The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Mr. Cottington unlocked a big door and they went through and there in front of them, behind the bars of their cage, were the royal lions pacing up and down. While they had been in the dark passages the sun had broken through and now it shone down through a window full upon the lions, turning their tawny coats gold. The first impact of lions is always a fearful yet glorious experience and Smuts and Lucy gasped, then glowed and exulted. One great beast stopped pacing and looked at them, his head up, his great mane so illumined by the light that it surrounded his majestic, dreadful countenance like the sun itself. “That’s Leo,” said Mr. Cottington.

  Leo, the only sign of the zodiac ruled by the sun, a royal sign, its flower the rose, its colour orange and its gem the ruby. For a moment or two the great lion, in his strength and kingliness, seemed not to be an animal at all but a symbol of tragic greatness and a portent of doom. Then, as Lucy’s stunned physical senses became active again, she saw with pity the marks of mange upon his body and smelled his smell, and it was as unhappy as the smell in the prison passage, and she knew he would die here. She stood staring at him, oblivious of the others talking and moving about her, and was hardly aware of being taken away, or of the door clanging shut and being locked behind her. As they went down the dark passage a great roar broke out, echoing in the stony place like thunder in a cave. It seemed to come up behind them, to reach, engulf and devour them and to triumph over them. “S’death!” Robert ejaculated. “Thank God the door’s locked.” But Lucy exulted. They might crash a prison door in his face but Leo had had the last word.

  It was Robert’s suggestion that they should go up to the ramparts. Lucy, confronting Leo, had looked a little white, and he doubted if his choice of an afternoon’s entertainment, regarded as entertainment, had been altogether successful. The tough little gipsy was as sensitive as a princess when it came to a hard pea under the feather bed. She was well aware of what she did not see. She was not to be fooled.

  Up on the flat roof behind the ramparts the glory of London leaped to meet them in the sunlight. The Thames flashed and sparkled and London shone as though reborn. The silver mist had not entirely vanished though the sun had thrust a hand through it, long rays of light outspread like fingers, and its ethereal silver gave a unity to towers and trees, ships and gulls and churches, while the fingers of the alchemist sun, turning all they touched to gold, gave to each wing and spire and rooftop its own life within the unity. This marvel, this diversity in unity, the elders saw, but having just experienced the newness of lions the eyes of Smuts and Lucy saw things made utterly new. “What’s that word that means things being made again?” she asked him as they hung over the ramparts together.

  With the kindly patronage of superior age and sex he told her. “Renewal. Re-new-all. Make all new.”

  “If you were to put please in front it would be a prayer,” said Lucy.

  “My uncle says that we are made new with every heartbeat,” said Smuts, “as the world with every spring. New birth, he says, is the rhythm of the world.”

  Lucy could feel the knocking of her heart, pressed against the stone ramparts. “Make us and make us and make us,” it knocked and pleaded. “Make us and make us until we come out right.” Then she jumped back from the ramparts. “You can’t catch me!” she said to Smuts.

  “I can,” he said, and ran after her as she darted backwards and forwards like a fly-catcher.

  “They’ll fall,” ejaculated their anxious host.

  “Sure-footed as conies,” Dr. Harvey assured him, and they returned to the anxious adult conversation that had very quickly submerged the first astonishment of the silver and the gold. Scraps of it floated to Smuts and Lucy when presently they leaned again upon the ramparts, getting their breath. Robert was telling the two other men that he had seen the Earl of Strafford. “Why could he not have stayed in Yorkshire?” he asked with passion. “Is he mad? Does he not know his own danger?”

  “He knows,” said Dr. Harvey. “But the man is a lion for courage. It is my belief that he has deliberately returned to London in the character of the King’s scapegoat.”

  The word riveted Lucy’s attention instantly. Another of these scapegoats? But he had not looked like her scapegoat at home. There had been nothing lion-like about her poor old friend. Or had there been just something in him of a fleeting reflection of the gold? She was feeling bewildered and scared when she heard them talking again.

  “I think it is his hope to draw the anger of the King’s enemies upon himself as much as possible,” Dr. Harvey was saying. “He will present himself as the man responsible for the King’s policies, and then refute whatever charges the Commons bring against him. He has the skill to do that.”

  “He will be impeached,” Mr. Cottington said gravely.

  “He may hope for that,” said Dr. Harvey. “He has done nothing treasonable. The law is on his side. If the Commons try to impeach him and he stands his trial, and the impeachment fails, they will have done nothing but make themselves look ridiculous. The result of that to the King will be clear gain.”

  Smuts was talking to her and Lucy missed the next bit but presently she heard Robert say, “Where was he going in his crimson cloak, with a page singing in the prow?”

  “At a guess, to Westminster, to take his seat in the House of Lords without more dallying.”

  “That will be to set a match to the powder,” said Mr. Cottington.

  “We will see what tomorrow brings forth,” said Dr. Harvey grimly. “Time’s going on. Where are those children? Mr. Cottington, we are deeply grateful to you for your hospitality.”

  2

  The return journey was by coach, not by water, and they gave a lift to Dr. Harvey and Smuts, setting them down in the city. As they bumped and rattled up the familiar way from the Strand to Covent Garden Lucy said shyly to Robert, “I said I would take you to my other special place. Please may we go there now? It is in the Garden and Old Sage is in the place. I hardly ever see him now and I love Old Sage.”

  “Of course we will go and see him. Which house does he live in?”

  “He does not live in a house. He has the herb stall in the corner by the church.”

  “But will not the stallholders have sold out and gone home by this time?”

  “Not Old Sage. When there are no more people buying herbs he stays at the stall and reads. He likes reading. He cannot talk because pirates cut his tongue out.”

  “Cut his tongue out?” ejaculated Robert. He was intrigued. He told the coachman to wait and walked with Lucy towards the sunset that came welling up from behind the church. He felt like a young god, lapped in gold, in the morning of the world. The white pillars of a temple rose up before him and the air was fragrant with the wild thyme of the hills of Greece. There was a yew tree somewhere and he could smell that too, and behind him he was quite sure he heard a flock of sheep grazing the turf; he knew so well the little tearing sound, with its evocation of so much. Then it vanished. The enchantment was so great that he was unaware that Lucy had left him. Then the silence was gradually filled with one of the sounds of power, beginning far off and growing in intensity, his exultation keeping pace with it, until he was ready to shout with joy as Apollo’s swans beat their way overhead, their wings lit with gold. They vanished into the sunset and bemused he turned blindly towards the yew. He had been too close to Apollo and needed the tree’s earthiness. From its shade a man looked forth at him, and he knew his face so well, the broad squashed nose, the bald furrowed forehead and curly grey beard. Whom else should he find here in the shadows of the Greek temple? Only the man who had spoken with such perfection of Apollo’s swans. Only Socrates.

  Whatever mystery it might be that had gently withdrawn him from his own place and time returned him with equal gentleness to the reality of the Garden; if where he was now was a place more real than the other. How could he know? But the man was real, and dumb; though it might be that he h
ad an eloquence of being as lovely and moving as the song that the page had been singing as the barge of my Lord of Strafford bore him along to Westminster.

  “This is Old Sage,” said a voice beside him, and looking down he found Lucy at his elbow. The man rose courteously to his feet, holding a half-closed book in his hand, his finger marking the place, and the herb dust that had been disturbed by his movement was about him in an illumined nimbus. Lucy stood watching. He did not look at Robert as old and poor men so often looked at young and rich ones, with a queer mingling of envy, subservience and contempt, he looked straight in his eyes with friendliness and compassion, as though he were in some way the more fortunate of the two. And Robert seemed to think so too for he looked at Old Sage with respect and entreaty.

  “Will you allow me to see what you are reading?” he asked.

  Old Sage held the book out to him, and looking up into Robert’s face Lucy realized that the language which had been unfamiliar to her was not so to him, for his face lit up. “The Iliad,” he said. “I thought that I should find you reading Homer. And Plato? Do you read him too?”

  An expression of great sorrow passed over Old Sage’s face and Robert divined its meaning. “You no longer possess your Republic,” he said. “Is your Iliad the only book now left to you?”

  Old Sage bowed his head, and then as though to forestall possible pity bent down to his basket and handed Robert and Lucy a sprig of rosemary each. The brilliant light had faded now and the pillars of the portico glimmered dimly in the twilight.

  “I must take Lucy home,” said Robert, putting the rosemary away in an inner pocket of his coat. “I have already had her with me for longer than the time allowed me by her mother. When I come back shall I find you still here?” Old Sage nodded, smiled at Lucy, sat down and opened his book, and by the time they turned away he had forgotten them.

  “Thank you, Lucy,” said Robert as they drove through the dusk towards the village. “I am glad to have met Old Sage.”

  “He is a very God-like man,” was Lucy’s surprising answer.

  “You are right,” said Robert soberly. “We are nearly home. I must come in with you and apologize to madam your mother for having kept you so long.”

  “If you are coming into the parlour to talk to madam my mother, and my aunt, I shall not be talking to them with you,” said Lucy firmly. “I shall be going upstairs to my grandmother. Therefore I will say goodbye to you in the garden.”

  In the shadowy garden, where a robin was singing a last song in a leafless apple tree, she curtseyed and thanked him very prettily for her entertainment. Then she rose from her formal curtsey, kissed him im­petuously, darted into the porch and sounded the knocker. Elizabeth opened the door instantly and while Robert was bowing to her Lucy circum­navigated her mother’s wide skirts and escaped upstairs to her grand­mother’s room.

  Mrs. Gwinne and Nan-Nan were sitting before the fire. The candles were lighted and for once Nan-Nan was not busy with the interminable mending. The two sat talking softly together, and the room was so quiet that Lucy regretted the sound of her feet on the polished floor, and the click of the door as she closed it. Sitting at their feet before the fire, with Nan-Nan’s hand occasionally caressing her hair, she told her day, reliving it in their company. But it was not until Nan-Nan had left the room, to get some hot milk for her, that Lucy told her grandmother about the fear that had come when she had seen the steps going up from the water, and the dark doorway. The memory of it was disturbing her but she did not want to disturb Nan-Nan. Her grandmother was not easily disturbed. On the stair of life she stood a step higher even than Nan-Nan.

  “Do not let it distress you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Gwinne calmly. “Many terrible things have happened in the Tower, many griefs have been borne there. These things can remain alive in a building long after they have ceased to trouble those who endured them.”

  “But it was not the past, it was the future,” said Lucy.

  Her grandmother looked at her. “Then forget it,” she said, and her voice had the firm edge of command. “In this world we possess nothing but the passing moment. Polish it as you would a jewel. It is the only wealth to which you have any right. All your other moments belong to God alone.”

  3

  Robert Sidney was driving back to the Garden and could not hear what she said, yet his mind was busy with the thought of wealth. He was thinking of all the books in his father’s library, of the many volumes in his own London lodging. Yet all of them together perhaps gave less pleasure than Old Sage’s one volume. And that world which the old man inhabited, and into which he had stepped for a few extraordinary moments, had more tranquillity in it than most men knew from birth to death. He knew, for he had breathed its air. That he would not do so again he was well aware, for these things were never repeated. When he walked back to the herb stall he found what he expected, a corner of Covent Garden, the deserted stalls, bits of torn paper rustling on the portico; the man reading a book by the light of a lantern just another of the poor vagabonds who lurked in London’s dark corners after the sun was down. Nevertheless this moment of return had its own richness. Old Sage looked up from his book, and if his face was not now quite what Robert remembered it was striking enough, for all that had seemed lost was still there in his eyes.

  Robert came straight to the point. “I have more books at my lodging than I need. You would honour me if you would accept a few.” He paused. “Would you like to come with me now on your way to your own home and fetch them?”

  Old Sage without a tongue had nevertheless learned to be explicit. The gratitude in his eyes, the rueful amused smile, the gesture of his hands, revealed all his feelings. He would be glad to accept a few books, and was grateful, but he did not think it fitting that he should come to a rich man’s home. What he did not try to express, but what his dignity expressed for him, was his fear that Robert, having him in his lodging, might try and press patronage upon him, and as Hellenists he considered that they must meet as equals or not at all. That he lived in some poor corner where books might be stolen was obvious from the fact that he read here, out in the evening chill, by the light of one guttering candle in a battered lantern. Robert thought quickly.

  “Shall I do this?” he asked. “Shall I speak with the incumbent of St. Paul’s, and arrange with him for you to keep the books in a safe place inside the church? You could perhaps read there in the evenings when it grows colder. Sometimes I could come and join you and read with you.”

  Old Sage smiled at the young man’s confidence, so rightly sure that with a mere word he could arrange matters to his liking. Then he bent his head in agreement and his eyes kindled. Robert held out his long slim hand and Old Sage rose to his feet. He did not kiss the hand, as any other poor man would have done, but gripped it in his great brown fist, looking down at the two contrasted hands with a tender and reminiscent smile. Then he loosed his grip and bowed. Robert also bowed, his bow the humbler of the two, and turned away. Before he entered his coach he looked back. He could see the flicker of lantern-light in the shadows of the yew tree. It faintly illumined Old Sage’s bald head and just one pillar of the colonnade.

  Eleven

  1

  Lucy sat sewing on the windowseat of the little room over the porch which was now her bedroom. Nan-Nan was not well and it was she and Elizabeth who now shared a bedchamber so that Elizabeth could look after her. The little room was hardly bigger than a cupboard, and reminded Lucy of her turret room at Roch, and with memories of Roch gathered about her to keep her warm she stitched at her Christmas presents by the last of the winter daylight. She needed to hurry, for Richard and Justus were coming home from boarding school this very evening and Christmas was only a few days away. She was making a satin bag for her grandmother, a posy of silken flowers for her mother, a housewife for Nan-Nan and finely hemmed handkerchiefs for Mr. Gwinne, Richard, Justus, Robert Sidney and Tom Howard. And there was som
ething else, secretly made, though secretly her grandmother had had to help her, so difficult had been the making, a pair of gloves for her father, worked in coloured silks, just in case he would be with them for Christmas. Would he? she had asked a month ago and her mother had flashed out an emphatic denial. But her grandmother had said, “It would be his wish,” and had smiled at Lucy, and she did not forget that smile.

  And there was still something else, secret even from her grandmother, a purse of soft green leather worked all over with a fragile web of silver threads. It was for Charles. It was impossible to make gifts for the others and not for him. Even if she was never able to give it to him it would still have been made for him, each stitch that she set with such difficulty adding a little strength to the thread that so precariously linked them.

  For she had discovered that as well as the evil web there was another. This too bound spirits together, but not in a tangle, it was a patterned web and one could see the silver pattern when the sun shone upon it. It seemed much frailer than the dark tangle, that had a hideous strength, but it might not be so always, not in the final reckoning. Lucy had seen the picture of the silver web one day as she stitched her Christmas presents. She had been remembering what Robert had said about not being separated from people if you were on the same bright star together, and she had seen the silver threads of people’s love for each other running all over and around the world. She had tried to make the picture of it on Charles’s purse.

  Her grandmother’s smile and a silver web. They kept Lucy afloat in a sea of unhappiness and fear. The troubles of the time, that had been like a thunderstorm rumbling in the distance, had begun to close in. The day when she had seen the Earl of Strafford going down to Westminster in his barge had been his last of freedom. By that evening he was in prison. On November the twenty-first Dr. Cosin had been arrested and a week later Archbishop Laud had been impeached. There had been much talk of Dr. Cosin’s humour in misfortune and the Archbishop’s gentleness. Dr. Cosin, bowing to the Committee before whom he had been summoned, had been told, “Here is no altar, Doctor Cosin,” and he had replied, “Why, then I hope there shall be no sacrifice.” The Archbishop, who had been granted a few hours of freedom, had spent them quietly at Lambeth setting his affairs in order and attending evensong with his household in his chapel. As he passed from his house to the barge hundreds of poor people lined his way praying for his safe return, and he had thanked God and blessed them.