The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  They were hungry and ate the last of the food. Then it was time to be turning home and Lucy left Charles on the cliffs while she fetched the mare. It was hard on the mare to have to carry the two of them on her back, Lucy riding pillion, but often they let her walk while Charles dismounted and strode beside her, and often the three of them rested in the shade.

  “It is not going to be so easy as you think to keep me hidden,” said Charles. “I cannot spend all my time skulking in your castle vaults. So what do we say when I am seen?”

  “That you are an escaped Royalist, a prisoner in hiding. For the moment the Puritans have got Pembrokeshire but my father’s people are Royalist at heart and no one would tell of you.”

  “What is my name?”

  “Tomos Barlow.”

  “But I do not speak as the Welsh do.”

  “You had better not speak at all. If you are spoken to smile and nod your head.”

  For the rest of the ride home they laughed often, but in the midst of their laughter they would fall suddenly silent, for they both knew that they were approaching a climax in their lives. An act of faith could lead to nothing else. When they looked at each other they smiled encouragement.

  In the westering sunlight they reached the bridge below the mill and dismounted. “I must stable the mare and get food for you,” said Lucy. “You go on to the castle. It is at the top of that hill. Go down the lane to the left and you will find the ways in through the garden.”

  When she reached the cottage Lucy found that her father had not come home yet. Dewi was winkle-picking down on the rocks but he was too absorbed to notice her for winkles cooked in ashes were his favourite supper. She put food in the saddlebag, took two blankets from the chest and the little mattress stuffed with dried bracken from her own bed, bound them together with rope, loaded them on her back and toiled up through the wood, and up the hill, burdened like the man in the moon. But the joy of what she was doing had a sharp intensity. This burden-bearing for Charles was the true beginning of her womanhood.

  She found him in the great hall. He was on the dais and called out to her as she came in. It was sunset now and once again the hall was roofed with glory. She dropped her burden, straightened herself and turned towards him. They each saw the other lit with gold like a little royal figure in the margin of a painted manuscript. Then they ran to each other, growing in size as they ran, and in the centre of the hall were in each other’s arms.

  “Why are there tears in your eyes?” Lucy asked.

  “Because this castle is lost to you and your father for my father’s sake, and my sake.”

  “Why do you mind so much?”

  “Would not you mind? The very birth of a prince means conflict sooner or later; homes destroyed, men wounded and dead, women bereaved.”

  “You are not a prince here in Roch,” Lucy comforted him. “You are only my lover Tomos. And you are tired and need your supper and bed.”

  But Charles was not to be comforted. “I shall have nightmares sleeping in this ruin,” he said. “Is there a haystack somewhere?”

  “Down below, where the kitchen is, there are no signs of ruin. It will make you happy to sleep there. Look, you must carry your own bedding down. I am not going to wait on Tomos.” She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with mischief and a touch of anger. “I am never going to wait on you more than any wife should wait on any husband; nothing extra.”

  He flushed with sudden shame and instantly shouldered the mattress and blankets and bag of food; because just for a moment he had stood aside to be waited on just as he always did. But following her down the steps an enormous question mark loomed up for the first time in his mind. Wife, she had said. Wife. And the shadow of Nan-Nan fell upon him.

  “Did she always live here with you?” he asked.

  Lucy glanced back over her shoulder, surprised. “Who?”

  “Your old nurse.”

  “But of course she did. She was here before I was born. She is a part of Roch.”

  “I thought so,” said Charles gloomily.

  But she had not heard him in her pleasure at showing him his hiding-place. The sunset light was pouring in through the west window and gave warmth to the pots and pans, the table and stools, the well and the great fireplace. There was no suggestion of ruin here, only of strength and peace. “Ruin is only temporary,” she told Charles. “Down below it is like this. Are you happy now?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This is the most comforting place I ever saw.”

  “Look here,” said Lucy, and she led him to the little stone figure. “He is our family crest and he used to stand over the fireplace in the hall. He is a stork really, but we call him the heron because there are herons down by Brandy Brook and we love them.”

  “Arrogant and undefeatable,” said Charles. “Like you.”

  “But I am not sharp-beaked,” pleaded Lucy, a little hurt by the “arrogant.”

  “No, you could never say sharp things, dear heart, but you could say hard things. Truthful things. And I love it in you.”

  He went thoughtfully back to the kitchen for he had just called her dear heart, which was what his father called his mother. The words had come most naturally to his tongue.

  Lucy said they must light a fire. It was always cool among the roots, the light was fading and the air from the sea came freshly through the window. And besides, she told Charles, this was their home just for now and every true Welsh home has a fire burning on the hearth whatever the weather. They became merry as children arranging the logs and fir-cones and getting the fire blazing, and then they sat and talked by it for a while.

  “I must go,” said Lucy suddenly. “It is getting dark and my father will be home. I will come in the morning and we will think what to do next.”

  He did not want her to go and hugged her so hard that she had to use her strength to get free. He dropped his arms and let her go.

  Four

  1

  It had without doubt been decided in some other world than this that the luck should be incredible. Not in heaven, whose concern seems to be not with what men call good fortune but only with pure good, and that interpreted on its own terms, not ours. No, not heaven, but the world of legend and myth that coming up over the horizon like moonrise put a magic protection about a few hours, a few days, a whole week it may be of human experience. Climbing up through the wood in the first light of the next morning Lucy wondered to which world her unremembered dream had belonged. Perhaps to both, since both were in the depths of herself. It did not matter. What mattered was that William and Dewi had been too deeply asleep to hear her getting up and putting their breakfast ready, and that upon going to the mill house last evening she had found Old Parson not very well in the heat, and in no mood to climb the hill to the castle as he so often did.

  A sea mist made the dawn mysterious today. The birds were hardly awake yet and in the castle garden there was silence and stillness. Motionless rose sprays, half seen in the mist, looked like arabesques faintly traced on silver, and the castle, its scars hidden in wreaths of vapour, seemed to rise to an immense height. As she climbed up the steps to the hall she heard faint unearthly music and stood still, her heart beating. “Where should this music be? In the earth, in the air?” She did not know and she went on to the hall thinking that it came from neither earth nor air but from the depths of which she had been thinking. She went slowly and softly down the stone steps to the kitchen and the music, while losing nothing of its beauty, became something homely. Charles was down there playing the flute.

  For a few moments she sat at the bottom of the steps and listened. He must have awakened very early for he had already lit the fire and now he was sitting on a stool beside it playing the flute with extraordinary skill. Now she knew something more about him. He was a musician. Oh joy, oh joy! For so was she. He was playing the air of Greensleeves. She stood up agains
t the wall and began to sing to his accompaniment. They took it from beginning to end and then looked at each other and laughed in delight

  “You sing like a thrush,” said Charles. “Why did you not tell me?”

  “Why did you not tell me that you can play like that? And where did you find that flute?”

  “Have you never been up the staircase behind the heron? There is a little room up there, a storeroom I should think. It is unharmed. There was a chest there and I opened it and found a guitar and this flute, both carefully wrapped up. Both unhurt.”

  The tears rushed into Lucy’s eyes. “They belonged to my father and mother,” she said. “We left them behind by mistake when we went to London and one of the servants must have looked after them and put them there for safety. It must have been old Gwladys. She is dead now.”

  “Do not cry,” said Charles.

  Lucy wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “No. But on Sundays we used to make music in the arbour, my father and mother and we children.”

  Charles came to her. “Have you brought me any breakfast?” he enquired in her ear. He was not heartless but he was intensely hungry and he had seen the bag slung over her shoulder. She was dressed as a boy today and he was amused to see how well her father’s breeches became her.

  “You shall have it later,” said Lucy. “Now you can only have a bit of bara ceich to eat while you come with me.”

  “I do not want to go anywhere. Only to eat.”

  “Very early this morning I heard something that you have got to hear too. That is why I got up so early. Come quickly.”

  Hand in hand, munching bara ceich, they walked towards the cliff. The mist was slowly yielding to the rising sun, and encompassed them mysteriously, as though peopled by spirits. Each faint movement of the veil seemed to promise the revelation of some secret thing, perhaps the very meaning of the world, but there was no fulfilment. Always as the curtain stirred it dropped again and from somewhere far away there came a cry that sent a shiver down the spine, a wild heartbroken voice, all humanity crying out in outrage at this thing. Must we suffer so, and never know why? Never from the beginning to the end of the world know why?

  “For God sake!” cried Charles, and dropped his bit of bread in the wet grass. “What in this world or out of it was that?”

  “You will soon know,” said Lucy placidly, and she steered him a little towards the right. “But you must keep very quiet.” She knew exactly where she was. She could have found her way to either of the three bays of Roch blindfold. Yet it gave Charles a jolt when she suddenly pulled him to a standstill and he found himself standing on the edge of the world, with nothing below him but a great cavern full of mist. One more step and he would have plunged into it.

  “You are quite safe,” whispered Lucy, as to a child, her hand gripping his tightly. “I have got you.”

  But from somewhere in the bowels of the earth, right under their feet it seemed, the cry came again, louder and more dreadful and he did not agree with her. Safe? In such a world? Nothing was safe, neither love nor life nor fortune. Only death was sure. And then a softer cry came, not beneath their feet but a cry in the mist, a flute-like cry that was sad but not hopeless. And then to the left another, and this time Charles thought of the god Pan and his sorrow now that no man believed in him any more. After that there was silence, the sort of silence which cannot be broken. The mist thinned and Charles thought he could see a glimpse of water, and dark rocks in the sea. And then what he thought he had seen was hidden, and then revealed; only one of the rocks moved. He was glad when Lucy at last softly broke the silence.

  “The first cry and the second must have come from one of the caves. The voice echoes so in the caves. The others are down in the cove or out at sea. They are the morlos.”

  “Morlos?” whispered Charles. The strange name seemed entirely appropriate to whoever they were down there. The sweat had started out on his forehead. He was ashamed of the fact and wiped it away with his wrist. “Morlos?”

  “The seals,” said Lucy.

  “Oh, the seals!” Caught amid shame and amusement he flung back his head and began to laugh his great laugh but Lucy, in a perfect fury with him, slapped her hand so hard over his mouth that he staggered and was instantly silenced. “I told you to keep quiet!” she muttered. “If they hear us they will go away. This is a chance of a lifetime. Follow me and do not dare make that noise again!”

  The mist was thinning very fast and already they felt the warmth of the sun. He could see now that the cliff fell from their feet in a savage rocky mass. She began to climb down and he followed her with his heart in his mouth. She climbed like a mountain goat and the education of Charles Stuart had not as yet included rock climbing. Presently they reached a wide rock-ledge where rough grass and heather grew. There to his relief they could lie flat and look down into the bay below, and gradually, as the veils of mist withdrew over a sparkling sea, the bay of the seals lay clear beneath them.

  It was a small bay of sloping shingle and flat rocks. Several marbled cows were lying on the rocks with their ivory-coated pups beside them, and a little way out in the water were five bulls. Lucy leaned close to Charles and began to whisper to him, but he hardly heard what she said for the burning sweetness of having her so close, her body stretched beside his, her hair tickling his cheek. “They are the grey Atlantic seals that breed on the Pembrokeshire coast. There are black seals too, my father says, but they come from the North Sea and the Baltic and you find them only in Scotland. The pups have soft brown eyes that fill with tears when they are hurt. You must never hurt a seal for they were human once. That dreadful cry is because of something they did long ago that banished them from the world of men. But they can sing too, like flutes. You heard them. The grey seals sing a better song than the black ones, they say.”

  She was so young that her hair still had that faint delightful scent that children’s hair has. He edged a little away from her and tried to concentrate his mind on flutes. He had heard that last bit, musician that he was. “Have you ever played the flute to them?” he asked.

  “No!” Lucy sat up, her whole face sparkling with delight. “I never thought of it. But we could not get near enough. They would hear us scrambling down the scree below the rocks. It is so steep there. It is not possible to be silent.”

  “We could come in very quietly from the sea at dusk,” said Charles.

  “So we could!” She was like a child delighting in a new game. Biting her little finger she wondered how they could manage it. “We cannot set off from the fishermen’s bay for we would be seen. But there is a boy there who would do anything for me. I will get him to take a boat round to the castle bay and beach it there. I will say I am going fishing with my father.”

  “Who is this boy who would do anything for you?” demanded Charles.

  “Just one of the fisherboys. They would all do anything for me but this one especially because I bandaged his arm when he cut it badly. His name is Iolo.”

  “What an outlandish name.”

  “No more outlandish to your ears than Charles would be to his. Are you jealous?”

  “Jealous? No! Why should I be jealous of a fisherlad?”

  But his face was dark with it and his eyes hot and she remembered Othello. “Dear General, I never gave you cause.” Who had said that? Someone in the same play. She must never give him cause.

  “You only for ever and ever,” she reminded him. “I will fetch you at dusk tonight and we will go to the castle cove and row round the headland and play to the morlos. Take another look at them for we must go now. My father’s men will soon be about in the fields.”

  They looked down again at the bulls in the water, the gentle cows and their pups on the rocks, and climbed back to the cliff top.

  “I will not be able to be with you again today, not until this evening,” said Lucy, “for my father said I must ride w
ith him to see the new parson and his wife who have been sent to look after us now that our old parson is in prison. They are Puritans and we do not want them but my father says we must be civil. You will not be lonely till I come?”

  “No, I will sit in the garden and read the book I found in the chest.”

  “A book? Did Gwladys hide a book there?”

  “The Mabinogion. A lovely book, safely wrapped in a blanket like the guitar and the flute.”

  “Oh, dear Gwladys!” cried Lucy in joy. “I thought the Mabinogion had been burnt with all the other things in my mother’s bower. Gwladys must have known inside herself what was going to happen. The Mabinogion has all the stories of our beginnings. Read about Prince Kilhwch and Olwen. Read about the giant who propped his eyelids up with forks.”

  He laughed and said he would and then he asked about the old man who was in prison and made Lucy tell him why he had been taken away. It grieved him and there was nobility in the sadness of his face when he grieved for those who suffered for his father. It banished the memory of his sudden fit of jealousy, and saying goodbye to him at the garden door Lucy felt her love for him burgeoning like a tree in spring. That it should be drawing strength from the soil of Roch seemed a happiness almost too great to bear.

  2

  It was twilight when they came down the lane to the castle bay, and there was no sound except the murmur of the little stream running to the sea. The rock that had always been Lucy’s special place loomed up with benign strength and Iolo had beached the boat beside it. Barelegged and laughing they pulled it down to the sea, pushed off and jumped in. Charles took the oars and Lucy steered, the flute lying in her lap. Birds were about them for the gulls who had flown inland today were coming back to sleep within sound of the sea, and the cormorants and guillemots were settling down for the night. The sky over their heads was deep and clear, but wisps of mist floated over a sea so still that it scarcely seemed to breathe. Charles rowed so skilfully that his oars in the rowlocks made only a whisper of sound. The blades dipped into the clear water and rose again so rhythmically that they seemed themselves to be the slowly moving wings of some majestic bird. “The swan that went down the stream with a crown on his head,” said Lucy to herself. “These days are crowned with joy. They are not earthly.”