Virgin Earth

Summer 1657

Elias Ashmole and the physicians, mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, geographers, herbalists and engineers returned to the Ark to argue, discuss and exchange ideas, on the first Sunday of every summer month. By common accord they avoided the subject of politics. It looked to most men as if Cromwell meant to make himself king. Most of the opposition to him had been dispersed, paid or bullied into silence. General George Monck, another turncoat royalist, held down Scotland for the Lord Protector with a heavy hand and the dour efficiency of the professional soldier. Cromwell’s own son Henry held down Ireland. The Cromwells were becoming a mighty dynasty, and the old idealism was lost in the difficulties of ruling a country where any freedom for the many was feared by the powerful few.

The great fear was not political opposition but religious madness. The men and women who would give their form of worship no name because they wanted it to be everywhere, to be the nature of life itself, were growing in numbers. Their opponents called them Quakers because they shook and trembled in religious ecstasy. Their enemies called them blasphemers, especially after one of their number, James Nayler, entered the city of Bristol like Jesus on a donkey with women throwing down palms before him. The House of Commons had him arraigned for blasphemy and savagely punished; but the mutilating of one individual could not stop a movement which threw up adherents everywhere like poppies in a wheatfield. Very soon John’s visitors banned the discussion of religion too, as overly distracting from the work in hand.

A couple of times Lord Lambert came from his house at Wimbledon to see any new additions to the garden or the rarities room and sometimes stayed for dinner to talk with the other guests. Sometimes men brought curiosities, or things that they had designed or built. Often at these talks Ashmole would lead the discussion, his classical education and his acute mind prompting him to take the part of host in John’s house.

“I don’t like how Mr. Ashmole puts himself forward,” Hester remarked to John as she carried another couple of bottles of wine into the dining room.

“No more than any other man,” he answered.

“He does,” she insisted. “Ever since he catalogued the collection you would think that it was his own. I wish you would remind him that he was nothing more than your assistant. Frances knows her way ’round the collection better than he does. Even I do. And Frances and I kept it safe through three wars, while he was at Oxford living off the richness of the court.”

“But neither Frances nor I know Latin like Mr. Ashmole,” John reminded her gently. “And he worked very hard for nothing more than my thanks. I couldn’t have completed the task without him, you know, Hester. And he’s a coming man, mark my words. He’ll do great things.”

Hester gave John a brief, skeptical look and said nothing more but turned to go back to the kitchen.

“Is Alexander coming downstairs tonight?” John asked her. It was Alexander’s habit now to join the men in the evening after they had dined so that he could listen to their talk. He wore his gown with a rich robe wrapped round his shoulders against the cool evening air. He was often too breathless to speak but he liked to listen to the men discussing, he liked to follow the arguments especially when they talked of astronomy and the new discoveries of the stars.

Hester shook her head. “He’s too weary, he says. Frances will sit with him upstairs.”

The Normans stayed at the Ark through the summer, but still Alexander grew no better. They all maintained the gentle fiction that he would improve when the colder weather came, as before they had pretended that he would be better when he felt the summer sun.

When he said he wanted to go home in August Frances did not argue with him, though the summer months were the most dangerous for the plague in the City. She simply sent the garden boy to the river to hail a boat to take them down to the Tower and told the stable lad to harness the cart.

“He’s very ill,” Hester cautioned her. “He’s too ill to make the journey. You should stay here.”

“I know,” Frances said simply. “But he wants to be home.”

“Settle him in and as soon as he is feeling better you come back here,” Hester said. “There’s plague in the City, I’d rather you were here.”

Frances shook her head. “You can see as well as I can that he will not feel better, even when he is home. I will stay with him until the end.”

“Oh, Frances.”

“I knew that this was likely to happen when I married him,” Frances said. Her eyes were filled with tears but her voice never faltered. “And he knew it too. We were neither of us such fools as to think that I would not lose him. We were prepared for this from our wedding day. He warned me of it. I have no regrets.”

“I’ll come with you,” Hester decided. “You’ll need someone to run the house while you nurse him.”

“Thank you,” Frances said. “I’ll want you with me.”

Alexander died in his bed, as he had wanted, with Hester at the foot of the bed and Frances holding his hand. He whispered something and she could not hear what he said. She leaned a little closer to hear the words.

“What is it, my love? Say it again?”

“You were the sweetest-” he paused for a breath and Frances leaned a little closer. “The sweetest flower in all of John’s garden.” He smiled at her for a moment, then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Frances buried her husband in the church where they had been married and walked back to her house with her father and stepmother on either side of her.

Hester had ordered in a dinner from the nearby bake-house and Alexander’s apprentices, his family from Herefordshire, and his friends from the City drank to his memory, ate their dinner and then left.

The house was oddly silent without the tapping of hammers from the yard and continual rasp of the saws.

“Have you thought what you would like to do?” John asked his daughter gently. “Have you thought where you would like to live? Alexander left you well-provided, and you can sell this house. The sale of the business is already agreed.”

“I had thought,” she said. “If you would allow it – I should like to come home.”

“To the Ark?”

“Yes.”

John found that he was beaming with delight. “That would give me much joy,” he said simply.