“I remember,” said Lucy, and she rustled round the fountain and sat down beside him and smiled at Minette. To her surprise and delight two arms were flung instantly round her neck and Minette’s butterfly kiss alighted on her cheek. Then the child was in her lap and they were hugging each other and laughing. Minette loved her. She loved Minette. The fountain man was forgotten in the joy of it.
4
Lord Wilmot’s coach that had brought Lucy, Dr. Cosin and Mr. Evelyn to Saint-Germain took them back to Paris again but Lord Wilmot was not with them, for after the heat and irritations of his mother’s levee Charles had wanted to go riding in the woods and had commanded his closest friends to go with him, and so the two elderly gentlemen found themselves alone with Lucy.
Mr. Evelyn sighed. He had not an eye for a pretty woman; that is to say he could recognize the mere face of female beauty there before him but it brought no kindling to his eyes and no lift to his spirit. His intellect was too highly developed. He would have enjoyed the use of the latter in conversation with Dr. Cosin but this could hardly take place in the presence of the King’s mistress. He considered the problem for a moment, found it too much for him, closed his eyes and slept so deeply that Dr. Cosin and Lucy found themselves virtually alone facing each other across the coach. He took her folded marriage certificate from his pocket and gave it back to her.
“Lucy,” he said, “your grandmother told me long ago that you were a happy-go-lucky little girl. It seems that you are still careless with your property. You must not keep your most precious possession so loosely tucked in your gown that it falls out. I agree with you that you must keep it with you, lest it be stolen, but in some safer way than the one you are employing now.”
“I will make a bag for it and hang it round my neck,” said Lucy. Then for the first time she dared to look at him. His former aloofness had gone and he smiled with such kindness that her shame was comforted; so much so that she could even speak of it. “When I gave you that paper to read I broke a promise to my husband. I almost think I broke my heart too.”
“Your action was not premeditated. Sin lies in the intention, Lucy, and the intention in your heart towards your husband is love. I shall of course respect your confidence. Your secret is safe with me and I am glad I know it. I have daughters of my own and I shall now count you as one of them.”
At this she cried a little and he waited patiently while she found her handkerchief.
“How this marriage came about you will perhaps tell me one day,” he went on. “Now there is no time. But there is one thing I should like to speak of before Mr. Evelyn awakes. Your loyalty to the King demands that you should act a part, and that in your case puts you in some danger. To a certain extent we are all actors, and we must be. We must wear the mask of courage however afraid we are and we must perform the actions of love however loveless we feel, but here we are in a hopeful case for it may be that the mask will bite deep, the actions shape and probe like the hands of a sculptor on clay, and we shall actually become braver and more loving. But you with the help of God must not and will not allow your mask to bite deep. You understand me?”
“Yes,” said Lucy. “I have already felt afraid of the corroding.”
“Continue in your fear, but continue even more in your trust in God and your practice of the Protestant faith of the Church of England. Why have I never seen you in the Embassy chapel?”
The last question shot out with such fierceness that Lucy jumped, and looking at him she saw his eyes blazing with the fierce passion of the prophet Elijah confronting the priests of Baal. She remembered how he had said, “The Church of England is my firstborn.” He had spoken gently then but now the words resounded in her memory as though the roll of drums was behind them. Here was a man upon the warpath and she thought she understood the nature of his thoughts.
Here they were, a little band of exiles set down in this wicked city of Paris, a stronghold of Rome, its ruler a corrupt and worldly Cardinal, and their only defender under God was himself. But let the enemy look to his defences for he had looked to his. From the King down to the smallest scullion running around the Embassy kitchen, not a single Protestant soul of them should be plucked from his hand while the breath of life was in him. He drew in a draught of that same breath and exhaled it like a warhorse, demanding of Lucy on the outflowing draught, “Why have you not answered my question?”
Lucy was seldom flustered but she was now. “It was because I was afraid,” she murmured.
“Of what?”
“All the good religious people looking at me, nudging each other and whispering about me. That little hypocrite kneeling with her eyes downcast as though she were a nun, she is the King’s mistress.’ ”
“Those who whisper or nudge during divine service are neither good nor religious,” thundered Dr. Cosin. “And those who dare call others hypocrites are invariably hypocrites themselves. Can you not face such littleness with the courage of your own integrity? I am ashamed of you, Lucy.”
“I will ask Lord Wilmot to bring me next Sunday,” said Lucy humbly, her cheeks scarlet. “My husband said that he might do so.”
Dr. Cosin’s rage fell from him and he said gently, endeavouring to rivet her armour piece by piece, “There is another service that you may care to attend, Lucy. After the death of the late King I compiled a service of intercession to be held every Tuesday, that being the day of His Majesty’s murder, both in Paris and at The Hague. As this service contains intercession for your husband you may be glad to attend it, both here and at The Hague. It is attended only by the few and may be less of an ordeal for you than the other. Though you must attend the other,” he added sternly.
“I will come always to the Tuesday service,” Lucy said humbly. “Is it held at the Embassy chapel?”
“At The Hague it is. Here it is held in the little chapel at the Louvre. You know perhaps that his late Majesty appointed me as chaplain to the Protestant members of the royal household. I have been given three rooms at the Louvre close to Her Majesty’s own quarters, to serve as bedroom, study, and a chapel for the recitation of the daily offices.” He smiled grimly. “The arrangement is a matter of chagrin to her Catholic majesty but as it was her husband’s wish and command she has acquiesced in the arrangement. I hope, Lucy, that you say your prayers at home?”
“I have by heart some prayers of yours that my grandmother taught me, and Dr. Jeremy Taylor whom I met at my cousins’ home of Golden Grove taught me a prayer.”
“Dr. Taylor is a good man and writes well but you should approach the Almighty in your own words as well as his and mine.”
“My own words have no lustre,” said Lucy. “The prayers of great and good men are shaped and polished with their skill and use.”
“Nevertheless the Almighty would prefer yours. He can provide the lustre. His touch as he receives our poor offerings is that of the alchemist.”
Mr. Evelyn woke up abruptly as the coach jolted over a stone. Lucy was so grateful to him for his long sleep that presently, childishly, she rubbed her eyes and feigned sleep herself. But a few moments later, as a totally incomprehensible conversation washed over her head, the soothing noise of it carried her away into a dream of the stream running through the Valley of Roses.
Eight
1
Charles’s companions found him delightful company in the woods. He was always happy out of doors, on horseback or at sea, happy with his dogs, with children or with his friends, and when he was happy his gaiety and charm were entrancing. He was a good raconteur and men were glad to sit up all night listening to his stories. All his friends loved him and Lord Taaffe left his own devotion on record in a letter he wrote. “May I never drink wine if I had not rather live at six sous a day with him than have all the pleasures of this world without him.” And Lord Taaffe liked his drink.
Yet when they had returned from the woods, and had had supper and settl
ed down for a jovial evening, the King’s mood changed. He grew silent and melancholy and said he would go to bed. Moodiness was not in his nature but since his father’s death these fits of sadness would come upon him suddenly and he would want one thing or another thing and not know what he wanted because the one thing he did want, to put the clock back and be to his father the son he would have been had he known what was going to happen, was denied him.
“Time!” he muttered as he led the way upstairs to his bedroom, accompanied by Robert Sidney, Lord Wilmot, Edward Prodgers and Lord Taaffe. “Time is the devil’s work. The devil shrouds the future in his own darkness. If men could see what is to come there would be no sin in the world.”
Lord Wilmot and Prodgers loyally agreed with His Majesty but Robert murmured something to the effect that men were men, and even if they could see the road ahead would still run off it since to run crooked is of the nature of men. Lord Taaffe said nothing. He was bringing up the rear with a bottle of wine, it being his opinion that whatever a man knew or did not know he could still drink.
In his bedchamber, as his patient friends had expected, Charles no longer wanted to go to bed. He went to the window and stood looking out over the garden. The four, who could not sit down unless he did, eased themselves into the perpendicular position most comfortable to them and endeavoured to admire the view with him. In the vault of the sky stars were thick in a pall of black velvet, and there were fireflies in the garden. The scene had great beauty but it was not a familiar loveliness and the smell of the night was somehow alien. When would they go home? Already their clothes were getting shabby and their pockets empty.
“They no longer dance at Whitehall,” Charles said. “On our dancing nights people would row up the river to listen to the music. What is London like now? Shrunken and waspish like a woman whose beauty has deserted her?”
“No, Your Majesty,” said Lord Wilmot. “While your throne remains empty she is a widow woman with a veiled face but under the veil she is eternally young.”
“Garlanded with her wild flowers,” said Robert. “They will still be growing in all the odd corners and crannies.”
But the King remained melancholic and standing. There seemed something more wrong with him tonight than one of his usual fits of sorrow. Prodgers, who had an old wound that hurt when he stood, plumped up the cushions in the royal chair with a meaningful sound but the King remained standing. Lord Taaffe poured the wine and clinked the glasses.
“I did not tell you to pour the wine,” said Charles coldly.
“Sire, you do not need to put yourself to the trouble,” said Lord Taaffe. “Have you ever found me backward in this service to Your Majesty?”
Charles laughed, turned round and flung himself into his chair, holding out his hand for his glass. For a moment it seemed that his black mood had lifted, then it was back again. “I cannot go to Ireland,” he burst out suddenly. “Hyde told me so today. Ormonde has had a bad defeat and will not have me now. I am King yet I am as bound hand and foot by the prohibitions of politicians and commanders as though I were a babe in arms. If I cannot go to Ireland then where the devil can I go? I cannot stay idling here.”
They tried to console him. Lord Taaffe said that he would go to Ireland all in good time. Once they had had their fill of murdering each other in the old country it would be safe as houses. Just let them have their fill. Charles swore that he did not want safety. Robert Sidney clinched the matter by saying grimly, “Sir, having just lost one king it would not be for the good of our cause that we should so soon lose another. Your Majesty’s advisers have a case.”
There was a long silence. Then Charles said like a child, “Ireland would have been that much nearer England.”
“Your Majesty has not touched your wine,” Lord Taaffe pointed out.
Charles pulled himself together. He felt as miserable as before but he would not provoke them any longer. He waved them to their seats and groped back over the stilted conversation to something that should start the talk flowing easily again. “London’s wild flowers,” he said. “Now that is something I know nothing about since I have never visited the crannies where they grow. How little I know of my own capital city; only the great houses and the churches, the river and the cheering crowds in the streets. Tell me about the corners and crannies that I have never seen.”
This was still a hobby-horse with Robert Sidney and he was away on it in a moment, telling Charles of small deserted gardens where the roses had grown to the tops of the trees, of hidden courts with fountains in them, of broken steps in dark corners that led to locked doors, and music that could not be reached sounding within. And he told of the strange characters he had found in such places, saints and sinners and fantastics of all kinds, people who brought a new dimension to life and gave back to tired minds the lost sense of mystery. Finally he spoke of the one he had loved the best.
“Not far from Your Majesty’s Palace of Whitehall I once met Socrates. In a hidden corner of Covent Garden, close to the portico of the church, I found him selling herbs under a dark tree. There within sounds of the bells of Westminster time turned back on itself and I watched Apollo’s swans flying into the sunset.”
He paused and drained his glass and Lord Taaffe refilled it. Not long before his lordship had left the room and fetched more wine, for since the royal house of France was still paying for their drinks there was no need as yet to stint themselves. But for the generosity of the Bourbons what happened next might never have happened at all, for Robert’s habitual caution would not have deserted him.
“How did you find the place?” asked Charles and Robert replied, “A child took me there. A little girl by the name of Lucy Walter.”
Charles had been politely attentive before but now his interest was captured, for throughout this black evening he had kept somewhere at the back of his mind the picture of his golden girl standing by the fountain in the garden. That hidden fountain under the dark trees was just such a place as Robert had been describing, a place where time turns back upon itself. Nothing would satisfy him now but to hear the whole story of Old Sage as told to Robert by Father Ignatius. “Lucy never told me of this old man,” he said when the story was finished. “She has forgotten him now, perhaps.”
“She has not forgotten,” said Robert. “We talked of him together not long ago, riding from Breda to The Hague, and I told her the story I have just told you. It interested her because at her home at Roch their old parson, also a figure of fantasy, had told her of a dumb friend of his youth and his description reminded her of Old Sage.”
“In what way was this old Welsh parson a figure of fantasy?” asked Edward Prodgers. He had drunk very little for he was a man of great caution and his keen analytical mind was always entirely under his control. He was a strange man, possessing unusual powers of intuition and discernment.
“He arrived at Roch Castle in the true fairytale manner, found in the snow by Mrs. Barlow’s father,” explained Robert. “He was a victim of a shipwreck, apparently, but too bewildered to give a coherent account of himself.”
Lord Wilmot and Lord Taaffe, bored with this childish and to them meaningless conversation, now found themselves stifling the yawns which were not permissible in the royal presence. Mr. Prodgers also pressed two fingertips to his lips before asking with sleepy politeness, “At what date was this arrival?”
Sleepiness is catching and Robert had to pause a moment before he replied, “Mrs. Barlow was a child at the time.”
“Did the poor gentleman recover his wits?” murmured Mr. Prodgers. “I gather that he did, since he subsequently became the parson of Roch.”
“Gentlemen, you are half asleep and talking nonsense,” Charles interrupted. “I am going to bed.”
He got up yawning, but Mr. Prodgers had not missed the little snap of haste with which he had ended the conversation and when later he reached his own bedchamber he was in no hurry
to go to bed. The story that had caused him to wonder whether the young Catholic Irishman who had only fancied himself a priest had become the Protestant vicar of Roch had sounded entirely fantastic in the telling, but Mr. Prodgers was well aware that truth is invariably more extraordinary than anything a man’s imagination can conceive, since a man’s mind is limited and truth is not.
He knew this and knew too how man, galled by his sense of inferiority, likes to twist truth if he can. He had already received his orders from Lord Jermyn and the Chancellor; he was to slip away to Pembrokeshire and if the facts he found there proved stubborn he was to do a little of this same twisting. Obviously now his first contact must be the parson of Roch. If the shock of the shipwreck had slightly disordered his wits it was possible that he had now recovered them; such things happened in old age. Slipping away was something he often did and his disappearance would not surprise Charles who knew perfectly well that many of the men about him were spies; some for his cause and some against it. Mr. Prodgers would always be for the King, whom he loved, but he had no sense of disloyalty in his present assignment. A morganatic marriage would not benefit Charles. And he did not like Lucy. At first he had admired her grace and liveliness but when he had attempted to express his admiration she had turned into a little mountain wild-cat and he was smarting still.
2
On the Sunday following the visit to Saint-Germain Lucy bravely attended the service at the Embassy. Lord Wilmot bestowed her between himself and Robert Sidney with Lord Taaffe sitting behind her, so that if there should be any breathings of gossip they should not go directly down the back of her neck. She was scared at first but her courage returned with the sense of stalwart protection about her, and the glimpse she had now and then of Charles in his chair of state some way in front of her, with the Chancellor and Ambassador on each side of him. When he sat she could only see the top of his dark head above the carving of the highbacked chair, but when he stood he was so tall that he was visible to the whole room. There was no stiffness in his dignity for his grace always gave life to his performance of his duties. Her heart beat high with pride and she told herself that her husband had power. He could be a great king. But if worse misfortune came what would it do to the incipient greatness? Foster or destroy it?
The Child From the Sea Page 54