooing in the rain. Suddenly that spring and this autumn ran together, and the child and the girl she now was became one. She looked round and saw the autumn damask rose tree growing at the end of the terrace, and the marble seat below it, and remembered that that was her special place where she had played her secret games. This was Golden Grove. She was back again. She turned and ran into the house.
2
Tired out, Lucy slept well that night in her small truckle bed beside Nan-Nan, but her dreams were not happy. Something, at some deep level, was troubling her. When she woke in the golden dawn she felt uneasy, and at first it was confusing to find herself not in her turret room at home. Then she became aware of unaccustomed luxury, panelled walls instead of cold stone, a soft goose-feathered mattress, curtains of embroidered linen drawn all round the fourposter beside her, and the awareness grew to a sleepy memory of last night; the big hall downstairs and gentle Lady Carbery bending down to kiss the children, and the Earl pinching their cheeks and asking them how they did. She was lapped about by the security and graciousness that were the atmosphere of this house, and yet at the same time she felt a pang of homesickness for the hardness of Roch.
“Nan-Nan!” she cried, but there was no answer. Nan-Nan must be still asleep. She jumped out of bed, parted the curtains and scrambled up to be with her. But the fourposter, big as a small room within the curtains, was empty. The counterpane stretched smooth and unruffled as a green lawn all about her, for Nan-Nan was not there. Through all the hours of the night Lucy, unknowing, had slept alone in this room with the empty bed beside her. Was Nan-Nan dead? Had she died of falling off the coach seat with the bundles? Her mouth was so dry that she kept having to swallow. The only sounds in the room were her swallows. Betsi and Dewi were gone, and Jeremiah the pony, and Roch was gone, and now Nan-Nan was dead.
The Child From the Sea Page 12