Virgin Earth

Summer 1650

Hester might have predicted Johnnie’s feelings as accurately as one of Elias Ashmole’s astrological projections except for one thing, which she had not taken into account: the endless determination of the Stuarts to regain the crown they had lost.

In July Charles Stuart arrived in Edinburgh and forged a new alliance with the Scots, who were always drawn by the temptation of one of their own Stuart kings, and the rich plums that a grateful English monarch might bring them. He promised them anything they asked, and they promised him an army to conquer England, and crowned him king.

Joseph brought the news from Lambeth and came into the dining room to tell it. The family were at breakfast, Frances and Alexander Norman were either side of the table, Philip Harding, a mathematician, and Paul Quigley, an artist, were dining too. A stunned silence at the news was broken by Johnnie dropping his spoon, and the scrape of his chair as he rose to his feet.

“Not again,” John exclaimed. “When will this stop? Does he not see that he is defeated and his cause defeated and that he owes it to this country, if he owes us any loyalty or love, to let us get on with our lives without another war?”

“I’m going,” Johnnie said determinedly. “He’s certain to march on England and I must be there.”

“Hush,” Hester said, sharply, uncertain of the safety of such an announcement.

The two guests tactfully rose to their feet. “I’ll take a stroll around the garden,” Philip Harding said.

“I’ll come with you,” said Dr. Quigley.

The door closed behind them. “That was unwise,” Alexander Norman said gently to Johnnie. “Whatever your opinions are, you should not let it ever be said that your father is harboring royalist sentiments and allowing them to be spoken at his table.”

Johnnie flushed. “I beg your pardon,” he said to his father and to Hester. “I won’t do it again. It was the shock of the news.”

“Joseph had no business blurting it out like that,” Frances said crossly. “And you can’t go, Johnnie. It’s too far. And it’s bound to fail.”

“Why should it?” he demanded passionately. “Why should it fail? The Scots army was stronger than the English last time it was out. And Parliament would never have defeated the king in the first place if it hadn’t cobbled together an alliance with the Scots. They could march on London and bring the king with them.”

“Not with General Lambert in the way,” Alexander observed.

Johnnie checked. “Is he going? The Scots have never beaten Lambert.”

“He’s bound to. I would think Cromwell will command with Lambert as his second.”

“It makes no difference to me!” Johnnie declared. “This is the return of the prince. I must be there.”

There was a silence, Frances turned to her father, who had not yet spoken. The silence extended. Johnnie looked toward his father at the end of the table.

“He is the king,” Johnnie said desperately. “Crowned king.”

“He’s not crowned in England,” Hester said sharply. “He’s not our king.”

“He’s the third king of England that this family has been called on to serve,” Johnnie pressed. “And I am the third generation in royal service. This is my service now, this is my king. I must serve him as you served his father and my grandfather served his grandfather.”

There was a long silence. Everyone waited for John to speak.

“You know my heart, sir,” Johnnie said with careful courtesy to his father. “I hope you will give me leave to go.”

John looked down the table and saw his son blazing with bright intensity. He was restored. He was the Johnnie who had ridden out to the siege of Colchester, nothing like the ghost they had sent back. John carefully avoided Hester’s minatory gaze and spoke softly to his impassioned son.

“I have to weigh your safety against your desire to serve the king. It’s not my cause, Johnnie, but you are a grown man and I see that it is yours. But you are the only heir, the only Tradescant to carry the name…”

Johnnie cleared his throat. “I know that,” he said. “But this is a great cause. It is worth a sacrifice.”

Hester moved quickly as if she would cry out against the thought of Johnnie being sacrificed to a cause, however great. Still John did not let himself look at her.

“If the Scots get as far south as York,” he said carefully, “then you may join them. You don’t want to fight for the king in Scotland, Johnnie, that’s their own business. I wouldn’t see you fight on their soil. But if they get to York I will buy you a horse and equipment and you can enlist, and I shall be proud to see you go.”

There was a swift intake of breath and a swirl of gray silk at the end of the table as Hester leaped to her feet.

“And your stepmother agrees with me,” John ruled, forestalling the quick exclamation.

“I can see that she does, sir,” Johnnie said gravely, a quiver of laughter in his voice.

“She does indeed,” John repeated.

Hester subsided into her seat again, her hands holding the edge of the table as if physical force was the only way she could restrain her speech.

“And you will promise me not to run off without my permission and blessing,” John stipulated. “You’ve been to war now, Johnnie, you know how hard it is. You know it’s a hundred times harder for a man without some money in his pocket and the right equipment: a good sword, a warm cloak, a strong horse. If you wait until the Scots have reached York you can join them as an officer. Do I have your word?”

Johnnie hesitated for only a moment. “You have,” he said. “But I will start preparing today, so that I am ready the moment I can go.”

“How can you?” Frances interrupted passionately. “How can you even think of it, Johnnie? After the last time?”

He fired up at the challenge in her voice. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “You’re a girl.”

“I understand that you nearly broke Mother’s heart last time and that we have none of us been happy since you came back from Colchester,” she said hotly. “I understand that you have been sick to death ever since that defeat. Why go? Why go all that way to feel despair again? What if you are hurt so far from home? We’d never even know! What if your luck runs out and you get killed in one of these stupid battles at a village where we never even know the name?”

Alexander Norman, looking from his angry young wife to her younger brother, still not yet seventeen years old, hoped for a moment that the two might quarrel like the children they once were and the whole issue be lost in the confusion of words and temper. Johnnie leaped to his feet, ready to blaze back at Frances, but then he reined in his temper and looked at his father.

“I thank you for your permission, sir,” he said formally, and left the room.

Hester waited in silence until they heard his footsteps cross the hall and go out of the back door. Then she spoke bitterly to her husband. “How could you? How could you agree that he should go?”

John looked at his son-in-law over a mug of small ale. “Ask Alexander,” he advised. “He knows how I could.”

Hester, her cheeks blazing, turned to Alexander. “What?” she spat out.

“They’ll never get to York,” Alexander predicted. “Cromwell can’t risk having a foreign army on English soil. He can’t even risk having a Scottish army on the march against him. Not after having bloodied his sword in Ireland to keep the people down. He has to bring peace to the kingdom or lose everything. Lose one kingdom and he has lost all four. He’ll fight them in Scotland and he’ll defeat them in Scotland. He’ll never let them come south.”

“But the king will bring out the clans,” Hester whispered. “Men who would march all night to die for him and for their clan chief. Wild men who won’t count the price, who will fight like savages.”

“The clans won’t leave Scotland, they never do,” John predicted. “They’ll come no farther south than a raiding party.”

“And they’ll be poorly equipped,” Alexander agreed. “They’ll come out with daggers and pitchforks and meet Cromwell and Lambert and the Model Army with its cavalry and cannon and muskets and pikes. I’ll have to go back to London today, there will be new orders for barrels. But you can be sure that my orders will be to send the ordnance by sea to Scotland to meet the army there – that’s where Cromwell will choose his battlefield.”

Hester turned to the window and looked out over the garden. The flower beds before the house were filled with pinks, gillyflowers, and the new star-faced spiderwort in pink. The roses on the walls were shedding petals as they bloomed. Johnnie was striding down the avenue, his head up, his shoulders back, his listlessness and sadness quite gone.

“How can we bear it?” she asked softly. “How could you give him permission and your blessing to go into danger again?”

John was beside her, he slid his arm around her waist and half-reluctantly she let him hold her. “I am doing the very thing that I think will keep him safe,” he said. “That is my only intention.”

All July and all August Johnnie was in a fever for news, desperate to be ready to go the moment his father said he might leave. He persuaded John to buy him a horse, a reliable old war charger called Caesar with big, strong haunches and broad shoulders that looked as if it would carry Johnnie’s light weight for hundreds of miles.

He tied a sack stuffed with hay into the low branch of a tree and practiced charging it and stabbing at it with his lance. The first few practices he followed his horse back to the stable after a couple of hard tumbles; but then he learned the knack of thrusting and withdrawing the lance in one smooth motion so the horse and he could go on together.

He bought a traveling cape and a bag that he could strap on the back of the saddle and he kept them packed with everything he might need so that he was ready to leave at a moment’s notice. He was alive and vital with excitement and determination, and the whole house rang with the noise of him singing, whistling, running up and down the wooden stairs in his riding boots, shedding mud and creating confusion out of sheer energy.

John had made him promise that he would not tell anyone of the agreement they had made, and Johnnie, who remembered well enough the danger of living as suspected royalists when the king’s army was on the march, was careful to make no direct reference as to which side he would be joining as soon as his father said he might go. He was as excited as a child, but he was no fool. Never again did he let slip to visitors or guests that he was only waiting for news from Yorkshire to saddle up his war horse and ride north to join the new, uncrowned king.

The family depended on Alexander Norman to tell them how the war was going. Living in the center of the city and near the Tower he always had the first of the rumors anyway; but filling Cromwell’s orders for supplies of munitions he always knew the latest position of the Model Army, though it might be impossible to tell how they were faring.

“But that’s not the point,” Johnnie reminded his father anxiously, finding him in the rarities room, with a tray of recently purchased foreign coins.

“We’re running out of space,” John said. “We have to buy new items, and people like to see different things when they visit. But we cannot show everything we have now properly. We should think about building another room, perhaps.”

“The point was not whether the Scots are winning or losing, it was how far they are advanced,” Johnnie persisted. “That was our agreement, wasn’t it? Because Mother is saying that if they have advanced to York but been defeated then I shouldn’t go. But we didn’t say that, did we?”

John looked at his son’s eager face. “The letter of our agreement was certainly that you might go if they reached York,” he said. “But surely, Johnnie, you wouldn’t want to join a defeated army. You wouldn’t want to volunteer for a lost cause?”

The young man did not hesitate for a moment. “Of course I would,” he said simply. “This is not about calculating which side might win and joining that. This is not about trying to end up on the winning side like half the men now in Parliament. This is about serving the king, whether he is winning or losing. His father did not recant when he saw the scaffold. Neither will I.”

John pushed the tray of coins roughly into his son’s hands. “Find a little corner for these, and write out new labels for them,” he said. “They need to be dusted and polished too. And don’t talk to me about scaffolds.”

“But if they get to York, even if they are in retreat-”

“Yes, yes,” John said. “I remember what we agreed.”