Virgin Earth

Spring 1643, England

On a cold day in spring, Alexander Norman took a boat upriver, disembarked north of Lambeth and strolled through the fields to the Ark. Frances, glancing idly from her bedroom window, saw the tall figure coming toward the house and dived back into her room to comb her hair, straighten her gown, and rip off her apron. She was downstairs in time to open the front door to him, and to send the maid running out into the yard to look for Hester and to tell her that Mr. Norman was come for a visit.

He smiled very kindly at her. “You look lovely,” he said simply. “Every time I see you, you have grown prettier. How old are you now? Fifteen?”

Frances cast down her eyes in her most modest gesture and wished that she could blush. She thought for a moment that she should lay claim to fifteen years, but then she remembered that a birthday invariably meant a present. “I’m fifteen in five months’ time,” she said. “October the seventh.” Without lifting her gaze, modestly directed to the toes of her boots, she could see his hand moving toward the flap on his deep coat pocket.

“I brought you these,” he said. “Some little fairings.”

They were very far from little fairings. They were three large bundles of ribbon of a deep scarlet silk shot through with gold thread. There would be enough to trim a gown and make ties for Frances’s light brown hair. Despite the shortages of the war, the fashion was still for gowns with sleeves elaborately slashed and trimmed, and Frances had a genuine need as well as a passion for ribbon.

Without taking his eyes from her absorbed face, Alexander Norman said: “You do love beautiful things, don’t you, Frances?” and was rewarded by a look of complete honesty, empty of all coquetry, when she looked up and said: “Oh, of course! Because of my grandfather! I have had beautiful things around me all my life.”

“Cousin Norman,” Hester said pleasantly, coming into the hall from the kitchen door. “What a pleasure to see you, and on such a cold day. Did you come by the river?”

“Yes,” he said. He let her help him off with his greatcoat and gave it to Frances to take to the kitchen to warm it through, and to order some hot ale. “I would not trust the roads these days.”

She shook her head. “Lambeth is quiet enough now that the archbishop’s palace is empty,” she said. “All the apprentice lads are exhausted with their drilling and their mustering and digging the fortifications. They have no stomach left for roaming around the streets and making trouble for their betters.”

She led the way into the family sitting room. Johnnie was seated before a small fire, writing out plant labels with painstaking care. “Uncle Norman!” he exclaimed and leaped up from his place. Alexander Norman greeted him with a brisk hug and then dived once again into his pocket.

“I have given your sister half a mile of silk ribbon, should you like the same to edge your suit?” he asked.

“No, sir, that is, not if you have anything else… that is, I should be very grateful for anything you bring me…”

Alexander laughed. “I have a wicked little toy here which one of the armorers made at the Tower. But you must promise me to only behead dead roses.”

From his pocket he drew a small knife that folded cunningly, like a barber’s razor, so the sharp blade was hidden and safe. “Do you permit, Mrs. Tradescant?” Alexander asked. “If he promises he will take care of his fingers?”

Hester smiled, “I should like to have the courage to say no,” she said. “You may have it, Johnnie, but Cousin Norman must show you how to handle it and see that you are safe with it before he leaves us today.”

“Can I carve things with it?”

Alexander nodded. “We’ll set to work as soon as I have drunk my ale and told your mother the news from town.”

“Wooden whistles? And toys?”

“We’ll start with something easier. Go and ask them in the kitchen for a cake of soap. We’ll work our way up to wood.” The boy nodded, put the cork carefully back in his pot of ink and carried the tray of labels out of the way, and then went from the room. Frances came in and set down a cup of ale before her uncle and then took up some sewing and sat in the windowseat. Hester, glancing across the room, thought that her stepdaughter could have been sitting for a portrait entitled “Beauty and the Domestic Arts’ as she bent her brown head over her work. A swift glance from Frances’s bright eyes warned her that the girl was perfectly aware of the enchanting picture she made.

“Any news?” Hester asked.

Alexander Norman nodded. “You’ve heard the news of Birmingham?”

Hester glanced toward Frances. “We won’t speak of it now. I heard enough.”

Alexander shook his head. “Dreadful doings. Prince Rupert lost control of his men altogether.”

Hester nodded. “And I heard that the king holds the whole of the west country.”

Alexander Norman nodded. “He’s lost the navy but he holds many of the ports. And they face France, so he can land a French army if the queen’s promises are fulfilled.”

Hester nodded. “And no one is marching on London?”

Alexander Norman gave a small shrug. “Not that I’ve heard, but this month alone there have been skirmishes all over the country.”

“Nothing close?”

Alexander Norman leaned forward and put his hand over Hester’s tightly gripping fingers. “Peace, cousin,” he said gently. “Nothing close. You know I would warn you the moment I heard of any danger to your little Ark. You and your precious cargo will come safe through this storm.”

He glanced over to the windowseat. “Frances, would you fetch me another glass of ale?” he asked.

She rose at once and went to the door. “And give me a moment alone with your stepmother,” he said smoothly. “I want her advice on a private matter.”

Frances glanced at Hester to see if she demurred, and when Hester gave the smallest of nods Frances slightly raised her eyebrows in a tiny expression of sheer impudent speculation and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“She’s impertinent,” Hester said as the door shut. “But it’s only lightness of spirit.”

“I know it,” Alexander Norman agreed with her. “And I would not see her subdued. She’s very like her mother. She was a lighthearted girl but her spirits were kept much in check by her strong sense of religion, and her strict upbringing. But Frances was spoiled from the moment she was born by John and by them all. It’s too late to try to weigh her down now, I would rather see her soar.”

Hester smiled. “I feel that too,” she said. “Though it falls to me to try to keep her in check.”

“You worry about her safety?”

“I do. I worry for all of us, of course, and for the treasures. But mostly for Frances. She is at an age when she should be venturing out a little more, going into society, to make friends; but she is cooped up here with me and with her brother. The plague is everywhere again this year so I cannot let her stay with her grandparents in the City – and besides they are not sociable people, they meet no one.”

“She could go to court at Oxford…”

Hester’s face was a picture. “I’d as soon throw her into the lion’s cage at the Tower than send her among that crowd. Everything that was bad about the king’s court when they were properly housed and properly served is ten times worse now they are crowded into Oxford and drunk nine nights out of ten with celebrating victories.”

“I’ve been thinking the same,” Alexander said. “I wondered if you would consider me… I wondered if you would let me offer her – and yourself of course – a safe haven. I wondered if you would leave here, shut the Ark up until the end of the war, and come and live with me at the Tower of London: the safest place in the whole of the kingdom.”

When she said nothing he added, very quietly, “I mean marriage, Hester.”

She went quite pale for a moment, and moved her chair back from his a little.

“You did not expect this? Though I have been such a frequent visitor?”

Mutely, she shook her head. “I thought it was just kindness for Mr. Tradescant’s family,” she said softly. “As a family friend, as a relation.”

“It was more.”

She shook her head. “I am a married woman,” she said. “I do not consider myself deserted or widowed. Until I hear from John that he is not coming home ever again I shall bear myself as his wife.” For a moment she looked at him as if she were pleading with him to disagree with her. “You may think he has left us forever, but I am sure he will come home. There are his children, there are the rarities, there is the garden. He would never abandon the Tradescant inheritance.”

Alexander did not answer, his face was very grave.

“He would never abandon us,” she said again but with less certainty. “Would he?”

Before he could answer she rose from the chair and went quickly over to the window with her light, determined step. “And if you are thinking that he will die over there, and never return, I must tell you that I would still think it my duty to stay here and guard the house and the garden for Johnnie to inherit when he is a man. I promised John’s father that I would keep the place and the children safe. Nothing would release me from that promise.”

“You have misunderstood me,” he burst out, “I am so sorry. I was not proposing marriage to you.”

She turned at that. The light of the window was behind her and he could not clearly see her face. “What?”

“I was thinking of Frances.”

“You were proposing marriage to Frances?”

The incredulity in her voice made him wince. Dumbly, he nodded.

“But you are fifty-five!”

“I am fifty-three.”

“And she’s a child.”

“She is a young woman, and she is ready for marriage, and these are dangerous and difficult times.”

Hester was silenced, then she turned away from him. He saw her shoulder hunch slightly, as if she were protecting herself from insult. “I beg your pardon. You must think me a complete fool.”

He took three swift steps across the room and turned her around, held her at arms’ length so that he could see her face. “I think of you, as I have long thought of you, as one of the most courageous and lovable women that I have ever met. But I know John will come home to you, and I know that you have loved him ever since you were married. I think of you now as I will always think of you, as a dear, dear friend.”

Hester looked away, wretched with embarrassment. “I thank you,” she whispered. “Please let me go.”

“It was my own shyness and stupidity in what I said that led you to misunderstand me,” he said determinedly. “Please, don’t be angry with me, or angry with yourself.”

She twisted from his hold. “I feel that I have been a fool!” she exclaimed. “Refusing a proposal which wasn’t being made to me. And you are a fool too!” She suddenly regained her spirits. “Thinking that you could marry a girl who is hardly out of her short clothes.”

He went for the door. “I’ll take a turn in the garden, if I may,” he said. “And we’ll talk again later.”

He went out without another word, and Hester, looking from the window, saw him walk along the terrace on the south side of the house and down the steps into the garden.

The garden was at its mid-May perfection. In the walled fruit garden he could not see the sky for the mass of pink and white blossoms, as thick as rose-sugared cream on a pudding. In the long walks in the flower gardens the daffodils and tulips were a wash of color, red and gold and white. The chestnut avenue was coming into its height of beauty, the blossoms opening up into thick candles, white delicately marked with pink. On the walls on the right-hand side of the garden the espaliered figs and peaches and cherries were already weighted with blossom, showering petals on the flower beds beneath them like unseasonal snow.

The parlor door behind Hester opened and Frances came in with Alexander’s glass of ale. “Has he gone?”

“You can perfectly well see that he has,” Hester snapped.

Frances put down the glass without spilling a drop and turned to examine her stepmother’s cross face.

“What did he do to upset you?” she asked calmly.

“He said something ridiculous, and I thought something ridiculous and I feel… I feel…”

“Ridiculous?” Frances suggested, and was rewarded with a glare of irritation.

Hester turned away from her and looked out of the window again. In the thick windowpane she could see, simultaneously, Alexander strolling in the garden and the reflection of her own face. She looked grim. She looked like a woman struggling under the weight of many worries, and still fighting them.

“What did he say that was so ridiculous?” Frances asked gently. She came beside her stepmother and slipped her arm around the older woman’s waist. Hester saw that smooth prettiness beside her own worn face and felt a deep pang of envy that her own beauty was past, and at the same time a glow of joy that she had brought that unloved, frightened little girl into this rare, beautiful being.

“He said that you were a young woman grown,” Hester said. She felt Frances at her side. The girl was a girl no longer, her breasts were filling out, the curve of her waist would fit a man’s hand, she had lost her coltish legginess, she was, as Alexander had seen but her stepmother had not, a young woman.

“Well, I am,” Frances said, as one stating the obvious.

“He said you should be married,” Hester said.

“And so I shall be, I suppose.”

“He thought sooner rather than later,” Hester said. “Because these are dangerous times. He thinks you should have a husband to take care of you.” She had thought that Frances would pull away and laugh her reckless laugh. But the girl rested her head on her stepmother’s shoulder and said thoughtfully: “You know, I think I would like that.”

Hester pulled back to look at Frances. “You still seem like a little girl to me.”

“But I am a young woman,” Frances pointed out. “And when I go into Lambeth the men shout at me, and call things to me. If Father were at home then it would be different, but he is not home, and he is not coming home, is he?”

Hester shook her head. “I have no news of him.”

“Then if he does not come home, and if the war goes on, and so everything is still so uneasy…”

“Yes?” Hester asked.

“If our lives don’t get easier then I would like a husband to care for me, and to care for you and Johnnie. I think we need a man in this house. I think we need a man to care for us.”

There was a long silence. Hester looked into the beautiful face of her stepdaughter and thought that perhaps the first of her promises to this girl’s grandfather, John Tradescant, was nearly fulfilled. She had brought up his granddaughter to be a beautiful woman and within a year or two there would only be Johnnie and the treasures for her to guard.

Alexander Norman strolled in the grounds for an hour before he came in to dinner. He found Hester laying the table in the parlor with Frances helping her. Johnnie was showing a visitor around the rarities.

“I think I made a sale for you,” he said informally as he came in the door. Hester glanced up at his entrance and was relieved to see his familiar, reassuring smile. “A young man from Kent, inquiring about fruit trees. I spoke warmly about John’s plums and handed him over to your gardener. I left him writing down an order for a score of trees and being paid in gold.”

Frances laughed and clapped her hands. “Excellent, Uncle Norman! Now all we have to do is to teach you to weed and you shall come and work for us every day.”

“Twenty trees is a very good sale,” Hester agreed. “Especially in these times, when no one can put their mind to gardening. You did say that he had to arrange his own transport?”

“I did. I know you can’t undertake delivery.”

“If we had anyone we could spare I still wouldn’t send them. I can’t risk losing my horse and cart.” Hester turned to Frances. “Fetch Johnnie, and tell Cook that she can serve dinner.”

Frances nodded and went out of the room.

Alexander held out his hand. “Am I forgiven for my stupidity?”

Hester took his hand. “And you must forgive me. It’s a curiously uncomfortable mistake for a woman to make. If I’d had more experience I would have known how a man usually proposes to a woman.”

He smiled at her and did not release her hand for a moment. “And the matter of Frances’s future?”

Hester shook her head and withdrew her hand. “She’s too young yet,” she said stubbornly. “Ask again in a year or two. I must warn you I would rather see her with a young husband in a little house of her own, starting her own life.”

He nodded. “I understand. But young men are not safe choices these days. Whether he’s a royalist or for Parliament he’s likely to be called to serve his master, and there are no little houses where young people can be sure that they will be left to live at peace in this kingdom any more.”

“When the war ends…”

“When the war ends we shall know whether she should look for a husband at Parliament or at court. But what if it trails on for years? I tell you, cousin, there are stores in the Tower promised to the Parliament army, and stores to match that in royalist hands enough to keep this war going for another twenty years. Parliament is not likely to surrender – that would be to sign their own death warrants for treason – and the king is not a man to come to terms with them.”

Hester nodded. For a moment she looked haggard with worry. “If she is in any danger I shall send her to you,” she promised. “I know you would take care of her.”

Alexander gave a small formal bow. “I would lay down my life for her,” he said simply. “And I love her so much that I would put her interests before mine. If they make peace, or if she falls in love with a man of her own age who could keep her safe, I will not stand in her way, nor even remind you of this conversation.”

A few days after Alexander Norman’s visit Hester, glancing out of the window, saw a stranger slip around the corner of the house and head for the kitchen door. She got up from the hearth, took off her rough hessian apron, and went to see what he wanted.

He was standing on the back doorstep. “Mrs. John Tradescant?” he asked.

The hair on the back of Hester’s neck prickled. “Yes,” she said levelly. “And who is asking?”

He slipped in around the doorframe, so that he was in the kitchen. “Shut the door,” he whispered.

Hester did not make a move to obey him. “There is a stout man in my employ within earshot,” she said. “And half the neighborhood would come running down the road if I called. You had better tell me your business, and swiftly.”

“Not my business. The king’s.”

Hester felt dismay like a blow in the belly. Slowly, she shut the door. “Come in,” she said, and led the way into the rarities room.

“Can we be overheard?” he asked, looking around but not seeing the hanging flags, the dangling birds’ skeletons, the whale’s head, the polished cases crammed with goods.

“Only if I scream,” Hester said with sour humor. “Now, what is it?”

The man put his hand inside his jacket and showed her a glint of gold. “Do you recognize this?”

It was one of the king’s favorite rings. Hester had seen it on his finger many times. “Yes.”

“I am here by the orders of a lady – we need not say her name – who has brought to London the king’s Commission of Array. You know what that means.”

“Not the least idea,” Hester said unhelpfully.

“It’s a summons. A summons to the king’s standard. It’ll be read aloud at Whitehall when our army is at the city gates. You have to play your part. Your husband is commanded to proclaim the king’s authority in Lambeth and order out the loyal men for His Majesty as soon as he is given the word.”

“What lady?” Hester asked flatly.

“I said we need not say her name.”

“If she’s asking me to risk my neck she can tell me her name,” Hester persisted.

He put his mouth to her ear and Hester smelled the familiar scent of sandalwood that the young men of court used as pomade. “Lady d’Aubigny,” he whispered. “A great lady and the widow of a hero. Her lord fell at Edgehill and she is trusted by the king to call out the royalists of London to fight for him. And she is trusting you.”

Hester felt a deep sense of relief that John was far away. “I am sorry,” she said swiftly. “My husband is away in Virginia, gathering rarities, and making his own plantation.”

“When will he return?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The man’s gleeful, conspirational mode deserted him in a moment. He swore and took two hasty paces away from her. “Then what are we to do?” he demanded. “Mr. Tradescant was to secure Lambeth and the riverside. We were counting on him.”

“You were counting on him to secure the king’s safety and you did not think to discover if he was at home?” Hester asked, disbelieving. “He could be sick, he could be dead of the plague, he could have changed sides!”

The man threw her a swift, angry glance. “War is a gamble,” he said grandly. “Sometimes the gamble pays off, sometimes it does not. I was gambling that he would be here, in good health, and keeping faith with his master.”

Hester shook her head. “He does not break his faith. But he can be of no use to you.”

“His son?”

“Johnnie is not yet ten.”

“What about you? Surely you have influence with local people. You could use this house as a rallying point. I could send you an officer to raise the men, or your father… d’you have a father?”

Hester shook her head. “No father, and no influence. I am a newcomer here,” she said. “I am Mr. Tradescant’s second wife. We have only been married four years. I have no friends here. And I have no family.”

“Someone has to do it!” he burst out. “Someone has to secure the riverside and Lambeth!”

Hester shook her head again and led the way to the front door. The royalist conspirator trailed unhappily after her.

“What about someone at the bishop’s palace? What about the local vicar?”

“The archbishop is in the Tower for his service to the king, as you well may recall. And his servants are long gone.” Hester opened the front door. “And the vicar here is an Independent. He was one of the first to preach against Archbishop Laud’s reforms.”

The man would have hesitated but she ushered him out of the house. “I shall call on you if we need a safe house this side of the river,” he promised. “D’you have horses, or barns where a small troop of horse could lie hidden?”

“No,” Hester said.

The man hesitated and looked at her with a sharp look. Hester felt a sudden fear, she had taken him for a fool but the bright assessing gaze he turned on her was not the gaze of a fool. “I trust you are for the king, Mrs. Tradescant,” he said, and there was menace in his voice. “When he comes into London he will expect support from his loyal servants. You will have to put this house at his disposal.”

“I know nothing of these matters,” Hester said weakly. “I am just conducting the business of the house and the garden in my husband’s absence…”

“There are wives and widows in the same case as you all around the country,” the man said sharply. “And they have not forgotten where their loyalties lie. Are you for the king? Or not?”

“For the king,” Hester said unenthusiastically.

“Then His Majesty will call on your services,” the man said. “You may count on it.”

He nodded to her, turned and walked across the little drawbridge over the stream at the side of the Lambeth road. Hester watched him stride away, his coat flung back, his feathers bobbing in his hat, every inch a nobleman, every inch a cavalier, then she closed the door on the sight of him, and on her fear.

She thought for a moment and then went into the parlor to write a note to Alexander Norman.

It may be that I need your assistance. Please let me know that your neighborhood is free of the plague. I may wish to come and stay with you for a few days.

She sealed the note and went through to the kitchen. The gardener, Joseph, was in there, eating his midday dinner of bread and bacon.

“Can you take this to Cousin Norman at Aldgate?” Hester asked abruptly.

The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I was going to cut back the leaves of the early tulips this afternoon,” he said.

Hester hesitated. There were few things more precious in the Ark than the tulips. “Even so,” she said. “I think this is more important. Put it into his hands only, and wait for a reply.”

Joseph brought a message back as it was getting dark. Hester was sitting on the terrace before the house, enjoying the setting sun and the slow gathering of the darkness. The garden before her was an enchanted place in the quiet twilight. The apple blossom was like a mist around the heads of the trees in the lower orchard, the tulips were drained of their daytime color and glowed like white cups in the beds. Hester thought of John Tradescant, the old man she had met, who had willed his grandchildren into her care, and thought that this garden was his memorial, as much as the ornate stone tomb in the churchyard.

“He didn’t write it, he spoke it to me.” Joseph made her jump, appearing suddenly before her on the path.

Hester put her hand to her heart. “You frightened me! Coming out of the gloaming like a ghost!”

“He said: ‘No plague. Rooms ready. Whenever.’”

Hester smiled at the man’s frowning delivery. “Was that all?”

“Absolutely all,” he said. “I made sure I would remember it, and he heard me say it over and over a dozen times before I left.”

“Thank you,” Hester said. “Johnnie and Frances and I will help you with the tulips tomorrow.”

He nodded and went around the back of the house to the yard pump and the kitchen door. Hester sat alone, watching the last light leave the tops of the trees, the nodding flowers. When it grew cold she rose to her feet and went toward the door. “John,” she said softly. “I wish you would come home.”