The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  That he should swear at her even in displeasure, that he should call her Lucy and not Bud, was something entirely new. She remembered the days of her childhood at Roch when he would put her across his knee to punish her and afterwards give her a hug. There was no chance now that this coldly furious man would give her the comfort of his arms about her. “The little cane you used to use was burnt at Roch,” she said sadly, “but some fathers horsewhip their grown-up daughters. The whip is hanging there by your hand.”

  In the dimness of the room her eyes seemed burning into his head. “For God’s sake do not stand there looming over me,” he shouted at her. “Sit on that stool. You know I would never lay a hand upon you. But what I will do is to sit here until you tell me where you have been and with whom.”

  “I have been in the cathedral with the prince, and for a short while at Bedford House with him to see the baby princess.”

  “It was an arranged meeting, for you took the mare and left a message. When did you make the arrangement?”

  “Yesterday. I met the prince by accident in the churchyard after I had been to see Granny Miles.”

  “Accident, begod! You told him to find you there.”

  “No, sir.”

  He dropped his face into his hands and groaned from behind them, “That is a lie, Lucy.”

  “I would never lie to you.”

  He took his hands from his face. “As a child you would not have lied to me but as a maid you do. You have been out most of the day and you have not only been in Exeter. You have been in the woods. The mare is mud to the fetlocks and you have leaves in your hair.”

  “I have been in the woods and lanes all the afternoon but I have been there alone, and if you think I would lie to you then all the love I thought there was between us has been a sham on your part.”

  “Bud!” he cried out. “For that last sentence I would whip you, but for nothing else.” She was Bud again. She slid off the stool to the floor at his feet “I believe you, my girl. But why alone all those hours in the woods?”

  “I was too unhappy to come home.”

  “Unhappy, were you? Do you imagine yourself in love with that ugly arrogant boy?”

  “I do not imagine things.”

  “Bud, Bud!” groaned poor William. “What do you know about love? You are a child.”

  “No,” said Lucy. “I am older than my age and so is Charles. We have both suffered so many things that we are not young now.”

  The truth of this plunged William into sadness and the familiar use of the prince’s name appalled him. She spoke as though she had known the boy for years. “Bud,” he said, “do you know to what utter misery this may lead you? Who do you think you are?”

  Lucy looked up and smiled at him. “You have told me often, sir. A Welsh lady of royal descent and I am not to forget it.”

  “I was a fool to tell you so,” groaned William. “Here in England you are a nobody. Do you hear? A nobody. Listen to me, Bud. The prince leaves Exeter tomorrow, I am told, but when he is back he will not find you at his beck and call. I must have your promise.”

  “No,” said Lucy. “I cannot promise not to see Charles again.”

  William struggled for the right and incontrovertible words that would never come at his call. “Bud,” he said at last, “you are living in a fairytale. It is no use, my girl; in this world that we actually live in there are no happy endings this side of the grave. All a girl like you can expect, if a prince takes a fancy to have his pleasure of her, is—well—begod it is no fairytale.” He paused, breathing heavily, crimson with effort and misery. “God forgive me, but there have been days lately when I have found it mighty peaceful being quit of your mother; but I wish she were here now to deal with you.”

  Lucy leaned her arms on his knees, her eyes once more holding his, and they were so limpidly blue that he could fancy he was looking down into a well of clear water with truth at the bottom of it. Her eyes gave him more comfort than what she actually said. “Sir, I will never willingly do anything of which you or Nan-Nan would disapprove, but I cannot give you my promise not to see the prince when he comes back to Exeter. And as for my future, sir, and all our futures, what we do today determines them, so it is just to be honest and loving for today and look no further.”

  He was put in his place. She laid her head down on her arms and his hands moved clumsily in her hair, mechanically picking out the dead leaves. He felt unutterably wretched. This business of begetting children, that was forced on a man merely because he was a man, how it could harrow his very soul. A small child in your arms beside the fire was one thing, food and shelter and love were all it asked for, but that child grown was another kettle of fish altogether. Once escaped out of his arms children broke a man’s heart, if his wife had not broken it already. Richard estranged from him, Justus forgetting him he could bear, but Bud lost to him would be a thing past endurance. The harness room was growing dark and cold but he could think of nothing more to say to her. Yet he could not take his hands from her hair. If he did she would go out of the door and be lost to him. He could not relinquish the feel of her, the warmth of her against his knees. What was she thinking that she was so silent, her face hidden? He sighed; a sigh of hopeless dejection.

  She stirred and looked up at him and he could just see the pale glimmer of her face. “You made a promise to me once,” she said.

  “Eh, Bud?”

  “That we should ride back to Roch together.”

  “Bud!” he gasped.

  “Shall we go soon? You and I and Dewi?”

  “Bud! We thought to wait till the war was over. There will be no comfort for you there.”

  “There will be a corner of the castle we can make habitable. Or a cottage somewhere.”

  “The travelling may be dangerous, Bud.”

  “You and I do not mind about danger.”

  With a gasp of relief he dropped his hands to her shoulders and held them tightly. Yet he sensed that she was at a distance from him. He would never know what her thoughts had been while she sat at his feet so motionless. He would not know what they were when they rode home together. She would love him and laugh with him, and it might be that they would share a last paradise together, but he would never know her thoughts.

  Two

  1

  Lucy scarcely knew what they were herself when she sat at his feet, struggling to turn home to Wales. Roch, and her father with her there, had always been her magnetic north, but now her being swung towards a boy on horseback who was homeless, and it seemed that his homelessness was now her north. Yet here was her father, his knees hard and firm under her arms but his thoughts a torment of anxiety, of which she was the cause, and for him Roch with herself at its heart was still the magnetic north. There, if she were with him, he would be himself again and at peace. He would think her safe from Charles there and it was the knowledge that he might be right that made it so hard for her to turn home. Charles would come back to Exeter and find her gone and how, in wartime, could he follow her? But the war would end some day and if he loved her with something more than a passing infatuation he would come to Roch to find her. She could not now give any happiness to Charles but she could give it to her father. And so she looked up at him and reminded him of that old promise.

  Mrs. Chappell made heavy weather of their going. She had considered their presence a cross which she must bear with Christian fortitude, and had repeatedly told her husband how she longed for their departure, but the realization that William and Lucy had had an equal longing for departure was a wound to her pride. “Have you not liked being here?” she demanded. They assured her both of their past happiness and their eternal gratitude but her hurt was not assuaged. To venture forth on a dangerous wartime journey with winter coming on, hardly a penny to bless themselves with and no roof over their heads when they got there, was the action either of raving lunatics or t
he most ungrateful creatures God ever made. There had never been mental instability in her family, nor in William’s father’s family, therefore they were ungrateful and she was exceedingly angry with them and, perversely and with an unconscious wish to punish them, determined they should not go.

  William, loving his mother and grateful to her, might possibly have yielded but Lucy stuck her chin out and began to pack the saddlebags. William had no servant of his own now and they were to ride alone. They would be murdered, Mrs. Chappell assured them, but Mr. Chappell said they would be just as likely to get through safely three as four, and servants were often a liability. He would miss William and Lucy but he was in agreement with them. Being a gardener he knew how deeply William felt about his land; such a man is only happy when his own mud is on his boots. And as for the pretty maid she was too pretty altogether and it was better she should be out of the Prince’s reach. To his wife’s subsequent fury, for he did not consult her, he gave Lucy the mare for her own, and Dewi the Dartmoor pony, for though he might slow them up a bit he was a stout little creature and would enable them to carry a few more saddlebags. He also gave Lucy a little purse of soft leather, and in it a few precious gold pieces, “For when you get married, my maid.”

  They set out early in October, St. Luke’s summer already golden about them and the moon a faint but growing crescent in the sky. “Remember, Lucy, I wish you never to ride after dark!” was Mrs. Chappell’s last injunction to her granddaughter as she embraced her at the front door. “Madam, I will remember,” was all Lucy said, but she hugged her grandmother with warmth, remembering her many kindnesses and touched at feeling real tears on her cheek. They were on hers too when she said goodbye to Mr. Chappell. His arms on her shoulders trembled and when he tried to take her face in his hands they would not hold it. Looking back as they rode away she knew she would not see him again. Her grandmother was weeping and wiping her eyes but the old man watched them go with a look of bewilderment on his face. It must, she thought, be very bewildering to be so old and know yourself no longer able to hold what you love. The three of them rode silently away and Lucy and her father did not look at each other. How strange it was. Here was their dream coming true at last and they were not as happy as they had expected to be. Would it always be like this with one’s dreams?

  “Look!” yelled Dewi. “A kingfisher.”

  There was a stream near and the music of it had been in their ears for some while. The glorious creature flashed like lightning right across their path as they rode and suddenly they knew that they were going home.

  When they reached Wales they were greeted with the sights and sounds and scents that spelt heaven for them. The sound of the streams and the smell of the wet ferns and moss, the sight of a falcon sailing up from the woods to hang a quivering speck in the blue above and the mountains faded purple and dull gold like the shoulders of an aged king. And there were the nights spent in rough inns, eating bara ceich and drinking buttermilk once more, hearing the Welsh tongue spoken again and the old songs sung before the fire.

  They had a few adventures. Twice they were set upon by thieves and William had to lay about him with the butt of his pistol and Lucy with her riding crop, and once Dewi, very tired with much travelling, fell off his pony and bumped himself so severely that they had to stay four days at an inn to nurse and rest him. But the plain clothes they wore made them inconspicuous, and when they met enemy cavalry, or small weary detachments of infantry on the road, no attention was paid to them beyond whistles of appreciation when Lucy’s pretty looks were perceived. Little did they know, she thought, that in one of her saddlebags she carried a sea-green dress and two little pearl earrings; and in her veins the blood of the Plantagenets. On this journey her childhood dreams came back to her and many times William and Dewi were slightly daunted by the hauteur of the Princess Nest, or set to a flying gallop by the buccaneer. It was a long journey, for William could not press his children too hard, but strangely they were in no hurry to get there. Journeys can be a respite from living. The problems left behind by the traveller, and the problems that will confront him when he arrives, fall away in a strangely dreamlike manner. They will link up when he arrives but while he is on the wing they are almost non-existent.

  On a windless pearly-grey afternoon, with dusk not far off, they seemed to come quite suddenly into their own country. “Remember, Lucy,” said William, “that when you have the first sight of the castle it will not look as you remember it.” Lucy nodded, speechless. William and Dewi had not been away from Pembrokeshire for long but she had been away for six years, and they had changed her almost beyond her own recognition. She felt a stranger even to herself.

  But the country had not greatly changed, though they passed burnt-out farms and hedgerows broken down by the passage of guns and troops, scars left by the recent fighting that had now left this part of Wales peaceful but in Puritan hands. Landmarks that Lucy remembered soon came thick and fast. They turned a corner and saw the old bridge that spanned the Brandy Brook and except for a broken balustrade it was unharmed. The brook sang under it in just the old way and looking to the right she saw a proud heron standing among the reeds, just as she had done when they went away. She looked up to the castle on its hill and saw the tower stark and torn like a tree that has been blasted by lightning, a cascade of fallen stones about its base. Yet it was still grand, perhaps even more so than it had been before, and for a moment her spirit leaped up to meet it, hot with the heron’s own pride. She looked at her father and smiled and as they rode up the steep hill the sun broke through the grey clouds behind the tower.

  2

  It was another good omen for their homecoming, for the next weeks were not unhappy ones. The first joy was the welcome they received from Parson Peregrine, the Perrots, Old Parson and William’s men. They stayed at first at Brandy Mill with the Perrots and Old Parson, and they were happy, though Lucy grieved to hear of the death of the sin-eater. Old Parson had taken it to heart greatly. One cold winter when he had himself been sick and not able to climb up the mill woods the sin-eater had been found lying dead, thin as a starved sparrow but free of the sins at last.

  After Christmas they moved to an empty cottage in the fishermen’s bay. The people there were rough and independent but they made them welcome because they were unfortunate, and though life in the primitive little cottage was hard it was happy. William’s sorrow over his wife and Lucy’s longing for Charles were always there, and they learned to hide a great deal from each other, not least their mutual bedrock knowledge of the precariousness of their state, but they found that joy cannot live at all unless the sense of eternity inherent in each moment, each now, is protected from the pressure of yesterday’s remorse and tomorrow’s fear and they learned the art of this protection. And they worked so hard, William on the land, Lucy in the cottage, Dewi as Parson Peregrine’s pupil, that their sleep at night was that of drugged dormice. But Lucy could not recapture her first pride at sight of the undefeated castle tower. William and Dewi went there occasionally but she did not. Brave though she normally was, over this one thing she was a coward. She could not face the emptiness.

  And then one morning in the new year she did. It had been cold and stormy since their return but at the end of January there came a strange foretaste of spring. The sea was quiet and the gentle wind blew from the south, and in the mill house garden the snowdrops stood bolt upright, a flash of white gleaming in the sun at the point of each spear. She got up early one morning and wrapped in her cloak climbed up through the leafless wood behind the fishermen’s bay to the cliff. It had been dark in the wood and her feet rather than her eyes had found the path, but out in the open a few stars and the crescent moon floated in a clear green sky. The sea was calm, the wash of the waves below the cliffs a sound so peaceful that Lucy was only aware of it as a quietness in her own mind. As she walked slowly along the cliff the lightening sky called forth the cockcrow; the trumpets of the birds of dawn
ing sounded as though one after the other, as they saw the light grow, they cried the news all the way from the eastern mountains to the western sea. Yet down in the woods the owls were still calling.

  Looking out over the sea, watching the gleams of light that floated like pale lilies on the dark flood, Lucy listened to the faint trumpet calls behind her and knew that she must turn round. She did so and saw the ruins of the castle standing out starkly against the sunrise, and though no fire burned now in the roofless hall the rising sun shone through the empty windows as though the logs were still glowing on the great hearth. Lucy looked for a long time and it was as though the emptiness were slowly filling up with warm welcome, and hardly knowing what she did she walked towards it. And presently she began to run.

  In the lane she felt almost joyous, even when she found that the garden door was broken and hanging loose on its hinges. She pushed through and found herself in a beautiful wilderness, with bright green moss growing where once the smooth grass had been and the rose trees exulting in wild and thorny freedom. The herbs, the mint and southernwood and thyme, had spread everywhere and their pungent scent was sharp in the cool wet dawn. The rosemary tree was unharmed and she buried her face in its cloudy greyness. The leaves pricked against her skin and the invigorating tang of it seemed to go through her body like sharp wine. Behind her back a stormcock tried out a few bars of his dauntless song.

  She went up the steps to the hall, and found it carpeted by the leaves that had blown through the empty windows in the autumn gales. They were sodden under her feet and smelled of death, but when she looked up at the space that had once been arched over by the glorious wooden roof she saw it pavilioned by a sky of flame. She must have been in the garden longer than she knew for there was no more night. She stood almost breathless and gazed up and up into a vault of extraordinary glory. This was the way to see sky. There were no distances to distract the eye, no distant hills or glittering sea, just this concentrated splendour of light, held up, it seemed, by the stark walls of the ruined castle. Had they not reared up their strength towards it surely the weight of glory would have fallen on her head. She was blinded and covered her face with her hands.