Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

“Frances has it too,” Hester said. “That ability to love without doubts. For her it’s Alexander, she’s not interested in following a master. But that talent to love a man and his cause is a gift, I really admire it. The more so, I suppose, because it’s not one that I share. I’m ashamed to say that I am a complete turncoat. I spent much of my early life at court and most of my family and friends were of the king’s party; but all I care for now is peace so that we can sell plants and show the rarities.”

“It’s a gift that comes with a price to pay,” John observed. “Johnnie can’t accept that the king is dead and that it is all over. I had hoped that General Lambert would have turned him into a Parliamentary man if not a Leveler. I would rather have had him in love with liberty than with a dead king.”

“He’ll grow out of it,” Hester said comfortably. “They were hard years for him. For all of his boyhood he was sure that Prince Rupert would win the war for the king. He thought that King Charles would triumph up to the very last moment. I think even after Colchester he still thought the king might win. But he knows it is all over now.”

In June Johnnie took the king’s melon seedlings in their final largest pots on the cart to the river and loaded them onto a little wherry to take them upriver to Wimbledon. He went alone, he did not even tell his father that he was going, anticipating correctly that John had hoped that the seedlings had been forgotten and might be raised among the others in the melon beds at the Ark.

Johnnie took with him some planks of wood to build the frame, his dinner of bread and cheese in his pocket, a saw and a hammer, and a handful of nails in his belt.

“Building a house and planting a garden?” the ferryman asked with a grin.

Johnnie did not smile in reply. “I am on an errand,” he said solemnly. “An errand for my master.”

At the manor house he found the garden running to seed and the kitchen garden overgrown. But there was a warm south-facing wall and Johnnie spent the morning setting in his timber framework and banking up earth for the melon bed. Finally he planted the precious seedlings with a good space between each one, and then painstakingly ferried water from the kitchen-yard pump in the empty clay pots with his finger stopping the hole at the bottom.

Johnnie was his father’s son; it was hard for him to leave the rest of the garden alone, and only weed the melon bed. He could see the hallmarks of a typical Tradescant garden becoming gradually obliterated. The south face of the house had a large paved terrace before it and an impressive sweep of paired steps coming down in a semicircle. Johnnie saw the stone pots on the terrace and guessed correctly that his father would have filled them with citrus trees pruned into glossy green balls. At the foot of the steps would have been flower beds, he could still see the floppy dead leaves of the tulips that had pushed up through the weeds and presented their bright cups to the blind windows above them. There were fountains and watercourses which were once planted with irises and kingcups and were now choked with waterweed. There was an ornamental lake which was now evilly bright green but it still had the white and rose plates of water lilies on the scummy surface. There was an old-fashioned knot garden but the pattern of the bay hedges was blurred with weeds and the white stones were dirty. Johnnie looked around at the desolation of the summer garden that had been carefully planted to be the queen’s special refuge and knew that the royal cause was lost indeed.

There was nothing he could do for the garden, he decided. But later in the summer, when the melons were in flower, he would visit again and take a soft rabbit’s tail from one to another to pollinate them. Then, when they were setting fruit, he would bring his father’s expensive glass melon domes to set over each one to make them ripen. He had not thought what he would then do with the fruit. The king had clearly ordered it, so only the king or his son should eat it. Perhaps it would be Johnnie’s duty to take the fruit to France, find the king’s son, and give him this eccentric piece of his inheritance.

Johnnie shrugged, the fruit was a question for the future. His task was to keep faith with the last order of the king. King Charles had ordered a Tradescant to make him a melon bed in his manor house at Wimbledon; and it was done.

When Johnnie got home he found that his father was irritated with the wasted day’s work, and reluctant to promise the loan of the glass melon domes later in the year; but his stepmother defended him.

“Let him be,” she counseled John, as she plaited her hair ready for bed that night. “He is doing nothing more than putting flowers on the grave. Let him do this one thing for the king and perhaps he will feel that he has done everything that should be done. Then he will feel that his defenses of the king is over, and he can be happy and enjoy the peace.”

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.