Virgin Earth

January 1645, England

Johnnie was in the garden at first light, looking for flowers for his sister’s wedding bouquet. The frost was as thick on the ground as snow, his boots crunched as he walked across the frozen grass. The sun was bright and hard and the air smelled sharp and exciting: of leaf mold, of coldness, of the earth waiting for sunshine. Johnnie had a powerful sense of being young and alive and that his life, as the only Tradescant heir, was about to begin.

He wanted to give Frances something beautiful. If she had married in springtime she would have carried a bouquet of flowers from the chestnut tree, their grandfather’s pride. If she had married in summer he would have cut the stems and snapped the thorns off a hundred roses. But she had chosen the very heart of the winter and Johnnie feared he could give her nothing from his grandfather’s garden but the shiny hardness of evergreen leaves.

Hester, seeing him bareheaded and wearing nothing warm, swung open her bedroom window, hearing the hinge crack against the frost. “Johnnie! What are you doing?”

He turned and waved. “I’m picking her a bouquet!”

“There’s nothing to be had!”

Johnnie shook his head and went on down the garden. Hester watched him go, the lithe little figure with the determined set to his shoulders: Johnnie Tradescant. Then she turned back into the house to wake Frances for her wedding day.

Frances, bathed, dressed, perfumed and wearing a new gown, came downstairs in a shimmering cloud of palest blue silk. She wore her hair down to her shoulders, curled in ringlets, a tiny scrap of lace for a cap on the back of her head. Her gown, rich pale silk embroidered all over with pale blue patterns, hushed and whispered on the flagstones of the hall. Her wide collar was of the finest Valenciennes lace; the future Mrs. Norman could import the very best from France. It matched the deep lace edging of her sleeves, crisp and sweet smelling with starch. The dress was cut low, the cream of Frances’s warm skin contrasting with the coolness of the white lace.

“How do I look?” Frances asked, knowing that she was beautiful.

“Awful ugly,” Johnnie said with a smile, invoking the nursery insult. He whipped out a posy from behind his back. “I picked you these. But you don’t have to carry them if you don’t like ’em.”

Frances took the posy from him without any word of gratitude or thanks and looked carefully at it. Hester was reminded that they were children and grandchildren of perhaps the finest gardeners the world had ever known. Neither of them exclaimed over the gift of a plant, they always carefully looked, carefully assessed.

He had cut her fronds of yew, the needles as soft as wool, the green so dark as to be almost black, starred with deep pink berries and smelling hauntingly of winter and Christmas. He had picked her mistletoe from the clumps on the old trees in the orchard and woven the light green wings of leaves around the darker yew so the white berries looked like drops of pearls against the needles. He had found some tiny buds of early snowdrops and woven them into a chain that linked leaves, needles and buds altogether, and he had twisted it around with the lacelike twigs of a rambling rose starred with pink hips.

“Thank you,” Frances said.

“But I have this for your hair,” Johnnie said with simple pride. From the table behind him he produced a spray of primroses, and their sweet, clear smell filled the hall.

“How ever did you get primroses?” Frances asked.

“Potted them up as soon as you said you’d marry him,” Johnnie said proudly. “I wasn’t going to let you catch me out with a winter wedding. We are the Tradescants, after all.”

Frances laid down her green bouquet and took the pot of primroses to the mirror in the rarities room. Her high heels sounded hollow on the floorboards; only the big things were left in the room, with a collection of lesser pieces which could be sacrificed to save the others. The room was rich enough to fool a looting soldier into thinking that he had seen all the treasures. Hester kept the key to the ice-house door on a chain round her neck and the ivy was growing thickly over the hinges.

Frances picked the flowers, nipping the soft stems with her fingernails, and tucked them behind her ears and into her ringlets.

“Pretty?” she asked, turning to her brother.

“Well enough,” he said, concealing his pride as he took her hand and tucked it under his arm.

They married at Little St. Bartholomew’s Church, Old Fish Street, in the City, with Hester as one witness and Alexander’s friend Thomas Streeter as the other. They dined that night at Alexander’s house opposite the Tower of London and raised a glass to the father of the bride.

“I wonder where he is tonight?” Mr. Streeter asked thoughtlessly. Alexander glanced quickly at Hester’s stricken face.

“I don’t mind, as long as he’s safe,” she said.

It was hard for Hester to leave Frances. She had cared for her since she had been a fair-headed, sad little girl of nine years old, overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after her brother, missing her mother every night and every day. She had been too proud to ask for help; she would always have all of the Tradescant stubbornness. She had been too independent to ask for love; but Hester would treasure all her life the memory of the way Frances had stepped sideways, without glancing up, until she could lean against her stepmother’s comforting hip and feel a protective hand rest gently on her shoulder.

“I shall miss you,” Hester whispered as she took her leave in the cramped hall of Alexander’s house the next day.

“Oh, Mother-” Frances said, and dived into her embrace. “But I shall come to the Ark often, and you will come and see us. Won’t she, Alexander?”

Alexander Norman, looking years younger as if sheer joy had smoothed the lines from his face, beamed at Hester and said: “You can come and live with us, if you like. I should think myself a Pasha of Turkey with two such beauties in the house.”

“I have the Ark to see to,” Hester affirmed. “But I expect you on a visit often. And when there is plague in the city…”

“I shall send her to you at once,” Alexander reassured her. “Never fear. And I shall write you what news there is.”

After that, there was nothing to do but to let her go. Hester held on a moment longer than was necessary, and when Frances stepped back into the encircling arm of her husband, Hester felt a pain in her whole body, as if something slowly and deeply was peeling away from her. She smiled at once. “God bless you,” she said, as if the pain was not gripping her inside. “Be happy.”

She turned from the pretty hall and stepped out into the street. The Tower of London threw a shadow over the street in the morning and the chill struck Hester as she gathered her cape around her. In a second Johnnie was at her side, offering his arm like a cavalier, and Hester managed to step briskly out toward the river and the boat to take them home.

“That was well done,” Johnnie said stoutly, keeping his face turned away from her.

“Very well,” Hester replied, rubbing her gloved hand against her cheeks. “A plague on this cold wind, it’s making my eyes water.”

“Mine too,” Johnnie said.