The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “I must go to him at once,” she said.

  “Are you mad, Lucy?” Robert demanded, and he grabbed her arm as she was rushing away to get ready.

  “But he may die!” she gasped.

  “He may,” agreed Robert. “But royal mistresses do not attend royal deathbeds. The code does not allow it and Charles will not want you there.”

  He had not meant to be cruel but though he had not lost his sensitiveness he was more downright in his manners than he had been. Seeing how he had hurt her he was sorry and took her in his arms to comfort her, for he thought she must be near to tears, but he found her dry-eyed, stiff and hard with anguish. He let go of her again, feeling as though his genuine compassion had been flung back in his face. Lucy was very changed from the little girl who had jumped into his arms like a bird in the garden at St. Giles. “Are we nothing to each other now, sweetheart?” he asked her.

  “I do not know,” she said dully. “I cannot think. Please will you go away?”

  But Charles was a strong young man. He recovered and went away to Breda to live there quietly, to save money. He found a lodging for Lucy not far from his own and she was there for some months, hardly anyone knowing where she was.

  It was a strange time, for Charles was absorbed in the struggle to help his father, a struggle that became agonizing just after Christmas when the news came that the King was to be tried for high treason. All his time was spent in reading his father’s long letters and writing appeals for help to the Dutch Parliament, to the Scots, to the English Parliament itself, to anyone at all who might be able to help the King. There were many days when Lucy did not see him, and when he did come to her lodging he was tired and anxious and only wanted to sit with her in front of the fire and be comforted; how he was too miserable to specify. But she was clever at knowing how. Sometimes she sang Welsh songs to him, or they played chess. At other times they had a meal together in front of the fire and afterwards she spread her mother’s cloak on the floor and he lay on it and they talked of the baby, and he laughed at the ridiculous contrast of the shirts she was making, one for him and one for his son. Over the fireplace they hung her little mirror and her father’s picture and it was part of the ritual that he should listen to the sea-shell before he went away.

  On other days they went for strolls together through the streets of Breda, beside the canals that at first were red and yellow with fallen leaves and then when December came were sometimes still and frozen under snow. And sometimes they went to the great mediaeval church to whose walls the little houses clung like chickens to their mother, and sat there in peace.

  January came and Charles was nearly beside himself, for no answer came to his appeal to Parliament. Coming in one afternoon at dusk from a walk beside the canal close to her lodging, where she went almost daily to feed the gulls, Lucy found Charles in her little sitting room writing at the table. He often came to her lodging to work for it was quieter than his own and her presence, or even the atmosphere of her presence, when she was out, gave him peace. He had lit the candles on the table and the movement of their flames in the slight draught of the opened door, and the flicker of firelight, sent queer shadows leaping in the room. Lucy never spoke if Charles was working. Passing him with no more greeting than a touch of her fingertips against his cheek she took off her cloak and sat down beside the fire. She was tired, for the child was heavy now and she was glad to sit still. Beyond the uncurtained windows the dusk was blue for it was a cloudless evening, warm for January and very still. It was utterly peaceful and yet Lucy found that her heart was beating fast. Presently Charles sighed, straightened his shoulders and began sanding his papers.

  “You have finished?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She came and stood behind him, placing her linked hands beneath his chin that she might lift his head up and kiss the lines of worry from his forehead. It was one of the ways she had with him; she had many such little ways and he loved them all. Then she saw his papers and her hands dropped from his face and gripped the lace that fell from his neckband, for she saw that lying beside the letter that he had been sanding there were three blank papers signed with his name.

  “What are you going to write on those papers, Charles?” she asked sharply.

  “Nothing,” he replied, and lifting one of them he quickly folded it within his letter; but not before she saw that the letter was yet another appeal to Parliament.

  “Why do you send Parliament a blank, signed sheet of paper?” she demanded, her hands twisting in his lace. “And what are you doing with the other two?”

  “They are only copies.”

  “To be sent to whom?”

  “To other persons in England. Dear heart, you are throttling me, and the matter is of no importance. Forget it. We will play chess now.”

  Lucy’s mind was working like lightning. “They can write what they like over your signature on that piece of paper,” she said, “and hold you to it.”

  “Take your hands away,” said Charles with a spurt of anger. “I tell you the matter is of no importance.”

  “You have said in that letter that you are offering any terms they like in exchange for your father’s life.” The words were screaming in her mind but they only came out in a breathless gasp of fury. “You are a fool, Charles! They can ask for your life instead of his.”

  Charles dragged her hands away and got up. His more than six feet of height seemed to tower to the ceiling and his usually sombre eyes were bright with anger. To offer his life in exchange for his father’s was exactly what he had intended. He had signed his carte blanche in a mood of dedication and exaltation and was in no state of mind to be called a fool by this little nobody of a girl whom he had been idiot enough to marry. She presumed. She was always presuming. She never seemed to realize either the honour he had done her or the increasing embarrassment she was likely to be to him. Glaring down at her he saw that she was as angry as he was, her cheeks scarlet. How dare she be angry? He took her by the arms and shook her. It was the first time that he had touched her in any way but the ways of love and the moment he had done it they were both horrified. She set her teeth in her lower lip to stop its trembling and looked up at him, the colour draining from her face, and in a moment she was in his arms and they were both sobbing in reaction from their shock and fear. They were eighteen years old. That there was nothing whatever that Parliament could write on that piece of paper was something they did not understand.

  Lucy recovered first. She pulled herself out of his arms and straightened herself.

  “I understand,” she said. “It is something you must do and that you ought to do. I love you more than ever. Seal up your letter and I will get our supper and then we will play chess.”

  The carved chessmen belonged to Charles and he had taught Lucy to play. He was not a man who either expected or asked for intellect in a woman, only for beauty and vivacity to delight his senses and make him laugh, but her quickness and skill as a pupil had charmed and surprised him. She was not of the stuff of which scholars are made but her lively mind and eager pleasure in new places and new skills made her a delightful companion when her heart was at ease. But tonight though she did her gallant best she could not concentrate and the game promised nothing except a victory too easy for his pleasure, and suddenly he impatiently swept up the pieces and put them back in their box.

  “I am sorry,” said Lucy humbly.

  “I must go back to The Hague early tomorrow,” he said. “I do not know what will happen from one day to the other and I must be where my advisers are and with my sister and brother-in-law.”

  “I will go to the Vingboons so that I can be near you,” said Lucy. “Or would you prefer me to go to the farm?”

  “To neither,” said Charles. “I want you to go to your aunt at Rotterdam and to stay there until the boy is born.”

  “But I cannot do that. I
am too far from you there!”

  “Listen, Lucy,” he said urgently, “there is nothing we can either be to each other or do with each other just now. I cannot be or do anything that is unconnected with my father and my future as his son. I want an undistracted mind and a man can’t have that if he is worrying about a woman. Women make one anxious, the way they have babies, and other things they do that can be a trial when a man must keep his attention on serious things. I love you very much, you know I do, but I would rather you were safely with your aunt until things are easier for both of us.”

  He slipped one finger inside his collar and eased it, and drops of perspiration stood on his forehead. It had had to be said and he only hoped he had said it as tactfully as possible. She knew quite well that the status she must keep for the moment was that of mistress and not wife, yet she was slow to understand her duty. Then suddenly his dark troubled face cleared. “Be a good girl, Lucy, and when these troubles are over I will take you to Paris!”

  Lucy was speechless. He had changed since the days in Wales when they had been equals, taking the centre of the stage together. Now he was pushing her into the wings. But then that stage had been the small one of her world and now they were in his large world and it was different. It was the setting that was changing, she told herself, and not his way of thinking; yet in her heart she knew it was his way of thinking.

  “Can you not say something?” he demanded impatiently. “Do you not want to go to Paris?”

  “One day,” she said. “But now? What am I to do now?”

  “I have told you. Go to your aunt at Rotterdam.”

  “May I go first to Wilhelmientje to collect some clothes I have there? I will not try to see you while I am at The Hague.”

  “You may, dear heart. Sidney shall take you there tomorrow. I am going now. I want a good sleep tonight.”

  “Will you not have it here with me?”

  “No. All that is ahead seems rushing towards me. Do you know that feeling? This quiet time here with you at Breda has been dear and peaceful but darkness has washed over it now.”

  That she could understand and there was no lack of love and no bitterness in their parting. But she hardly slept all night for he was right about the darkness. She was so lonely that night that it frightened her.

  3

  Robert Sidney found her a girl he hardly knew when they rode back to The Hague together, so quiet and saddened was she. But yet he did know her for he remembered the sad little girl with whom he had driven to London when she was missing her father, and whom he had comforted with the thought of the green star. Would she remember? “You and Charles are on the same green star, Lucy,” he said.

  She turned her head quickly with a sudden smile of remembrance and the hood she was wearing fell back from her hair. It was the same hair, springy and untidy, and in a moment or two wet with the fine misty rain. Was Charles expecting to turn her into a Court lady, Robert wondered? If so he would find her intransigent material.

  “The green star!” she said. “That was the day I took you to visit Old Sage. He is dead now and I shall never know where he came from or who he was.”

  “I can tell you, for I found out about him. Are you too grown up now for storytelling?”

  She was almost herself again, her eyes alight with curiosity. “I shall never be too old for storytelling,” she said. “And I loved Old Sage. Tell me.”

  So he told her the story of the night when the mob was surging outside the palace at Whitehall and he and her father had gone to find Old Sage, and the three of them had rescued Father Ignatius and Old Sage had been put in the pillory. And he told her of his visit to Father Ignatius and the story the old man had told him. Lucy listened with concentration and asked many questions, for her intuition told her that she was connected with this story by more than her love for Old Sage.

  “Patrick’s ship was wrecked on the coast of Pembrokeshire?” she asked for the second time.

  “That was the rumour,” said Robert.

  “What year would that have been?”

  Robert made some calculations. “Probably in the year sixteen hundred and six or sixteen hundred and seven,” he said. “Later perhaps.”

  “My father was a boy then,” said Lucy thoughtfully. “He was a boy when Old Parson came.”

  “Since this is a storytelling day tell me about Old Parson,” commanded Robert.

  So Lucy told him about the old priest with a wound on his head and lost memory. “But he is better now,” she said. “I think he is nearly well because when I left Roch he was remembering things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “He remembered a dumb friend he had loved. He told me he thought he had been the cause of his friend’s dumbness though he could not remember how. He felt sure his friend had died but he was not unhappy because he knew his friend had forgiven him.”

  “Say that again,” said Robert and Lucy said it again, her wondering eyes on his face. “Can you remember anything else?”

  “No. Except that his dead friend told him that it is quite true that a person for love’s sake can choose to suffer for the guilt of another and take it away.”

  “I can hear Old Sage saying that,” said Robert.

  They looked at each other and Lucy’s lips parted in surprise. Robert’s eyes were very bright and illumination seemed coming to her mind from his eyes. Then for a moment fear came, putting out the light. Something in the story she had just heard threatened her but she did not know what it was because the fear paralysed her thinking.

  “There is The Hague,” said Robert quickly, for her fear was invading his own sensitive mind, and though he did not know why they must escape instantly from Old Parson he knew that for Lucy’s sake escape they must. “Seen from a distance these Dutch cities never look corporeal. They belong to dreams.”

  They had been riding through a belt of woodland and the bare stretched arms of the motionless winter trees had gathered the mist like cobwebs about their sad skeletons, their presence adding to Lucy’s sense of dread, but as they rode out from the shadows she saw that a shaft of pale sunlight was lighting the steeples and the high-pitched roofs. “We shall see the storks soon,” she said.

  “You like storks?” enquired Robert. Storks seemed to him a safe subject.

  “A stork is our family crest,” said Lucy. “Only we call him a heron because there are almost as many herons in Pembrokeshire as there are storks at The Hague. A little stone figure of our stork-heron was not destroyed with the castle. It is there now, in the kitchen where Old Parson and I talked about—about—”

  She broke off in confusion. So storks were not a safe subject after all, thought Robert. No subject is safe when the mind has been refused some knowledge that must not be allowed entry; created to search out knowledge it hates to be denied. “Forget the story I told you,” he commanded Lucy. “Forget Patrick. It was too sad a story for you to remember. Forget it.”

  A week later, when she was back in Rotterdam with Aunt Margaret, she did forget it. The small skeleton in her cupboard was swept away, cupboard and all, by the overwhelming horror of what happened next.

  4

  It was a cold February day darkened by low motionless clouds that seemed unable to shed their burden of snow. A few flakes drifted down to the dull grey water of the canal, but that was all. Lucy, sitting in the window to catch the last light on her sewing, found herself unable to look out. She had a feeling that if she did she would see some sorrowful sight; some beggar dragging his misshapen body along on crutches, an idiot child or a woman weeping. Then she pulled herself together. One had queer fancies when one was expecting a baby but one must not yield to them. She dropped her sewing in her lap, sat upright and looked steadily out of the window. At first there was nothing to be seen; only the deserted cobbled way beside the water. Then a man wrapped in a heavy black cloak suddenly appeared and st
rode past the window. With his hat pulled down over his forehead, his head bent against the eastern cold that met him as he walked, she could not see his face but he seemed a figure of doom that made her shrink back. Then he vanished from sight and the slam of the front door seemed a dreadful thing as it shattered the heavy quietness of the grey day.

  Aunt Margaret, who had been dozing by the fire, woke up with a start. “What is that?” she asked. Lucy was standing upright, her face white, watching the parlour door. Her lips moved but she said nothing when Peter Gosfright came in. “You silly girl, Lucy, it is only your uncle,” said Aunt Margaret with relief, and then turning to her husband in outrage, “Peter! Do you know you are still wearing your hat and cloak?”

  Then he told them, and he was too shocked and angry to choose his words carefully. On January the thirtieth the King of England had been beheaded outside his Palace of Whitehall. The Hague had been stunned by the news. Kings had been murdered often, or deposed, or killed in battle, but never before executed by their own subjects on a public scaffold, their last agony lifted up and exposed to the full view of their people. And this king had been a good man, Peter stormed on, doing the best that he knew for his people, and a religious man who had put his trust in God. Was this the lot of good men in this evil world? Did God sleep? He stopped speaking, removed his hat and dropped his heavy cloak to the floor.

  There was silence. To Lucy it seemed that the room was full of whirling darkness and that something had come out of it and hit her a blow in the middle of her forehead. She put one hand to the place and groped for the door with the other. “Stay here, Lucy!” commanded Aunt Margaret, but Peter said, “Let her alone.” After that she did not know what she did but when she came to herself again she was kneeling on the floor in her bedchamber packing her saddlebags to go to Charles.

  She was at all times a quick recoverer and her mind started working again, bringing her to her feet under the impact of another blow. Charles was now King of England. He wished her to be known only as his mistress and so she could not go to him. “I am only his mistress.” She spoke the words aloud and sat down on the edge of her bed. It was the smallpox over again only worse. She could not go to him. The holding together in the disasters of life that could bring such unity to husband and wife would never be for them. A queer little vision came to her, her father and mother clinging to each other after the wheel had come off the coach on the journey to Golden Grove, and the unborn baby’s life had been threatened . . . And the baby had died . . . As the vision faded her own child moved in her womb, Charles’s son that he must have to comfort him. Nothing must happen to Charles’s son.