Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

“Like a babe in a cradle,” Captain Argall assured her. He kissed her hand in his flirtatious way and ignored her lack of response. “Good night.”

Elizabeth watched J go up the stairs to his little bed in the attic and then drew the curtains of the four-poster around her and John.

“I’d have thought you would have leaped at the chance of a fresh start in the new world,” John remarked as he got into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. “You who always want us to be freeholders. We would be freeholders in Virginia of land we could only dream of here. Three hundred acres!”

Elizabeth, pulling her nightgown over her head and only then dropping her skirt and shift, did not answer. John was too wise to demand a reply. He watched her kneel at the foot of the bed to say her prayers and closed his own eyes and muttered his thanks for blessings. Only when Elizabeth was in bed, tying the ties of her nightcap under her chin, did she say, suddenly, “And who is the governor of this new land?”

John was taken aback. “Sir George,” he said. “Newly appointed. Sir George Yeardley.”

“A courtier. Exactly,” she said and blew out her candle with an emphatic puff. They lay for a moment in silence in the darkness, and then she spoke: “It’s not a new land at all. It’s the same land but in a different place. I won’t go, John. It’s just another form of service. We risk everything, we gamble our savings, our livelihood, and even our lives. We put ourselves in grave danger in a country – one of the few in the whole world where you could not earn a living doing your own trade; no one will want a gardener there, it’s farmers they need – we put our son into a forest filled with unknown dangers, and we try to make a living from a land that no one has farmed before. And who makes the profits? The governor. The Virginia Company. And the king.”

“It’s their land,” John said mildly. “Who else should make the profits?”

“If it’s their land then they can take the risks,” Elizabeth declared bluntly. “Not I.”

Elizabeth’s determined opposition to the Virginia venture could not prevent John investing money. While she watched, with her mouth in a hard ungenerous line, he counted over twenty-five gold sovereigns for two shares. Captain Argall promised that two men – poor men who could not find their own passage money – would be sent on John’s account, and that the land granted to them on arrival in Virginia would be held in part for John.

“You’ll be a squire of Virginia yet,” Argall said to him, stowing the purse of gold beneath his coat with a swift glance at Elizabeth’s stony face. “I shall pick you out a good piece of land, west of Jamestown, inland, upriver. I shall call it Argall Town.”

He broke off as Elizabeth snorted quietly at his presumption.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Excuse me,” Elizabeth said swiftly. “I sneezed.”

“I shall call it Argall Town,” Captain Argall repeated. “And there will always be a welcome there for you, John.” He glanced down at J’s adoring uplifted face. “And for you, J,” he said. “Never forget that you are a landowner in the new world, in virgin earth. When you are weary of this old country you have your stake in the new. When you want to be away from here, there will be your headright in virgin land.”

J nodded. “I won’t forget, sir.”

“And I shall take you to meet Princess Pocahontas,” Argall promised. “She is visiting in England and she has a kindness for me. I shall introduce you to her.”

J’s eyes grew rounder and his mouth dropped into a perfect circle of astonishment.

“She would not want to be troubled with us,” Elizabeth said quickly.

“Why not?” Captain Argall asked. “She would be delighted to make your acquaintance. Come up to London next week and I will introduce you. It is a promise.” He turned to J. “I promise you, you shall meet her.”

“Time for him to go to school,” Elizabeth interrupted firmly. “I am surprised, husband, that you linger so long.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Argall said, taking the hint. “And thank you for your hospitality, Mrs T. It’s always a pleasure to be entertained by such a lady.”

Elizabeth nodded, still unsmiling. “I wish you well in your ventures,” she said. “I hope that you make a profit, especially as it is our money you are venturing.”

Argall laughed without embarrassment. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he reminded her and took her hand in the way she disliked, and kissed it. Then he clapped John on the shoulder and the two men left the house with J bobbing behind, like an agitated duckling in the wake of two grand swans.

Argall was as good as his word and John took his son to London to see the Indian princess, traveling up on a wagon taking fruit to London market, staying overnight, and coming down the next day on the empty wagon.

Elizabeth tried not to encourage J’s excitement, but she could not hide her own interest. “Was she black?” she asked.

“Not at all!” J exclaimed. “Just brown, a beautiful lady, and she had a little baby on her knee. But she didn’t wear bear skins or anything, just ordinary clothes.”

“J was bitterly disappointed,” John said with a smile to his wife. “He expected something very savage and strange. All she is, is a pretty young woman with a little son. She calls herself Rebecca now and is baptized and married. You would pass her in the street and think nothing more but that she was a fine tall woman, a little tanned.”

“She said that there are boys and girls of my age who live in the forest and hunt deer,” J said. “And that they can fire a bow and spear a fish from four years old! And that they can make their own pots and sew their own clothes from deer hide, and-”

“She was making it up to amuse you,” Elizabeth said firmly.

“She was not!”

“She truly wasn’t,” John said gently. “I believed every word she said and I should so like to go, Elizabeth. Not to settle there, but just to take a look at our land and see what the prospects are. Not as planters to be there forever, but just to take a little run over there and see what the land is like. It sounds very fine-”

“A little run?” Elizabeth demanded. “You speak of the ocean as if it were the cart track to your orchards. Lord Wootton could not spare you from his garden. I could not spare you now we are settled here. It is six weeks at sea on a huge sea. Why can you not stay in the same place, John? Why can you not be at peace?”

He had no reply for that, and she knew he would have no reply.

“I am sorry,” he said at last. “I just long to see all there may be for me to see. And a new land would have new plants, don’t you think? Things that I might never have seen before. But you are right. I have my garden here, and Lord Wootton’s garden, and the house, and you and J. It is enough for me.”

Elizabeth had prevented John from uprooting the whole family and setting off for Virginia, but when he had an invitation to go venturing to Russia – of all places – and it came with the blessing of his master and a recommendation that he should go, there was little she could do to stop him. It was the king’s business at the top of it, so no man in the country could refuse. The king wanted a new trade route to China and thought that Sir Dudley Digges might find one by making an agreement with the Russians. A loan of English gold coaxed from the coffers of the Muscovy and East India Companies was supposed to help.

Sir Dudley was a firm friend of Lord Wootton who wanted new plants for his garden. Sir Dudley said he needed a useful man and a seasoned traveler, not a gentleman who would be too proud to work, and not some dolt of a workingman who would be of no use in an emergency. Lord Wootton said he could have Tradescant, and Tradescant was as ready to leave as a bagged hare when the hounds are giving tongue.

All she could do was to help him pack his traveling bag, see that his traveling cloak was free of moth holes and tears and go down to the dockside at Gravesend with J – now a tall boy of ten years, and a King’s Scholar at Canterbury – at her side to wave farewell.

“And beware of the cold!” Elizabeth cautioned again.

“It may be Russia, but it is midsummer,” John replied. “Do you keep yourselves well, and J, mind your studies and care for your mother.”

The dockers scurried about, pushing past Elizabeth and her son. With a moment’s regret John saw that there were tears in her eyes. “I shall be back within three months,” he called over the widening gulf of water. “Perhaps earlier. Elizabeth! Please don’t fret!”

“Take care!” she called again but he could hardly hear her as the rowing barges took hold of the lines and the sailors cursed as they caught the ropes flung from the shore. Elizabeth and her son watched the boat move slowly downriver.

“I still don’t understand why he has to go,” J said, with the discontent of the schoolboy.

Elizabeth looked down at him. “Because he does his duty,” she said, with her natural loyalty to her husband. “Lord Wootton ordered him to go. It is unknown country; your father might find all sorts of treasures.”

“I think he just loves to travel,” J said resentfully. “And he doesn’t care that he leaves me behind.”

Elizabeth put her arm around her son’s unyielding shoulders. “When you are older you shall travel too. He will take you with him. Perhaps you will grow to be a great man like your father and be sent by lords on travels overseas.”

Baby J – her baby no longer – disengaged himself from her arm. “I shall go on my own account,” he said stiffly. “I shall not wait for someone to send me.”

The ship was in midriver now; the sails which had been slack when sheltered in the dock flapped like sheets on washing day. Elizabeth gripped her son’s arm.