Time flies when the mind turns inward to the past it treasures and it seemed only a few moments later that she heard the distant cheers and the sound of an approaching cavalcade beat in her blood. Processions of any kind always excited Lucy; kings and princes coming and going, wild beasts on the move, the migration of birds, ants upon the march and the passing of clouds across the sky. They thrilled her with a sense of some vast purpose to be achieved and some great haven to be reached. Even when they were caught up short, abortive, or satisfied with some minor goal, the echoes seemed to sound on through time. And this procession was bringing Charles once more from his world into hers. They were swinging together again like two clock figures who can meet only briefly at the striking of the hour.
They were coming under the linden trees, the summer dust rising under the horses’ hoofs, the sun piercing through the leaves to illumine the colours of plumes and doublets and the sparkling points of the swords and halberds. They were passing her, a detachment of cavalry first and then the young Prince and Princess of Orange whom she had seen last as children, the Queen of Bohemia and her two dark eagle-faced sons, Rupert and Maurice, Charles and his young brother James and the ladies and gentlemen in attendance upon them. She watched them from the depths of her dark tree as once she had watched the procession at Exeter from the narrow street down which she had turned back to her own world. Now, as then, they passed by and she was alone again.
They were gone and only three of them seemed still with her. The Queen, gaunt in face and figure but still a woman of grace and beauty, holding herself proudly and sitting her horse superbly. And Charles, no longer the boy she had married but a confident young man with a new pride in his bearing as well as a new hardness in his face. And the third was Robert Sidney, with the same dignity and gentleness that she remembered. To know he was here at The Hague brought comfort; for Charles had changed so much in so short a time.
Yet it was his face only that she saw when they had all gone and the road emptied and she was alone in her tree, for he was her husband and she wanted him intolerably. Yet how could she come to him? What could she do? At this moment, nothing. Only sit here and wait for Herman to fetch her.
But he did not come. She heard the church clocks strike six and the shadows lengthened on the grass. Two storks flew over the tree and she heard the gulls calling. She saw and heard these things but her mind grew numbed as her body grew stiff with fatigue. She supposed that Herman, the most casual of men, had forgotten her, yet she did not want to leave her tree because she did not know what to do if she did. Having seen Charles existence no longer seemed possible without him, and yet there was no way to come to him. So there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.
There were laughing voices in the garden and she saw a group of young men and girls standing beside the lake watching the swans, and Charles was with them. They had come out to enjoy the coolness of the garden before getting ready for the banquet. She had not expected this. She had no experience yet of how Charles behaved in his own world, they had been together only in hers, and she did not know that he would always be where there was fun going on. The aloofness, the cold and royal dignity that was his father’s, would never be for him. She did not move from her tree, for she could not; but she did not take her eyes from his face until Robert Sidney came from the palace, it would seem with some message, for he and Charles drew away from the others and walked down the long path towards her, talking together.
She would never know what would have happened if at that moment the two storks had not come flying back. Perhaps she would have made no sign. Perhaps she would never have been united to Charles again. But they came back and being tame storks alighted fearlessly together on the roof of the Greek temple beside her tree. Charles and Robert, new to Holland, were not yet accustomed to the charms of the storks of The Hague. They broke off their conversation and looked up with delight at the two birds. It was Charles who saw her first and a mischievous grin broke across his face. He saw only that there was a girl in the tree, not who she was. “There is another bird up there,” he said to Robert, “a swallow.” And he ran up the steps beside the wall. “Lucy!” he gasped.
For a moment the expression on his face was one of blank dismay, then as she stretched out her hand to him and he saw his ring on her finger his face seemed to break up, the man’s hard mask dropped away and the boy behind came back. He gripped her hand and love poured from his face like light.
“Sir!” gasped Robert from the foot of the steps. What next? He had recently been appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince and found the appointment no sinecure. Charles swung round to him and was instantly a man again, rapping out the royal orders. “Go back to the others and say I have gone into the palace. And please see to it that my devotions in this temple are not disturbed.”
“You are acquainted with this lady, sir?” asked Robert coldly.
“Since my childhood. She is Mistress Lucy Walter.”
“Lucy Walter!” Robert forgot he was a mere gentleman of the bed-chamber and leapt up the steps to stand beside the Prince. “My little Lucy! Marry come up! I’d not have known you, Lucy.” He laughed, his old unchanged kindness pervasive as some astringent herb. It saved Lucy from the disaster of a storm of weeping and she smiled and held out her other hand to him. Her husband’s hand was cold from shock and shaking a little but Robert’s grip was warm and reassuring. Jealousy surged in Charles and he struck his free hand down on Robert’s wrist. “You have my orders,” he said, and Robert bowed and left them.
Charles lifted Lucy down from the wall and they went into the little temple and clung together as though each was welcoming the other back from the grave. And so indeed it seemed to them. The stretch of time that had brought them from the kitchen at Roch to this hidden place at the foot of the yew tree had seemed endless, but now it had doubled round in a circle and brought them to the roots of being again and in so doing had vanished. For a moment or two the westering sun, slanting into the little temple, seemed the warmth of the flames on the kitchen hearth. All the bells of The Hague rang out their joy as the new hour dawned and for the man and woman life began once more. “The maintaining of truth is so hard.” Not now. Never again, thought Charles. There was only the one woman and there would never be another.
They found themselves sitting on the seat inside the temple. Looking out they could see no more of the world than the flowers growing against the wall and it was easy to forget the dangers that threatened them beyond. Lucy, who need hide nothing from her husband, talked most. The question she had come to ask him, whether or not he wanted her, she did not ask for there was no need. The love that had shone from his face had banished the memory of that first look of dismay. She told him how she had come to be here, and going back a little she told him about the visit to Golden Grove and of her conviction, on the day the post came, that he had wanted her. “Did you want me then?” she asked.
“It was in October?” he asked.
“Yes. I think in the second week.”
“I did want you then,” he said thoughtfully. “It must have been the day when I told my mother about our marriage.”
“What did she say?” whispered Lucy.
But it seemed that he wished he had not spoken for he suddenly changed the subject and began to tell her about little Minette who had been brought out from England to be with their mother, and how enchanting she was, and then he said, “Lucy, I have only a week before the fleet puts to sea again. What are we to do?”
“You do not wish your family here to know about our marriage?” she asked.
He seemed horrified at the very thought. “ ’Sdeath, no! That would wreck all. And you are not to speak of it to a soul, Lucy. Where can we find another hidden home like the one at Roch?”
Lucy thought a little. “There is a fishing village on the coast called Scheveningen,” she said. “People from The Hague go there to watch the
wind chariots on the sands. The parents of Wilhelmientje’s maid Betje live there. They have a farm and Aunt Margaret said I might go and stay there when I liked. Shall I do that? You would not mind being Tomos Barlow once more, my sailor husband from one of the English ships?”
Charles laughed. “Would I mind? I wish I were really Tomos, not heir to the throne of England but just your husband Tomos.”
“That is not true, Charles,” said Lucy soberly. “The throne of England is what you want. Even as a little boy you desired it. You wept when you thought your father might lose what you wanted.”
He was silent and for a moment angry, for it would always vex him when she put her fingers on the truth, and to punish her he got to his feet. “I regret that I must leave you now,” he said formally, but looking down into her vivid brown face with its blue, deep eyes he was overwhelmed again by his love for her and pulled her into his arms. “Make the arrangements,” he whispered to her, “and then send a note to Sidney. He is trustworthy.”
“I would like him to know that we are married. He was fond of me when I was a child.”
“You may not tell him,” said Charles shortly. “He will think none the worse of you. Do you not know that to be the mistress of a prince is to occupy a position of honour?”
“I did not know,” said Lucy with equal shortness.
For a moment or two they were both taut with obstinacy, but they did not pull away from each other and presently Lucy relaxed with a willed gentleness that acknowledged no defeat. “If I have my integrity inside myself I can learn not to care too much what people say of me,” she said.
“Did you expect me to proclaim you as my wife, just at this moment when the tide is turning and I am about to sail for England to recapture it for my father?” demanded Charles.
“No, merely to acknowledge me for what I am if and when we are seen together. But I have yielded now, for I did not come here to embarrass you but hoping that I might be with you sometimes to love and comfort you. And so I choose to be at your command to honour and obey you in all the ways that are possible for me.”
The relaxation that was in her body was still not in his for he knew he had won no victory over her. The right of choice was something she still retained; and he wanted her to hold nothing back. Then the gulls flew over, returning from the inland feeding places to the sea to sleep, and their voices brought back memories of Roch and he knew that if fortune should be good to them, and if he could match this girl’s integrity with his own, he might yet find all his happiness in her love.
“You will not be sorry, Lucy,” he whispered. “One day I will make it all up to you.”
For a moment or two they were in bliss, then Lucy heard Herman striding up the garden path and withdrew herself gently. “Stay here,” she said. “I will go with him before he has time to see you.”
Charles stepped back and sat on the seat in the shadows as she ran down the steps. He heard her ask Herman, “Had you forgotten me?”
“No, my girl. But Prince William’s horse has fallen lame and I was delayed. Come quickly now. It is late.”
Their footsteps died away and Charles sat on in the little temple, for he found that he had their bliss with him still. The two years of their parting that she had passed in the quietness of familiar places, cherishing her love for him and pondering upon it, had been for him years of turmoil and anxiety. At first the longing for her had been acute, then it had gradually become merely a dull sense of loss, and the acute longing had returned only once, on that day in Paris when his mother had tried to make him promise to marry Mademoiselle de Montpensier. He could never see La Grande Mademoiselle, jewelled and elaborate and looking always a little coarsened by her wealth, without a haunting memory of Lucy’s simplicity and grace and that day, goaded beyond endurance, he had suddenly longed for her with such passion that he had told his mother he was already married and had shown her his copy of the marriage certificate.
After her first stunned silence the Queen had flown into one of her famous tempers and behaved like a little wild cat. After that she had wept herself exhausted and taken to her bed, made a remarkably quick recovery and summoned her chamberlain Harry Jermyn to a conference in her bedchamber. Jermyn had then tackled Charles. Their relationship was difficult. Charles disliked the large fair smiling man who for years had been his mother’s favourite servant. Even in England the usual rumours had circulated and here in Paris it was the same. Yet the Queen was most easily approached through her chamberlain and her son dared not quarrel with him. But he could talk good sense and he had talked it then. He had told Charles that to acknowledge his marriage at this juncture would gravely prejudice his succession, and would give his enemies yet another weapon against his father. “Hold your tongue, sir, I implore you,” he had said. “The Queen and I will do the same. The time of revealing this foolishness is not yet.”
Privately Jermyn had trusted it would be never. He had a keen nose for rats and he thought he smelt one in that marriage certificate. Enquiries must be made. There was that man Prodger who was always about the Prince. Not a man he cared for personally but a useful type. But at this point he had realized that the Prince was speaking.
“Then if Lucy joins me here it must be as my mistress and not my wife.”
“Join you here!” poor Jermyn had ejaculated. “God have mercy on us! I trust there is no danger of that, sir. Is she likely to follow you?”
“Only if I send for her.”
“Sir, I must ask for your promise that you will do no such thing.”
“I will think it over,” Charles had said with hauteur.
But he had not thought it over for there had been too many other things to think about. And now here was Lucy. His confidence that she would not come unless he sent for her had been misplaced. Sitting in the little temple he had a moment of reaction and was a little angry with her; she was too proud, too independent, and she could not have come at a more awkward time. This mutiny of the fleet and its desertion to him was the opportunity that they had all been praying for. How could he think of Lucy when his mind was seething with anxiety and excitement? Yet when she had been in his arms she had seemed his world. He sat up straight with sudden resolution. Why should he not have this small world of home hidden secretly at the roots of his life? The French court was cautiously hospitable at present but exiled penniless princes were always felt to be a liability sooner or later. The same was true of the Dutch court who already had his exiled aunt of Bohemia upon their hands. He had no home and though he would have admitted it to no one he often felt lonely, rootless and insecure. Lucy had come and she should stay. He got up and ran down the steps of the temple light of heart.
3
Hesitation was never a part of Lucy’s temperament and that same evening she had a conversation with Betje, and told her of her husband Tomos Barlow in the English navy, whose existence was not known to her Aunt Gosfright. Her explanations bore little relation to the truth but Prince Kilhwch-Charles Stuart-Tomos Barlow had such a radiance of fantasy about him now that the fabrication of fairytales was not as difficult as it had been. Passing on to Aunt Margaret she beat down her objections with her superior willpower and going to her bedchamber wrote a letter to Robert Sidney that Betje’s father would deliver at the palace with the fish.
The next morning one of the Vingboon servants rode with her to Scheveningen. Joy came to her when leaving the woods behind them they crested a little rise and she saw the North Sea brilliant under the summer sun. The famous sands of the wind chariots looked from this distance like a gold pavement laid down for the containment of the sea, and behind it was a protective stretch of sand-dunes. Sheltered behind this rampart was the village of low red-roofed houses standing in small trim gardens.
The Flincks’s house looked seaward across a small flower-filled garden with a sandy path leading from the wooden gate to the door. The square one-storey building was the
largest in the village for the Flincks were well-to-do. The kitchen-living room, called the huiskamer, was in the centre of the house and the other rooms opened out of it, a bedchamber to right and left, with behind them a dairy and cow-house also opening from the huiskamer. A ladder led to the loft above. Across the yard at the back of the house was the stable and in the green fields beyond the black and white cows were at pasture.
The huiskamer was not like the Roch kitchen but it had the same atmosphere of work, warmth and hospitality. Vrouw Flinck was a friendly, motherly woman. Her hair was hidden away inside a snow-white cap and a white apron covered her voluminous blue skirt. Upon a hook behind the door hung the vermilion cloak which she like all the women of the village wore when she walked abroad. The fishermen wore jerseys of blue or red and it was a memory of colour that Lucy carried away with her from Scheveningen; golden sands and blue sea, the red roofs, the brightly painted fishing boats and the gay clothes.
The huiskamer gleamed with light reflected back from shining utensils and highly polished heirloom furniture. It was a low-ceilinged room scented by the bunches of herbs hanging from the beams of the ceiling, the peat fire and the strings of dried fish that hung within the huge chimney-place. The floor was of stone scrubbed to snowy whiteness, and never soiled by mud for sabots were left at the door and the family moved about their spotless home in stockinged feet. Vrouw Flinck herself knitted the stockings in thick, strong homespun yarn.
“Even in winter our feet are not cold,” she told Lucy, “for when we are eating round the table or sitting to read or sew we have our stoofs,” and she showed her the wooden footstools with perforated lids that in winter held earthenware vessels full of burning peat. “And it is with stoofs that we keep our babies warm.” And she pointed to a corner of the room where there stood beside her spinning-wheel the baby-chair that her children had used, a beautifully carved wooden chair on wheels with a little cupboard underneath it for the stoof. Lucy almost cried out because for a flash of a second she saw a little boy sitting there, kicking his legs and laughing.
The Child From the Sea Page 46
