The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  She woke in the first light of dawn and found Charles, fully dressed, standing beside her. “Lucy, I must go now. I do not want anyone to see me leave your house. Do not move.”

  But to be with him till the last moment she slipped out of bed and pulled her cloak over her nightshift. Then they opened the door. Dewi in his orange-tawny doublet was lying across the threshold, his drawn sword beside him. He was so deeply asleep that he did not hear the door open, and his face in sleep looked young as the face of the litde boy who had lain outside the door at Roch Castle.

  “Dewi,” whispered Lucy. “Dewi.” Charles looked at her. “Do not wake him. But tell him, when he wakes, that I will keep my promise. One day he shall be my servant. Go back to bed, dear heart.”

  He kissed her, stepped across Dewi and ran down the stairs. Lucy went back to bed and she did not know whether the flood of tears that came to help her were of grief or joy. But as soon as she could she checked them, for she must not let the children see her with a swollen face. She turned her wet pillow over and found a little box lying under it. She opened it and inside was a diamond brooch. What Charles had had in his mind when he brought it she did not know, but she knew what he had been thinking when he left it, for he had written on a torn bit of paper, “Not for both of you this time but for you alone.” So she was forgiven for the sale of the first brooch. Forgiveness seemed golden in the air.

  Sixteen

  1

  When Lucy suggested to Jackie that he was now a big boy and that only little boys were always with their mothers, and that perhaps now they could not be together the whole of the time, he gave the matter his consideration and conceded that she might be right. He wished to be a big boy. Building upon this wish she carefully unfolded Shir Da’s plan. She would have a holiday with Uncle Justus and he should have a holiday with Uncle Smuts and his children, and when they met again they would have much to tell each other.

  He said he would be pleased to be with Uncle Smuts but where was maman going? She said to England, and immediately there were yells. When she had calmed them down and sorted them out they were found to be composed both of fear and anger. It was too far for maman to go. If she went a few miles away then she could come back instantly if he did not like it without her, but it would take her a long time to come back from England. And he wanted to sail with maman on the big ship. And Anne and Mary were going to England too, and why should they go and not he? He yelled again, with sheer rage this time. He had inherited the love of ships and the sea from both parents and was thwarted in his very soul. His mother decided that she must write and tell Charles that she could not go to England.

  But at this crucial moment Richard came home and with him, to Lucy’s great surprise, came Tom Howard. She was delighted to see him but distressed to find that he had left the service of the Princess of Orange. When she asked why he merely laughed, “I was no longer wanted,” was all he would say. After that, it appeared, he had had an unexpected meeting with Richard and had accepted an invitation to return with him to Antwerp. “He needs a roof over his head,” Richard explained to Lucy, and Tom joined Richard and Justus and Dewi in the attics that had once been the children’s domain.

  None of them would accept Lucy’s decision to abandon England. “If you let that little brat dictate to you in this way,” Tom warned her, “you will as surely as the night follows the day make a tyrant of him. Who is he to say where his mother is to go or not to go? If you are not careful, Lucy, you will ruin that boy.”

  It was the phrase “that little brat” that horrified Lucy. Was it possible that her exquisite child could be described in such terms? Had she spoilt him? She was still worrying about it when Jackie came to her and said with royal graciousness, “Maman, you may go to England.”

  It was Tom Howard and Justus together who had brought him to this frame of mind. They had reminded Jackie that the plan was the wish of Shir Da, and Shir Da was King. Tom further pointed out with some grimness that kingly fathers had been known to thrash disobedient sons, and so had non-kingly uncles. Jackie after deep thought came out with a startling remark. “I may myself be king one day,” he said, “and will wish to be obeyed.” Then descending gracefully from Tom Howard’s knee, where he had been enthroned, he went to Lucy with the royal permission.

  “And what, may I ask, has Lucy been saying to the brat?” Tom demanded of Justus.

  “She has told him that she is the King’s wife and he is the King’s son,” said Justus. “She wanted him, she told me, to grow up with a sense of his own integrity. What else could she tell him?”

  Tom rubbed his nose. “Life is a mess,” he remarked. “Poor Lucy. Poor girl. Justus, I am coming to England with you.”

  Justus looked at him keenly. “As a Royalist you will be in danger,” he warned him.

  “I will risk it,” said Tom. “Richard, as no doubt he has told you, remains here for a while. And so I understand does Dewi.”

  “Dewi wants to see Holland,” said Justus. “What Richard wants I do not know. He is the most secretive fellow on earth.”

  “And the one man I know who is never in a mess,” said Tom.

  2

  The ship chosen was the Seagull, sailing from Flushing, and if she was not in Lucy’s eyes quite as lovely a ship as the Sea-Horse she was yet superb. But much tribulation had to be surmounted before they reached the haven of the point of no return.

  It was decided that Jackie should say goodbye in the little house, go to the Harveys with his puppy Snowy two days before his mother left and not be at the dock to see the departure. Apart from a flood of emotion in the little house at the moment of parting all seemed well and Jackie departed with Smuts weeping but resigned, and as soon as he arrived settled down well with the children he liked so much.

  But to Lucy’s horror he and Snowy came with Smuts and his wife and children to see them off. Smuts explained that the previous day Jackie had suddenly decided that he must see the big ship that was to take maman to England. When his will had been thwarted his screams had been terrible. He was anxious to know that the ship was big enough and safe enough to take maman, and it had seemed best that he should see for himself. When he saw the Seagull in her pride he could not at first speak for excitement, for he had not known that a ship could be as lovely as this. Then he demanded that he should go on board.

  “No,” Tom Howard whispered to Lucy, but Smuts said, “Let him see for himself that you will be safe.”

  So they all went on board together and Jackie was shown the cabin where his mother would sleep. He also saw the captain on the poop and the dark-faced men at the capstan, smelt the salt in the breeze and heard the gulls screaming. Once again he could not speak but his cheeks flamed and his eyes shone.

  The captain shouted an order and it was time to go. They said their farewells and Mrs. Harvey went down the gangway with her children, Jackie had said goodbye to Tom and Justus and Mary and was in his mother’s embrace; but with a determined Smuts, Snowy under his arm, standing beside him, ready to grab him at the first slackening of Lucy’s arms.

  “Be a good boy, my darling. I will soon be back,” she whispered. She had been utterly resolved not to cry as she had cried when they had said goodbye at the little house, but the moment was a terrible one for her. There can be a dreadful finality about a ship leaving the shore. She did not cry but her breath came in gasps, and without her knowledge her arms tightened about the child from whom she had never been parted in seven long years. And he, her gasps shivering through his body, knew suddenly that all his safety was leaving him. He began to cry and sob and scream all at once and twined his legs and arms about his mother like a young octopus. They both took leave of their senses at the same moment. Lucy picked up her son and ran for the safety of her cabin. Snowy struggled fiercely from beneath Smuts’s arm and bounced after them, a round white ball of determined fluff. When the three reached the cabin Lucy banged the door an
d shot the bolt. They fell on the floor and crouched there trembling until the ship was well out to sea.

  The weather was perfect and the Seagull, white wings spread, even lovelier in performance than she had been in promise. Yet the first day of sailing was not a happy one for Lucy, for she was in disgrace with the two men. Tom was furious and Justus, for the first and last time in their lives, could not bring himself even to smile at her. “You know the interpretation the King will put upon this,” he said. “He will think that you deliberately deceived him, meaning to take Jackie with you all the time.”

  “He will never think that,” said Lucy. “He will understand. I am sure Smuts will write to him and explain how it happened.”

  “He may or he may not. The poor fellow had to leap for the gangway in a hurry. He fell on the quay and it looked as though he had hurt his shoulder. A broken collarbone in all probability. A painful thing.”

  “When we get to England I will write to Charles myself,” said Lucy.

  Tom, who had just joined them, said grimly, “Do so. And may your letter arrive in time to prevent his suspicions from hardening into conviction. Once let a Stuart have a conviction in his mind and you can never get it out again. I have warned you.”

  “The thing is done,” said Lucy with surprising calmness, “and there is no point in recrimination between us.”

  Secretly she thought there was now such trust between herself and Charles that he would understand. The men shrugged their shoulders and went to join the captain in his cabin for a drink. It all simmered down and the Seagull, the wind behind her, sped joyously over the sea to England. The sea was blue, the sky cloudless, the air like wine and Lucy was so invigorated that she could not think of danger. She had borrowed the name of her beloved Vrouw Flinck and was an unknown Dutch lady travelling with her children. How could there be danger for Jackie? She sat in the sun with Mary and two dollies, Sally and Polly, and watched Jackie’s ecstatic delight in the big ship.

  The Seagull was bound for the Port of London and so to Lucy’s joy she returned to England as she had left it, by way of the river that was to her the loveliest in the world. To sail up the great estuary with a favourable wind, to see English gulls circling about the ship and English cormorants sitting on the sandbanks with their absurd wings spread wide in welcome, was bliss. The shores of the estuary were like arms too, held so wide that at first they could hardly be seen, then coming closer with their treasure of green fields, villages and churches. Then the shore birds came out to welcome them, swans and ducks, and all the while the white sails above their heads were no whiter than the clouds of England sailing before the wind.

  They came to London and the river was full of shipping, a gleaming thoroughfare of busyness and beauty, the city with its thousand eyes looking out upon all that went up and all that went down from where it lay like some splendid beast stretched out beside the water. As they came slowly to their mooring place they could hear a deep humming purr, an echo it might be of the roaring of a lion deep beneath the stones. But the great beast was amiable today in the hot summer sun. It allowed Lucy and her children to come on shore with joy in their hearts, and a sense of special safety falling down upon them from London’s special sun.

  3

  Lucy, Anne and the children settled down happily in a house in the Strand, their landlady a kindly woman to whom Justus as a lawyer had been of service and who for his sake could not do enough for them. Mary’s dollies and Jackie’s toys were unpacked, and Lucy’s little writing desk that went everywhere with her was set upon the table in her bedchamber. Inside it were her papers and letters and her jewels. She was careful to keep it locked and the key hung round her neck.

  Justus went back to his home but was with them as much as possible. Tom Howard came and went but they did not see much of him and Lucy was concerned for his safety. In leaving Antwerp there had been so many things to think of that it was not until they were on board the Seagull that she had suddenly realized that Tom, as a Royalist, would be in danger in England. She had gone to him in great contrition, ashamed that she had not thought of this before, but he had laughed at her fears. “I have done this often, Lucy,” he had assured her. “I know how to protect myself.” Nevertheless she was anxious sometimes, but only sometimes, so great was her happiness.

  With her legacy from her mother she now had enough money for a few luxuries and she hired a coach to take Anne and the children to see the sights of London. Sometimes Justus went with them but occasionally, when she felt well enough, she went herself. She took them to see the house in Covent Garden where she had lived as a little girl, and to St. Paul’s Cathedral and to London Bridge, where she stood with Jackie on the exact spot where she had first seen his father as a little boy coming up the river in the royal barge.

  “Shall I ever be king of this country?” he asked loudly, leaning over the parapet, her hand gripping his little blue doublet, his great wondering eyes gazing at the vista of river and shipping, churches and palaces, clouds and birds. “Will it all be mine?”

  “Hush, Jackie,” she whispered in panic. “Remember that you are not the King’s son here, you are just my son, the son of Vrouw Flinck. You are Jackie Flinck.”

  She hoped he had not been heard. Two men were leaning over the parapet near them but they seemed deep in their own conversation. Nevertheless she realized how right Charles had been to forbid her to bring Jackie. “Forgive me,” she whispered to him. “But you know I did not mean to do it.” She was absurd enough to think that he did know, so strong was her belief that after the day and the night in the little house at Antwerp their love was indissolubly strong again.

  There was one place to which Lucy allowed no one to take her children and that was the Tower of London. When they were out on the river one day Jackie noticed the pile of stone and asked what it was and she told him, “A zoo. They keep animals there,” but to her great relief he did not ask to see the animals. He merely said, “I do not like it,” and looked the other way.

  Lucy found London very changed from the old days of colour and splendour. The people and their clothes seemed muted. London was beautiful still but she was like a lovely widow who has covered her face with a veil. There were few people now in London whom Lucy knew. She took her children and Anne to see Aunt Anne Byshfield and found her kind and pretty as ever. Aunt Anne was not a critical woman, like Aunt Margaret, and it was not her habit to sit in judgment. Of all Mrs. Gwinne’s daughters she was the most like her mother. Lucy was in her arms at once, and then the children, and then Anne because she looked after them so well. It was presently obvious to Lucy that Aunt Anne had taken a fancy to young Anne, and she was delighted because she could see that Anne was pleased; people seldom took a fancy to her and she was touched almost to the point of confusion. And Aunt Anne was fascinated by Mary. She was prepared to love both children because they were Lucy’s, but Mary and her dollies took instant possession of her great-aunt’s compassionate heart.

  Lucy went alone to visit old Mr. Gwinne. To find him now within his ramparts of books was like struggling through a labyrinth, and when she did at last reach the heart of it he did not know who she was. His failing mind now understood what he read but nothing else. The little house seemed utterly dead without the presence of her mother and grandmother and Nan-Nan, and that was the only day when sorrow overwhelmed her.

  There were a few pilgrimages that she made alone; to the landing-place where she had gone so often as a child and where the mulberry tree still leaned its arms upon the wall, to the unicorn wood, to the dark yew tree where once Old Sage had had his herb stall, and to the church beyond. To the church she came more than once, sitting on the same seat where she had so often sat by Old Sage. It seemed to her that he was beside her still, and not only in the church, for here in London he was seldom out of her thoughts. “He was one of the Great Ones,” she said one day to Justus. “I mean, he is one of the Great Ones. They sometimes c
ome back, I believe, and go about the world. I watch for his face in the streets.”

  It was then, in that moment of vision and dream, that Justus put his arms round her and told her part of his great plan. He and she and the children and Anne would travel, by easy stages that would not tire her, to Roch. They would see again all the places where as children they had been so happy. They would see their father’s grave. After that he stood silently, his cheek against hers, and the rest of his plan, that Charles had guessed, he kept in his mind alone. Lucy should not go back to Europe. He and she and the children would live together at Roch and he would practise as a country lawyer. He would be a poor man’s lawyer but they would have enough to live on. But he dared not broach this last bit of his plan yet, only hold her closer. No lover, no husband, can love a woman as a brother can, he believed. Brother and sister share such a depth of memories.

  Lucy began to tremble in his arms and then she gently freed herself. “No, Justus,” she said. “Wales is a far place for me to take the King’s son. His Majesty would not wish it.”

  Justus let his arms fall to his side and his usually gentle thoughts took a savage turn. Damn and blast the King, he thought, damn and blast the whole royal breed. Almost he could be a Parliament man like Richard, or a parti-coloured man like Tom, running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Who could blame Tom? Loyalty to kings brought men nothing but sorrow. Then with a swing of shame he was himself once more. “We will talk of it again, Lucy,” he said, and to please him she smiled and nodded.

  4

  But they did not talk of it again for the next morning as Lucy and Anne and the children, with Snowy the puppy, left the house to do some shopping, they were arrested. Before they left, looking out from the window above, Lucy had seen three men strolling up and down and a coach drawn up a little way down the street, but she had no sense of alarm, so safe did she feel in homely London. Indeed the three men had made her smile for they seemed figures of comedy. One was tall and thin, a mournful Don Quixote, another jolly and red-faced, a Falstaffian figure, and the third a white-faced man to whom she did not pay much attention until they went downstairs and out into the street, when he put his hand on her shoulder and arrested her in the name of the Lord Protector. Then for a moment the world turned dark, but she straightened herself and said quietly, “I am a Dutch lady, widow of a sea captain, on a visit to England with my children. I have done no harm. With what am I charged?”