The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  But today it was the third that seemed most relevant.

  “Put the spirit of counsel, of courage, and of unity, upon them that are loyal to him. And to those that either openly oppose him, or those strange children that dissemble with him, that thou wouldst infatuate their counsels and blast their endeavours, turning their hearts close to thee their God and to the King; which we beseech thee to grant for Jesus Christ his sake, our Lord and only Saviour.”

  Infatuate their counsels and blast their endeavours. Had it been because this small colony of sad and shabby people prayed week by week in this place that Charles had not been murdered? She did not know, she could not know, so inscrutable is the will of the God who never answers questions, but the mere possibility made her heart leap up like a bird.

  She was happy driving home but Anne could not respond to her mood, thankful though she was to be back in the streets again. What had induced her to let Lucy beguile her to that place? Though hell fire had not been mentioned by the spectral man who had groaned out the prayers it had seemed not far off, and the old terror had once more opened like a pit in her mind; the terror she had felt for so long before her father actually threw her into hell. No one knew what it was like to hang on the edge of a black pit waiting for something vile to happen. And then when it was over and you were expecting to be happy you found yourself left with memories too dreadful to admit happiness among them. You knew you would never, now, be happy.

  She turned her head to reply to some remark of Lucy’s and met the glance of the other girl’s clear eyes, and saw her serene face. Behind that peaceful facade of beauty she must have a few bad memories, for who had not in this appalling world, but no memories of hell. She had a father who loved her and whom she adored. Anne knew that for she had seen Lucy standing before her father’s picture and had seen the love in her face. And because of that father’s love Lucy did not hate men. And so she had a lover and a son. The confused miseries in Anne’s mind suddenly unified into hatred of Lucy. It was all she could do not to strike her face.

  Sitting in front of her mirror at bedtime, with Anne brushing her hair, Lucy found herself talking of Jackie. “You have not seen my baby yet,” she said. “When we get back to Rotterdam I will show him to you. You will love my baby, Anne.” She raised her head to smile at her maid in the mirror and saw the reflection of Anne’s face, white and set, and remorse seized her. How could she have spoken in that insensitive way? Anne had no baby. In a tempest of Welsh emotion she jumped up, put her arms round Anne and kissed her disfigured cheek.

  To Anne this seemed an outrage of condescending pity. Who did they think they were, these painted dolls who had never known a moment of discomfort in all their pampered lives? Did they think that pity was all that was required of them by a suffering world? Pity never filled an empty stomach or staunched a wound. Yet though she did not respond she withdrew herself from Lucy’s arms quite gently and as the routine of going to bed continued, and she was examining her mistress’s dress for possible damage, she herself began to talk of Jackie. Was he like his father? Was his father devoted to him? Yes, Lucy said, the King adored his little son. “I am glad, madam,” said Anne. “That you are the mother of his son gives you the pre-eminence.”

  Lucy was puzzled. “The pre-eminence?” she whispered.

  “His Majesty is young and of an affectionate disposition, but you are the prettiest, madam, I am told. Lovelier than Lady Shannon or the Duchesse. There is the girl in the Channel Islands, but maybe she is forgotten now. It’s a long time since His Majesty was in Jersey and she did not follow him.”

  Though the room seemed full of mist Lucy knew she must keep control of herself. Charles would not like her to lose her dignity in front of her maid. She sat very erect on the edge of the bed. “How did you know this?” she asked gently.

  “I overheard Betje and her husband talking. There is much gossip about your king, madam, even in the palace of Cardinal Mazarin. Of course any gossip I hear I keep to myself.”

  “That is right, Anne,” said Lucy. “All royal persons are at the mercy of gossip and most of it untrue. I have all I need. Blow out the candles please. I enjoyed our outing together but I am tired and I shall sleep at once. Goodnight, Anne.”

  “Goodnight, madam,” said Anne. She extinguished the candles and left the room. For some time she stood listening at the head of the stairs but she did not hear the creak of Lucy’s bed. With her uncanny power of silent movement she drifted back along the passage, opened the door a few inches and looked in. There was enough light to show her Lucy still sitting on the side of her bed. She closed the door without sound and floated down the stairs to her own room. She lay awake for a little while, the memories that had tormented her buried now beneath the sweetness of revenge. Then she slept deeply and dreamlessly. Yet, unaccountably, when she awoke she was crying. She had not cried since her mother had died.

  5

  The days passed and Charles did not come and he sent no message. Lucy longed for him and yet she was glad to have a breathing space in which to face the two new facts of her existence; Charles was not a faithful lover and it had been cruel of Anne to tell her so. Anne was cruel. She spent two miserable days and then Betje, coming into her room when she knew Anne was out on an errand, asked her what the matter was? Lucy shook her head and was silent for she had pledged her faith to Charles with the gift of herself to him, to Anne with the gift of her kiss, and what was the pledge of faith but the promise never to hurt this human being if one could help it, either by word or deed, and above all not by the disclosure of their failings to another.

  But Betje was so sure that she knew what the trouble was that she dared to put it into words. “That cat Anne Hill has told you of the gossip she overheard,” she declared indignantly, her large hand gripping Lucy’s shoulder. She shook the shoulder a little. “My dear, you should not take on so. You live too much in your Welsh fairytales. Do you not yet know the world you live in? Gentlemen are gentlemen the world over, especially if they are royal gentlemen. That the King loves you there is no doubt, and you had better see to it that you do not put yourself in the way of losing his love with reproachful glances and moping ways. That is a sure way to lose a gentleman’s regard, especially a royal gentleman who can pick and choose where he likes.”

  Her bracing common sense was salutary, and Lucy acknowledged its truth. She lived too much in fairytales. Had she expected that those lovers in the Valley of Roses would never grow older, never become battered by the storms of the sea to which the silver stream ran down? I am not such a fool, she said to herself, and one must trim one’s sails to the storms as they come. But the stream and the crowned swan are real as the sea and we shall find them again.

  “My love, there is another thing,” said Betje, breaking in on her thoughts. “Anne was deliberately cruel to you and I think you should dismiss her from your service.”

  “I cannot do that,” said Lucy.

  “I think you should do it,” persisted Betje.

  But Lucy only shook her head. She had pledged her love to Anne as she had to Charles and she must forgive. One day they might both have much to forgive her. How could she tell? She had broken her promise to Charles. Life, truly lived, is not an exercise in safety and no one is secure in a storm at sea.

  When a few days later Charles came to see her she had never loved him so much. Each of them was bound to fail the other again and again and because they were one must bear the burden of the other’s failures as well as their own. Scapegoats. We all are, she thought in astonishment. Not only the great ones but all of us. And to be so is a great exercise of love.

  They were sitting on the windowseat looking out over Paris and once more the sun was setting, not this time with banners of stormy light but vanishing beyond a veiling of pale colours that lay along the sky like the horizontal waves of a gently breaking sea. Charles was in a gentle and tender mood and Lucy was suddenly overwhel
med all over again by remorse at the thought of her broken promise, and it seemed to her a fearful thing that she was deceiving him and that he should not know what she had done. Why not tell him of it and begin the mutual burden-bearing now? He would not be angry. He would understand. And so, her hand in his, she told him.

  The result was not what she had expected. For a moment he seemed unbelieving, and then he was on his feet, angry, hurt, absurdly upset by such a small fault. He had a fanatical fear of betrayal. He had trusted her and she had broken her promise. Too late she saw her mistake. There are circumstances in which confession can be a selfish thing. “I did not mean to tell Dr. Cosin,” she pleaded with him. “Can you not forgive me?”

  “I can trust no one,” he burst out. “There are spies round me all the time. Even the men I call my friends may be plotting my life for all I know. I thought I could trust you but I can trust no one. Not even you.”

  She began to cry bitterly. It was said of Charles in later life that he could never bear to see a woman cry, and in a moment Lucy had him with his arms round her. But for the first time his arms felt slack about her. “Stop crying, dear heart,” he said impatiently. “If you had to blab like that it is God’s mercy it was only to Cosin. He is trustworthy. Now stop crying for I have much to tell you.”

  “You are not going away again?” asked Lucy.

  “Yes, to Jersey with James.”

  Jersey, where the girl was who had not followed him but had remained on her island within sound of the sea. Was Jersey like Pembrokeshire? Did the flowers grow on the cliffs in the same way and the gulls cry? All she said to Charles was, “Not to Ireland?”

  “No. Things are too bad there.”

  “But why must you go to Jersey?”

  “Because I am no longer welcome in France,” he said bitterly. “Mazarin has been watching the tide and now, with Cromwell settling well into the saddle in England, my cause lost in Ireland and Scotland divided, it has turned against me. I am a liability and he will pay me to leave France. I was asked to leave The Hague and now I am bribed to leave France. Jersey is still loyal.”

  There was despair in his voice. So much had happened in the past week of which she had known nothing. His failure of faith, and hers, seemed for the moment almost small things, and her tears and his anger equally small. She clung to him and whispered, “I will come to Jersey with you.”

  “It is far too dangerous. We are likely to be attacked at sea.”

  “I like danger.”

  “And what about Jackie? Is he to lose both parents? You must go back to Rotterdam and look after him. I have arranged it. I cannot spare Wilmot but there is a French lady whom he knows travelling overland to The Hague and she will look after you. It is a long journey but it is September now and beautiful weather. Cheer up, dear heart. I hope their ill humour will not last at The Hague and that they will have me back. Let us have a gay supper, and music to give us peaceful dreams, and then a happy goodbye in the morning.”

  He slept that night but Lucy lay awake and was too exhausted in the morning even to pretend to be happy. Also there was something she had to say, something unpleasant that had been better said last night, only she had lacked the courage. “Charles,” she whispered as they stood together in the window in the autumn sunshine, “I have no money.”

  “No what?” asked Charles. He had heard her the first time but the state of his finances was such a skeleton in the cupboard that whenever the door opened a little, and the bony face looked out, he kicked the door shut again, and the kick had become a reflex habit.

  “No money,” repeated Lucy.

  “Money is a destestable subject,” groaned Charles. “Are we to discuss it during our last moments together? I loath the thought of money.”

  “So do I when I have not got it,” said Lucy. “Charles, I have not yet paid Betje all I owe for my lodgings. I cannot leave without paying her. And Anne has not had her wages. And my aunt at Rotterdam. She and her husband have been good to me but I cannot impose on them for ever. Yet if I go to the farm I must pay for my keep. Charles, what am I to do? Could you not give me something out of the Cardinal’s bribe? Jackie and I can live on very little but we must have something.”

  “There will be little left of that when I have paid my debts. I am over head and ears in debt.”

  “Shall I sell the diamonds you gave to Jackie and to me?”

  “No!” thundered Charles. He pulled his purse out of his pocket and a ring off his finger and gave them to her. “There is little in the purse but the ring will fetch something. When that is spent apply to my family at The Hague.”

  It was so sordid, such a shadow on their love, that turning away from him and looking out over the city dreaming in September light Lucy cried out, “I hate Paris! I hope I shall never see it again.”

  “You will,” said Charles bitterly. “Paris is the city of sorrows and we shall both come back.”

  Nine

  1

  Lucy left Paris under the shadow of its sorrows, grieving over the lovelessness of her parting with Charles, and once more afraid of Anne. But her travelling companion was kindly, the fair land of France lay under the enchantment of autumn sunshine, and Anne, stimulated and delighted by travel, was again her smiling friend.

  The memories of Paris became unreal, slipping away as dreams do when the sun rises, and then one night as she lay in bed praying for Charles she was conscious of a strange click, heard and yet not heard, as though a shutter had folded back, and saw a little picture of him standing at a window in moonlight, listening intently as though to the sound of the sea, and knew he was safely in his castle at Jersey and that he thought of her with love. The little flash of clairvoyance was the turning point of her journey. After that she journeyed into light because with every mile she was closer to Jackie, who was a part of Charles.

  When they reached Holland the sun poured its light from a great sky upon the flat green land that was now almost as much home to Lucy as the mountains of Wales, yet when she saw the steep red roofs of Rotterdam she felt a sudden pang of longing for the grey rock of Roch Castle, discovering that through all our lives every homecoming brings a pang of longing for the spot of earth that is for us pre-eminently home.

  But she had forgotten Roch by the time she reached the tall house by the canal; though she was hardly aware of it, nor of greeting her uncle and aunt, though she did so with charm and politeness. She was aware of nothing until she found herself with her son in her arms; in which room and in what circumstances she did not afterwards remember. He had come to her arms instantly, grown and changed though he was, and she a stranger to him. At first she could not see him at all, only feel his warmth and smell the fragrance of a clean and healthy baby. Then her sight cleared and she saw his rosiness and the depth of his eyes, and from their depth, as she had expected, her husband spoke to her.

  2

  Once again Lucy and Charles were together in the happy town of Breda. The States General that had desired the young King of England to leave Holland had suffered a slight softening of the heart, and it had been indicated to him that he might return for a while if he wished. In February he and James left Jersey and after a meeting with his mother he went to Ghent, where Lucy joined him, and from there they travelled together to Breda, where she was established in her old lodgings.

  The first afternoon in the familiar sitting room they wrote to her aunt in Rotterdam, in whose care Anne and Jackie had been left, asking that Anne should bring the King’s son to him as quickly as possible. Mr. Prodgers, whose quiet disappearance in Paris had now terminated in an equally quiet reappearance at The Hague, was already with them, having brought Charles his favourite embroidered coat to wear at Breda. When the letter was finished Charles summoned him from below with his silver bell and Lucy gave it to him. He was to ride with it to Rotterdam and Anne and Jackie would travel to Breda under his protection.


  “We will come as fast as possible, madam,” he said to Lucy, and his lean controlled face relaxed into a kindly smile as he took the letter. She returned the smile, for it seemed that he had forgiven the anger with which she had once repulsed him. She was glad for he was the King’s faithful servant, and those who formed a chain of loyal protection about Charles must keep the links between them strong.

  Prodgers bowed and left the room and Lucy and Charles sat for a while on the windowseat, looking out at happy Breda. Charles was wearing his old coat that he had had before his father’s death. It was a holiday garment and shabby though it was he liked to wear it when his mood was relaxed. It was dark green with scarlet and gold embroidery. Wearing it he looked like Prince Kilhwch in unwarlike mood, and Lucy smiled. “When Jackie comes we will hire a coach to match your coat and go driving with him every day.”

  Charles laughed, his mind leaping forward to the thought of Jackie. He was almost ashamed of the fact that a longing to see a scrap of a baby could almost overshadow the business that had brought him to Breda, business of which Lucy as yet knew nothing. Presently she would have to know but he did not look forward to telling her. She was not one of those wives who automatically think that whatever their husband does is right. It would have been pleasant to have an automatic wife but that was not the sort of wife he had. But if she had her failings as a wife she was a good mother.

  “How soon shall we see that scrap?” he asked her when they were at supper, the candles lighted and the stars thick in the sky.

  She laughed. “I do not know. In a few days’ time we shall hear the coach wheels in the street. But Jackie is no longer a scrap. He is a big boy of eleven months. If he were not so lazy he would be walking by himself.”