The Child From the Sea

  “I was afraid,” she said. “What made you so different?”

  “I was afraid too.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “Even though I thought about you while I lay awake I hated that wind last night. It moaned under the door like a dying man and when I got up the shadow was on me. Do you know what I mean? It falls on you from what is still to come.” She knew but she would not say that she knew. “Sir,” she said shyly, “this is my day of glory and I do not look beyond it. Do you wish us to ride together?”

  “No, I should be too conspicuous. We will walk. I will take your horse to the stable. Wait here for me.”

  He led the mare away and she waited under the cherry tree. Charles thought she looked strangely mature when he came back to her. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

  “I am the same age as yourself, sir. I was born under your star. Did not the people of London say that a special star danced in the sky when you were born?”

  “It was your star, not mine,” he said. “I would not have a dancing star. You should have been called Beatrice, Shall I call you Beatrice?”

  “Call me what you like, sir.”

  “No, I prefer Lucy. Beatrice sounds fat and I do not like fat women.”

  His mood had changed again and he was whirling her up the lane, striding fast and laughing, his arm tucked tight into hers. Breathless, and laughing too, she was carried along by his speed. They seemed flying and a memory flashed into her mind; the man and girl she had seen in Covent Garden, speeding along on the wings of their joy. Now it was her turn, her day of glory. They came to a busy street. Carts and coaches rattled over the cobbles and they must dodge the pedestrians, housewives with their baskets, itinerant pedlars with their wares, soldiers with their girls, children, dogs and cats. They were excited, and thrilled with a delicious fear.

  “Pull your hat forward, sir,” whispered Lucy.

  “You dare call me sir,” he whispered back. “My name is Charles.”

  “That is not your name today.”

  “What then?”

  “You are Kilhwch today.”

  “Who?”

  “Kilhwch.”

  “What an outlandish tongue!”

  “Do not insult my language. Princes spoke it and I am descended from them.”

  “Who was Kilhwch?”

  “A very grand man. He had a gold-hilted sword with the hue of lightning and his greyhounds wore collars of rubies.” She smiled up at him as he bent his head down to her and whispered very low, “He was a prince of Wales.”

  It seemed a huge joke. Laughing they bumped into an old woman and bounced the apples out of her basket. Charles picked them up for her and she berated him soundly while he did it. After that they laughed more than ever, but the little incident had made people turn round and look at them and Charles whispered, “We will go to the Cathedral.”

  He whirled her round a corner into a side street, in sight of the towers that soared up towards the racing clouds, and on to the Cathedral Close. The wind blew them in through the west door in company with a shower of autumn leaves, and put them down in a cavern of silence so vast that it shocked them into complete stillness. The leaves rustled for a moment about their feet and then lay quiet. They no longer heard the wind or the rattle of carts, nor the voice of humanity. They had been flying together, now they were still together. They were spirits who had been blown out of time into eternity.

  Lucy looked up at Charles and saw him rapt and astonished; even, she thought, forgetful of her. But her eyes on his face brought him back to her, as they would always do, and he looked down into her face. He had noticed already how penetrating her gaze was, and that her eyes were not easy to meet. They seemed to demand the truth and the human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth. The acknowledgment of truth, like the maintaining of it, is too hard for us. But he forced himself to hold her gaze, even to beat it down if he could, for he was not going to be governed by a girl, even when she was his first love. But he could not do it. It was she who deliberately lowered her eyes, releasing him, and he was a little angered, as he would have been if a servant had dismissed himself instead of waiting for the royal permission to retire. Then he was amused, for she had released him with quite a royal air. What was that she had said about her royal descent? But he did not ask her yet for they were strolling down the nave together, hand in hand, and though he knew it well the awe of the great fane was still upon him.

  “I have been in so many great churches,” he told her, “Westminster and St. Paul’s among them, but never in quietness like this. Wherever princes are there are crowds, trumpets and music. You must be alone to feel the mystery of things and princes are never alone.”

  “You are not alone now,” said Lucy. “You are with me.”

  “I love you,” he said simply. “I love you in the way that makes two people one person.” And he kissed her.

  “Would Nan-Nan think we ought to make love inside a church?” Lucy wondered. “We should be saying our prayers.”

  “I cannot say my prayers unless I shut my eyes and I will not insult your beauty by doing such a thing. Who is Nan-Nan?”

  “She was my nurse. She is dead now but I love her very much and I try never to do anything of which she would disapprove.”

  Charles looked at his love in some dismay for he was well aware that she meant what she said, and she spoke of Nan-Nan as though the dead woman still lived. He turned from the thought of Nan-Nan, and from the sight of Lucy’s obstinate chin which told him this was no pliant maid and that there might be rocks ahead. “These Welsh princes from whom you are descended,” he asked, “who are they?”

  They were standing in a little chantry now, beside the tomb of a knight in armour, and Lucy was reminded of the tomb of Rhys ap Thomas in the church at Carmarthen, and all that her father had said to his children there. With her head up she recited the deeds and virtues of the greatest Welshman since Owen Glendower and gave an account of her own lineage. Then looking up and flashing blue fire at him she said, “Sir, there is more true royal blood in my veins than there is in yours.”

  “Then why do you insist on calling me sir?” asked Charles, and he was nettled.

  She pondered this in silence for a moment or two. “Because I acknowledge that I am King Corphetua’s Beggar Maid,” she said at last. “If my father ever gives me in marriage he will give no dowry with me. He had a castle in Wales, Roch Castle, but now it is in ruins. It was garrisoned for your father and destroyed by his enemies. But a maiden, just because she is poor, need not sit on the bottom step of the throne looking at the ground. I despise such maids. I will call you sir, for that is my duty, but I will never say yes sir, or no sir, at your whim, and I wish you to know this.”

  Charles saw that he had been right about the rocks, but what she had said about her father’s castle had banished his anger. He had a compassionate heart and those who suffered for his father found instant place in it. He took her hand and led her to a bench. “Tell me about Roch Castle,” he said gently.

  She sighed, for it was hard to speak of Roch. “It stands, I mean the ruins of it still stand, on the brow of a hill. From the windows you could look out to sea, and you could look across the land to the mountains. It was built upon volcanic rock.”

  “Ah!” said Charles. “Rock. Were you born there?”

  “Yes, I was born there.”

  “Listen, Lucy. When the war is won my father and I will build up your castle and give it back to you again. That is a promise. I would like to see Roch.”

  “To show you Roch would be such happiness,” she said. “I would show you the bay where the seals come, and perhaps they would sing to you, and the Valley of Roses at St. Davids, where the stream is so cool. We would stand on the cliffs when the wind was blowing and he
ar the gulls screaming and the waves roaring all along the coast.”

  “You love the sea?”

  “I belong to it.”

  “You shall show me Roch,” he promised her.

  “It is only a dream,” she said.

  “No. You shall show me.” They were silent and then he said, “We must go now.”

  “Why?” she asked. “It is so peaceful here. Can we not stay longer?”

  “No prince can ever stay anywhere,” he told her. “There is forever something else we must do. I cannot disappear for an hour without a hue and cry after me. But you shall come back with me to Bedford House and I will show you my little sister.”

  “Will not people see me with you?”

  “They saw you when we rode together.”

  “But a second time?”

  He got up from the bench and held out a hand to her. “They will hardly trouble to chide me, for tomorrow I leave Exeter. We must go now.”

  He put his arm into hers again and took her down the nave and out into the Close where the wind from Roch met them again and the leaves once more danced about them, but there was no airiness in their movement now as they walked away. He held her tightly because she was trembling, not because he thought that she would float up into the air at any moment.

  “To the war?” she asked.

  “Yes. Do not tremble, love.”

  “No, I will not,” said Lucy. “There will be other men and girls saying goodbye today. It is no different for us than for them.”

  “It is different,” said Charles bitterly. “They can make plans. They can say, when the war is over we will marry and have a butcher’s shop. But what can we do? You will show me Roch, I said to you, and that was all I could say, and now I do not feel certain even of that.”

  Like all lovers faced with the first parting they were like two children on a see-saw. When one was down the other was up. “I think it could be gain to have no certainty,” said Lucy. “Suppose that night came and you were not sure the sun would rise again, and then after the dark hours you saw the east beginning to glow. What joy! That is how we will feel every time we meet. Each time we are together it will be an unexpected wonder. A present. I have had five already.”

  She felt his fingers counting on her arm. “Four,” he said gloomily. “And you had to remind me of the first.”

  “We were together in Westminster Hall,” she told him. “It was when the Earl of Strafford was standing his trial. I wished I could comfort you.”

  “Do not speak of it again,” he said. “If there is justice anywhere we shall pay for that, my father and I.”

  “Not you!” she said quickly.

  “I am one with my father,” he answered and she knew he was right. He loved his father and so must share in guilt and retribution. And she must share in all that happened to Charles because she loved him. Not only the dark web but the golden web too demanded it, the one of necessity, the other by reason of its own nature.

  They had come through the streets without knowing where they went and were in the lane again. Charles unlatched the door under the cherry tree and they went in. There were tall trees in the garden, the vividly green grass of the West Country and along one wall a tangled rain-beaten border of flowers. A lady with her skirts tucked up and a kerchief tied over her head was dealing with the tangle. “It is Lady Dalkeith, my mother’s friend who is looking after the baby,” said Charles.

  She had turned at the sound of the closing door and waited for them on the path. Her worn but still beautiful face was severe as the couple approached, but not unsympathetic, and Charles knew how to forestall displeasure. He presented Lucy with the information that her Royalist father’s castle had been destroyed by the King’s enemies. “And so may I take her to see the Princess Henrietta?”

  Lady Dalkeith did not relax her severity, though there was a quirk of amusement at the corners of her mouth as Lucy rose from her curtsey. An untidy girl, but pretty and not predatory and in any case Charles was leaving Exeter tomorrow. “As you wish, sir,” she said. “Only if the princess is asleep do not wake her.”

  Servants came forward as they entered the house but Charles waved them aside and took Lucy up the winding staircase, warning her to be careful at the trip step, that was shallower than the rest so that a man running up the stairs with evil intent would stumble at it and give warning of his approach. In the nursery the nursemaid who was watching the baby was also waved away and there was no one to see them as they knelt down beside the cradle. It was not, Lucy thought, quite so fine a cradle as the one they had had at Roch, but the Royal Arms surmounted the carved hood and a little bunch of golden balls hung from it on a white ribbon to amuse the baby. But inside the cradle there was a royal grandeur of lace-trimmed pillows and a silken coverlet embroidered in gold.

  The Princess Henrietta was a fragile baby and there was no colour in her delicate face. Her short hair lay in rings of thin gold all over her shapely little head and her minute fists were doubled up under her chin. The peace that emanates from a sleeping baby filled the room. She was white and gold like the rose at Golden Grove and as she looked at her Lucy’s heart turned over. Then she looked at Charles and marvelled that this tall, vital boy could be the brother of this little moth of a child. It was the difference between a child born in sorrow and despair and one born in joy and hope. Yet his face was as mobile as hers was delicate and the tenderness and sorrow he had for her trembled over it almost like a reflection of her fragility. Lucy got up from her knees and came to him. “You are sad for this baby,” she said.

  “She is like my sister Anne. I liked Anne. When they told her she had to die and that she must say her prayers she said, ‘I cannot say my big prayer but I will say my little one.’ And she did. She was not afraid to die though she was only five.”

  “This princess will live to grow up,” Lucy said steadily, and as if to assure him the baby woke up. They made the bells swing and she laughed and condescended to hold her brother’s finger and bestow a smile on Lucy. She was very much alive, full of Stuart charm, and sorrow vanished.

  “I call her Minette,” said Charles. “She is so tiny.”

  The nursemaid was back again, murmuring something about Lady Dalkeith not liking Her Royal Highness to be overstimulated, and they left the nursery and went back to the garden. Lady Dalkeith was still at work in her border but she was an ardent gardener and was now too absorbed to know or care what went on behind her bent back. Time had stopped for her and only the crying of Minette would have brought her back to awareness of it.

  A mulberry tree, its aged limbs propped up on crutches like those of an old man, protected a narrow path from the eyes of the house. They wandered up and down for a few moments and tried to talk and could not. “We must say goodbye now,” said Lucy with sudden decision. “Having to say it is a shadow over us and we will not be happy if we stay longer together. Let us say it and be done.”

  “I will come back,” said Charles urgently, his hands on her shoulders. “Exeter is my base and I will come back as soon as I can. Stay here. Do not you dare to leave Broad Clyst! Promise me!”

  “No,” said Lucy.

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Why not?” he demanded. “I do not ask it, I command it.”

  “Sir, you have no right,” said Lucy. “You are not the only person in the world I love. All I can promise is that I will stay at Broad Clyst if my duty permits it.”

  “Lucy, you are the most arrogant girl I ever met!” he exclaimed angrily. “Your duty is to me, your prince.”

  “As to that I am not sure,” said Lucy. “The Welsh are subjects to the King of England by conquest only and if Owen Lawgoch should suddenly come up out of his cave, as he has promised to do, and unite all Wales against her enemies, England will be one of them.”

  Even in his anger and unhappiness Charles began to laugh. “You are rig
ht,” he conceded, and took her in his arms. “And who can make promises in wartime? I cannot. Nor you. Goodbye.”

  “Now, it would break my heart to leave Broad Clyst,” said Lucy, and began to cry with a wild heartbreak that took him as much by surprise as the indignation of a few moments before. Would he ever understand this girl of his, so sturdy and yet so temperamental? But at the moment he had not to understand but to comfort. He flung her hat on the path and kissed her and tried to stroke her hair, but it rose under his hand like an indignant cat. “Your hair is alive!” he ejaculated.

  “Of course it is alive,” said Lucy through her sobbing. “I am alive am I not?” Then abruptly she controlled herself. “Take me out of this garden,” she implored him, “and find my horse and send me away.”

  He hugged her close for a moment, then let her go and did what she had asked him to do. He picked up her hat and handed it to her and then walking hand in hand they went out of the garden. He left her standing under the cherry tree while he fetched her horse, then helped her up into the saddle.

  “Goodbye, sir,” she said, looking straight in front of her.

  “Goodbye, Lucy,” he said, and went back into the garden and shut the door.

  6

  She did not go straight home. She and the mare spent the next few hours wandering through the woods and the country lanes near Broad Clyst. Waves of desolation kept coming at her and breaking over her. Sometimes in a moment of respite she would hear a bird singing or notice the tracery of a fallen leaf, but then another wave would come and she would know only that she could not live without Charles. But she had to live without him, perhaps for a short time, perhaps for always. That was the way it was. “My father is my firstborn.” Had she said that? It was no longer true in the sense in which she had once said it but in another sense it was true. In time he had come first and her love for him was no less than it had been; perhaps greater because she had grown five years in the last few hours. She turned the mare’s head towards home.

  Her reception was hardly loving. William was in the stableyard when she rode in and he lifted her down from the mare with a face black as thunder and eyes miserable as sin. With his right hand clamped on her arm he marched her straight into the empty harness room and banged the door. Then he sat down on the bench and she stood before him bolt upright, her eyes on his. “No privacy indoors with your grandmother and her maids prying and peeping everywhere. Damn you, Lucy, where have you been?”