Virgin Earth

Summer 1641

John remembered that promise on the day that the Earl of Strafford was taken to the Tower of London and thrown into the traitors’ prison to be executed when the king signed the Act of Attainder – his death warrant.

The king had sworn to Strafford that he would never betray him. He had written him a note and gave him the word of a king that Strafford would never suffer “in life, honor or fortune” for his service – those were his exact words. The most cautious and wily members of the Privy Council fled the country when they recognized that Parliament was attacking the Privy Council rather than attacking the king. Most of them were quick to realize too that whatever the king might promise, he would not raise one hand to save a trusted servant from dying for his cause. But the Bishop of Ely and Archbishop William Laud were too slow, or too trusting. They too were imprisoned for plotting against the safety of the kingdom, alongside their ally Strafford in the Tower.

For all of the long spring months, Parliament had met on Strafford’s case and heard that he had recommended bringing in an army of Irish Papist troops to reduce “this kingdom.” If the king had interrupted the trial to insist that Strafford was referring to the kingdom of Scotland he might have saved him then from the executioner. But he did not. The king stayed silent in the little anteroom where he sat and listened to the trial. He did not insist. He offered, rather feebly, to never take Strafford’s advice again as long as the old man lived if they would but spare his life. The Houses of Parliament said they could not spare his life. The king struggled with his conscience for a short, painful time, and then signed the warrant for Strafford’s execution.

“He sent little Prince Charles to ask them for mercy,” Hester said in blank astonishment to John as she came back from Lambeth in May with a wagon full of shopping and a head full of news. “That poor little boy, only ten years old, and the king sent him down to Westminster to go before the whole Parliament and plead for the Earl’s life. And then they refused him! What a thing to do to a child! He’s going to think all his life that it was his fault that the Earl went to his death!”

“Whereas it is the king’s,” John said simply. “He could have denied that Strafford had ever advised him. He could have borne witness for him. He could have taken the decision on his own shoulders. But he let Strafford take the blame for him. And now he will let Strafford die for him.”

“He’s to be executed on Tuesday,” Hester said. “The market women are closing their stalls for the day and going up to Tower Hill to see his head taken off. And the apprentices are taking a free day, an extra May Day.”

John shook his head. “So much for the king’s loyalty. These are bad days for his servants. What’s the word on Archbishop Laud?”

“Still in the Tower,” Hester said. She rose to her feet and took hold of the side of the wagon to clamber down but John reached out his arms and lifted her down. She hesitated for a moment at the strangeness of his touch. It was nearly an embrace, his hands on her waist, their heads close together. Then he released her and moved to the back of the wagon.

“You’ve bought enough for a siege!” he exclaimed, and then, as his own words sunk in, he turned to her. “Why have you bought so much?”

“I don’t want to go into market for a week or so,” she said. “And I won’t send the maids either.”

“Why not?”

She made a little helpless gesture. He thought he had never before seen her anything other than certain and definite in her movements. “It’s strange in town,” she began. “I can’t describe it. Uneasy. Like a sky before a storm. People talk on corners and break off when I walk by. Everyone looks at everyone else as if they would read their hearts. No one knows who is a friend and who is not. The king and Parliament are splitting this country down the middle like a popped pod of peas and all of us peas are spilling out and rolling around and not knowing what to do.”

John looked at his wife, trying to understand, for the first time in their married life, what she might be feeling. Then he suddenly realized what it was. “You look afraid.”

She turned away to the edge of the wagon as if it were something to be ashamed of. “Someone threw a stone at me,” she said, her voice very low.

“What?”

“Someone threw a stone as I was leaving the market. It hit me in the back.”

John was dumbfounded. “You were stoned? In Lambeth?”

She shook her head. “A glancing blow. It was not thrown to hurt me. I think it was an insult, a warning.”

“But why should anyone at Lambeth market insult you? Or warn you?”

She shrugged. “You’re well known as the king’s gardener, the king’s man, and your father before you. And these people don’t inquire where your heart lies, what you think in private. They think of us as the king’s servants, and the king is not well regarded in Lambeth and the City.”

John’s mind was whirling. “Did it hurt you? Are you hurt?”

She started to say “No”, but she stumbled over the word and John, without thinking, caught her into his arms and let her cry against his shoulder as the torrent of words spilled out.

She was afraid, very afraid, and she had been afraid every market day since Parliament had been recalled and the king had come home defeated from the war with the Scots. The women would not always serve her, they overcharged her and leaned on the scales when they were weighing out flour. And the apprentice boys ran after her and called out names, and when the stone had struck her back she had thought it would be the first of a hail of stones which would hit her and knock her from the box of the wagon and beat her down in the street.

“Hester! Hester!” John held her as the storm of crying swept over her. “My dear, my dear, my little wife!”

She broke off from crying at once. “What did you call me?”

He had not been aware of it himself.

“You called me little wife, and your dear-” she said. She rubbed her eyes, but kept her other hand firmly on his collar. “You called me dear, you’ve never called me that before.”

The old closed look came down on his face. “I was upset for you,” he said, as if it was a sin to call his own wife an endearment. “For a moment I forgot.”

“You forgot that you had been married before. You treated me like a wife you are… fond of,” she said.

He nodded.

“I am glad,” she said softly. “I should like you to be fond of me.”

He disengaged himself very gently. “I should not forget I was married before,” he said firmly, and went into the house. Hester stood beside the cart, watching the kitchen door closing behind him, and found she had no more tears left to cry but only loneliness and disappointment and dry eyes.