The Child From the Sea

  “We are pilgrims,” she said bravely.

  “Have you come from far?” asked the man, and his bright eyes darted with amusement from her tousled head to her bare feet.

  Lucy opened her mouth to say they had come from Roch but before she could speak Old Parson replied for them both. “From a great distance,” he said, and his voice had an unusual depth in it. Lucy saw that he was not afraid of this man, in spite of the authority, for he went on with a steadiness and clarity unusual with him, “I have come from the place of the husks and swine, and the child who brought me here, who knows where she came from? Is it true, sir, that if after long journeying pardon is asked at the shrine of St. David it is granted by the Most High God?”

  “My dear sir,” said the man, almost with irritation, “the journey of penitence is short. You do not need to travel from the other end of nowhere with peas in your shoes to reach that mercy,” and he jerked his head up towards the rood. “It is in your heart.”

  “Then we need not have bothered to come,” said the practical Lucy.

  “Pilgrimages have their uses,” explained the man. “They are sacraments and symbols, like the rood up there, and the bread and wine. They bring conviction.” He turned back to Old Parson. “And if you, sir, have become so far desperate as to doubt the mercy of God you had best follow me now along the pilgrim way. No, not up the nave. They did not enter up the nave. We must go out and in again. Come, child.”

  He led the way back through the west door and round through the cloister quadrangle towards the door that led into the north transept. He went first, his hands placed palm to palm, pilgrim fashion, and Old Parson followed him, his head bent low over his prayerful hands, and Lucy came after, her shoes tucked under one arm and her brown palms pressed together very devoutly; her eyes twinkling with the sudden discovery that religion could be fun. The man’s eyes had been twinkling too, she had noticed, when he had led them from the Cathedral, but there had been also a gravity that seemed vaguely familiar as though she had seen him before somewhere. Gravity came to her also as her bare feet in the green cloister grass became aware of the hidden path of the pilgrims. It was grass-grown now but her bare feet knew about it.

  They went up the north transept and came to the holiest part of this Cathedral, the place of the altar, the shrines and chapels and the tombs of the great dead. Lucy had not been here before and she was too awed to be conscious of much more than sunbeams and pillars and fine carving that was like sea spray frozen into stillness. The way beneath her feet still held her and even if she had not been guided she would have followed it up the north choir aisle, to kneel where the pilgrims had once knelt before a raised platform where the shrine containing the saint’s relics had been placed at times of pilgrimage. They knelt there while the man told them this, and then they followed him to the sanctuary and saw the peep-hole in what had once been an outer wall, through which people outside could see the shrine, and here once more they knelt. The relics of St. David had been hidden at the time of the Reformation, no one quite knew where, and had not been found yet, but it was as their guide had hoped and the imaginations of the child and the child-like old man supplied what was wanting. For them, kneeling here so close to the high altar, St. David the great saint of Wales was truly present to aid them with his prayers. They knelt one on each side of the man facing towards the altar and to both of them the fancy came that he was himself the saint, for his authoritative presence held them with a sense of absolute security. If he said anything was so, it was so.

  “If I ask St. David to make someone I love happy, will he do it?” asked Lucy.

  “Certainly,” said the man.

  “The pardon is sure?” pleaded Old Parson, plucking at his cloak.

  “Perfectly,” said the man.

  “But I cannot remember my sins, you see,” cried Old Parson in anguish. “How can I obtain pardon when I do not know what they are?”

  “God knows what they are,” said the man. “The only requisite on your part is penitence. Now, my dear sir, pray for forgiveness once and for all and know once and for all that you have received it. I meanwhile will show this child the tomb of the great Lord Rhys.”

  He spoke with such absolute conviction that he seemed to grow in stature as he spoke, and Lucy was quite sure that Old Parson would be happy now. For the next half-hour she and the man walked through the sunbeams, backwards and forwards through history. They saw the tomb of Rhys ap Tudor the father of the Princess Nest, and the tomb of Edward Earl of Richmond, father of King Henry the Seventh, and other great men whose stories the man told her, and then sitting in Bishop Vaughan’s chapel behind the High Altar they talked of St. David himself.

  They were still talking when they heard a step and looking up saw that Old Parson had joined them. His face was shining and rested, like the sand when the sea has washed over it and withdrawn again, leaving it renewed and clean beneath the sun. His eyes were bright like blue-washed stones.

  “It broke over me,” he said simply.

  “I knew it would,” said the man.

  “Warm and gold,” said Old Parson.

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “Which way did the pilgrims go out?” asked Old Parson.

  “Through the south door,” said the man. “Shall we go now?”

  They re-formed and with their hands palm to palm upon their breasts they walked with great rejoicing down the length of the Cathedral and out through the south door, and were met by more gold, as though this paradisal day had turned towards its ending.

  “There is only one sin that you need now to remember,” said the man to Old Parson, “and that is the one you must never commit. It is the sin of doubting if you are forgiven.”

  He bowed to them both, lifted his hand in a gesture of blessing and moved away. At the angle of the Cathedral wall he turned round and lifted both his arms in farewell. He looked like a winged bird. Then he disappeared into the western gold.

  “He was no mortal man but St. David himself,” said Old Parson with conviction.

  But Lucy knew now who he was for she had recognized the same bird that she had seen in the pulpit. He was Chancellor Pritchard. But she left Old Parson thinking he was St. David because she thought it would be good for him to think that. She took his hand and they climbed back up the long flight of steps and stood for a while at the top looking back. The ruined palace dreamed in shadow but the tower of the Cathedral was alight with flame and all the stones of it glowed with gold. They stood gazing for a long time and then went through the archway and climbed up the cobbled lane back to the inn.

  Lucy offered the old landlord the little gold brooch she wore, in payment for their meal and the stabling of the ponies. He did not want to take it but she loved giving away her possessions and he could not withstand her pleading. But he gave them, for love’s sake, more bara ceich and some home-cured ham and a couple of apples to eat on the way. As they left the village they found that the women were already bringing in their cows. In their dresses of homespun grey flannel, the cows tethered to their arms, they knitted as they walked but looked up to smile at the old man and the little girl as they passed. The last thing Old Parson and Lucy heard, as they gained the wild again, was the musical cow-call of the peasants. It rose and fell with unearthly beauty, dying away behind them as they rode off into the twilight.

  3

  It was a magic ride home. The ponies were fresh after their rest and they trotted sure-footed as conies. Something of the enchantment of twilight seemed to run like wine through their bodies and to lift and toss their manes as though with invisible fingers. Lucy had noticed before how animals in the wild at night suffer a change and are clothed with princeliness. The night is theirs, not man’s. They take their true place. The dew fell and Lucy’s wild rough hair was wet with it while upon Old Parson it alighted like a benediction; baptismal dew bringing newness of life. The stars pricked ou
t and an eye of the harvest moon glimmered beyond the mountain. There was mist in the valleys and the sea breathed deeply. The rhythm of its breath seemed the heartbeat of the world, the pulse of life in the veins of men and ponies.

  They did not stop to eat for they had decided that the food the landlord had given them was for the scapegoat, but their hunger gave them no pain, only a sharpening of the sense of joy and a deepening of their peace. They came to Newgale almost before they were aware of it and saw the lights in the fishermen’s cottages, and then they were home, on the bridge where they had seen the kingfisher, and it was as though they had been away for a hundred years. The moon was up now and the Brandy Brook was like liquid silver flowing below the bridge. Everything was very clear in its light, most finely etched, more delicate than by day because unclouded by colour. They tethered the ponies and walked through the wet grass by the stream and climbed up through the wood.

  “I wish he could have come too,” said Lucy sadly. Yet she knew he could not have come for in the nature of things scapegoats were always outside the warm hut circle that men built about the fire. But there were other circles and other fires and perhaps he knew of them.

  They came to the great rock and she gave her bird call. Was he here tonight? They waited, and then she called again, and he came from the trees above and stood peering down at them. For a few moments, as though he had been a shy wild animal, she took no notice of him, but busied herself putting the food in the hiding-place. Then leaving Old Parson beside the rock she climbed up to him, and he let her come nearer to him than ever before. Perhaps he would have fled before she could stretch out her hand, but she slipped on a stone and he shot out a long arm to keep her from falling, and she clung to his hand with both hers, smiling up at him. What can I do? she thought wildly. What can I give? But it seemed she could do and give nothing because he pulled his hand away and ran.

  But there had been an exchange between them. She was left with the wound he had dealt her, from which compassion flowed, but he, hiding far up in the woods, wrapped his spirit about a new warmth. The darkness within him, which his groping awareness had always pictured as an emptiness falling to the abyss, had now a glow within it. The sins fell and fell through the darkness, yet he was never free of them because they came again thick and fast as bats on the wing, but this warm glow did not fall. Later, when he had fetched his food and eaten it in the turf hut he had made in the valley behind the wood, and laid himself down to sleep, he crossed his arms upon his breast as though to assist his spirit to keep it in place. Then he contemplated it within himself, warmed himself at it, and began to know that he need not fear its loss. Stars, he had discovered, could be obscured but did not fall. Only evil fell. The thought of his own eventual fall into damnation, dragged down headlong in the wake of the sins, that had drenched him with fear every time it confronted him, now lost something of its terror. Whatever in him could cling about the warmth and light would not fall. Whatever did fall would be a good riddance. He turned over and went to sleep.

  Lucy returned to Old Parson and they climbed down again to the cwm. She kissed the old man goodbye at the door of his room, then fetched the ponies from the bridge and rode home up the hill. She knew she ought to take them to the stable, not to the meadow, to be rubbed down after the long ride home, but she was afraid the door might be locked. However, it was open and the stable empty, and the bridles of the riding horses were gone from their place. Then she realized what had happened. It was much later than she had realized and her father and the men servants were out looking for her, and her mother and Nan-Nan were perhaps very anxious. She felt a pang of compunction, but she unharnessed the two ponies and rubbed them down unhurriedly and fed and watered them. And then she thanked them for their great goodness. The moonlight and starlight shone through the stable window and they were spun about with silver. Prince might have been made of moonlight and even stout little Jeremiah had a radiance. She was loth to leave them and tired though she was she lingered, leaning her head against Jeremiah’s neck. In spite of the happiness of the pilgrimage, and of Old Parson’s joy and relief, she felt intensely sad. She was not afraid of punishment, for she was always ready to face the music, but now there was this wound at the centre of her joy, and she was changed. When she left the stable, crossed the lane to the garden and saw the castle blocked so strongly against the stars, the fancy came that it was receding. What had happened to her? As a child she had possessed her world. It was her first intimation that she might not always do so. In her panic she raced down the garden and up the steps to the hall door, sobbing, “Nan-Nan!” The door opened as she reached it, for her footsteps had been heard, and she was in Nan-Nan’s arms, and then her mother’s, and then Nan-Nan’s again, and the queer new sadness was forgotten.

  Five

  1

  Lucy was punished, but not severely, so thankful was the household to have her safely home. “Do you call that a whipping?” she enquired sarcastically of her father the next morning, for she had scarcely felt it. But she found that he had dropped the cane to blow his nose and she had to turn her attention to comforting him. “I just went to St. Davids,” she said patiently. “On pilgrimage.”

  “Fool’s rubbish,” said William. “And let this teach you, Bud, never to listen to sermons. Parsons are all very well for marryings and buryings but once you start putting into practice the damn silly nonsense they preach you never know where it will lead you. I thought I’d lost you, Bud. I thought you’d fallen over the cliff.”

  “I’ve more sense than to fall over the cliff. Sir! Listen! You must let me go where I like, and do what I like or I will not be able to bear it!”

  Then she in turn burst into tears and flung herself into his arms. What could she do? Here was her mother ill from the anxiety and her father crying and Nan-Nan strangely distant with her, and all because she had been away for a few hours on pilgrimage. She must be free. Couldn’t they understand? She bellowed with grief and William picked her up and carried her, penitent as he believed, to her mother’s bed, and the escapade was forgiven and dropped into the past.

  But Nan-Nan, though loving, remained remote. Damaris Perrot had been awakened out of her first sleep that Sunday night by the sound of trotting ponies, had looked out of her window and seen Lucy and Old Parson climbing up into the wood, and had thought it her duty to tell Nan-Nan what she had seen. The top of the wood was one of the habitual haunts of the sin-eater and Nan-Nan had known then that Lucy had disobeyed her. Lucy, she now remembered, had made no promise of obedience, but all the same Nan-Nan was grieved at her heart, as well as deeply anxious for the safety of this unmanageable child. She began to think more favourably of Elizabeth’s wish of spending a winter in London. Nan-Nan had never been outside Wales, or set eyes on any sizeable town, and her mental picture of London was a mixture of Golden Grove and the new Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. There was hope that such a place might have a civilizing influence on Lucy. But, and here Nan-Nan did not waver, William must not be left behind. Not again. Nor would it be wise for him to live with his mother-in-law for though they were mutually attached that was an arrangement that seldom succeeded. If they went at all they must hire their own little house for the winter and keep together, Nan-Nan was not yet certain of the wisdom of the step but whenever Elizabeth discussed it with her she was progressively more in sympathy with her mistress.

  The fine weather broke in the first of the autumn gales. The rain drove horizontally from the sea before the wind, and it was so dark at midday that Elizabeth had to light the candle in her bower when she wanted to stitch at embroidered caps for the new baby. She felt ill and depressed and William, harassed by crops in danger, was not sympathetic. Only the children enjoyed themselves, splashing like ducks in the wet.

  Then the gale blew itself out and it was summer again. The early mornings were cool, bespangled with silver spiders’ webs, the days warm and still, scented by the first windfall apples and the f
irst blackberries, and the harvest was saved after all. The weeks slipped by. The song of the robins was sharp and sweet and the starlings chattered like a lot of old wives outside an ale house. But the swallows were gathering to go away to the moon for the winter and Lucy felt uneasy. She was not going to the moon for the winter, she kept reminding herself, and her thoughts turned to Christmas in the great hall, the yule log leaping into golden flame, the kissing ring gay with ribbons and gleaming berries and the wassail bowl smelling of raisins and honey.

  “Not much longer to Christmas,” she said one evening to Gwladys the cook as she stood beside her in the kitchen watching her make suckets. With a long two-pronged fork she was packing fruit into earthenware jars. Presently she would fill up the jars with thick syrup, seal them and put them away. They would reappear at Christmas and the plums and ginger and blackberries would have become sucket sweet-meats such as the children loved.

  “ ’Tis greedy you are, Lucy fach,” said Gwladys, but she laughed and gave her a handful of blackberries. Lucy crunched them with pleasure for though she had had her supper she was a child who always had room for more. She was wearing her nightshift stuffed into Richard’s breeches, for Nan-Nan had put her to bed and left her apparently sleeping a quarter of an hour ago.

  “Only young ones want winter,” said John Shepherd. He was sitting on the seat inside the chimney by the fire and Lucy went to him and laid a hand upon his knee, for he had spoken sadly. There was no one in the kitchen except herself and John Shepherd and old Gwladys, for the young servants had gone to a merrymaking at the inn. The kitchen, so empty, seemed vast, like a cavern inside a mountain as she looked at it from the inside of the chimney, that was as big as a little room. The firelight was reflected in the pewter plates on the great dresser, and the rows of jugs on the hooks. In the centre of the stone floor was the castle well, a deep dark place where sometimes there were rumblings as of thunder. Lucy adored the kitchen. Here, where hummocks of rock showed among the uneven stone flags, one was down among the tree roots. From these rocks, the fire and the dark depth of water, the castle and its life had grown. She herself had grown from this, she thought, from the fire and the water and the rock. And from John Shepherd. Standing beside him, her hand still on his knee, she felt suddenly that he was as much a part of her beginning as her father and mother and Nan-Nan. Gwladys too. Such men and women had held it all up for generation after generation and when they did not do so the tree would fall. Yet no one considered them down here among the roots. They were not remembered. She turned and put her arm round John Shepherd’s neck and stood for a moment with her face pressed against his cheek. Then she ran to Gwladys and flung her arms as far round the old woman’s vast waist as they would go. Then she burst into tears and vanished up the stone steps to the hall, so quickly that they scarcely saw her go. Gwladys turned to John Shepherd, her eyebrows raised in concern.