The Child From the Sea

  “No, by cock,” said William. “I have no mind to have my dinner burnt to a cinder. Attend to your woman’s affairs.”

  Without a backward glance he strode across the bridge with Dewi at his heels.

  Woman’s affairs! Lucy seethed with anger all the way down through the wood but back with the stew she calmed down. Men’s affairs were more exciting, and she had always wished she was a boy, but Charles would not have fallen in love with a boy. She smiled as she set some apples to roast before the fire, for the first time consciously contented with what she was.

  The Puritan victory in Pembrokeshire had ended the physical fighting but not the religious wrangles. There were bitter arguments as to whether the altar was to be at the east end or in the body of the church, whether it was to have a cross and candles on it, and were images and pictures and stained glass windows of God or the devil? And should a priest wear vestments in church or a plain black gown? Lucy could not see that such matters were important, and she doubted if God could either, but the Presbyterian Parliament now sitting at Westminster regarded them as symbolic of deeper matters and permitted Puritans all over England and Wales to wreck the insides of churches, and turn the priests and their families out of their houses and treat them just as they pleased.

  Some priests, afraid for their children, gave in. Parson Peregrine, though he had been warned again and again by Puritan gentlemen of the neighbourhood, had no intention of conforming. In old days he had sometimes forgotten to light the candles on the altar but he never forgot now, and he had found somewhere a little statue of Our Lady and put it on one of the window ledges, and had taken no notice of the recent parliamentary command to cease using the prayer book and use the Directory of Public Worship instead. He had been issued with the Directory and had stoked the kitchen fire with it. And now he was to be evicted. He was a very courageous, angry and obstinate man, not a man to placate his enemies. What would they do? Lucy had heard some terrible stories and she was afraid for him.

  She began to lay the table for dinner and her thoughts passed on to Dr. Cosin, for there was another brave and loving man capable of great anger. Where was he now? She knew that both his deanery of Peterborough and his mastership of Peterhouse had been taken from him, and she knew too that it had taken the Puritans a whole fortnight to wreck the treasures of his cathedral. Where he was himself she did not know but she did not believe that he was dead.

  There was the sound of footsteps and the light of the doorway was blocked by the dark figure of William. He came in heavily and with anger, Dewi behind him. “A foul anonymous letter,” he told Lucy as he kicked off his muddy boots. “If the old man does not do as he is told this time we will have the church wrecked, and Peregrine himself with his ears cropped and the parsonage burned over his head. And so I told him. Does it matter a damn, I said, where you put the table or the candles? Does it matter a damn if you have them at all? And that pretty little female you have put on the window ledge, she is nothing but a distraction to a man’s thoughts. And you might just as well groan prayers out of one book as another. Better give in, I told him. Let us have a bit of peace, I said.”

  “What did he say?” asked Lucy.

  “Lost his temper and was most insulting to me. Dared to ask if I had turned Puritan myself. Aye, by cock! He is a damned impertinent fellow and deserves what is coming to him. I have never liked him. I wash my hands of the whole business. That stew done?”

  “You do not deserve it, sir!” said Lucy hotly as she ladled it out.

  “What has the arrangement of furniture or dolls on window ledges to do with religion?” demanded William.

  “Nothing,” said Lucy, “but taking the little statue down from the window would be yielding to the enemy and no man likes to do that. Would you have liked it if they had taken the Royalist flag down from our castle tower when the fighting started? It was nothing but a bit of silk, and taking it down might have saved a lot of trouble, but would you have approved?”

  “You hussy, to put such a question to me!” roared William.

  “It is just the same,” said Lucy. “Now eat your stew.”

  William began to laugh, for Bud was so patronizingly maternal, and he ate his stew, but for days he did not cease to mutter that if trouble came Parson Peregrine could expect no help from him. And all the villagers said the same. Their loyalty to the King was not in question but it would soon be lambing time, and then it would be the spring sowing, and it was not to be expected that a countryman could attend to quarrels of Church and State when land and beasts needed attention.

  It was possible that the enemy had the same idea for it was after the lambing, but before the spring sowing, that it happened, and the first that William, Lucy and Dewi knew of it was a banging on their door in the first light of a spring morning. They all three bounded from their beds and opened the door to Bowen the Beadle. “Come quick, sir!” he cried to William. “They have tied Parson Peregrine to his bedpost and are smashing up the church.”

  William rushed back into his room and began pulling on his clothes. “You children stay here,” he called to Lucy and Dewi. “If you dare follow me I will thrash you both to within an inch of your lives when I get back.”

  “I am coming!” cried Dewi.

  “You heard me,” said William.

  “We will follow,” Lucy whispered to Dewi, who instantly subsided, and as William ran out of the cottage with Bowen he spared a moment to congratulate himself on his children’s obedience. He had trained them well.

  Lucy and Dewi dressed and climbed up through the dark wood by Lucy’s short cut that brought them to the cliffs. At first, running and stumbling over the tussocks of grass and heather was exciting but as they came nearer the churchyard and heard the noise excitement vanished in fear, for the angry shouting had in it real hatred; and these men were of the same race and the same countryside. And it was not fair. That was her first coherent thought as she and Dewi ran down the hill towards the church. For the Puritan gentry had brought their men, well prepared and primed with ale, down upon a sleeping village, while the men of Roch had had to tumble out of their beds to the defence of their church and parson. And they were outnumbered, with no stiffening of troops among them as the enemy had. But anger stiffened them. They had forgotten now that they had said they would not defend Parson Peregrine. While their blood stayed hot they were ready to die for him, for who were these damn’ fellows, not even born upon the soil of Roch, that they should dare to come down like wolves on a fold that was not theirs, and with the lambing scarcely over? Was there no liberty now in this land of Wales? Could not a man do what he liked in his own church? Their parson was a good old fellow and the roaring that came through his bedroom window, where he was tied to his fourposter, was a trumpet call to which they rallied with all the strength they had.

  Lucy heard it as they ran down the lane and she swerved aside towards the parsonage. “We must undo him!” she called to Dewi.

  “Let him be, Lucy!” shouted Owen Perrot, running to her. “He is out of harm’s way there.” And he snatched her up in his arms, and then Dewi, and deposited them as high up as he could in the oak tree by the lych-gate. “You plaguey children!” he shouted at them. “Stay there.” Even in his anguished state he knew it would be useless to tell them to go home. They would not go.

  Lucy was so frightened that she felt only a passing anger at being called a plaguey child by her father’s bailiff, she, a maid nearly fifteen years, beloved of a prince. Dewi was frightened too. They clung to each other in the oak tree and watched the destruction going on below with horror. A bonfire had been lit in the churchyard and the communion table had already been flung upon it, together with Parson Peregrine’s surplice and the prayer books from the vestry. Men were coming from the church now carrying the altar rails, and the chairs upon which William and Elizabeth had sat in the happy days of peace. They were having their will because there were s
o many of them, and because their discipline told against the confused anger of the men of Roch, but they were getting plenty of savage kicks, bloody noses and black eyes. It was not them Lucy hated so much as the men who had set them on to do this, the Puritan gentlemen in their tall hats who kept at a safe distance while they issued their orders and laughed and jeered, their swords drawn to defend themselves, their pistols ready. They were the only ones who had effective arms. The rest only had sticks.

  The wind was from the sea and carried to Lucy a whiff of smoke and the scent of burning. She looked round. “The parsonage!” she cried to Dewi. “It’s on fire and Parson Peregrine is tied to the bedpost!”

  No one saw them scramble down from the tree and run across the lane to the parsonage. It was not the cottage itself but the pile of wood that Parson Peregrine had stacked against the rear wall that had been fired, but the wind was rising and it would not be long before the cottage was on fire too. The door had already been broken open and they ran across the living room to the kitchen, where Lucy snatched up a knife before they dived into the cupboard in the corner where the stairs were, and climbed up to Parson Peregrine’s bedroom above. The old man was dressed except for his coat, for he was an early riser. He had been strongly roped to his fourposter and even his colossal struggles had not been able to get him free.

  “Give me that!” he shouted to Lucy when he saw the knife.

  “I cannot give it to you while your hands are bound,” she pointed out. “Keep still and I will cut your ropes. Keep still. Dewi, hold him still.”

  Something of the calm that had descended on Lucy with the need for quick action came to the frantic old man too as he felt the light hands of the little boy trying to hold him still. Except for his angry panting he kept quiet while Lucy freed his wrists. Then he snatched the knife from her and hacked at the ropes round his ankles so madly that he cut himself. “Come quickly, the parsonage will be burning in a minute,” said Lucy. But he did not hear her. He went instantly to the window. He had seen something of what was happening from his bedpost, but now he could see the west door with ease and just as he looked one of the Puritan gentlemen came out laughing, carrying the little statue of the Virgin upside down by her feet as a man would have carried a dead rabbit. He was a magistrate from Haverfordwest, a man Parson Peregrine had always disliked and whom now he hated, because it was he who had written that last vile letter. Cold with fury he reached for the loaded gun that lay on the chest against the wall and took careful aim. He did not intend murder and even in the extremity of rage he was a good shot. The bullet passed straight through the man’s tall hat. But the report turned what had hitherto been no more than a nasty scrimmage into bedlam.

  Lucy never remembered clearly what happened after that. She remembered getting safely out of the parsonage before the roof went up in flames, and trying to hold Parson Peregrine back as he stormed across the lane to the lych-gate, her feet dragging on the road as he pulled her with him. Then someone, she thought it was William, pulled her away, lifted her over the parsonage wall and dropped her roughly in the garden, where she and Dewi crouched sobbing among the currant bushes. But she must have looked over the wall because confused memories of what she saw fluttered like bats through her nightmares for months afterwards. Only two of them were touched with greatness. Almost at the end of it all she saw Parson Peregrine mounted on a horse, his feet roped under it. His face was bruised and bleeding and one arm was hanging down as though it were broken. But he held the reins with the other and his back was straight. All anger had passed from him and his face was strong as stone and in spite of the pain he was in, peaceful. Other horsemen gathered around him to prevent rescue and the cavalcade rode quickly away. The sound of the horses’ hoofs going down the hill, and the hollow sound they made as they passed over the bridge that spanned the Brandy Brook, sounded in Lucy’s ears all through the days that followed. The other picture was of Old Parson standing beneath the walls of the ruined castle, his hands held palm to palm together as though he prayed and the tears running down his face. Weeping and the hollow sound of death. That was the end of it.

  Three

  1

  The August afternoon was hot and breathless in the garden of Bedford House and Charles sat inert beneath the mulberry tree, his back against its trunk, an open book on his knees. But though he kept his eyes lowered he was not reading. Occasionally he turned a page so that kindly persons watching him from the windows of the house should think he was and leave the scholar alone. A scholar! What elaborate parts princes played in order to be left to stew in hell by themselves for one stagnant hour. ’Sdeath, it was hot! His head ached and his shirt stuck to his skin. He was tired to the bone and his mind was filled with a queer blank dismay. It was neither fear, despair nor grief, but the sort of feeling a man would have who opened his front door one morning and saw not the familiar sunlit garden but some blackened landscape utterly unknown to him. For he had always been sure that it would end right. He had never doubted the ultimate victory and the triumphant return home to Whitehall; where in the evening the air came freshly off the face of the river and the swans floated cool as lily petals.

  The defeat of Naseby, two months ago, had marked a disastrous turning of the tide, and after it the note of foreboding had sounded so constantly in his father’s letters that he had dreaded to see the familiar handwriting on an envelope. If only he had been with his father and Rupert at Naseby. If only they had kept together! His father’s superb courage had very nearly turned defeat to victory that day. The King and his nephew Prince Rupert had become separated in the fighting, with the main battle raging in the valley between them and going badly for the Royalist troops. But the King had seen clearly that he had only to lead his own guard in a charge downhill to meet Rupert, and Cromwell would be trapped. “One more charge, gentlemen,” he had cried, “and the day is ours,” and his troops had rallied as he drew his sword and rode to put himself at the head of the cavalry. Then one of his gentlemen had cried out, “Sire, will you go to your death?” and snatched at his bridle and turned his horse aside. The King, always irresolute, had hesitated, then had yielded and ridden from the field.

  “If I had been there I should have cut the bastard’s hand off the bridle with my sword!” Charles muttered to himself for the hundredth time. But it was too late now. He was separated from his father, who had marched north to try and make contact with Montrose, and from his cousin Rupert who was holding Bristol. His own commanders here in the west were quarrelling with him and with each other and he did not know what he should do next. He had not been well and had been sent to Exeter to visit his little sister. It was a time of stagnation and there was nothing he could do except sit here in this hellish heat, and try not to think what might have happened if he had been with his father at Naseby.

  But it did not mend matters to think of Naseby. Nor to think of the girl. He had ridden to Broad Clyst to find her but she had gone. Little bitch! She had run away to Wales. He was furious with her yet in this garden where they had been together he ached for the sight of her, the comfort and feel of her. There was not a breath of wind under the mulberry tree. Exeter was in the valley and such low-lying, airless and damp places always made him feel ill and depressed. And Sir Edward Hyde, who had been his father’s faithful friend and adviser and was now appointed to be his, was driving him mad by watching over him like a clucking hen and lecturing him like a maiden aunt. It appeared likely that they would be stewing and quarrelling here for a month or more, while the war in the north fell into its new pattern.

  He sat without movement for a long time and forgot to turn the pages. Then a slow smile spread over his face. The idea was both mad and reprehensible. The commander of the army in the west had no right to leave his army even in a period of stagnation. If it were known to more than a few his father would never forgive him. But why should it be known? He was supposed to be resting, and Exeter was where the Stuart family went to ear
th. His mother had come here to have Henrietta. His father had been seriously ill here for some while. Why should he not burrow down too? Only the end of his burrow should come up in Wales. With luck he should get there and back in a month. With incredible luck. It would be the biggest gamble he had ever taken on but he was at the age when a gamble is the breath of life, and it was air he wanted now, air and life. God alone knew what the future held for him; probably ruin and death both for himself and his father. Why not live first? Why not? The faintest breath of wind stirred in the hot garden and something soft touched his face in passing; almost as though a girl had bent to flutter long eyelashes against his cheek in what children called the butterfly kiss. He looked up, startled, and saw two butterflies floating by. They settled on the low branch of the mulberry tree close behind him and basked there, slowly fanning their wings. He had his sign. The luck would be incredible.

  He got up instantly and went into the house to his room and wrote two letters, to Lady Dalkeith and to Hyde. He badly needed sea air, he told them, and was going sailing, a trip down the river to the sea, and he might be away three weeks or more. All arrangements had been made for his safety and he would be excellently cared for and they were not to worry. They were to say he was ill. Everyone knew his family were always ill in Exeter. Having written his letters he put them in his pocket and strolled to the stables to find a favourite, trusted groom. Ten hours later, with moon and stars to guide him, he was riding alone across Dartmoor dressed in his groom’s clothes. His luck in getting away unseen had already been fantastic, and a singing south-easterly breeze caressing the back of his neck told him it would continue so. For the south-easterly was what he wanted. He was bound for Torrington and from there to Bideford. There were always ships in plenty at Bideford and he would be certain to find one bound for a Pembrokeshire port and willing to take a passenger. He had money in his pocket and money accomplished most things. If the south-easterly were to sing a little more powerfully he would be in Pembrokeshire in a few days’ time. There was heather now under his horse’s feet and he began to sing himself. His breed were always at their best and their happiest when they took to the heather.