The Child From the Sea

  Jackie murmured something and was asleep, and presently Lucy too was asleep. They slept deeply and peacefully and were awakened in the morning by the sun shining on their faces.

  5

  For the children the days passed pleasantly. They were allowed to go to the inner garden with Anne and play there, and on the third day they had toys to play with because a wonderful thing happened. The door opened and the warder came in carrying a bundle which he gave to Lucy with a smile. It contained a few garments and kerchiefs, Mary’s two dollies Polly and Sally and Jackie’s favourite toy, a wooden model of a mounted cavalier. Also, carefully wrapped in a little shawl, was Lucy’s miniature of her father. “Anne!” she ejaculated with shining eyes, “Colonel Howard is free already!”

  “The landlady could have packed the bundle,” said Anne.

  “The landlady does not know which are the children’s favourite toys,” said Lucy. “Nor how dearly I love my miniature.” She searched everything carefully, even the petticoats on the wooden dollies, but there was no letter.

  “They would have searched the bundle before it was given to you, madam,” said Anne. But Lucy went on looking and then saw that securing the bonnet on one of the dollies was a pin with a green head. “Look!” she said to Anne. “That pin belongs to Colonel Howard.”

  Two days later the Lieutenant of the Tower himself took the children to see the lions, and they came back to the cell for their midday meal chattering of what they had seen and done. But Anne, Lucy realized, though she laughed and talked with the children, was more deeply unhappy with each day that passed. “What is it, Anne?” she asked.

  “Nothing, madam,” replied Anne.

  Lucy could have gone to the garden too, if she had wished, but she was not strong enough for the long steep journeys of the Tower and so she spent the days lying on her bed, locked in the cell, alone and glad to be alone, gathering her strength. This lying still at every opportunity to gather strength was now a daily necessity. At first she had rebelled but now she treasured her lonely times. She prayed as well as she could, saying daily Dr. Cosin’s prayers for Charles, remembering all Dr. Jeremy Taylor had taught her and praying the prayer he had given her, widening it to include them all. “Keep us, O Lord, for we are thine by creation; guide us for we are thine by purchase. Let thy mercy pardon us and thy care watch over us.”

  And she turned the pages of the book of memories that she called her Book of Hours, lingering a long time over the ones that had borders of bees and butterflies surrounding people whom she loved stepping through golden sunshine in gay garments, with illuminated capital letters for words like Love and Joy and Peace. These were the pages that held her memories of Roch, Golden Grove and the golden hearted rose, her grandmother and Old Sage, happy hours with Lord Taaffe, and above all memories of the three idyls with Charles; the days together in Wales, the time of happiness after Jackie had been born, the day and night together in the little house at Antwerp.

  Sometimes her memories became confused and the people who walked in the sunshine did so in oddly assorted couples. Indeed it seemed to her sometimes that she was looking not backward but forward. Lord Taaffe laughed with Nan-Nan in the garden at Roch, and Charles sat and talked with Old Sage in the church at Covent Garden, and Old Sage was no longer dumb; indeed it was he who talked while Charles listened. And Parson Peregrine walked with Lucy’s children holding to his hands. She had thought much of Parson Peregrine since the stones of the Tower had closed about her. His prison, the hulk ship, had been not far away and she did not doubt that he had died there. But she had not thought of him with sadness because in her Book of Hours he always walked in gold, on a path that was bordered by the roses and lilies of a martyr’s death.

  And since she had been in the little house at Antwerp there had been another who walked that same path. He had appeared mysteriously, the only figure whom she did not know, a lame old man who walked slowly. He had a wrinkled, bearded face, very bright eyes and a domed forehead. He reminded her of Old Sage but he was not Old Sage. He was smaller physically but equally great.

  When they had been at the Louvre Dr. Cosin had read her and Jackie a poem about heaven written by Bernard of Cluny, and it reminded her of her Book of Hours, for in it the blessed were walking among flowers.

  And through the sacred lilies

  And flowers on every side,

  The happy dear bought people

  Are wandering far and wide.

  Could that be a part of heaven, she wondered, watching those one loved, unknown to each other on earth, delightfully united by one’s loving? But how great must be the power of love that could make that union, and how selfless, for on the pages of her book she never found herself. But how did one learn to love like that? How did one get to heaven at all? How? Lying on her bed in the Tower she cried out again to God, “Do not let me hate Tom for what he is doing to Charles. Do not let me hate. Do not let me hate Anne.” But she did not hate Anne. She had forgiven her for reading her letters. So why did she pray not to hate Anne?

  Towards the end of their stay in the Tower a night came when she knew why. In the timelessness to which prayer carries the one who prays she had known how deeply she would soon need the help of God. It was a night of moon and stars, very still, and Jackie, so often disturbed by bad dreams, was sleeping happily and peacefully beside her. But Mary, her mother sensed, was wide awake in the opposite corner of the cell. Yet she dare not call to her for fear of waking Jackie.

  Presently Mary came quietly creeping to her. “Have you a pain, my darling?” whispered Lucy. But Mary was seldom concerned with her own troubles, only other people’s. “Anne,” she whispered to her mother. “She is crying, maman. Anne is crying.”

  “Get into my bed but do not wake Jackie,” whispered Lucy, “and I will go to Anne. Mind you go to sleep.”

  Mary nodded and did as she was told and Lucy put her mother’s cloak round her shoulders and went to Anne. She was sobbing almost soundlessly into her pillow but even so Lucy was appalled that someone she loved, lying only the room’s breadth away from her, could be in despair and she not know it. She pushed Mary’s truckle-bed under Anne’s and knelt down on the floor beside her. She did not insult her by asking her if she was afraid; Anne was fearless and had not for a moment felt scared of the Tower. And this was something much deeper than fear. “You must tell me, Anne,” she said. Though Anne had turned her face away from her the movement had told Lucy that she knew she was there. There was no reply until Anne’s sobs gradually became manageable. “No,” she said.

  “You must,” said Lucy. “Whom have we in the world just now but each other? And we do not know what we have yet to face. Because we are innocent we are hopeful, but we may deceive ourselves. The innocent frequently suffer for the sins of the guilty.”

  There was a long silence and Anne’s sobs utterly ceased. Then she turned her face to Lucy. Only the light of the moon illumined the room and it may have been that it was a face less ghastly than the one Lucy saw. “You have put it into words,” she said. “That is why you are suffering now. Why you have suffered so long. For my sin.”

  “I do not understand,” said Lucy, “but I do know that you must tell me what troubles you. We may die in this place and we must both die in penitence.”

  To men and women of their generation this was a matter of supreme importance. Priests would labour at the bedside of the dying, almost tormenting them, to see that no stone of sin was left unturned and unrepented of. In no other way, they thought, could a soul pass on in peace, and who knows if they were not quite right. There was no priest with Lucy and Anne but the extraordinary beauty of complete silence seemed to have fallen upon the prison. Anne told it all and it seemed to both her and Lucy to take hours. Actually it was soon told. Just a short story of vile treachery, with cause and motivation so deep and entangled that it was not possible for either girl to understand them.

  ?
??And yet,” said Anne at last, “I love you. I have never loved anyone except my mother, and you and the children. It was when I thought you were dying at The Hague that I began to get free.”

  Lucy had listened all the while with her face buried in her arms laid upon the bed, and so Anne could not see her face. She had heard all that Anne said to her, and understood it, and she knew that her life was in ruins because of Anne. The day and night with Charles at Antwerp, that she had hoped had restored trust between them, would remain with him merely as an untrustworthy dream. The reality that would persist was his poisoned mind. Hatred, she found, was not hot but cold. It broke over her in waves so that she shivered. What was the good of truth? What was the use of love? She had given Anne both and was smashed to pieces, and now there was no help anywhere. None at all. Yet a voice deep in her was crying for help, a child’s voice saying childishly, “God? God.” Just in that way had a child in a cave summoned help. No glow of comfort now, no golden hearted rose, only a sense of tearing and rending and then a voice speaking out loud, “You are utterly forgiven. What you did is washed away by all your tears.”

  She heard the voice but did not think it was her own. Nor did she know that her head had come up from her arms until she found Anne’s terrible ravaged face within a few inches of her own. Their lips met, Anne’s burning hot, Lucy’s ice-cold from the hatred that was still breaking over her. Anne slipped her hands under the cloak and felt Lucy’s body. “My love, my love,” she cried, “you are cold as ice. Go back to your bed and let me cover you up warmly. There is room there for you and Mary too.”

  Lucy gave a gasp of relief. There had been a moment when she had thought that Anne was going to take her into her own bed to warm her. If she had been made to lie beside the woman in the same bed she would have screamed. But Anne put her back in her own bed and said to Mary, who wakened when they came to her, “Lie close to your mother and keep her warm.”

  Once more there was the ghastly rending within her and the voice that was not her own speaking. “Go back to bed, Anne, and go to sleep. It is over. All is well between us.”

  “Madam, madam,” whispered Anne, and went sobbing back to her bed. Lucy heard her crying softly for some while, but now it was merely the weeping of exhaustion and relief and presently she was asleep.

  “Is Anne happy now?” Mary asked from within the curve of her mother’s arm about her.

  “She is happy now,” said Lucy.

  “Are you warm now, maman?”

  “You are like a little warming-pan, my poppet. Now go to sleep.”

  So Mary slept and Jackie, dreaming blissfully of lions, had never waked at all. Lucy lay without movement until morning came and the great Tower with its enclosed burden of misery woke to another day.

  It was a warm and sunny day and Anne and Jackie spent it in the garden, for Lucy had a bad headache and Jackie was in a noisy mood. To keep his noise away from his mother was, Anne knew, the best service she could render today; and as for the rest of her days, they belonged now to Lucy and her children. Mary was with them in the garden during the morning but after the midday meal in their cell she would not leave her mother. She sat on the floor beside Lucy’s bed and played quietly with her dollies. “Go to sleep, maman,” she said. Lucy smiled and shook her head. She did not want even to try to sleep while her headache was so bad. Sleep shot through with pain brought nightmares.

  She lay still, holding to something she had heard Anne say last night. “I began to get free.” She remembered her childhood’s thoughts of two webs, the dark and the light. Had the web of madness and hatred spun about Anne in her youth kept her a prisoner against her own consent and knowledge? If so it was not Anne herself whom she hated now with such horror but simply evil.

  She put her hands to her head, wanting to still the pain that she might think. They were gently removed and Mary’s small hands took their place. Her daughter was standing beside her. “Maman, I will make you better. Then you will go to sleep and have a lovely dream.” It happened. Under the child’s hands the headache went slowly away and with astonishment Lucy found herself at peace from pain, and drifted into sleep.

  She passed from one happy dream to another, small dreams gay as pages from the Book of Hours; but they were only stepping stones that carried her deeper, right down to the roots of being, to the kitchen at Roch. The fire burned on the great hearth and she was standing looking down into the well of living water. A man was standing beside her wrapped in a cloak and she was talking to him, and the conversation seemed familiar to her. “Is it true that one man can take upon himself the sin of another?” she asked. “Can he save him that way? Is it really true?”

  “Yes,” said the man slowly. “If the sinner will accept salvation, it is true.”

  Lucy remembered now. These words had been spoken before, and the man beside her was Old Parson, who was dead. She had been remembering the sin-eater when she had asked him that question. “Tell me more,” she said.

  “The man who is the cause of the suffering can be saved by the man who bears it, if the tortured man for love’s sake can take the sin upon himself together with the pain. That is the way it is. It is quite simple, if the sinner for love’s sake will accept salvation. And she has.”

  The slow old voice had changed. This man was speaking with the tongue of angels. He was no longer Old Parson. He was Old Sage, who was also dead.

  “But I did not know that I suffered for her, I did not know I had taken her sin upon me.”

  “You pledged yourself to love her when you were in Paris,” Old Sage reminded her. “You knew that you must love her. When you accept the burden of love you pledge yourself to know not what. Knowledge of what we are doing is not always given to us even while we fulfil the pledge.”

  “Treachery is hard to forgive,” said Lucy. “I have not forgiven Anne. It was not my voice that spoke the words.”

  “No,” agreed the man beside her. “But you called upon God and Christ within you spoke the words. Will you now betray Christ?”

  “It is hard to forgive treachery,” Lucy repeated.

  “Indeed it is. I found it so,” agreed the man. “I found it harder to forgive the treachery of the smiling friend who betrayed me to the stake than to forgive the men who lit the fire. Indeed it was only in the flame that I could do it.”

  He was no longer speaking with the tongue of angels. He had a high weak old voice and he was no longer Old Sage. His head came out from the shadows of his cloak in much the same sort of comic way that the head of a wise old tortoise appears from its shell, and she saw the bearded face of the old man in her Book of Hours who walked between the lilies and the roses. She looked at him for a long time and could not have told when his face changed from that of a mere man and became the face of forgiveness itself. She woke up, and knew she had slept for long. Her patient little daughter was still with her, sitting on the floor beside the bed dressing and undressing one dolly after the other to make the time pass.

  “Mary,” she said softly, and there was healing in the mere speaking of the name, since it was one of the loveliest in the world and belonged to her daughter.

  Mary looked up and smiled. “Maman,” she replied.

  6

  They all slept well that night but were awakened at first light by the sound of voices and tramping feet in the passage outside the cell. Lucy, waking suddenly, might have been frightened, only the voices were so cheerful and one, almost beyond hope or belief, she recognized.

  The door was unlocked and Justus walked in. He sat on the edge of Lucy’s bed and hugged her briefly, then said, “You are free. Get up quickly and get dressed. You too, Anne. Get the children dressed. You are free but you cannot stay in England. There is a ship on the Thames sailing for Flanders in an hour, on the ebb tide, and a boat waiting for you at the water steps to take you out to her. You will find food and all you want on board. Be quick. Jackie, do as
you are told. Yes, you can take the puppy.”

  It was still so dark that they had to light candles to see what they were doing. Justus packed their few belongings into bundles as they dressed, Mary directing the bestowal of her dollies with quiet competence, and briefly told Lucy all that had happened as he did so. He had been cleared and set free two days ago but had not been allowed to see her. He and Tom had spent the night packing Lucy’s belongings at the lodgings, and they were already on board. Her little desk had been returned to her, her papers and letters safely back inside it and her jewels untouched. Tom had cleared Lucy and Justus and convinced Parliament that they were not spies. It had not taken too long, for he was a trusted Parliament agent.

  “He is not coming to say goodbye to you,” said Justus. “He thought you would not want to see him.”

  “I hope never to see him again,” said Lucy. “I can forgive anything done to myself but how could he behave so to Charles?”

  “You will have to forgive him,” said Justus grimly. “He has been good to you, and he has got us free, and he will be returning to Europe later. The working of other people’s minds is always incomprehensible but one must forgive.”

  “You are coming with me, Justus?” whispered Lucy.

  “I am not allowed to, my dear. I shall not be allowed to leave England again and you will not be allowed to return. This is goodbye. Thank God for those days of paradise together at Antwerp. I wish I could have seen the old man who let you have his house so cheaply, and thanked him for it. If you ever see him, thank him for me. It is goodbye for you and me but do not forget that Richard and Dewi are on the other side of the Channel, and Smuts and his family. You have friends. You are not alone.”

  He talked on as cheerfully as he could and did not look at Lucy. They were quickly ready and went out into the passage where a warder was waiting for them with a lantern. He took them down to the arched doorway by which they had entered the Tower, where the Lieutenant was standing. He bowed pleasantly to Lucy and Justus and showed them the order for their release, signed by the Lord Protector, that he held in his hand. Then the door was opened and they went out, and a glorious rush of fresh air met them. In a moment it seemed to blow away all the terror and smells of the prison. The sky was now a translucent green and the morning star was shining. London lay sleeping beside the river and the silence was deep. They went down the steps to the boat that was waiting and it seemed that Justus was not allowed to go out to the ship with them. They must say goodbye here on the steps. They did so and it seemed to them both a terrible rending of farewell. Yet all round them was this great cool freshness and silence.