Virgin Earth

Autumn 1658

In early September John was wakened at dawn by the noise of the rising wind.

“I’m glad I’m not at sea today,” he said to Hester.

He went to the window and saw the trees in the orchard and the avenue flailing their boughs at the sky where the clouds raced overhead.

“Come back to bed,” Hester said sleepily.

There was a clatter from the stable yard.

“I’m awake now,” John said. “I’ll get up and see that everything’s safe. We’re in for a storm.”

He spent the day with the lad and Joseph pinning back the creepers and staking the plants which were already rocking in the earth, pulling at their roots. Frances took a sharp knife and went around the garden mercilessly pruning the climbing roses so the long boughs would not tear the stalks from the soil. She came in for dinner at midday with her arms scratched above her gloves and her hair tumbled about her shoulders.

“Frances Norman,” said Hester, disapprovingly.

“It’s wild out there,” Frances said. “My cap blew off.”

“I can see that,” Hester said.

“We’re going to lose half the apples,” John said irritably. “What a foul wind.”

“And the plums,” Frances said. “I’ll pick as many as I can get this afternoon.”

“I’ll come out and help,” said Hester. “I don’t expect any visitors this afternoon, no one would take a boat on the river unless they had to.”

John had thought that the wind might drop as night fell; but it grew stronger and wilder, and it started to rain. Hester went round the house fastening shutters but still they could hear the thud of the wind against the leaded panes of glass, and in the rarities room they could see the great panes creaking as they moved in their frames.

“I hope to God they don’t crack,” John said. “We’ll close the shutters behind them, then at least if they smash the rarities will still have some protection. If I had thought I could have boarded up the house this morning.”

They had an ill-cooked supper. A great gust of wind had come down the chimney and blown soot all around the kitchen. While they ate they heard the clatter of a slate falling from the roof into the stable yard.

Frances declared that she was going early to bed and putting her head under her pillow, and Hester followed her example; but John prowled around the creaking house for half the night, feeling that his Ark was rocking in high seas and that the master should be awake.

In the morning there was less damage than they had feared. The Virginian creeper was stripped of its rosy leaves and would make no show to attract buyers, and there were fallen fruit and broken boughs all down the orchard. The chestnuts had been ripped from the trees too early and they might not ripen, and they had lost most of the apple and plum crop. But the house was still standing and the windows were unbroken, and only a few slates had gone missing from the roof.

“I shall go into Lambeth and order the builder to come,” John said. “He’ll be a busy man this day, I should think.”

He rode Caesar down the lane to Lambeth and thought that the crowd in the market was agog with news of the storm damage until he drew closer and heard what they were saying.

“What was that?” he asked, dropping from the saddle. “What did you say, sir?”

“Don’t you know?” A man turned to him, delighted to be first with the news. “Haven’t you heard? He’s dead!”

“Who?”

“The Lord Protector. Oliver Cromwell. Dead in his bed while the storm rattled the roof above him.”

“It’s as if God himself was angry,” a man piously asserted. “It was a sign.”

“A very odd sign then, and rather late in the day,” John said crossly. “If God didn’t like Oliver Cromwell he had plenty of time to demonstrate that before.”

An unfriendly face turned toward him. “Are you one of his old soldiers?” someone asked unpleasantly. “Or a servant of the major generals? Or one of the damned tax collectors?”

“I’m a man who thinks for himself,” John said stoutly. “I serve no master and I owe nothing to any man. And I am absolutely certain that God didn’t blow the slates of my roof last night to show me that Oliver Cromwell was dying. If He is all-wise, then He might have found a way to tell me that didn’t let the rain in.”