Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

“Now wait a minute,” she said. “Not so fast, husband. I cannot leave here.”

For a moment John did not hear her. He was so conscious of the fall of her nightgown, and of her dark hair only half hidden by her cap, of the play of the firelight on her neck and the glimpse of her shoulder. “What?”

“I cannot leave here,” she said steadily. “This is my home.”

“You don’t understand,” he said abruptly. “I have made up my mind. I have to go. I cannot stay here, I will be torn apart by the two of them – king and Parliament. Parliament will have me out entrenching and drilling for their defense, and the king will summon me to court. I cannot be faithless to them both. I cannot watch the king ride into war as if it were a masqued ball. I cannot stay in England and see him die!”

“And I cannot leave.” She spoke steadfastly, as if nothing would ever move her.

“You are my wife,” John reminded her.

She bowed her head.

“You owe me absolute obedience,” he said. “I am your master before God.”

“As the king is yours,” she said gently. “Isn’t that what this war is all about?”

He hesitated. “I thought you wanted to be my wife?”

“I do. I agreed to be your wife, and to rear your children, and to care for the rarities and the garden and the Ark. How can I do these things in Virginia?”

“You can care for me and the children.”

Hester shook her head. “I won’t take the children there. You know yourself how dangerous it is there. There are wild Indians, and hunger, dreadful disease. I won’t take the children into danger.” She paused for a moment. “And I won’t leave here.”

“This is my home,” John reminded her. “And I am prepared to leave it.”

“It is my home too.”

They locked gazes like enemies. John remembered his first impression of her as a plain-faced managing woman who had been put in his house without his consent. “Hester, I am going to Virginia,” he said coldly. “And it is my wish that you come with me and the children.”

Her straight gaze never wavered. “I am sorry,” she said evenly. “I cannot do that. I will not take the children into danger and I have no wish to leave my home. If you go then I will keep everything safe for your return, and I will welcome you when you return.”

“My father…” he started.

“Your father trusted me with the care of this house and with the care of the children while you were away,” she said. “I promised him on his deathbed that I would keep it all safe: plants, rarities, and children. I will not leave this house for any wandering battalion to take it over and to chop down his trees for firewood. I won’t leave his chestnut avenue for them to spoil. I won’t leave it unprotected for any vagrants to steal the fruit or pick the flowers. I won’t leave the rarities stored in a warehouse with no idea of when I can return. And I will not take Jane’s children to a country far away where I know they cling to survival against all the odds.”

“Jane’s children!” he shouted. “Jane was my wife! They are my children! She is nothing to you! They are nothing to you!”

John saw her flinch as if he had slapped her face. But it did not shake her steadiness. “You are wrong,” she said simply. “I have long thought of myself as caring for Jane’s children and trying to care for them as she would wish. And sometimes I think that she looks down from heaven and sees them, growing strong and beautiful, and that she is happy for them. But they are my children too, I have loved them without fail for four years and I will not take them from their home because you have decided to leave your master and leave your country and leave your home.”

“I’m not faithless!” he said, stung.

Hester gave him a long, level look. “You and your father are the king’s gardeners,” she said. “You are in his service.”

“He doesn’t own my soul!” John shouted. “I am his servant, not his slave! I can withdraw my service. I can work for myself, I can leave. I have just left.”

She nodded. “Then a man has a right to choose where he lives and who he calls master?”

“Yes,” John said firmly.

“A woman too?”

“Yes,” he said begrudgingly.

“Then I choose to live here, and you will not take the children without me to care for them.”

“You want to stay here and face who knows what dangers?”

“I shall face the dangers when they come,” she said. “I am not such a fool as to think that we are safe here. We’re too near to the city – if the king brings in a Papist army we will be in the worst place. But if that happens I shall take them to Oatlands, or away into the country. We will have a warning of the dangers. I can prepare for them. And Jane’s parents will warn us and protect them, and Alexander Norman knows to the minute where the king’s army can be found, he makes the barrels for the gunpowder. My own family have refuges planned. I shall have advisers, I shall have protectors.

“But in Virginia there would be no one to keep us safe but you; and you don’t know the country, and you are not a farmer or a laborer, and I think only a farmer or a laborer can get a living there.”

John got to his feet and spoke bitterly. “I won’t argue with you,” he said spitefully. “Because I don’t care enough to take the trouble. It doesn’t matter to me if you will come with me to Virginia as my wife or if you prefer to stay at home like a housekeeper. It is your choice. I shall go to Virginia a single man, if that is your wish.”

She felt a pain inside her which was worse than anything she had suffered from him so far. She heard the threat of infidelity in his words but she would not let him frighten her into abandoning her home. “I am sorry to stand against you,” she said steadily. “But I promised your father I would guard his trees and his grandchildren, and I cannot escape that promise.”

John got to his feet and stalked to the door. “I am tired. I shall sleep. I don’t want to be disturbed. I am used to sleeping alone.”

Hester bowed her head, not commenting on the fact that she was no longer invited into bed with him. “Take your bed,” she said politely. “I shall make up the bed in the spare bedroom.”

“And as soon as possible I shall take ship,” John said. “Don’t doubt me, Hester. I shall leave for the new world. I am sick of this country. I am sick of this house.” He did not say it but the words “and I am sick of you” hung in the air, unspoken, between them.

She bowed her head. “I shall guard the children and the trees for your return.”

“And if I never come back?”

“Then I shall guard them for the next John Tradescant, your son,” she said. “And I shall guard them for the people of England who will want the trees and the plants when they stop making war. And then they will remember and honor the name of Tradescant, even if you are no longer here.”

The luck of the Tradescants was still running John’s way. There was a ship due to leave for Virginia in October and he could get a place aboard her. Half a dozen new settlers were sailing too, loading their goods and getting ready for their new life. John was on the dock with them when someone shouted that the king had fought a battle and had triumphed, at a place called Powick Bridge.

John joined the crowd that gathered around the trooper. He was a Parliament man and his tale of terror was growing greater with every telling.

“We were serving under my Earl of Essex,” the man said. “And ordered badly, no one can deny it. We were to cut off the king’s cousin, Prince Rupert, from the main army. But as we went down the lane toward them there was firing on either side of us, from the hedges. Dirty work, you couldn’t see where it was coming from. The officers shouted ‘Wheel about’ – but none of us knew how to wheel about. Easier to say than do in the narrow lanes anyway. Some were shouting that ‘wheel about’ meant retreat, and they tried to force their way back through the others coming forward. Those at the back still didn’t know of the danger so they were coming on. It was all confusion, d’you see?

“There was a charge from the king’s devils, cavalry, riding like madmen, and we went down and around and were thrown about. It was every man for himself all the way back to our camp and the next day the Earl said we should all be trained properly, and that he would have us trained at once.

“But Prince Rupert trained his men before he took them out. He told them what ‘wheel about’ meant before he marched them into the very jaws of the enemy. Prince Rupert learned his fighting all over Europe. Prince Rupert is going to win this war for his cousin King Charles, he knows all the tricks. Prince Rupert has changed our plans completely, he has beaten us before we began.”

Bertram Hobert, a fellow passenger with John, glanced at him. “Does this change your plans, Mr. Tradescant?” he asked.

“No,” John said discreetly. “My going or staying is nothing to do with the progress of the war. I have interests in Virginia, a plantation there, some land where I have a fancy to build a house. And I made a good sum on the plants I brought back last time. Whether Parliament or the king wins, some day there will be peace and men will want to garden.”

“Are you not for the king? Won’t you join him now? Now that he is on the road to victory?”

“I have been in his service all my life,” John said hiding his resentment. “The time has come for me to do some traveling and gardening for myself. He does not need a gardener now, he needs soldiers, and – you heard that man – he has them.”

Hobert nodded.

“What about you?” John asked.

“I was leaving whatever happened,” the man said. “I can make no progress here. I work as hard as any man; but what the taxes don’t take, the tithes do. I wanted a country where I can see real wealth for me. I’ve seen how a man can prosper in Virginia. I’ll stay a dozen years and come back a rich man and buy a farm in Essex. What about you? Will you stay for long?”