The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  It was obvious to Lucy that Justus was not well paid for his work as a poor man’s lawyer. He was exceedingly shabby. He had told her a little of what he did, living by choice in a poor part of London and trying to sort out the troubles and tangles of humble people. She took his hand. He worked at repairing old furniture in his odd moments, to augment his meagre income, and his hands were roughened and stained. His face lighted up when he spoke of his furniture and she knew that it was as beautifully and lovingly handled as were the lives of those who came to him in their troubles.

  “I like your hands,” she said, “and you must not dislike Richard, for disliking anyone does not match your hands. And he has been very kind.”

  “Yes, he has developed a kindly manner and it oils his way. After we had seen Smuts it was his idea that we should come over at once and bring you what our mother left for you. It would not have been safe to send it.”

  He had brought a parcel with him into the arbour and laid it beside him on the seat. Lucy had asked no questions, knowing she would be told about it in Justus’s own good time. At no period in his life had he liked to be hurried. He unwrapped it now and laid a shabby leather case on her lap. She opened it and saw her mother’s wedding pearls. Instantly she was back at Roch, standing on the dais with Nan-Nan and looking down at her father and mother playing and singing with their guests in the hall below, and saw the candlelight gleaming on her mother’s pearls. It was Justus’s turn to take her hand and hold it while she cried. It distressed him that she now cried so often for he saw her little bursts of weeping as a symptom of her physical weakness. She needed a change and a good holiday. More than that, she needed to come back to England for good and let him look after her.

  “Our mother left some money for you too. There is still some legal business to be done and it would be a help to Richard and to me if you would come back to England with us and stay for a while. Will you? You know what London is like in the spring and summer; a jewel girdled by the little villages among their meadows and flowers. Will you come? You and the children and Anne.”

  She gasped. “I do not think that the King would let Jackie come. It might not be safe for him.”

  “Richard and I have thought of that. You could come under an assumed name. No one would know whose child he was. If that did not please the King Jackie could stay here with Smuts Harvey and his wife. He loves playing with the Harvey children.”

  “No, he would not be happy. He cannot bear to be separated from me.”

  “It is time he learned a little independence, Lucy. He is growing a big boy. It would do him good.”

  “No! no!” cried Lucy.

  Justus smiled at her. “I believe it is you cannot bear to be separated from him,” he teased. “I never met such an infatuated mother. But think about it. Keep it in your mind.”

  He said no more for Dewi came out to join them with the children running at his heels, for he was a Pied Piper to them and they would have followed him anywhere. At nineteen years old he was lithe and gay and walked with a lilting step, whistling like a blackbird. The three of them were playing some game. They circled the garden and went back into the house, the whistling and laughter lingering on the air. Lucy smiled, delighting in them, but Justus groaned comically, for Dewi was something of a problem.

  On his father’s death he had travelled to London to be with Justus, whom he loved, and since he was good with horses had found employment as a groom at a great house in the Strand. Justus told Lucy that he was courageous, affectionate and honest, but that responsibility for him was no sinecure because of his fiery temper.

  “Our father spoilt him and now I cannot teach him to control it. He gets into a fight in a moment. He was dismissed from the first house for knocking a man’s teeth out, and now he has just been thrown out of a second for emptying the slop bucket over his mistress’s head because she thrashed her dog. In the good old days they sent these tempestuous young men on the Crusades, and as you see I am trying foreign travel for Dewi. Also I thought you might be a good influence.”

  Lucy laughed, unable in these halcyon days to take Dewi’s temper too seriously. He was a wonder of a boy, she thought, and he and she had recaptured all their old love for each other.

  A few days later Lucy and Justus went for a stroll by the river, talking of Old Parson, who had died only a short while after their father. His mind had grown steadily clearer, Justus told Lucy, and he had died serene and happy. Lucy managed not to weep, but she walked more slowly. Justus was grieved that she could walk only so short a distance, and so breathlessly, but for her, after her illness at The Hague, it was wonderful to be walking at all. They were facing the sun and at first she did not recognize the two men who were coming towards them, then with a gasp she pulled Justus away from the path into the shadows between two beached boats. The two went by deep in talk, a slender young man of middle height, elegant in spite of shabby clothes, and an older man, tall and fair, who walked with long strides.

  “English,” said Justus.

  Lucy had gone white. “Lord Wilmot and, I think, Lord Ormonde. Justus, the King must be in Antwerp.”

  She was so shaken that they went straight home and found Dewi in the garden weeding and tying up the tulips, which were full-blown now and getting weak at the knee with the weight of their own glory. He had much of his father in him and if he could not be with horses he was happiest with his fingers in the earth. They told him what they suspected and he leapt to his feet with shining eyes and cheeks flaming with excitement.

  “The King in Antwerp! Shall we see him? ’Sdeath, after he left Roch I used to cry in the night!” He took a flying leap over a bed of tulips and fetched a broom to sweep up the mess he had made on the paved path. Lucy remembered suddenly his dog-like devotion to Charles at Roch, and also Nan-Nan’s prophetic “seeing” that he would serve a king and be beloved by him.

  Two days later a letter was delivered from Lord Ormonde. It told her His Majesty would call upon her on the morning of the following day. She was in great anxiety. Had he come to Antwerp especially to see her, and was it about Jackie? She was so distressed that it was Justus who had to do the thinking. Richard was away already and he decided that he and Mary had better go to the Harveys!

  “But why?” asked Lucy.

  “This is to be a happy visit,” said Justus, smiling at her. “I believe the King will spend the day with you, and he will want to be alone with you and Jackie. Anne will cook the food and Dewi shall stay to wait upon His Majesty.”

  Dewi’s face, that had been black as a thundercloud cleared. He was devoted to Justus, but any suggestion that he should accompany his brother to the Harveys would have been met by one of the explosions of his temperament that Lucy had not yet witnessed. “You need not come back until I fetch you,” he said airily to Justus, when next day he showed him off the premises. “The King may stay some days with Lucy and myself. That is what he did at Roch.”

  Justus grinned and held out his hand to Mary. Lucy, watching from an upstairs window, saw the companionableness of their departure. Justus and Jackie had made little contact with each other because Jackie was jealous of Lucy’s love for her brother, and Justus privately agreed with Captain O’Neil that Jackie was a damnably spoilt little brat, but with Mary he had made fast friends. They were birds of a feather, Lucy thought, and her heart gave a lift of joy. In her uncle Mary had yet another safeguard for the future.

  Lucy waited for Charles in the parlour but Dewi and Jackie, restless with impatience, sat at the foot of the stairs to watch for him, Dewi wearing an orange-tawny doublet and Jackie a little suit of green.

  Charles came quietly, dismissing those who had attended him at the door, and the first Lucy knew of his arrival was the sound of voices and steps on the stairs, and then the door was flung open and Dewi announced His Majesty.

  Dewi had worshipped Charles. To him the King was more than a hero, he
was a god, and from top to toe he was a glowing flame of joy. Even the short, crisp dark curls stood up on his head as though they aspired like flames, and the sunshine blazed upon the orange-tawny doublet. Jackie was not shy today; he had jumped from the stairs to his father’s arms and was still there. Lucy curtseyed, then wobbled and found she could not get up. Charles put Jackie down and with one hand helped her up while with the other he gripped Dewi’s arm.

  “Is this Dewi?” he asked. “The little fellow who lay across the door at Roch Castle to guard me?”

  It was a guess on his part, prompted by the knowledge that Lucy had her brothers with her, but he had the royal gift of inspirational guessing; which was one of the reasons why men loved him.

  “Sir,” said Dewi, struggling with Welsh emotion, “I would die for you.”

  “Shir Da,” said Jackie, “I have a puppy that my uncles gave me.”

  “Show me your puppy,” commanded his father. It was fetched and resembled a tiny white fur muff. Legs could scarcely be found but two glow-worm points of light within the fur added their quota of illumination. The room was full of light and love and Charles was painfully confused. After The Hague rumours, represented to him as the truth, he had been filled with something like hatred for Lucy and had come to Antwerp himself to get his son away from her. And now he found himself in the midst of an idyl and in the presence of a woman who looked like a dying queen, her face as fragile as a transparent sea-shell, her enormous blue eyes searching his face with love. He was, he found, still holding her arm. “Jackie,” he said, “I will see you again. The puppy too. Dewi, I want to talk alone with your sister.”

  They were alone and that he might not look at her again he looked round the room. It was so simple, and very beautiful, but there was nothing in it to hold the eye and he had to look at her again. She stood with her shoulders straight, her eyes looking into his. “Sir, I know that many ugly things are said about me. I do not know what they are and I do not want to know. Nor do I want to defend myself. Sir, I make mistakes, but in my heart I am your wife and I am always loyal to you.”

  He stared at her. Could he believe her? He had lately discovered that two more friends whom he had trusted were in Cromwell’s pay, reporting his movements to his enemies. And now there was yet another, Tom Howard. His sister had just dismissed him from her service for suspected spying. This had hit him hard. Tom Howard, who had been his companion as a boy. When good men crumbled under the stress of an apparently hopeless exile how could he trust a slip of a girl? Yet how he longed to believe her. He wanted to take her in his arms and be back with her again in the days of Roch.

  “Sir, may I show you something?”

  In old days she had always treated him as an equal but since the unhappy business of Taaffe, above all since she had known she was not legally his wife, she had like all his servants acknowledged in speech and manner the divinely appointed difference between King and subject. Today of all days, when he had come here to exercise his kingly right and take his son away from an unworthy mother, the change in her manner hurt him. There was something about this house. It exerted a strange influence. Whose house was it? Instead of answering her question he asked abruptly, “Who owns this house?”

  “It belongs to some old gentleman, sir,” said Lucy. “Mr. Harvey made all arrangements for me and so I did not meet the old man or hear his name. It seems he travels a good deal.”

  “A business man?”

  “Mr. Harvey merely said that he went where he was wanted.”

  “Very mysterious,” said the King drily. “Is there a garden?”

  “Yes, sir, there is a charming secluded garden.”

  “Then could you show me what you want me to see in the garden?”

  “Yes, sir. We shall be alone there. Dewi has taken Jackie down by the river. I will ask Anne to bring the wine to the arbour.”

  Anne was called and instructed while Charles fidgeted. He wanted to get out of the house. He could not say what he had to say within its peace. “Lead on, Lucy,” he said impatiently.

  She took him out to the vine arbour and they sat in the green shade and looked out to where the tulips burned in the sun. The atmosphere of peace in the garden was the same as the one in the house. Anne brought the wine, curtseyed and left them. Lucy took something from her pocket and slipped to her knees to present it to the King. “Sir, it is a miniature of Jackie. It was painted by Mr. Samuel Cooper and it is my gift to you, in gratitude for your generosity in giving me my pension; and for more, much more than that; for your loving goodness in leaving our son with me.”

  Charles took the miniature in his hands and was speechless, and she misconstrued his silence. “It did not cost too much,” she said anxiously. “I did not have to take too much of my pension money to pay for it. Mr. Cooper charged me very little because he said Jackie was such a beautiful boy that it was a joy to paint him. Sir, is it not a good likeness?” Forgetting herself she had leant one arm across the King’s knee and was looking eagerly up into his face.

  “It is a wonderful likeness,” said Charles slowly. “And I thank you for your gift. It will never leave me.” Then suddenly his control snapped. “For God’s sake get up and sit down, Lucy!” he implored her. “And pour the wine.”

  She did so and he drank silently, trying to get hold of himself again, one hand in his pocket clutching the miniature in its small case. He struggled for words. “You will be here for long?” he asked.

  “I do not know, sir,” said Lucy. “My brothers want me to go back to England with them for a little while, just for a rest and holiday, and I do not know what to do. I could not go without my children and I do not know whether you would wish me to take Jackie out of the country.”

  A sudden light seemed to explode inside Charles’s head as a vista of hope opened out before him. He began to think quickly and silently, and to keep Lucy quiet he automatically put out a hand and held hers. He thought he could see what Lucy’s brothers had in their minds. They were dismayed to see how frail she was, horrified at her loneliness and the ambiguousness of her position. Once they could get her back to England they would do all they could to keep her there, he had no doubt. And he could surely find some way of insisting that they did so. It was all easy now. There need be no cruelty. She would think she was going back to England only temporarily, and a short parting from Jackie, for Jackie’s sake, was something to which she would surely agree.

  “No, Lucy,” he said gently. “You cannot take Jackie to England. He is my son and it would not be safe for him.”

  “I would travel under an assumed name,” said Lucy. “I would be a Dutch lady and her children visiting her relatives in England. There would be no danger then.”

  “There might be,” said Charles. “Spies are everywhere. There have been several attempts at Royalist risings in England and all is plot and counter plot, a tissue of treachery and lying that leaves me unable to trust even the men who were boys with me.”

  “Every day,” said Lucy, “Jackie and I say together the prayers that Dr. Cosin wrote for your protection. There is one that I say many times a day. ‘Send him, and all who are loyal to him, help from thy holy place. And ever more mightily defend them. Confound the designs of all that rise up or conspire against him. And let no wicked thing come near to hurt him.’ ”

  He found he was still holding her hand. Oh God, could she speak so and yet be what men said she was? In this place she seemed his girl still yet how could he tell? How could he know? But there was Jackie. He forced his mind back to Jackie.

  “When I came to Antwerp I did not know where to lodge,” he told Lucy. “I knew Dr. Harvey’s nephew lived here and we went to him for advice. I liked him and his wife and heard how much they loved Jackie. It seems our boy plays happily with their children. Leave him with them, Lucy, while you go to England. It would be good for him.”

  It was the same advice that Jus
tus had given her. She was a little shaken but she gave the same answer. “Jackie has never left me.”

  “He must learn to stand on his own feet. How can he grow up to be an independent man if he is always tied to your apron strings? He will have to learn how to accustom himself to short partings from you, and this will be an ideal beginning. You will be back so soon. I do not command you, Lucy, I only ask you to think about it for our son’s sake.”

  She was silent and he knew how much she was suffering as she faced the truth of what he had said about their son. And behind that truth lurked his deception of her, for right back under her spell though he was, almost trusting her again, he still meant to have Jackie. He hated himself. Was he any better than Howard and the rest? Could a man never run straight? “Dear heart, I will stay with you for the rest of this day,” he said. “Do not give me your answer until I have to leave you.”

  But when the evening came, as on that day when he had gone to Rotterdam after Jackie’s birth, he could leave neither wife nor son. He had fallen right out of life as it was into life as it had been; or might have been. Dewi was despatched with a letter to assure Lord Ormonde of the safety of the King and then Charles forgot he was a king. He played with Jackie and saw him put to bed. Lucy sang to him in the parlour and when darkness came they sat at the window and watched the stars come out, and saw the riding lights of the ships reflected in the water.

  At night it seemed to them that they slept little, but talked dreamily, drifting on a tide of peace. Their talk was never of now but only of then. “Do you remember how we sang to the seals? Do you remember the stream in the Valley of Roses and the wishing well where we dropped the pins?” The bare lovely little house seemed to have built itself around them like a living entity. It took great care of their thoughts and memories. It knew what to exclude. Though just once, between sleeping and waking, Lucy murmured to her husband, “To do what is best for those one loves, that is what one must do. I will go to London for my brothers’ sake, to please them, and I will leave Jackie with the Harveys, for his sake and because you wish me to do that.” Then she was asleep again.