Virgin Earth

Summer 1643, England

Hester woke on the morning of 31 May to the sound of gravel rattling against her bedroom window. For a moment she had the absurd thought that it was John, locked out of his own house, summoning her to let him in, to a reconciliation, a return, and to the end of her loneliness and waiting.

She jumped out of bed, ran to the window and looked down. It was a man, wrapped to the eyes in a cape, but she would have recognized the hat, heavy with plumes, anywhere.

“God rot him,” Hester swore under her breath, threw a jacket over her nightdress and ran barefoot down the stairs to let him in at the back door. In the stable yard a dog barked briefly. Hester let the man slip inside and then closed the door behind him.

“What is it?” she asked tersely.

“It’s gone awry,” he said. He dropped the cape from his face and she saw he was drawn and anxious. “I need a horse to get away from here to warn the king.”

“I don’t have one,” Hester said instantly.

“Liar,” he shot back.

“I don’t have one to spare.”

“This is the king’s business. His Majesty shall hear how I am served.”

Hester bit her lip. “Will you send the horse back to me?” she asked. “She’s my husband’s horse and the saddle horse for my children, and she works on the land as well. I need her.”

“The king’s need is greater.”

“Keep your voice down,” Hester hissed. “D’you want to wake the whole house?”

“Then give me the horse!”

She led the way down the hall to the kitchen at the back. He hesitated when he saw the fire banked in for the night. “I need food,” he said.

“You’re going to Oxford, not to America!” Hester said impatiently. “Eat there!”

“Give me some bread and some cheese, and I’ll drink a glass of ale while you are saddling the horse.”

Hester waved him toward the larder. “Eat what you want,” she said. “And come out into the yard as soon as you are done.”

She stepped into a pair of clogs which were on the stone doorstep and unlocked the kitchen door. She pulled the jacket around her shoulders and did up the buttons. John’s mare was in her loosebox, she whinnied when she saw Hester and the dog barked again.

“Hush!” Hester called to them both as she went into the tack room to fetch John’s heavy saddle and bridle. The mare stood obediently while Hester struggled with her tack, and then shifted when a shadow fell over the stable. Hester looked up, instantly afraid that it was Parliament men come to arrest the royalist, and arrest her too as a conspirator. But it was the cavalier, his hands full of bread and cheese, his hat tipped back on his head.

Hester led the horse out into the yard. “Give me that,” she said suddenly and snatched the hat from his head. He was too surprised to protest. With one swift movement she plucked the feathers from the hat band and tossed them into the midden heap. “Why not carry the king’s colors while you’re about it?” she demanded.

He nodded. “I shall tell His Majesty that the Tradescant house remembers their master. You will be rewarded for this.”

“The only reward I want is for you to send the horse back,” Hester said. “D’you promise you will send her back to me?”

“I do.”

Hester stood away from the mare’s head as she stepped delicately on the cobbles, and out of the yard and around the house to the road. Hester stood very still and quiet, listening. If the man had been sighted she would hear the horses’ hooves on the Lambeth road as they chased him. There was silence. Somewhere in the garden a thrush was starting to sing.

Hester realized that she was shivering with cold and with apprehension. She turned and crept across the yard to the kitchen door, slipped off the muddy clogs and went to the fireside. If he was captured and named her as his ally and the Ark as a safe royalist house, then she could face arrest for treason against Parliament, and the punishment for treason was death. The cavalier might ride with feathers in his hat and a light heart even in the middle of defeat; but Hester was only too well aware that the country was at war, and it was becoming a war in which there was no quarter given.

She waited by the fire until the little square kitchen window became light and then she went upstairs and woke Frances and Johnnie.

“What is it, Mother?” Johnnie asked, seeing her grave face.

“We’re going on a visit to Uncle Norman,” she said. “Today.”

They took a boat down the river and the boatman was full of news of a royalist plot which had been uncovered only yesterday. Hester nodded. “I have no interest in politics,” she said.

“You’ll be interested soon enough if these traitors hand the city back to the king,” the boatman said. “If the king brings in murdering Irishmen and damned Frenchmen to cut the throats of honest Englishmen!”

“Yes,” Hester said politely. “I suppose I will be then.”

The boatman hawked and spat in the water and rowed steadily on.

Alexander Norman greeted them as if their visit had been planned for months instead of thrown together in Hester’s panic. His housekeeper had prepared two rooms in his small town house next to his work yard in the Minories in the shadow of the Tower. Frances and Hester would share a bed and Johnnie was to have a little attic room.

“My cousin has long promised me this visit,” he said to his housekeeper as she showed Hester into the front parlor and took her hat and cape. “I insisted it should be May before the City is too hot and unhealthy.”

“There’s nothing worth having in the shops,” the housekeeper remarked to Hester. “So if you were thinking of new fashions you might as well have stayed at home. There are more tailors out of business than you could name.”

Hester nodded. “My husband’s first wife’s family are haberdashers,” she said. “I thought they would let me see if they have anything left in stock.”

The housekeeper nodded. “They’ll surely have some silk saved for the little miss here. Isn’t she a beauty?”

Hester nodded. Frances was struggling out of the thick cape and the big bonnet which Hester had insisted she wear. “Yes, she is.”

“Looking for a husband for her?”

Hester shook her head. “Not yet.”

The woman nodded and bustled off. “I shall serve you with your dinner in a few minutes,” she promised.

Alexander drew a chair near the fire for Hester. “Was it cold on the river?”

“A little,” she said, sitting down.

“Are you in trouble?” he asked very quietly.

“A royalist officer came and took John’s horse. He was looking for John to help them in a plot to claim Lambeth for the king.”

Alexander looked shocked. “When was this?”

“He left this morning. But he came for the first time two weeks ago.”

He nodded. “Did he get safe away?”

Hester shook her head. “I don’t know. There was no one waiting outside the house, at any rate, and no one seemed to be watching us leave today. But he was headed for Oxford and the king. I don’t know if he got there.”

He turned away from her for a moment.

“What is it?” she asked. “The boatman said there was some kind of plot.”

“It’s Lady d’Aubigny,” Alexander said.

Hester gave a little gasp.

“You knew her name?”

“It was a name I heard when he was swearing me to secrecy two weeks ago. I didn’t think that everyone would know it so soon.”

“She’s a fool. Edmund Waller and she were plotting together to seize London for the king. They were going to seize the Tower and arrest Parliament and the House of Lords was to gather behind them and royalists were to rise up.”

Hester’s face was pale. “And?”

“And nothing. Everyone in the plot spoke about it from the assemblies to the taverns, and they were arrested this morning. Lady d’Aubigny has disappeared, no one knows where yet; but Waller is arrested, and half a dozen others.” He paused for a moment. “Who knows you’re here?”

“The household. I said we were coming for a visit. I thought it might look worse if we went into hiding.”

He nodded. “You were right. But I am wondering if you should leave London.”

“All of us?”

“Just you. D’you have family somewhere outside the City? Somewhere you can go until this panic is over?”

She shook her head. “John said I was to go to Oatlands if I was in danger. He still has his house there. He is still gardener there.”

The housekeeper put her head around the door. “Dinner is on the table,” she said.

“I’m starving!” Johnnie exclaimed, and he and Frances, who had been sitting in the windowseat looking at the street below, went to the dining room. Alexander took Hester’s cold hand.

“Come and have something to eat,” he said. “Nothing is going to happen in the next ten minutes. And I will send one of my clerks to Westminster to see what is happening.”

Hester ate nothing at dinner, and every time a cart went by in the street outside she found she was listening, waiting for the knock at the door.

“What is the matter, Mother?” Frances asked. “I can tell that something is wrong.”

Hester looked at Alexander.

“You should tell them,” he said. “They have a right to know.”

“A royalist spy came in the night and took Father’s mare,” Hester said.

Frances and Johnnie looked stunned at the news.

“A royalist spy?” Johnnie demanded.

“What was he wearing?” Frances asked.

“Oh, why didn’t you wake me?” Johnnie cried. “And I could have helped him!”

“He was wearing a cape and…” Hester’s voice quavered on a reluctant laugh. “And an absurd hat with feathers.”

“Oh!” Frances breathed. “What colors?”

“What does that matter!” Johnnie exclaimed. “Oh, Mother! Why didn’t you tell me? I could have guided him! I could have gone with him and been his page!”

“I expect that’s why she didn’t tell you,” Alexander said gently. “Your place is at home, guarding your mother and the Ark.”

“I know,” Johnnie said. “But I could have gone with him for a battle or two and then come home again. I am a Tradescant! It is my duty to serve the king!”

“It is your duty to protect your mother,” Alexander said, suddenly grim. “So be silent, Johnnie.”

“But why have we come here?” Frances asked, abandoning interest in the color of the royalist’s hat feathers. “What is happening? Is Parliament after us?”

“Not after you,” Hester said quietly. “But if they know that he came to the Ark for help then I may be in trouble.”

Frances turned at once to Alexander Norman and put her hands out to him. “You’ll look after us, won’t you?” she demanded. “You won’t let them take Mother away?”

He took her hands, and Hester saw that he had to stop himself from drawing her close. “Of course I will,” he said. “And if she’s in any danger at all I shall find somewhere safe for her, and for you all.”

Frances, still hand-clasped with Alexander, turned to her stepmother and Hester saw them, for the first time, as a couple; saw the tilt of his head toward her, saw her trust in him.

“Should you go into hiding?” Frances asked her.

“I’ll go to the Tower now,” Alexander decided, “and see what news there is. You keep the door locked until I return. They can hardly have found your name and traced you here so soon. We must be a day ahead at least.”

Hester found that her mouth was dry and reached for a glass of small ale. Alexander gave her a quick, encouraging smile. “Be of stout heart,” he said. “I will be back within the hour.”

The little family went back into the parlor and Frances and Johnnie took up their posts in the windowseat again, but this time they were not commenting on the passersby, they were on lookout. Hester sat, in uneasy idleness, by the fireside. The housekeeper coming in with fresh coal made them jump. “I’d have thought you would want to go out and walk around.”

“Perhaps later,” Hester said.

Inside the hour, true to his word, Alexander Norman came strolling down the street, stopping for a chat with his neighbor, who had a small goldsmith’s shop, and then opened his front door and stepped inside. At once his air of leisured cheerfulness deserted him.

“It’s bad news,” he said, checking that the parlor door was closed behind him. “Lady d’Aubigny took sanctuary in the French embassy under the pretext that her husband’s family is French. But Parliament has ordered that the French hand her over and they have done so. She’ll be tried for treason, she was carrying the king’s Commission of Array. She was trying to raise an army in the very City itself.”

“The French ambassador handed over an English lady of the king’s party to Parliament?” Hester demanded, incredulously.

“Yes,” Alexander said, looking grave. “Perhaps His Majesty has fewer friends in Paris than he thinks. Perhaps the French are preparing to deal with Parliament direct.”

Hester found she was standing by her chair, as if ready to run. She forced herself to sit down and to start breathing normally. “And what else?”

“Edmund Waller, who passes for the brains behind this brainless scheme, was taken up and is singing like a blinded thrush,” Alexander said. “He is naming everyone he spoke to, in the hopes of escaping Tower Hill and the block.”

“Would he have my name?” Hester asked quietly. She found her lips were numb and she could not speak clearly.

“I can’t tell,” Alexander said. “I didn’t want to ask too detailed questions for fear of attracting attention. We can hope that your man got clear away, and that he was too small a link in the chain to connect you to the plot.”

“As long as he was not captured on Father’s horse,” Frances pointed out.

“If I said it was me who gave him the horse…” Johnnie suggested. “I could say that it was me and that I was a royalist. They wouldn’t execute me, would they? I’m not ten yet. They’d give me a whipping and I don’t mind that. I’d get the blame and you’d be all right.”

Hester drew him toward her and kissed his smooth fair head. “I don’t want you involved in this, whatever the risks.” She looked up at Alexander Norman. “Should I stay? Or go?”

He bit his upper lip with his teeth. “It’s the devil’s own decision,” he said. “I think you should go. We gain nothing from you being here and we risk everything. If your man is captured and he follows the example of his betters he will volunteer information and he is bound to name you. Even if he goes free the king’s men are so indiscreet that your name might still be mentioned. Go to Oatlands and stay in John’s house in the garden for a week. I’ll send you a message if it’s all clear and you can come home again.”

“Oatlands?” Johnnie demanded. “With Prince Rupert?”

“Yes, he’s said to be quartered there,” Alexander Norman said. “At least you’ll be safe from Parliament while he is there.”

“Oatlands!” Johnnie exulted. “Prince Rupert! I’ll have to go with you. To defend you.”

Frances was about to say “I’ll come too,” but she hesitated and looked toward Alexander Norman. “Should I?”

“You’ll all go,” he said. “You’re safer there than anywhere if Rupert is still there. Parliament can’t arrest you there, you’ll be under royalist protection; and when you come home we can say you were only doing John’s work on the gardens.”

Frances was about to argue, but then she held her peace.

“You could go now,” Alexander said. He led the way out of the room to the narrow hall.

Hester hung back and looked at her beautiful stepdaughter. “Did you not want the risk of being with me?” she asked. “I would understand if you didn’t want to come to Oatlands. You can go to your grandparents if you wish, Frances.”

“Oh no!” Frances cried out, and suddenly she was a girl again. “Mother! Oh no! Whatever risks you were taking I should want to be with you. I’d never leave you alone to face danger! I was just thinking that perhaps Uncle Norman could come with us. I’d feel so much safer if he was with us.”

“The safest way is for him to be here, gathering news, and for us to be tucked out of the way in the country,” Hester said. “And when it is all quiet again we can go home. I don’t like to leave the rarities and the gardens.”

“In case Father comes home this month?” Johnnie asked.

Hester managed a smile. “In case Father comes home this month,” she agreed.

Oatlands Palace was beautiful in early summer. The garden was showing signs of neglect and most of the rooms of the house were shut up. There was a regiment of soldiers occupying the main hall and the regimental cooks working in the kitchens. The cavalry’s horses were stabled in the old royal stables and there was constant drilling and training and parading over John’s precious turf at the front of the palace. Prince Rupert was only rarely with his troops. Half the time he was at Oxford with the court, arguing against the negotiations for peace, bolstering up the king’s erratic determination to conquer the Parliament and not negotiate with them. The royalist cavalry troops paid no attention to the silkworm house nor to the gardener’s house next door to it. The commander saw Hester when he was walking in the gardens and Hester mentioned that since her husband was still nominally gardener to the palace she had thought it her duty to make sure that the gardens were not suffering too badly.

“Very commendable,” he said. “What needs doing?”

“The grass wants mowing,” Hester said. “And the knot garden needs weeding and trimming. The roses should have been pruned in winter, it’s too late now, and the fruit trees.”

He nodded. “These are not the times for gardening,” he said flatly. “You do what you can and I shall see that you are paid for your time.”

“Thank you,” Hester said.

“Who’s the pretty maid?” he asked abruptly.

“My stepdaughter.”

“Keep her out of the way of the men,” he said.

“She’ll stay by me,” Hester said. “Can she walk in the gardens?”

“Yes. But not near the house.”

Hester dipped a little curtsy.

He was about to walk away but he hesitated. “I visited the Ark once,” he said. “When I was little older than your lad. The old Mr. Tradescant showed me around himself. It was the most wonderful place I had ever been. A palace of curiosities. I could hardly believe the things I saw. A mermaid, and the jaw of a whale!”

Hester smiled. “We still have them,” she said. “You are very welcome to visit us again when you come to London. You may come as our guest. I should be glad to show you the new things too.”

The commander shook his head. “It seems extraordinary to me that while I am fighting for the king against his own deluded people that you are still collecting mice skins and glassware and tiny toys.”

“For one thing there is nothing else for me to do,” Hester said tartly. “My husband left the rarities and the garden and the children in my care. A woman should do her duty, whatever else may be happening.”

He nodded his approval of that.

“And when it is all over, when it is finished, then the men who have been fighting will want to go home to their houses and their gardens,” Hester said more gently. “And then it will be a great joy to them to find rare and beautiful things have survived the war, and that there are strange and lovely plants to grow, and tulips are as bright and fiery as ever, and the chestnut trees are as rich and as green as ever they were.”

There was a little silence, and then he bowed low and took her hand and kissed it. “You are keeping a little piece of England safe for us,” he said. “Pray God we all come safely home to it at the end of all this.”

“Amen,” Hester said, thinking of John so far away, and of the war going on for so long, and of the young men who came to the Ark to order trees only for their heirs to grow. “Amen.”

Hester found a youth who had so far avoided both the excitement of the war and the recruiting officers to mow the courts around Oatlands under her supervision, and then weed the gravel of the knot garden. Little could be done with the kitchen garden except to leave it to grow what vegetables and fruit could struggle through the weeds. But judging from the blossom which drifted like snow in the corners of the walled garden, there would be a fine show of fruit, especially plums and apples, which thrived on neglect.

In the silkworm house the shelves were full of dusty little corpses. When the king and queen had left the court and abandoned the old life, the boiler had gone out and all the worms had died. Hester, with her instinctive hatred of waste, cleaned out the trays and swept the floor with a bustling irritation against a queen who could command such things into being, and then forget them completely. Every day Hester and Frances hitched up their skirts, rolled up their sleeves and worked in the gardens, noting the positions of the tulips which should be lifted in autumn, tying in climbing plants to the bowers and arbors, and weeding, weeding, weeding: the white gravel of the stone gardens, the drive, the terrace, the stone-flagged arbors. Johnnie put himself in charge of the watercourses and drained and scrubbed them, coming home at dusk wet through with triumphant tales of streams running clean, and cracks in the watercourses repaired with his own sticky mixture of clay and white chalk.

In the afternoons he was allowed to watch the cavalry drilling, practicing turning and wheeling at a shouted order, and once he saw Prince Rupert himself on his huge horse with his poodle held over his saddlebow and his dark hair in a curled mane over his shoulders. Johnnie came home full of joy at the sight of the handsome prince. Prince Rupert had seen him and smiled at him and Johnnie had asked if he could serve in his regiment as soon as he was old enough and could find another horse.

“You didn’t say anything about the cavalier who took Father’s horse?” Hester asked quickly.

At once all the boyish wildness drained from his face and he looked cautious. “Of course not,” he said quickly. “I’m not a child.”

Hester had to stop herself from drawing him onto her knee and taking him in her arms. “Of course you’re not,” she said. “But we must all mind our tongues in these dangerous days.”

She smiled to reassure him that she was not afraid; but at night, in all the long dark nights, Hester remembered that she was in exile from her home and in danger of her life, and sometimes she feared that while they were safely hidden at Oatlands the other army, who were at least as well-armed and perhaps as well-trained as this one, might march on the little house at Lambeth and destroy it with all the treasures and all the plants as a nest of treason.

She could get neither news nor gossip. The soldiers stationed at Oatlands Palace knew nothing more than they would get their marching orders any day, and Hester was too fearful to go into Weybridge for news. She had to wait for a message from Alexander Norman. In the third week of June he came himself.

Frances saw him first. She and Hester were grubbing in the flower beds of the queen’s court, lifting the early tulips and putting the precious bulbs into sacks to take away.

“Look!” Frances exclaimed, and in the next moment she was up and running like a child with her arms outstretched to him.

For a moment he hesitated and then he spread his arms to her and folded her tight. Over her light brown head his eyes met Hester’s and he gave her a small apologetic smile. Frances pulled back to see his face but did not unclasp her hands from their grip around his back. “Are we safe?” she demanded urgently.

“Praise God, yes,” he said.

Hester felt her knees go weak and sank down on a stone seat. For a moment she could not speak. Then she asked: “The man got safe home to Oxford?”

“And sent your mare back with a hidden note in the saddle which apologized for seizing the animal at swordpoint. If anyone does inquire we can show them the note, which will serve as a strong argument in your defense. We have been lucky indeed.”

Hester shut her eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. “I have been more afraid than I was ready to admit.”

“And I,” Alexander Norman said with a gleam. “I have been trembling in my boots for the last fortnight.”

“I knew we’d be safe,” Frances said. “I knew you would keep us safe, Uncle Norman.”

“What other news?” Hester asked.

“Waller, who started the whole plot, is the only one to get off scot-free,” Alexander said, his voice low. “Every time the king uses such weak reeds as this, he falls in the estimation of every right-thinking person. Waller confessed everything, he named everyone he had spoken to and thanks to his ready tongue two men have been hanged for conspiracy, though they did far less than him, and at his bidding. And there will be more to die.”

Hester shook her head in disapproval.

“Waller himself is fined and imprisoned, but the news of his treachery and of his conspiracy has driven the Parliament men closer together. There’s a new oath of loyalty and they’re all eager to make close alliance with the House of Lords and with the Scots. The king has done his cause the worst damage he could have done – he has frightened his enemies into friendship with each other, and not advanced himself a single step. And any man of judgment must despise Waller, and his master too.”

Hester rose from the seat. “So I can go home?”

“Yes. I called in at Lambeth on my way upstream so that I could tell you if things were well there. Joseph tells me that the garden is beautiful and the house has been closed and kept safe. Everything is ready for your return.”

Frances clapped her hands. “Let’s go!” she said. “I’d rather weed my own garden than the king’s any day!”

Alexander took her hands and turned them palms upward. They were filthy from lifting the bulbs and her fingernails were broken. “You’ll never be a lady with hands like these,” he said. “You should wear gloves.”

“Oh phoo,” Frances said, pulling her hands away. “I don’t care about being a lady. I’m a working woman like Mother.”

“Well, you’ll never sew silk with calloused hands,” Alexander replied. “So I shall never bring you ribbons again.”

She knew him too well to fear his threats. “Then I shall never dance for you or sing to you or speak to you kindly,” she said.

“Enough,” Hester remarked. “There’s enough warfare in the kingdom without it starting at home. We’ll finish lifting these tulips and then we’ll pack and go home. I am longing to sleep in my own bed again.”