Virgin Earth

Spring 1642

Parliament, still in session, drew ever closer to accusing the queen. It was a steady, terrifying approach, which would not waver nor hesitate. They impeached twelve bishops for treason, one after another, until a round dozen had appeared before the bar of the House, with their lives on the line. And then the word was that the queen was next on the list.

“What shall you do?” Hester asked John. They were in the warmth of the rarities room where a large fire kept the collection warm and dry though there was a storm of wintry sleet dashing against the grand windows. Hester was polishing the shells and precious stones to make them gleam on their beds of black velvet, and John was labeling a new collection of carved ivories which had just arrived from India.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I shall have to go to Oatlands to see to the planning for the gardens next season. I will learn more there.”

“Planning gardens for a queen who will be beheaded?” Hester asked quietly.

John met her gaze, his mouth twisted with anxiety. “I am following your creed, wife. I’m trying to survive these times. I don’t know what’s best to do other than to behave as if nothing has changed.”

“But John-” Hester started, but was interrupted by a knock at the front door, and they both froze. John saw Hester’s color drain from her cheeks, and the hand that held the duster trembled as if she had an ague. They stood in complete silence and then they heard the maid answer and the reassuring chink of a coin as a visitor paid for entrance to the collection. Hester whisked her cloth out of sight into the pocket of her apron and threw open the handsome double doors to him. He was a well-dressed man, a country man, by the look of his brown suit and his weather-beaten face. He paused in the doorway and looked around at the grand, imposing room and the warm fire.

“Well, this is a treat,” he said in the round tones of the west country.

Hester moved forward. “You are welcome,” she said pleasantly. “This is John Tradescant, and I am his wife.”

The man dipped his head. “I am Benjamin George,” he said. “From Yeovil.”

“A visitor to London?”

“Here on business. I am a Parliament man representing the borough of Yeovil.”

John stepped forward. “My wife will show you the rarities,” he said. “But first, can you tell me what news there is?”

The man looked cautious. “I can’t say whether it is good or bad,” he said. “I am on my way home and Parliament is dissolved, I know that much.”

John and Hester exchanged a quick look. “Parliament dissolved?”

The man nodded. “The king himself came marching in to arrest five of our members. You would not have thought that he was allowed to come into Parliament with his own soldiers like that. Whether he was going to arrest our members for treason or cut them down where they stood, I don’t know which!”

“My God!” John exclaimed, aghast. “He drew a sword in the House of Commons?”

“What happened?” Hester demanded.

“He came in very civil though he had his guards all about him, and he asked for a seat and sat in the Speaker’s chair. But they were gone – the men he wanted. They slipped out the back half an hour before he came in the front. We were warned, of course. And so he looked about for them, and made a comment, and then went away again.”

John was struggling to hide his irritation with the slowness of the man’s speech. “But what did he come for, if he left it too late to arrest them?”

The man shrugged. “I think myself it was some grand gesture, but he bodged it.”

Hester looked quickly at John. He made an impatient exclamation. “Are you saying he marched his guard into the House to arrest five members and failed?”

The man nodded. “He looked powerfully put out,” he observed.

“I should think he was. What will he do?”

“As to that… I couldn’t say.”

“But then what will Parliament do?”

The man slowly shook his head. Hester, seeing her husband on the edge of an outburst and the man still thinking his answer through, had to bite her lip to keep silent herself.

“As to that… I couldn’t say either.”

John took a swift step to the door and then turned back. “So what is happening in the City? Is everything quiet?”

The country squire shook his head at the mystifying speed of change. “Well, the Lord Mayor’s trained bands are to be called out to keep the peace, the king’s men have all gone into hiding, the City is boarded up and ready for a riot or… something worse.”

“What could be worse?” Hester asked. “What could be worse than a riot in the City?”

“War, I think,” he said slowly. “A war would be worse than a riot.”

“Between who?” John asked tightly. “A war between who? What are you saying?”

The man looked into his face, struggling with the enormity of what he had to say. “War between the king and Parliament, I’m afraid.”

There was a brief shocked silence.

“It has come to this?” John asked.

“So I am come to see the greatest sight of London, which I promised myself I would see before I left, and then I am going home.” George looked around. “There is even more than I thought.”

“I will show it all to you,” Hester promised him. “You must forgive our hunger for news. What will you do when you get home?”

He bowed courteously to her. “I shall gather the men of my household and train them and arm them so that they can fight to save their country from the enemy.”

“But will you fight for the king or for Parliament?”

He bowed again. “Madam, I shall fight for my country. I shall fight for Right. The only thing is: I wish I knew who was in the right.”

Hester showed him the main features of the collection and then, as soon as she could, left him to open the drawers and look at the smaller things on his own. She could not find John in the house, nor in the orangery. As she feared, he was in the stable yard, dressed in his traveling cloak, waiting for his mare to be saddled.

“You’re never going to court!” she exclaimed.

“I have to,” he said. “I cannot bear having to wait for scraps of news like this.”

“You are a gardener,” she said. “Not a courtier, not a Member of Parliament. What is it to you whether the king is quarreling with Parliament or not?”

“I am on the edge of it all,” John said. “I know too much to sit quietly at home and nurse up my ignorance. If I knew less of them then I would care less. If I knew more then I could decide better what to do. I am halfway between knowledge and ignorance and I have to settle on one side or the other.”

“Then be ignorant!” she said with sudden passion. “Get into your garden, John, and set seeds for the gardens at Wimbledon and Oatlands. Do the trade you were born to. Stay home where you are safe.”

He shook his head and took both her hands. “I won’t be long,” he promised her. “I shall go over the river to Whitehall and find out the news and then come back home. Don’t fret so, Hester. I must learn what is happening and then I’ll come home. It is better for us if I know which way the wind is blowing. It is safer for us.”

She left her hands in his, enjoying the warmth of his calloused palms. “You say that, but you are like a boy setting out on an adventure,” she said shrewdly. “You want to be in the heart of things, my husband. Don’t deny it.”

John gave her a roguish grin and then kissed her quickly on both cheeks. “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s true. Let me go with your blessing?”

She was breathless with the sudden casual embrace and felt herself flushing. “With my blessing,” she repeated. “Of course you have my blessing. Always.”

He swung himself into the saddle and let the horse walk out of the yard. Hester put her hand to her cheek where his lips had briefly touched, and watched him go.

He had to wait for a place on the horse ferry at Lambeth, and then the traffic on the City side of the river was busier than he had ever seen it. There were hundreds of people milling around in the narrow streets, asking for news and stopping ballad sellers and peddlers of news-sheets to demand what they knew. There were armed groups of men marching down the road, pushing people aside and demanding that they shout “Hurrah! for the king!” But then down another road would come another group shouting, “Hurrah! for Pym! No bishops! No Papist queen!”

John drew his horse back into a side street, fearful of being caught up in a fight when he saw two of these groups heading toward each other. But the royalists wheeled off quickly to one side, as if they were on an urgent errand that took them away; and the others took care not to see them, and not to give chase. He watched them go and saw that they, like himself, were not ready for a fight yet. They didn’t even want a brawl, let alone a war. He thought the country must be filled with men like himself, like the honest Member of Parliament for Yeovil, who knew that they were in the grip of great times, and wanted to take their part in the great times, who wanted to do the right thing; but were very, very far from knowing what the right thing might be.

John’s father would have known. He would have been for the king. John’s father had had a straightforward faith that his son had never learned. John made a wry face at the thought of the certainties of the man and of his own confused layering of doubts, which left him now still mourning one woman, half in love with another, and married to a third; in the service of a king while his heart was with the opposition; always torn both ways, always on the fringe of everything.

The crowds grew thicker around the palace of Whitehall and there were armed guards looking grim and frightened with their pikes crossed at the doorways. John rode his horse ’round to an inn and left her in the stable, and then walked back to the palace, jostled all the way. The crowd was the same strange mix of people. There were beggars and paupers and ill-doers in rags and shabby old livery who were there to shout and perhaps collect a few coppers for their hired loyalty. There were workingmen and women, young apprentices, artisans and market people. There were the serious black-coated preachers of the independent churches and sectaries, and there were the well-to-do merchants and City men who would not fight themselves, but whose hearts were in the fight. There were sailors from the ships in port, shouting for Parliament since they blamed the king and his French wife for the dangers of the Dunkirk pirates, and there were members of the London trained bands, some of them trying to impose order and find their men, and others running wild and shouting that they would die to defend the rights of Parliament. This motley crowd had a motley chant which ranged from the catcalls and boos of those who did not know what they cared for, to the regular call of those who knew their cause: “No bishops! No queen!” and the new call which had come about since the king had taken a sword into the House of Commons: “Privilege! Privilege!”

John fought his way to the front of the mob at the gates to the palace of Whitehall and shouted, over the noise, to the guard.

“John Tradescant! The king’s gardener.”

The man shifted slightly, and John ducked under the pike and went in.

The old palace of Whitehall was the most disorganized of all the royal palaces, a jumble of buildings and courts and gardens, dotted with statuary and fountains and alive with birdsong. John, hoping to find a face he knew, made his way toward the royal apartments and then was brought short as he rounded a corner and nearly collided with the queen herself.

She was running, her cape flying behind her, her jewel box in her hands. Behind her came the king, carrying his own traveling desk of papers and a dozen maidservants and manservants, each burdened with whatever they had been able to snatch up. Behind them came two royal nursemaids, running with the two royal babies in their arms, the five-year-old Princess Elizabeth trotting to keep up, and the two young princes, James and Charles, lagging in the rear.

John dropped to his knee as she saw him but she rushed toward him and he jumped to his feet as she pushed her jewel box at him.

“Gardener Tradescant!” she cried. “Take this!” She turned to the king. “We must wait!” she insisted. “We must face the rabble! We must face them down!”

The king shook his head and motioned for her to go on. Unwillingly, she went before him. “I t-tell you they have run mad!” he said. “We must get out of the C-City! There’s not a loyal heart here. They have all run m-mad. We must go to Hampton Court and c-c-consider what to do! We must summon soldiers and take advice.”

“We are running like fools from our own shadows!” she shrieked at him. “We must face them and face them down or we will spend the rest of our life on the run.”

“We are l-lost!” he shouted. “L-lost! D’you think I want to see you dragged before the b-bar and impeached for treason? D’you think I want to see your h-h-head on a pike? D’you think I want to see the rabble take y-you, and the children, t-take you now?”

John joined the train of servants running behind them and followed them to the stables. All the way the quarrel between the king and queen grew more inarticulate as her French accent deepened with her temper and his stammer grew worse with his fear. When they reached the stable yard she was beside herself.

“You are a coward!” she spat at him. “You will lose this city forever if you leave it now. It is easier to run away than to retake. You must show them that you are not afraid.”

“Ha-Hi-I fear nothing!” He drew himself up. “N-Nothing! But I must have you safe and the children safe before I can m-make m-my m-move. It is your safety, Madam, that I am securing now. For myself I care nothing! N-ha-N-Nothing!”

John pressed forward and put the jewel box on the coach floor. He was reminded of the king’s odd mixture of shyness and boastfulness. Even now, with a mob hammering on the doors of the palace, the two of them were playing out their parts in a masque. Even now they did not seem to be completely real. John looked around, the servants were like an audience at a great play. No one urged a course of action, no one spoke. The king and queen were the only actors; and their script was a great romance of danger and heroism and lost causes and sudden flights. John felt his heart pounding at the noise of the crowd outside and knew the deep visceral fear of a mob. He had a sudden vision of them breaking down the gates and tumbling into the stable yard. If they found the queen beside her traveling coach with her jewel box beside her, anything could happen. The whole power of the royal family which the old Queen Elizabeth had so powerfully cultivated depended on the creation and maintenance of distance and magic and glamour. Let the people once see the queen swearing at their king like a French lace-seller, and the game would be up.

“I will see you s-safe at Hampton Court and then I will return and crush these traitors,” Charles swore.

“You shall crush them now!” she shrieked. “Now, before they gain their strength. You shall face them and defy them and destroy them or I swear I shall leave this kingdom and never see it again! They know how to respect a princess of the blood in France!”

At once the mood of the scene shifted. The king took her hand and bowed over it, his silky hair falling to shield his face. “N-never say it,” he said. “You are q-queen of this country, queen of all the h-hearts. This is a faithful country, they l-love you, I love you. Never even th-think of leaving me.”

There was renewed shouting at the door. John, forgetting that he should stay silent, could not bear to see them taken like a pair of runaway servants in the stable yard. “Your Majesty!” he urged. “You must either prepare for a siege or get the coach out! The crowd will be upon you in a moment!”

The queen looked to him. “My faithful Gardener Tradescant!” she exclaimed. “Stay with us.”

“G-Get up at the back,” the king ordered. “Y-You shall escort us t-to safety.” John gaped at him. The only thing he had thought to do was to bring the two of them to a sense of urgency.

“Your Majesty?” he asked.

The king handed the queen into the coach where the two little princes, Charles and James, white-faced and silent, were waiting, their eyes like saucers with terror. Then the nursemaids and the babies bundled in and the king climbed in himself. John slammed the door on them. He wanted to tell them that he could not possibly go with them but he heard the rising volume of the crowd at the gates and he was afraid they might argue with him, command his service, question his loyalty, delay again.

John stepped back from the coach, waiting for it to draw away; but it did not move. Nobody would do anything without a specific order and the king and queen were arguing again inside.

“Oh! Damnation! Drive on!” John shouted, taking command in the absence of any authority, and swung himself up beside the footmen clinging on the back. “Westward, to Hampton Court. And drive steadily. Don’t for God’s sake run anyone down. But don’t stop!”

Even then the footmen hesitated at the stable doors.

“Open the doors!” John shouted at them, his temper at breaking point.

They leaped to obey the first clear order they had heard all day and the great wooden doors swung open.

At once the men and women in the very front of the crowd fell back, as the doors opened up and the coach pulled out. John saw they were taken aback at the sudden movement of the doors, at the progress of the fine horses, and the wealth and richness of the gilding on the royal coach. The king’s ornate carriage with the plumes of feathers on each roof corner, and the huge high-stepping Arab horses harnessed with tack of red leather and gold studs, still had the mystique of power, divine power, even with a traitorous Papist queen inside. But those in the front could not get back very far; they were held steady by the weight of the crowd behind them, still pushing forward.

The crowd had pikes but they were using them as banners, not yet as weapons. On each one was tied a white flag scrawled with the word “Liberty!” and they jogged them up and down at the windows of the coach. John prayed that the queen kept her face turned down and for once in her life kept quiet. The prestige of the king might get them safely through the mob if she did not antagonize them.

John heard a frightened child crying from inside the coach. “Drive on!” he ordered the coachman above the noise of the crowd. “Go steady!” and he shouted as loud as he could: “Make way for the king! For the rightful king!”

“Liberty!” someone yelled, jabbing a pike dangerously close to his face.

“Liberty and the king!” John replied, and heard another voice at once echo the new slogan. The footman beside him flinched as someone spat. “Stay still, you fool, or they will drag you down,” John muttered.

At any moment the mood of the crowd could change from boisterous protest to murder. John looked over the roof of the carriage to where the streets narrowed for the way out of town.

“Make way for the rightful king!” John shouted.

The crowd grew denser at the crossroads. “Keep going!” John yelled at the coachman. He had an absolute certainty that if they stopped, even for a moment, the doors would be pulled open and the royal family dragged from the coach and torn apart on the very street. Once the mob learned that they could stop the king in his carriage, then they would know they could do whatever they wished. All that was holding them back was the old superstitious belief in the king’s power, the divinity of kingship that King James had preached and that Charles so passionately believed. The crowd kept reaching toward the coach as it crawled slowly past them but their hands would drop back as if they feared a burning from the gold paintwork. If they touched and snatched just once, then they would all know that the king was not a god, a vengeful god. If they found the courage to touch just once, they would snatch at everything.

“Keep back,” John shouted. “Make way for the king!”

Everything depended on the coach maintaining the painfully slow walking pace, and never checking, and never stopping, all the way westward where the sun shone on the water in the open sewers, like a pointer to safety.

Someone pulled at his coat, nearly hauling him off balance. John grabbed tighter at the footman’s strap and looked down. It was a woman, her face contorted with rage. “Liberty!” she cried. “Death to the Papists! Death to the Papist queen!”

“Liberty and the king!” John shouted back. He tried to smile at her and felt his lips stick on his dry teeth. As long as the queen kept her face hidden! “Liberty and the king.”

The carriage lurched over the cobbles. The crowd was thicker but the road farther ahead was clear. Someone threw a handful of mud at the coach door but the crowd was too dense for them to start stoning, and though the pikes still jogged to the cry of “Liberty!” they were not yet aimed toward the glass of the windows.

As the road went on, out of town, the crowd thinned, as John had hoped it would. Most of these people had homes or market stalls or even businesses in the City, there was nothing to be gained by following the coach out along the West Way. Besides, they were out of breath and tiring of the sport.

“Let’s open the doors!” someone exclaimed. “Open the doors and see this queen, this Papist queen. Let’s hear her prayers, that they’re so keen that we should learn!”

“Look!” John yelled as loud as he could. “An Irishman!” He pointed back the way they had come. “Going into the palace! An Irish priest!”

With a howl the mob turned back and ran, slipping and sliding over the cobbles back toward the palace, chasing their own nightmares.

“Now drive on!” John yelled at the driver. “Let them go!”

The carriage gave a great lurch as the driver whipped the horses and they leaped forward, bumping on the cobbles. John clung like a barnacle on the back of the great coach, swaying on the leather straps, and ducked his head down as the wind blowing down the street whisked his hat away.

When they reached the outskirts of London the streets were quiet, the people either boarded inside their houses and praying for peace, or roaming in the city. John felt the slackening of tension around his throat and he loosened his grip on the footman’s strap and rocked with the sway of the coach all the way to Hampton Court.

The king was not expected at Hampton Court. There was nothing ready for the royal family. The royal beds and furniture, rugs and pictures were all left at Whitehall. The family stepped down before the solidly closed great doors of the palace and there was not even a servant to open up for them.

John had a sense that the whole world was collapsing around him. He hesitated and looked toward his monarch. The king leaned back against the dirty wheel of the coach, as if he were exhausted.

“I did not expect this sort of welcome!” Charles said mournfully. “The doors of my own palace closed to me!”

The queen looked pleadingly at Tradescant. “What shall we do?”

John felt an irritable sense of responsibility. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll find someone.”

He left the royal coach before the imposing grand front doors and went around to the back. The kitchens were in their usual careless state; the whole household always took a holiday during the king’s absence.

“Wake up,” John said, putting his head around the door. “The king, queen and royal family are outside waiting to be let in.”

It was as if he had set off a fire-ship among the cockle boats at Whitby. There was a stunned silence and then instantaneous uproar.

“For God’s sake get the front door open and let him in,” John said, and went back to the courtyard.

The king was leaning back against the coach surveying the high, imposing roofs of the palace as if he had never seen them before. The queen was still seated in the carriage. Neither of them had moved since John had left them, although the children were whimpering inside the coach and one of the nursemaids was praying.

John pinned a smile on his face and stepped forward and bowed. “I am sorry for the poor welcome,” he said. As he spoke the great doors creaked open and a frightened-looking footman peeped out. “There’s a couple of cooks here and a household of servants,” John said reassuringly. “They’ll make Your Majesties comfortable enough.”

At the sight of a servant the queen brightened. She rose to her feet and waited for the footman to hand her down from the carriage. The children followed her.

The king turned to John. “I thank you for the service you have given us this day. We were glad of your escort.”

John bowed. “I am glad to see Your Majesty safe arrived,” he said. At least he could say that with a clear conscience, he thought. He was indeed glad to get them safe out of London. He could not have stood by and seen the queen and the royal princes pulled out of their carriage by a mob, any more than he could have watched Hester and the children abused.

“Go and see that there are r-rooms made ready for us,” the king commanded.

John hesitated. “I should return home,” he said. “I will give orders that everything shall be done as you wish, and then go to my home.”

The king made that little gesture with his hand which signified “No.”

John hesitated.

“S-stay until we have some order here,” the king said coolly. “Tell them to prepare our p-privy chambers and a dinner.”

John could do nothing but bow and walk carefully backward from the king’s presence and go to do his bidding.

There was only so much that could be done. There was only one decent bed in the house fit for them; and so the king, queen, and the two royal princes were forced to bed down together in one bed, in the only aired linen in the whole palace. There was a dinner which was ample, but hardly royal; and no golden plate and cups for the service. The trappings of monarchy – the tapestries, carpets, gold plate and jewels, even the richly embroidered bed linen that always traveled with the king in his great progresses around the country – were still at Whitehall. All that was ever left in the empty palaces was second-rate goods, and Hampton Court was no exception. The queen ate off pewter with an air of shocked disdain.

Dinner was served by the kitchen staff and the lowly gentlemen of the household who maintained the palace in the king’s absence. They served it as it should be done, on bended knee, but all the ceremony in the world could not conceal that it was plain bread and meat on pewter plates on a plain board table.

“You will escort the queen and I to Windsor tomorrow,” the king said, when he had finished eating. “And from thence to Dover.”

Tradescant, who was seated at a lower table down the hall, got up from his bench and dropped to his knee on the stale rushes on the floor. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He kept his head down so that he showed no surprise.

“See that the horses are ready at dawn,” the king ordered.

The royal family rose from their places at the top table and left the great hall by the door at the back of the dais. Their withdrawing room would be cold and smoky with a chimney which did not properly draw.

“Are they running for it?” one of the ushers asked John as he rose from his knees. “All of them?”

John looked appalled. “They cannot do so!”

“Did they need to run from London? Like cowards?”

“How can you tell? The mood of the rabble around Whitehall was angry enough. There were moments when I feared for their lives.”

“The rabble!” the man jeered. “They could have thrown them a purse of gold and turned them around in a moment. But if they run from London, will they run from the country? Is that why they’re going to Dover? To take a ship to France? And what will become of us then?”

John shook his head. “This morning I was taking leave of my wife in my stable yard at Lambeth,” he said. “I hardly know where I am, let alone what is to become of the king and the queen and their kingdoms.”

“Well, I bet you they run for it,” the young man said cheerfully. “And good riddance,” he added under his breath, and then snapped his fingers at his dog and left the hall.

It was a long, cold journey to Dover; the royal family were muffled up inside the coach but John was standing in the footman’s place behind, holding on to the strap. By the time the coach rumbled in to Dover castle John was clinging on with fingers that were blue, his eyes running with tears from the cold wind in his face, every bone in his face aching as if he had an ague. From his place on the back of the coach he had heard, over the rumble of the wheels, the queen steadily complaining, all the way down the long frosty roads.

They slept that night in Dover castle, in better comfort; and then lingered undecided for a week. First they were waiting for news, then deciding to sail to France, missing the tide, changing their minds, waiting for more news. Courtiers slowly reassembled from the rout of London, noblemen were recalled from their country seats. Everyone had different advice, everyone was listened to with kingly courtesy, no one could agree, no one could act. Eleven-year-old Princess Mary, setting sail to live with her bridegroom in Holland, joined them during the week that they hesitated, havering between one choice and another, and found that the queen, her mother, was very bitter with her daughter for marrying a Protestant and leaving the family in such distress. Princess Mary made no undutiful replies to her mother, but sulked in eloquent silence.

A couple of heavy bags arrived at dawn from the Tower of London and John assumed, but did not ask, from the dour expression of the guard who never let them out of his sight, that the king was sending the country’s treasure overseas with his wife and that once again the most precious stones in England would be hawked around the moneylenders in Europe.

The king and queen finally came to a decision to separate. Princess Mary was bound for Holland in one ship, the queen and the three babies were to set sail for France in another: the Lion. The two princes – Charles and James – and the king were to stay in England and find a solution to the demands of Parliament. John and the other attendants waited at a distance on the quayside as the royal couple forced themselves to the brink of parting. The king held both her hands and kissed them tenderly.

“You will not yield one inch to them,” the queen said, her voice demanding and penetrating so that every man on the quayside could hear how the king of England was hagridden. “You will not make one concession. They must be brought to heel. They must know their master. You will not even speak with them without keeping me informed.”

Charles kissed her hands again. “No,” he promised. “M-my love, my dear love. I will not have a m-moment when I do not think of you.”

“Then think that I will never be able to come back until the traitor Pym is executed for treason,” she said fiercely. “And think of your son and his inheritance which must be passed to him entire. And I shall raise such an army in Europe that if they will not agree they will be destroyed! So make no concessions, Charles, I will not permit it!”

“My dear, d-dear love,” he said quietly.

He raised his head from her hands and she kissed him full on the mouth as if to pledge him to an oath.

“Don’t forget!” she said passionately. “We have lost too much already by your weakness! Not one concession without my agreement. You must tell them that they will have to concede to us: Church, army, and Parliament. I am a queen, not a market trader to huckster over the price. Not one concession.”

“Godspeed, m-my love,” he said tenderly.

She smiled at him at last. “God bless you,” she said. Without thinking of the effect it would have on the king’s waiting servants, she made the sign of the cross, the dreadful Papist gesture, over his head; and Charles bowed his head beneath the sign of the Antichrist.

Henrietta Maria picked up her full silk skirts and went carefully up the gangplank to the sailing ship. “And don’t forget,” she called, raising her voice from the ship. “No concessions!”

“No, my love,” the king said sadly. “I would d-die rather than disappoint you.”

The ship moved away from the quayside and the king called for his horse. He mounted and rode alone, up the steep cliffs behind the little town, keeping the queen’s sail in sight, riding and waving his hat to her until the little ship was vanished into the pale mist lying sluggishly on the waves, and there was nothing for God’s anointed monarch to do but ride slowly and sadly back to Dover castle and write to his wife promising that he would always do whatever she thought best.

John subtracted himself carefully from the men who surrounded the king as they returned to break their fast in Dover castle. He ordered a horse from the tavern, and when he was ready to leave went to seek the king.

“With Your Majesty’s permission I will go to my home,” he said carefully. He saw at a glance that the king was in one of his moods of high drama. John did not want to be the audience to one of the tragic speeches. “I promised my wife I would only be away a matter of hours, and that was weeks ago. I must return.”

The king nodded. “You may travel w-with me for I am going to London.”

“Back to the City?” John was astounded.

“I shall see. I shall see. Perhaps it is n-not too late. Perhaps we can agree. The queen would be pleased, d-don’t you think, if my next letter to her came from my palace at Whitehall?”

“I am sure everyone would be pleased if you could reclaim your palace by agreement,” John said carefully.

“Or I could go to B-Bristol,” the king said. “Or north?”

John bowed. “I shall pray for Your Majesty.”

“I hope you will do – do more than that. I hope you will be with me.”

There was an awkward silence. “In these troubled times…” John began.

“In these troubled times a man must bid farewell to his wife and then do his duty,” the king said flatly. “P-painful duty. As I have done.”

John bowed.

“You may go and bid her farewell and then j-join me.”

John bowed again, thinking rapidly of how he could escape from this service. “I am only a gardener,” he said. “I doubt that I can assist Your Majesty better than by keeping your palaces in beauty. And when the queen returns I would want her to have a pretty garden to greet her.”

The king softened at that, but he had the needy anxiety of a man who hates to be left alone. The loss of the queen made him cling to anyone, and John’s presence was a reassuring reminder of the days of gardens and masques and royal progresses and loyal speeches. “You shall s-stay with me,” he said. “I shall send you back to the garden when I have more men about me. In the meantime you shall write your f-farewell to your wife and join me. I am separated from my wife – you would not w-wish to be more happy than your king?”

Tradescant could see no escape. “Of course not, Your Majesty.”

He sent Hester a note before they left Dover.

Dear Hester,

I am commanded by His Majesty to stay with him until he takes up his new quarters, wherever they may be. We are traveling northward at present and I will return home as soon as I am permitted, and write to you if not. Please keep my children and rarities safe. And preserve your own safety. If you think it best, you may store the rarities in the place you know, and take the children to Oatlands. These are troubled times and I cannot advise you at this distance. I wish I were with you. If I were free from my duty to my king, I would be with you.

He did not dare to say more for fear of someone stealing and opening the letter. But he hoped she would read between the lines and understand his reluctance to travel with the king and the two princes, and his deep anxiety that none of them, least of all the king, seemed to know where they should go or what they should do next.

They rode north, still uncertain. The king was instantly diverted by the pleasure of being on the road. He loved to ride and liked being free of the formality of the court. He spoke of the time that he and the Duke of Buckingham had ridden across Europe – from England to Spain – without a courtier or a servant between them. He spoke of his present journey as if it was the same playful piece of adventure and the two young princes caught his mood. Prince James and Prince Charles for once in their lives were allowed to ride alongside their father, as his companions, and the country people lined the roadsides as they entered market towns and called out their blessings on the handsome bareheaded king and the two charming boys.

The courtiers, returning from their country houses and from Whitehall, joined the train, and the whole trip became an adventure: riding through the spring countryside and staying each night in a hunting lodge or a fine Tudor mansion.

A court formed around the king, and many of the loyal gentlemen dug deep into their own fortunes to support him, and tried not to begrudge the cost of the hunting and the dancing and the music which the king had to have wherever he went. Even so, there were many debts that remained unpaid. Many gentlemen stayed at home, although they were summoned more than once; many did not send money. When the king, tired of provincial minstrels, sent for the court musicians they sent back a polite letter saying they would come if they could, but since they had not been paid any wages for months they could not afford to attend His Majesty without payment in advance. The king had to do without his own musicians for the first time in his life. There was no money to pay them, neither in advance nor in arrears.

John said nothing, and did not remind the king that his wages also had not been paid since the end of last summer when he had been appointed gardener at Oatlands in his father’s place and also given the care of the Wimbledon garden. He was not following the king for gold, after all. He was not following him for love nor loyalty either. He was neither mercenary nor courtier. He was following him because the king refused to release him, and John was not yet ready to insist on his freedom. The habit of obedience was ingrained in him, he was not yet ready fully to rebel. Loyalty to the king was like honoring his father whose loyalty had never wavered; honoring his father was one of the ten commandments. John was trapped by habit and by faith.

He did not cease to try for his release. He spoke to the king in the stable yard of a pretty hunting lodge that they had commandeered for the week. Charles was out hunting on a borrowed horse and was in a lighthearted mood. John checked the tightness of the girth under the saddle flap and looked up at his king.

“Your Majesty, do I have your permission to go to my home now?”

“You can ride with us to Theobalds,” the king said casually. “It was one of your father’s gardens, was it not?”

“His first royal garden,” John said. “I didn’t know the court was moving again. Are we going back to London?”

The king smiled. “Who can say?” he said mysteriously. “The game is not even opened yet, John. Who can say what moves there are to b-be made?”

“It is not a game to me,” John burst out incautiously. “Nor to the men and women that are drawn into it.”

The king turned a frosty look down on him. “Then you will have to be a reluctant player,” he said. “A s-s-sulky pawn. For if I am prepared to gamble my future with daring then I expect the lesser men to throw in their all for me.”

John bit his lip.

“Especially those who were b-born and b-bred into my service,” the king added pointedly.

John bowed.

The stay at Theobalds brought them closer to London, but no closer to an agreement. Almost every day a messenger came and went from the palace at Theobalds to Parliament at Westminster but no progress was made. The king was certain that the country was solidly behind him – in his journey northward from Dover people had brought invalids to him at every stopping point and the mere touch of his hand had cured them. Every loyal address at every inn and staging post assured him that the country was solidly his. No one had the courage to point out that anyone who disagreed with the king was likely to stay away from his progress, and no one reminded the king that at every major town there had also been petitions from common people and gentry begging him to acknowledge the rights of Parliament and to reform his advisers, and live at peace with the Scots and with his Parliament.

From London came the rumors that the Lord Mayor’s trained bands were out drilling and practicing every Sunday and they would fight to the death to defend the liberty of Parliament and the freedom of the city of London. The city was solidly for Parliament and against the king and was preparing itself for a siege, entrenching both to the west and north. Every workman was bidden to dig great ditches which would run all around the city, and women, girls, and even ladies saw it as their patriotic duty to ride out on Sundays and holidays and help the men dig. There was a great wave of enthusiasm for the Parliamentary cause against the impulsive, arrogant, and possibly Papist king. There were great fears of an army coming from Ireland to put him back inside his capital city and to force Roman Catholicism back on a country which had only been free of the curse for less than a hundred years. Or if the king did not bring in the Irish then he might bring in the French, for it was well known that his wife was openly recruiting for a French army to subdue the city and its supporters. Chaotic, excited, fearful, London prepared itself for siege against hopeless odds, and decided to choose a martyr’s death.

“We go to York,” the king decided. John waited to see if he would be released from royal service.

The king’s heavy-lidded gaze swept over the men in the stable yard, saddling up their horses for the ride. “You will all come too,” he said.

John mounted his horse and edged it through the courtiers to the king’s side.

“I should like to go to Wimbledon,” he said cunningly. “I want to make sure that all is well there. So that it is fit for the queen when she comes home again.”

Charles shook his head and John, glancing sideways, saw that his king was beaming. The king was enjoying the sense of action and adventure, the end of the effeminate routine of masques and plays and poetry of the peacetime court.

“W-we have no time for g-gardens now!” He laughed. “M-march on, Tradescant.”

John wondered for a moment if there was anything he could say to abstract himself from the small train, and then shrugged his shoulders. The king had a whim that Tradescant should stay with him, but the whim would pass, as did all royal whims. When his attention was diverted elsewhere Tradescant would ask and receive permission to leave.

John pulled his horse up and fell in at the rear of the royal train as they trotted down the great avenue of Theobalds Park, through the sea of golden daffodils between the trees. He thought for a moment of his father, and how his father would have loved the ripple of cold wind through the yellow bobbing heads, and then he realized with a smile that his father had probably had a hand in planting them. As the party trotted out through the great gates John looked back at the avenue of trees and the sea of gold washing around their trunks and thought that his father’s legacy to the country might last longer than that of the royal master he had served.

When they reached York in mid-March the king and his immediate friends settled in the castle, while the other courtiers and hangers-on found billets in all the inns and ale houses in the town. John lodged in the stables on a pallet bed in the hay store. After a few days when he had not been summoned he thought that the king had finished with his service and he might go home. He went to find the king in the main body of the castle. He was in his privy chambers, books and maps all around him.

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon,” John said, putting his head around the door.

“I did not send for you,” the king said frostily.

John came no nearer. “Spring is here, Your Majesty,” he said. “I seek your permission to go and supervise the planting of the queen’s gardens. She likes the flower gardens at Oatlands to be well planted, and she wants fruits from her manor at Wimbledon. They need to be planted soon.”

The king softened at once at the mention of his wife.

“I would hate Her Majesty to be disappointed.”

“You shall go,” the king decided. He thought for a moment. “After we have taken Hull.”

“Hull, Your Majesty?”

He beckoned Tradescant in and gestured him to shut the door against eavesdroppers. “The queen bids me to make the garrison of Hull my own,” he said. “So that I may have a strong port for our allies to send supplies. She has bought up half the armies of Europe, and her brother the king of France will aid us.”

John closed his eyes briefly at the thought of French Papist troops marching against the English Protestant Parliament.

“She wants us to take Hull for her – and so we will,” the king said simply. “After that you can go home.”

John dropped to one knee. “Your Majesty, may I speak freely?”

The king smiled his tender smile. “Of course,” he said. “All my people can speak to me freely, and in safety. I am their father, I am their only true friend.”

“A French army, a Papist army, will not aid your cause,” John said earnestly. “There are many men and women in the country who do not understand the rights and wrongs of this quarrel between you and Parliament; but they will see a French army as their enemy. People will speak ill of the queen if they think she has summoned the French against her own people, English people. Those that love her and love you now will not accept a French army. You will lose their love and trust.”

Charles looked thoughtful as if he had never had such counsel before. “You believe this, Gardener Tradescant?”

“I know these people,” John urged. “They are simple people. They don’t always understand arguments, they often cannot read. But they can see the evidence of their own eyes. If they see a French army marching on the English Parliament they will think we have been invaded and that their right course of action is to fight against the French. My own father went with your friend, the Duke of Buckingham, to make war against the French. They have been our enemies for years. Country people will think that the French have invaded us, and they will take up arms against them.”

“I had not seen it that way.” Charles looked undecided. “But I must have an army and I must have munitions and H-hull has the mightiest store of weapons outside of London…”

“Only if you have to fight a war,” John said persuasively. “You only need arms if you fight. But if you could come to an agreement…”

“I l-long to come to an agreement,” the king said. “I have sent them m-message after message offering talks and concessions.”

John thought of the queen’s tempestuous demands that the Members of Parliament should be hanged before she would return to her city.

“I shall take Hull, and then I shall be able to make concessions,” the king said decisively.

John felt the sense of frustration that all the king’s advisers were learning to endure.

“If you came to an agreement you would not have to take Hull,” he pointed out. “If you could agree with Parliament, then the country would be at peace and there would be no need for a fort, Hull or any other. There would be no need for a position of strength.”

“She wants me to take Hull,” the king said stubbornly. “And it is mine own. I am claiming nothing but what is mine by right.”

Tradescant bowed. When the king started speaking of his rights it was difficult to make any headway. By right everything in the four kingdoms was his; but in practice the countries were ruled by all sorts of compromises. Once the king assumed the voice he used in his masques and spoke grandly of his rights nothing could be agreed.

“When do we go to Hull?” John asked resignedly.

The king smiled at him, a flash of the old merriment in his eyes. “I shall send the P-prince James in to Hull on a visit,” he said. “They cannot refuse a visit from the prince. He shall g-go with his cousin, the Elector Palatine. And then I shall f… follow him. They cannot separate father and son. And once he is inside he will open the gates to me. And once I am there” – he snapped his fingers – “it is mine! As easily and peacefully as that.”

“But what if…”

The king shook his head. “No. N-no carping, Tradescant,” he said. “The city of Hull is all for me, they will throw open the gates at the sight of Prince James, and then, when we are installed, we can make what terms we wish with Parliament.”

“But Your Majesty…”

“You may go now,” the king said pleasantly. “Ride with me at n-noon tomorrow to Hull.”

They left late, of course, and idled along the road. By the time they finally arrived on a little rise before the town it was getting cold with the sharp coldness of a northern spring afternoon, and growing dark, getting on for dinner time. The king had brought thirty cavalrymen, carrying his standards and pennants, and there were ten young gentlemen riding with him as well as Tradescant and a dozen servants.

As they came toward the city Tradescant saw the great gates swing closed, and his heart sank.

“What’s this?” the king demanded.

“A damned insult!” one of the young men cried out. “Let’s ride at the gates and order them open.”

“Your Majesty…” Tradescant said, bringing his horse a little closer. The young courtiers scowled at the gardener riding among them. Tradescant pressed on. “Perhaps we should ride by, as if we never intended coming in at all.”

“What use would that be?” the king demanded.

“That way, no one could ever say that an English town closed its gates to you. It did not close its gates because we were not trying to enter.”

“Nonsense!” the king said easily. One or two of the young men laughed aloud. “That’s the way to teach them b-boldness. Prince James’s party will open the gates to us if the governor of Hull does not.”

The king took off his hat and rode down toward the town. The sentries on the wall looked down on him and John saw, with a sense of leaden nausea, that they were casually pointing their crossbows toward him, their monarch, as if he were an ordinary highwayman coming toward the city walls.

“Please, God, no fool fires by accident,” John said as he followed.

“Open the gates to the king of England!” one of the courtiers shouted up at the sentries.

There was a short undignified scuffle and the governor of Hull, Sir John Hotham himself, appeared on the walls.

“Your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “I wish we had known of your coming.”

Charles smiled up at him. “It does not m-matter, Sir John,” he said. “Open the gates and let us in.”

“I cannot, Your Majesty,” Sir John said apologetically. “You are too many for my little town to house.”

“We don’t m-mind,” the king said. “Open the gates, I would see my son.”

“There are too many of you, it is too large and too warlike a party for me to let in at this late hour,” Sir John said.

“We are not warlike!” Charles exclaimed. “Just a small party of pleasure-seekers.”

“You are armed,” the governor pointed out.

“Only my usual g-guards,” the king said. He was still smiling but John could see the whiteness around his mouth and his hand trembling slightly on the reins. His horse shifted uneasily. The royal guards stared, stony-faced, at the sentries on the towers of Hull.

“Please, Your Majesty,” Sir John Hotham pleaded. “Enter as a friend if you must enter. Bring in just a few of your men if you come peacefully.”

“This is my t-town!” the king shouted. “Do you… do you… do you deny your king the right to enter his own town?”

Sir John closed his eyes. Even from the road before the gate the king’s party could see his grimace. John felt a deep sense of sympathy for the man, torn between loyalties just like himself, just like every man in the kingdom.

“I do not deny Your Majesty the right to enter into your town,” the governor said carefully. “But I do deny these men the right to enter.” His gesture took in the thirty guards. “Bring in a dozen to guard Your Majesty and you shall dine with the prince in the great chamber this night! I shall be proud to welcome you.”

One of the courtiers edged his horse up to the king. “Where is the prince’s party?” he said. “They should have thrown open the gates to us by now.”

Charles shot him an angry look. “Where indeed?” He turned back to the governor of Hull. “Where is m-my son? Where is Prince James?”

“He is at his dinner,” the governor said.

“Send for him!”

“Your Majesty, I cannot. I have been told he is not to be disturbed.”

Charles spurred his horse abruptly forward. “Have d-d-done with this!” he shouted up at the governor. “Open the gates! That is an order from your k-king!”

The man looked down. His white face had gone paler still. “I may not open the gates to thirty armed men,” he said steadily. “I have my orders. As my king you are always welcome. But I do not open the gates of my town to any army.”

One of the king’s courtiers rode forward and shouted at the people whose curious faces were peering over the tops of the defensive walls. “This is the king of England! Throw your governor down! He is a traitor! You must obey the king of England!”

No one moved, then a surly voice shouted, “Aye, and he’s the king of Scotland and Ireland too and what justice do they have there?”

The king’s great horse reared and shied as he pulled it back. “Then b-be damned to you!” the king shouted. “I shall not forget this, John Hotham! I shall n-not forget that you locked me out of my own town!”

He wheeled the horse around and flung it into a gallop down the road, the guards thundering behind him, the courtiers, servants and John with them. He did not pull up till his horse was blown and then they turned and looked back down the road. In the distance they could see the gates finally open, the drawbridge come down, and a small party of horsemen ride out, following in their tracks.

“Prince James,” the king said. “Ten minutes too l-late.”

The king’s party waited while the horsemen rode nearer and nearer and then pulled up.

“Where the devil were you, sir?” the king demanded of his nephew, the Elector Palatine, who had led the party.

“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” the young man replied stolidly. “We were at our dinner and did not know you were outside the gates until Sir John came to us just now and said you had ridden away.”

“You were supposed to open the g-gates to me! Not idle with your no-noses in the trough!”

“We were not sure you were coming. You were due before dinner. You said you would come in the afternoon. We gave up waiting for you. I thought the governor would have opened the gates to you himself.”

“But he refused! And there was no one to force him, b-b-because you were at your dinner, as usual!”

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” the young man replied.

“You will be sorrier yet!” the king said. “For now I have been refused admittance to one of my t-t-towns as well as being banned from my City! You have done evil, evil work this day!” He turned on his son. “And you, J-James! Did you not know that your father was outside the gates?”

The prince was only eight years old. “No, sire,” he said. His little voice was scarcely more than a thread in the cold evening air.

“You have disappointed your f-father very much this day,” Charles said gloomily. “Pray to G-God that we have not taught disloyal and wicked men the lesson that they can defy me and travel in their w… wicked ways and fear nothing.”

The prince’s lower lip trembled slightly. “I didn’t know. I am sorry, sir. I didn’t understand.”

“It was a harebrained plan from first to last,” the Elector said dourly. “Whose was it? Any fool could see that it would not work.”

“It was m-my plan,” the king said. “But it required speed and decisiveness and c-courage, and so it failed. How am I to succeed with such servants?” He surveyed them as if they were all equally to blame, then he turned his horse’s head toward York and led them back to the city through the darkening twilight.