Virgin Earth

Spring 1644, England

Alexander Norman did not speak again of marriage to Frances, but he visited the Ark at Lambeth every week. He took Frances out on the river, he bought her a pony and took her riding in the lanes away from Lambeth and out into the country. Frances came back from these expeditions unusually quiet and thoughtful but she never said more to Hester than that her uncle had been very kind and they had talked about everything under the sun, but nothing that she could remember. Hester felt torn. On one hand she felt she should warn Frances against deepening her relationship with her uncle, which could only bring him pain and disappointment; but on the other hand she did not want to prevent her daughter from enjoying a trusting, loving relationship with a good man old enough to be her father.

It must be Alexander who was principally at risk from heartbreak. Frances enjoyed his company, and learned much from him – from horsemanship to politics. Hester trusted Alexander to spend every day with her without one word of courtship, but she wondered how much pleasure he took when Frances looked up at him and said trustingly: “You’ll know about King Henry, won’t you, Uncle Norman? You were a boy when he was on the throne, weren’t you?”

He gave Hester a wry smile over his niece’s brown head. “That would be true if I was a hundred years old now. Do you know nothing of history, Frances?”

She made a face. “Not much. So how old are you, Uncle?”

Hester thought he had to brace himself to answer.

“I am fifty-four,” he said honestly. “And I have seen three monarchs reign; but never times like these.”

Frances looked at him consideringly, her head on one side. “Well you don’t look very old,” she said bluntly. “I never think of you as that old.”

“I am that old,” he said.

Hester thought that the assertion must be costing him dear.

“I am old enough to be your father.”

Frances’s surprised ripple of laughter made him smile. “I think of you as my friend!” she exclaimed.

“Well, I was your grandfather’s friend before you were born. I bounced you on my knee when you were a dribbling little baby.”

She nodded. “I don’t see that makes any difference at all,” she said, and Hester wondered, but did not ask: “Difference to what?”

Alexander did not neglect Johnnie or Hester on his visits. He brought Johnnie pamphlets and ballads about his hero Prince Rupert, and he brought Hester welcome news of the progress of the war. He spoke of a new commander, Colonel Cromwell, who had come from nowhere and was said to be little more than a working man, but who had a regiment of soldiers that could withstand a royalist cavalry charge and who had been trained and drilled until they could turn and stand and march forward on one shouted command.

“I think this Cromwell knows his business as well as Prince Rupert,” Alexander said.

Johnnie shook his head. “Prince Rupert has fought all around Europe,” he said certainly. “And he was riding horses, great cavalry chargers, when he was my age. No one from East Anglia could say the same.”

The news from the king’s court at Oxford was of riotous loose living, of scholars and courtiers drunk in the gutters every morning, and of the king celebrating victory after victory, however small the skirmish and insignificant the campaign. It looked as if the kingdom was opening up to him and he would be in London within a year. And then he started his march on his rebellious capital city itself. Alexander Norman sent a message to the Ark at Lambeth.

Dear Cousin Hester,

I suggest that you hide your most precious treasures in your safe place and pack necessary clothes and goods for yourself. The king is marching on London from the north and the City is preparing for a siege. However, if the king should circle London to besiege it, then I should think it most likely that Lambeth will fall and the Parliamentary forces stand back and hold their ground north of the river. If the fighting is prolonged then you may well be caught between two armies. Therefore, be ready to leave the moment I give you the word and I will take you back to Oatlands.

Alexander

Hester put the letter at once into the tiny fire of coal dust and kindling and watched it burn sluggishly. She felt very tired, as if the war had gone on forever, and would go on forever, without victory, without peace, with nothing but the wearisome task of surviving. For a moment she sat by the fireside, her head leaning on her hand, watching the note flame, turn to ash, and then fall in soft flakes into the red embers. Then she gave herself a little shake, brushed off her skirt, tied on her hessian working apron and went to the rarities room.

Johnnie was showing a visitor out of the front door.

“What is it, Mother?” he asked as soon as the door was safely closed. “Not bad news from Virginia?”

She shook her head. “Not that, thank God. It is a note from your uncle. He says that the king is marching on London and that we must be prepared to leave if the fighting comes close. We must pack up the most precious things for safety at once.”

He nodded, his little face grave. “I’ll call Frances,” he said. “We’ll all help.”

Frances came down from her room, her hair pinned in a new style. “How do I look?”

“Awful ugly,” Johnnie said with a grin.

Hester was drawing out the big wooden chests which were stored beneath the display cases. “You pack the glass and porcelain, Frances, you’re the most careful. Johnnie, you pack the coins.”

Hester unlocked the cases and then started folding and packing the clothes, vests and coats from all around the world, savages’ clothes of feathers and beads, beautifully worked scarves from India and China, and King Henry’s own gloves which King Charles himself had given to the Tradescants. She glanced over, Johnnie was carefully laying every coin with its label in the chest.

“You’ll have to just pile them in,” she said. “And when we unpack them we’ll have to label them again.”

His little face was shocked. The order of the rarities room had been a sacred charge for the whole family for all of his life. “But these are Grandfather John’s labels!”

“I know,” Hester said grimly. “And I hope that he would understand that we’re doing the best that we can to keep his Ark and all its contents safe. Just tumble all the coins in the chest, Johnnie, and then we can hide it and, even if a dozen regiments come through, when the war is over we can dig it all up and start again.”

He looked reluctant, but did as he was told. Frances, at the other side of the room, was wrapping precious pieces of glass in silks and scarves, and packing them tightly in a wooden box.

Hester looked around the room. It was a collection that had been amassed over years of work, all she could do was to choose the most precious pieces from it and try to save them. “The little toys,” she said to Frances. “The mechanical toys. Do them next.”

“What about the mermaid’s tail?” Johnnie asked. “And the whale’s jaw?”

“We can’t even lift them,” Frances said. “What will we do? How can we hide them in safety?”

“I don’t know,” Hester said. Her hands kept moving, packing, folding, smoothing, but her voice was full of despair and weariness. “We just pack everything we can, I suppose. And for the rest? I don’t know.”

At night Hester and the children and the gardener, Joseph, carried the boxes carefully to the ice house, and stacked them inside. The ice house was lined with brick, it was damp and dark. Frances shivered and pulled her hood over her head, fearing spiders and bats. The boxes filled the small circular room. When they came out they nailed up the door. Hester had an odd, superstitious feeling that it was as if they were mourners before the family vault and that all that was most precious to them had been buried.

“I’ll plant a couple of shrubs before it tomorrow,” Joseph promised, “and grow some ivy over the door. In a month or so you won’t know it’s there.”

“I hope we have a month or so,” Hester said. “Cut some branches and lay them over the door to hide it while the ivy is growing. And put a couple of saplings in.”

“Is the king’s army coming so soon?” Joseph asked.

“The king himself is coming,” Hester said grimly. “And please God that whether he wins or loses the battle is over swiftly and the winners bring the country back to peace, because I don’t think I can bear another year like this one.”

Within days in the city of London everything was rationed and nothing could be bought. The king’s army was coming down the Great North Road and no wagons could get into London to feed the people. The Lord Mayor of London himself set up distribution points where people could buy food and set fair prices so that racketeers could not profit from the city’s desperation. Joseph was drafted out every day to dig trenches to protect the city from the cavalry, and there was even an inquiry from the local commander of the trained bands as to how old Johnnie might be, and when he would be old enough to serve.

Johnnie, with his home under siege from the king, was wild to sneak out at night and get to the king’s army. “I could be a scout,” he said. “I could be a spy. I could tell the king where the ditches are dug, where the cannon are mounted. He needs me, I should go to him.”

“Be quiet,” Hester snapped. The sense of an impending disaster for the house and the children she loved was wearing her patience very thin. “The king has enough fools running to his standard. You are a child. You will stay home like an obedient child.”

“I am nearly eleven!” he protested. “And the head of the household.”

Hester gave him a small smile. “Then stay and defend me,” she said. “We hold the treasures of the country here. We need to stay at our post.”

He was a little mollified. “When I am a man I shall train and join Rupert’s cavalry,” he promised.

“I hope that when you are a man you will be a gardener in a peaceful country,” she said fervently.

At the end of March there was extraordinary news which came into the city as gossip and was confirmed within the day in broadsheets and pamphlets and ballads. Despite all premonitions and fears, despite all likelihood, the Parliament army, working men officered by those who had never been gentlemen at court, had met the king’s army at Alresford outside Winchester, fought a long, hard battle and won a resounding victory. It was all the more impressive because the battle had turned on a cavalry charge by the royalists which, for once, did not end in a rout of terrified Parliament infantry being cut down as they fled. This time the Parliament men stood their ground, and the king’s horse, thrown back into the twisting, deep lanes of Hampshire, could not come around again, could not regroup, while the Parliamentary infantry doggedly and determinedly slugged their way uphill to Alresford ridge, and were in Alresford before nightfall.

There were bonfires all over Lambeth that night, and precious candles showed at every window. The next Sunday there was not a man, woman nor child who did not attend a service of thanksgiving. The tide of the war had ebbed for a moment, for a moment only; and no cavaliers would be riding through the narrow streets of Lambeth for a month or two at least. And there would be no Papist Irish murdering soldiers either. The news came filtering through that the Parliamentary forces had captured all the Irish-facing ports of Wales. The king could not bring the Papists into England. Even in Scotland the small royalist forces were being driven back.

“I think the king will have to come to terms with Parliament,” Alexander said to Hester one evening in April. “He’s on the defensive for the first time and the royal army is not one which fights well in retreat. He doesn’t have the advisers or the determination to carry on.”

“And what then?” Hester asked. She had a basketful of sweet pea pods from last year in her lap and she was shelling the seeds ready for planting. “Do I unpack the rarities from their hiding places?”

Alexander considered for a moment. “Not until peace is declared,” he said. “We’ll wait and see. It may be that the tide is turning at last.”

“D’you think the king will make peace with Parliament and come meekly home?”

Alexander shrugged. “What else can he do?” he said. “He has to come to terms with them. He is still king: they are still Parliament.”

“So all this pain and bloodshed has been for nothing,” Hester said blankly. “Nothing except to teach the king that he should manage his Parliament as his father and the old queen managed theirs.”

Alexander looked grave. “It’s been an expensive lesson.”

Hester threw a handful of dried empty pods into the fire and watched them spark and flare up. “Damnable,” she said bitterly.