Virgin Earth

Winter 1660

Elias Ashmole came to visit the Ark in midwinter, wearing a new fur-lined cape and very conscious of his new status. He came by carriage with some friends and brought a case of Canary wine to share with John. Hester lit the candles in the rarities room, and ordered dinner for them all, served it and ate her own dinner in the quieter company of Cook in the kitchen.

John put his head around the kitchen door. “We’re taking a stroll down to Lambeth,” he said. “For a glass of ale.”

Hester nodded. “I shall be in bed by the time you return,” she said. “If Mr. Ashmole wishes to stay the bed is made up in his usual room, and there are truckle beds for his friends.”

John came into the kitchen and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I shall be late home,” he announced with satisfaction. “And no doubt drunk.”

“No doubt,” Hester said with a smile. “Good night, husband.”

They came home earlier than she expected. She was putting out the candles in the rarities room and raking out the fire when she heard the front door open and John stumble into the hall with Ashmole and his companions.

“Ah, Hester,” John said happily. “I am glad you are still awake. Elias and I have been doing some business and I need you to witness it for me.”

“Can it not wait until the morning?” Hester asked.

“Oh, sign it now and then we can put it away and have a glass of port,” John said. He spread the paper before her on the painter’s table in the window of the rarities room. “Sign here.”

Hester hesitated. “What is it?”

“It’s a piece of business and we need a witness,” Elias said smoothly. “But if you are uneasy, Mrs. Tradescant, we can leave it until the morning. If you want to read every paragraph and every sentence, we can leave it. We can find someone else to serve us if you are unwilling.”

“No, no,” Hester said politely. “Of course I can sign it now.” She took the pen and signed the paper. “And now I shall go to bed,” she said. “I give you good night, gentlemen.”

John nodded, he was opening a case of coins. “Here you are,” he said to Ashmole. “In good faith.”

Hester saw the antique milled shilling piece passed to Elias.

“Are you giving away one of our coins?” she queried in surprise.

Ashmole bowed and pocketed the coin. “I’m very grateful,” he said. He seemed far more sober than John. “I shall preserve it very carefully as a precious token and a pledge.”

Hester hesitated, as if she would ask him what pledge John had made to him; but one of the men opened the door for her and bowed low. Hester curtsied and went out and up the stairs to bed.

She was wakened by the bang of her bedroom door as John stumbled into the room and then by the shake of the bed as he dropped heavily onto it. She opened her eyes and saw that he had fallen asleep at once, on his back, still wearing his clothes. Hester thought for a moment that she could get up and undress him and get him comfortable in bed. But then she smiled and turned over. John’s drinking bouts were rare but she saw no reason why he should not wake up in the morning in some slight discomfort.

When he woke in the darkness he thought for a moment he had been dreaming his worst dream: of failure and his own inability to inherit his father’s work and continue his father’s name. He slipped out of the narrow bed without waking Hester, who turned and stretched her hand out over his pillow.

He slipped on his shoes and went downstairs. The parlor which had seemed so bright and jolly only hours ago was now dark and unwelcoming, it smelled of stale ale and tobacco smoke, and the fire was burned down to dark embers. He blew on the coals, was rewarded by a red glow, and then threw on a handful of kindling. The dry wood caught and the shadows leaped high in the room.

On the table was the document and at the foot of the document was his own clear signature, and next to it Elias Ashmole’s educated elliptical hand. He touched the wax of his seal. It was hard and cold, there was no escape. The signature was there, the seal was there, the document was there. It stated very clearly that at John Tradescant’s death Elias Ashmole was to inherit all the rarities in the collection and all the plants in the garden. John had signed away his patrimony, he had signed away his name, he had signed away his inheritance and all his own work and his father’s work would count for nothing.

“I didn’t mean this,” John whispered quietly.

With the deed of gift in his hand he went out into the hall. Hester in her white nightgown was like a ghost coming down the stairs.

“Are you ill?” she asked.

Dumbly, he shook his head. “I have done a most terrible, terrible thing.”

At once her eyes went to the contract in his hand which she had signed as he had bid her. “The business you were doing with Mr. Ashmole?”

“He told me it was a deed of gift, to give the rarities to the University of Oxford at our deaths. He told me that they would put our name to the collection and that everyone would always know that we had the first collection open to any visitor in all the world, that we had the finest things, the rarest, the most beautiful. He told me that I was signing the goods to him as a trustee. He would ensure that the university received the rarities entire, that they would call it the Tradescantean.”

There was the creak of a door opening upstairs.

“Come outside,” Hester whispered as if only in the garden could they be safe. She opened the door to the terrace and slipped out into the icy night, careless of her bare feet on the chill floorboards. “Does it not say that? The document? Is he not pledged to do that?”

“I just signed it,” John said numbly. “I just agreed with him that it would be a fine thing to have the collection in the care of the university. So I just signed it. And I made you sign it too.”

“And what does it say?”

“I didn’t read it carefully enough. And he is a lawyer. He has made sure that it is unclear. It says that the collection is to go to him entire; but there is nothing about the university. He is not a trustee, he will inherit everything for himself. He will have it when we die. He can keep it as he likes. Or he can give it to his heirs. My God, Hester, he can break it up and sell it piece by piece.”

She said nothing, she was aghast. Her face was as white as her nightcap, as her gown.

“And I signed too,” she said, her words a tiny thread of sound.

John took his gardening cape hung on a hook near the door, wrapped it around her shoulders, then turned and looked out over the garden, leaning on the rail of the terrace. He thought of the many hours his father had spent, leaning on the rail and looking out at his trees, at his beloved chestnut avenue.

The night was kind to the garden, the trees were as beautiful as black lace against the sky which was slowly growing blue. Somewhere amid the rare plum trees a robin was starting to sing, its haunting ghostly song enhancing the silence. Farther down the orchard a duck, disturbed in its sleep beside the lake, quacked once briefly and then was still.

John leaned his head in his hands and blotted out the garden. “He will have it all when I am gone, Hester. He was witty and helpful, and I thought I was doing a clever thing. And now my head is fit to split and I know that you are married to a fool. There will be no Tradescant collection to carry my father’s name to future generations, they will call it the Ashmolean and we will all be forgotten.”

He thought for a moment that she would cry out against him and beat him, but she had turned away and was reading the document by the light of the setting moon. In the pallor of the moonlight she looked sick with the shock. “I have broken my promise to your father,” she said in a low voice. “I told him I would guard your children and guard the rarities. I lost Johnnie and now I have lost the rarities too.”

John shook his head. “You lost nothing,” he said passionately. “Johnnie died thinking kings were glorious heroes, not timeserving lechers. He died because he could not bear to live in the new world that the time-servers were making. And it was me that did this; not you. I did it all from my own folly. Because I thought Ashmole was cleverer than me. That’s why I was glad to be his friend. That’s why I wanted his help with the catalogue of the treasures. And now I wish to God I had inherited my father’s caution as well as his treasures. Because I could not keep the one without the other.”

“It might fail,” she said. “This – paper. We could say you were drunk when you signed…”

“I would have to prove more than being drunk. I would have to prove that I was mad for it to fail,” he said. “And being a fool is not the same as being mad.”

“We could cut off the seal, and the signature, and deny it…”

He shook his head again, not answering for a moment. “We can try but he has the law on his side, and he knows the lawyers. I think there is no escape from my folly. I have failed you and I have failed my father.” He thought for a moment. “I had no heir,” he continued with deep sorrow. “No one to come here after me. And now there will be nothing here, anyway.

“I thought my father’s name, my name, my son’s name would live forever,” he said wonderingly, looking out over the dark garden, thinking of the riches hidden safe in the frozen soil, waiting for the sun. “I thought everyone who ever planted a garden would know of us three, would be glad of what we had done. I thought every garden in England would grow a little brighter because of the plants we had brought home. I thought that as long as people loved their gardens and loved trees and shrubs and flowers there would be people who would remember us. But I have thrown it all away. My life’s work, my father’s life’s work: it will all mean nothing. Elias Ashmole will have it all and we will be forgotten.”

Hester stepped forward so she could lean her head on his shoulder, the warmth of her body was familiar and comforting. He put his arm around her and held her close. A little breeze went through the orchard and Tradescant’s trees; fifty-seven new plum trees, forty-nine new apple trees, forty-nine new pear trees, twenty-four new cherry trees moved their branches in a gentle dance. Before them the great branches of the chestnut avenue bobbed, their up-winging boughs carrying the hidden sweet spikes of their buds, their proud, broad trunks strong and still. In the orangery, safe in the warmth, were the rare and tender plants, the exotic, precious plants which the Tradescants, father and son, had brought from all over the world for the gardeners of England to love.

“We will be forgotten,” John whispered.

Hester leaned back and picked a sweet-scented winter-flowering jasmine bud, one of the first ever grown in England. The unfurling petals were cream in the yellow moonlight. The tears were hot on her cheeks, but her voice was confident.

“Oh no, they will remember you,” she said. “I think the gardeners of England will remember you with gratitude one hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years from now, and every park in England will have one of our horse chestnut trees, and every garden one of our flowers.”