Read The Child From the Sea Page 17


  “It is strange, Lucy, that they should have sung the Dean’s own hymn today. He wrote it towards the end of his life and it was set to music. I was told that when the boys were to sing it, ill though he was he would come in wrapped in his cloak and sit in his stall and listen.”

  “Is it about sin?” asked Lucy.

  Her grandmother looked at her, startled. “It is a hymn of penitence,” she said.

  “What did the Dean do?” asked Lucy.

  Mrs. Gwinne was getting up and shaking out her skirts, and she had about her now the remoteness of a grown-up who wishes to change the conversation.

  “There is no need to know about adult sin at your age, my dear,” was her answer.

  “I do know about it,” said Lucy. “It is a tangle and we are all caught up in it, squirming like flies in a spider’s web. I knew a sin-eater once and he was a very nice man. I could not hear all the words of the hymn. Will you say it to me, please?”

  Mrs. Gwinne capitulated and sat down again, for she knew her granddaughter’s tenacity. She repeated the poem as well as she could.

  Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

  Which was my sin, though it was done before?

  Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

  And do run still: though still I do deplore?

  When thou hast done, Thou has not done,

  For I have more.

  Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

  Others to sin? and made my sin their door?

  Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

  A year, or two, but wallowed in a score?

  When thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

  For I have more.

  I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

  My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

  But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

  Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore:

  And having done that, Thou hast done,

  I fear no more.

  “Was his last thread his last sin?” Lucy asked. “How nice to be dead and not have to sin any more.”

  “Poor old coachman must be tired of waiting for us,” said Mrs. Gwinne. Rising now with finality she took her grandchild by the hand and led her firmly from the building.

  Lucy’s mood changed instantly. “Now for the bridge,” she said joyously, and leaving her grandmother she ran on ahead to find the coach.

  The southern boundary of the city was the river and they drove through the south gate on to London Bridge itself. Though there were thirty landing places on the Thames there was only this one bridge, and to Lucy it seemed one of the glories of the world. Eighteen great arches carried the famous shopping centre right across the river. The buildings were tall and some of the houses above the shops were carried by arches across the street. Between the blocks of buildings there were open bays and here one could lean over the wall and see the river and watch the shipping. The shops on the bridge held everything the heart could desire, silks and velvets, jewels and silverware, perfumes and spices from the East, fine china and delicate glassware. Everything that the ships brought up the river found its way to London Bridge. There was even a shop that sold parrots and lapdogs, and little monkeys and marmosets such as the Queen loved. Being so small herself Henrietta Maria liked diminutive creatures and people said that when she travelled she was followed by a whole coach full of monkeys and dwarfs. Lucy had visited this shop once before but it had broken her heart to see these little creatures. Their eyes were so sad as they sat shivering in their cages. There had been one especially, silver in colour with a black face, who had looked at her as though imploring her to buy him. But she had had no money then, and Mrs. Gwinne had told her this morning that a marmoset would cost more than one silver piece. Yet she could not forget him. “If we go past the shop today,” she told herself, “I will shut my eyes.”

  They moved slowly along the bridge, stopping here and there for Mrs. Gwinne to make a few purchases. She was not a wealthy woman, least of all now with her grandchildren needing so much help, and she bought only a few things and these only after careful consideration. Lucy was not bored for everything she saw fascinated her, and today, for the first time in her life, she had money to spend. If Dr. Cosin’s silver piece would not buy a marmoset it might buy the red shoes she saw in the window of the third shop they entered. She had always wanted red shoes. While Mrs. Gwinne was rubbing a piece of green cloth between finger and thumb, testing its worthiness to be made into a winter cloak and hood for her granddaughter, Lucy ran out of the shop to look at the shoes from outside. Running away from her grandmother was the last thing she intended, and she would have been back beside her again in a moment had it not been for the sudden excitement that broke out on the bridge.

  “The Prince! The Prince! Coming up the river!” First one voice cried it out and then another, and there was a stampede of the passersby to the open bays between the shops upon the east side of the bridge. There was one not far from the shop and Lucy was off like the wind. She would get to the front against the parapet or she would die. Diving this way and that wherever she saw an opening, thrusting with her sharp elbows and kicking hard, with her pink hood lost and her rose-coloured gown torn, she reached the parapet. But she could not get to the front for a solid line of bodies was leaning over it. Almost weeping with frustration she attacked the three backs nearest to her; slim backs clad in well-cut doublets, emerald green, silver grey and periwinkle blue. The emerald back had a familiar look and upon that she beat the hardest; then as its owner swung round with an oath she wriggled in between him and the taller figure in blue and hooked herself over the parapet of the bridge, clinging like a limpet with hands and feet and the whole of her defiant body. Let them unhook her if they dare!

  “Lucy, you little devil!” ejaculated Tom Howard. He began to explain who she was and they all three burst out laughing, and the young man in blue put his arm round her to protect her from the pressure of the crowd behind them. She glanced up briefly, smiling, then turned back towards the river, for the barge was coming towards them.

  He was coming up the river to Whitehall. The busy traffic on the water had come to a standstill, the boats and barges drawing in to the banks with the men pulling off their hats and cheering and the women waving their handkerchiefs. Were the King and Queen there? asked the gossips on the bridge. No, only the Prince and the Earl of Newcastle, his tutor, and his gentlemen, said a man behind Lucy. They wouldn’t be cheering like that if the King and Queen were there. But everyone loved the Prince. Even the Puritans. It was said the Puritans wanted to depose the King and put the Prince on the throne. “Traitor devils!” murmured Tom Howard hotly, but the young man in blue who held Lucy replied under his breath, “It might be the answer.”

  Then Lucy heard no more for the barge was coming nearer and the people on the bridge were beginning to cheer too. The golden summer day was turning towards evening and a cool breeze came over the water, lifting the folds of the Royal Standard flying from the stern of the barge. It came strongly forward, two white-crested waves rippling back from the prow, the banks of oars rising and falling in perfect time. The level sunlight gleamed on the flashing blades of the oars and glinted back in points of light from the gilded carving of the barge. All was a swift movement of colour and light held in the blue of water and sky like a gliding star, the mysterious planet that had shone when the Prince was born.

  He stood bareheaded in the prow, waving his hat to the cheering people. He was a tall boy for his age and stood very erect, with dignity and grace. His hair fell to his shoulders, black and shining. His doublet was of golden satin with a big white lace collar that contrasted startlingly with the darkness of his skin. The barge had come almost to the bridge and he looked up at the cheering people crowded against the balustrade, lifting his hat and smiling at them in the way he ha
d been taught, but holding the smile with difficulty, licking his lips now and then when they grew stiff and dry with the effort. Lucy saw his face more clearly than she had ever seen anything in her life, a square face dominated by the big nose and the large dark eyes. The Prince, looking up, saw the little girl leaning over the parapet and knew with the instinct that all children have that here was someone of his own age. His difficult smile changed to a grin so merry and infectious that Lucy’s intentness broke up and with the whole of her self she smiled back at him, her eyes sparkling. He tipped his head far back and they laughed and waved to each other until the last second. Then the barge shot forward under the bridge and he was gone.

  She was so tired, she found, that when the young man in blue lifted her down from the wall she could scarcely stand and was glad to hold to his sleeve.

  “You have lost your hood, Lucy,” said Tom Howard. “And torn your gown. What a gipsy you are.”

  “Has she run away from her mother?” asked the other young man. Lucy, coming to herself again, looked up into the face above the blue sleeve to which she was clinging. She considered both the strange young men, flashing her glance from one to the other so piercingly that they laughed. They were brothers, she thought, for they were alike, tall and good to look at, with the easy manner of those who have never made contact with the necessity for earning a living. If they did not look as though they owned the earth that was because they had never given a thought to the fact that they did. It was a fact of nature that had not yet been called in question.

  Tom told her their names, Algernon and Robert Sidney. It was Algernon who was dressed in dove grey and Robert who wore periwinkle blue. Though she had not heard their illustrious name before Lucy sensed that these were young men upon whom the Princess Nest would have looked with a favourable eye, and she walked away between them with an air of such delicate yet comical dignity that they laughed again. Then her mood changed, as the buccaneer suddenly became aware of grave financial loss. “My silver piece!” she cried, and pulling her hand from Algernon’s she ran back towards the river wall, thrusting the people aside that she might search among the cobbles for her lost treasure. Tom Howard blushed for shame, disassociating himself from this dishevelled little bantam hen scrabbling for corn, but both the Sidneys followed her and endeavoured to be helpful.

  “It was a large silver piece?” asked Algernon.

  Lucy lifted a flushed face. “It was not large but Doctor Cosin gave it to me. When the Prince came I must have dropped it.”

  “We will not find it now,” said Robert gently. “Do not grieve, Lucy. I will give you another silver piece. What do you long for? A marmoset?”

  Lucy looked up at him, as transfigured as though she had lifted the edge of a curtain and looked into heaven. Then the curtain dropped again. “No,” she said. “A pair of shoes. A silver piece would not buy a marmoset.”

  “But you want a marmoset,” said Robert. “And I have several silver pieces and I want to give you a marmoset. Shall we choose one?”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth before she was running across the bridge, in and out of the traffic, making for the pet shop upon the other side. Horrified, he leaped after her, afraid she would be run over. Laughing, Algernon returned to Tom.

  Lucy’s face was pressed against the shop window when Robert caught up with her, her eyes searching anxiously among the little creatures within. “There was a special one,” she said, in desperate anxiety lest it should be gone. “Silver and small. There it is!”

  “That one in the corner?” he asked dubiously, for the poor little creature looked very fragile. But Lucy was no longer with him. She was in the shop and had the marmoset in her arms. He followed her and looked into the great dark eyes so tragically set in a tiny velvet mask of a face. The eyes were too sorrowful to reflect light, and the silver body had become tarnished with misery, but the promise of beauty was there in the whiskers that fringed the little face; they shone in the sun like threads of fine spun glass. And it knew how to cling to what it wanted. It had its forearms round Lucy’s neck, its tail was endeavouring to encircle her waist and it was giving little frantic cries of pleading. Lucy too knew what she wanted. Her eyes pierced straight through the doubtful Robert, transfixing him to her will.

  Nevertheless he made enquiries of the salesman as to the marmoset’s age and health. It was a young one, he was told, and valuable, but it had been difficult to keep alive because its mother had died; but with a good home it should not now be difficult to rear. With his back to Lucy Robert took out his purse and paid for the creature. When he turned to her again she was holding the marmoset in the crook of one arm as she had seen so many mothers holding an ailing child, and her face was grave. The child who had rushed across the road to find the marmoset had vanished now in someone much older. “I believe he cost too much,” she said in a low voice. “But I cannot give him back for if I do not have him he will die. Can you afford it?”

  He respected her feelings, and he did not laugh as he assured her that he could afford the marmoset.

  “Thank you,” said Lucy. “Thank you for my marmoset. His name is Jacob.”

  They crossed the bridge again and found Algernon Sidney and Tom with a very shaken Mrs. Gwinne. The face that she turned on her granddaughter was sterner than Lucy had ever seen it. “Madam, I did not mean to run away,” she said.

  Mrs. Gwinne, believing her, gravely inclined her head and by intuitive mutual consent the thrashing out of this matter was postponed until later. But the stern glance was not relaxed. It passed on to the marmoset and remained there.

  “His name is Jacob,” said Lucy with rock-like firmness.

  Robert explained, recalling Mrs. Gwinne to the remembrance of a former brief meeting. His mother, he believed, had the honour to number Mrs. Gwinne among her friends. Mrs. Gwinne’s face softened and she smiled. She was too good a woman to be a snob but nevertheless she was not averse to having her acquaintance with Lady Sidney expanded into friendship. Doing violence to a natural distaste for monkeys, and a prophetic foreboding as to this one, she forced herself to caress Jacob’s velvet head and to express her gratitude, on her grand-daughter’s behalf, for so valuable a gift. Then the coach was found and the ladies handed into it.

  “Have you seen the lions at the Tower of London, Lucy?” asked Robert. She shook her head, “Then with your grandmother’s permission I will take you there one day.”

  “It is a bargain?” asked Lucy.

  “It is a bargain,” he said.

  Eight

  1

  It was a month later, when she was back again in King Street, Covent Garden, that Lucy’s world collapsed about her. The pattern of her childhood, the father and mother, the children and Nan-Nan, had always seemed immutable to her. When the family unit had been moved from Roch she had been disturbed, but it had been set up again in Covent Garden and she could adjust herself to change of place if the family itself remained intact. The quarrels that broke out so often now between her father and mother made her feel as though pulled two ways by a branching tree, but it had never occurred to her that the tree could split in half and crash to the ground, bringing its nesting birds down with it in its fall.

  The day began happily. She woke soon after dawn and dressed quietly, because she shared this room at the top of the house with Nan-Nan and she must not wake her. When she was dressed she tiptoed across the room to the big bed. Ever since the fright at Golden Grove, when she had woken up and found the fourposter empty, she had needed constantly to check that Nan-Nan was there. Being so small she tended to get lost in the billows of her feather bed but she was more visible than usual this morning, lying on her back as though she had not moved all night. Yet Lucy doubted if she had been sleeping during the hours when she had not moved. Though oblivion had come to her now she lay like someone on the rack. Lucy pushed the horrid idea away from her and turned to pluck Jacob from the
padded box beside her bed where he slept. He protested, screwing his tiny hands in his sleepy eyes, but when she tucked him in the crook of her left arm and he felt the warmth of her body his whimper turned to mutterings of pleasure. With her thin shoes hung round her neck by their ribbons she crept out of the room and ran lightly down the stairs, unbarred the door and came out into the fresh and dewy sparkle of Covent Garden; the loveliest square in London, and never lovelier than at five o’clock on a summer morning when there was no one there but Lucy and Jacob.

  She put him down and he ran after her to where the stalls of the country people, who were allowed to come daily to sell fruit and flowers and fresh vegetables, stood empty and waiting. Here, for a few moments, they played together. Jacob was still a very small and thin monkey, but his coat was no longer tarnished and whenever he was with Lucy his great dark eyes reflected her love. For Lucy was his joy and his life. With her he was a charming and delightful little animal but apart from her he was cantankerous, mischievous and a perfect nuisance. With her this morning he leaped and played as though he had been the first monkey in Eden, and the growing light shone on his silver coat.

  William, who had a grudging affection for this London square that he had chosen out of all others to be Lucy’s home, had told her its history. The square had once been the convent garden of the monks of Westminster, the men of the White Abbey of whom the Harper had sung at Golden Grove. It adjoined their graveyard and had been called Frère Pye’s garden, but William had not been able to tell Lucy anything about Frère Pye. What had happened to him, she often wondered, when Henry the Eighth had turned out the monks? She hoped that loving this patch of earth so much he had become a shepherd when he could not be a monk any more, one of the King’s shepherds whose sheep had grazed under the apple trees and among the gravestones of the monks.