Virgin Earth

Summer 1641

Hester did not go to market again all summer. And she had been right to fear the mood of the village of Lambeth. The apprentice boys all ran wild one night and the fever was caught by the market women and by the serious chapel goers, who made a determined mixed mob and marched through the streets shouting, “No popery! No bishops!” Some of the loudest and most daring shouted, “No king!” They threw a few burning brands over the high walls of the empty archbishop’s palace, and made a halfhearted attempt at the gates, and then they broke the windows down Lambeth High Street at every house that did not show a light at the window for Parliament. They did not march down the road as far as the Ark and John thanked God for the luck of the Tradescants, which had once again placed them on the very edge of great events and danger and yet spared them by a hairsbreadth.

After that, John sent the gardener’s lad and the stable lad together to market and though they often muddled the order and stopped for an ale at the taverns, at least it meant that any muttering about the king’s gardener was not directed at Hester.

John had to go to Oatlands and before he went he ordered wooden shutters to be made for all the windows of the house, especially the great windows of Venetian glass in the rarities room. He hired an extra lad to wake at nights and watch out down the South Lambeth road in case the mob came that way, and he and Hester went out one night in the darkness with shaded lanterns to clear out the old ice house, and put a heavy bolt on the thick wooden doors to make a hiding place for the most valuable of the rarities.

“If they come against us you will have to take the children and leave the house,” he ordered.

She shook her head and he found himself admiring her cool nerve. “We have a couple of muskets,” she said. “I won’t have my house overrun by a band of idle apprentice lads.”

“You must not take risks,” he warned her.

She gave him a tight, determined smile. “Everything is a risk in these days,” she said. “I will see that we come safe through it all.”

“I have to leave you,” John said anxiously. “I am summoned to Oatlands. Their Majesties will visit next week and I have to see the gardens are at their best.”

She nodded. “I know you have to go. I shall keep everything safe here.”

John was at Oatlands ready for the full court, but the queen came alone. The king and half the court were missing, and the rumor was that he had gone north to negotiate with the Scots himself.

“He is in Edinburgh and all will be mended,” the queen said with her complacent smile when she came upon John deadheading the roses. She was concealing her boredom as best as she could. She was accompanied only by a few ladies, the old flirtatious, artistic, idle entourage was broken up. The more adventurous and more ambitious men were riding with the king. There was the smell of opportunity and advancement in the court of a king at war, and the young men had been sick of peace and a court devoted to marital love for so long. “It will all be resolved,” the queen promised. “Once they meet him again he will charm them into seeing that they were wrong to march against him.”

John nodded. “I hope so, Your Majesty.”

She came close to him and lowered her voice. “We will not go to London again until it is all agreed,” she confided. “Not even to my little manor at Wimbledon. We shall go nowhere near to Westminster. After the death of my Lord Strafford-” She broke off. “They said they would try me after the Earl! Try me for treasonous advice!”

John had to resist the temptation to take one of her little white hands. She looked genuinely afraid.

“He should have stood against them,” she whispered. “My husband should not have let them take Strafford, nor Laud. If he lets them pick us off one after another we will all be lost. And then he will be left all alone and they will have tasted blood. He should have stood against them for William Laud, he should have stood against them for Strafford. How can I be sure he will stand for me?”

“Your Majesty, matters cannot go so far,” John said soothingly. “As you say yourself, the king will come home and it will all be resolved.”

She brightened at once. “He can scatter a few baronies around the Houses of Parliament, and places at court,” she said. “These are all lowly men, commoners up from the provinces. They have neither learning nor breeding. They will forget their folly if the price is high enough.”

John felt the familiar rise of irritation. “Majesty, I think they are men of principle. They did not behead Lord Strafford on a whim. I think they believe in what they are doing.”

She shook her head. “Of course not! They are scheming with the Scots, or with the Dutch, or with someone for their own ends. The House of Lords is not with them, the court is not with them. These are little men come up from the country, crowing like little cocks on their own dunghills. We just have to wring their necks like little cocks.”

“I pray that the king can find a way to agree with them,” John said steadily.

She flashed him her charming smile. “Why, so do I! He shall make all sorts of promises to them, and then they can vote us the taxes we need and the army we need to crush the Scots and they can go back to their dunghills and we can rule without them again.”