Virgin Earth. Philippa Gregory
few things. We can be married in October.’
He nodded as if it were the completion date of some routine gardening work. ‘In October then.’
John wondered if he should feel himself faithless to his promise to Suckahanna, but he did not. He could not remember her well enough, only foolish details like the pride of her smile or the cool clasp of her hand when he had pledged himself to her. He dreamed one night that he was in the woods with her and she was setting a fish trap. When he woke he wondered at the power of the image of her bending over the little stream and setting her trap of woven withy. But then Baby John marched determinedly into the room and the dream was gone.
He wondered occasionally what was happening to her, whether she and her mother were safe in the woods as they had planned to be. But Virginia was so far away, a two-months’ voyage, and such a leap of the imagination that he could not keep her in his mind. Surrounded by the business worries and demands of his home J could not retain the picture of Suckahanna. Every day she seemed more exotic, more like a traveller’s tale. She was a mermaid, a barnacle goose that swam underwater and then flew from the barnacle shells, a being with its head beneath its shoulders, a flying carpet. One night when he was drunk he tried to tell a fellow gardener that he had collected his Virginia plants with an Indian maid who was covered in blue tattoos and wore nothing but a buckskin pinny; and the man roared with laughter and paid for another round of ales to praise John’s bawdy invention.
Every day she receded further from him. Whether he tried to speak of her or kept silent, whether he dreamed of her or let her image go, every day she seemed less likely, every day she floated down the river of his memory in her little canoe, and never looked back at him.
On the first of October Hester went to stay in her City lodgings to prepare for her wedding: buying a few pieces of lace to stitch on her petticoats and her shift, packing her bags, warning her landlady that she would need the little room no longer for she was going to be married to the queen’s gardener – Mr John Tradescant.
Her uncle John de Critz gave her away and his family and the de Neve relations made an impressive show in the little church. It was a quiet ceremony. John did not want to make a fuss and the de Critz family were refined, artistic people with no desire to throw rice or ears of wheat, or shout and riot around the bedroom door.
The bridal couple went soberly home to Lambeth. Before she left Hester had given orders that the great bedroom which had once been John and Elizabeth’s should be hung with new curtains, swept out and cleaned, and fully aired. She felt that she would rather sleep in the bed where John Tradescant had died than share the bed that had belonged to John and Jane. Frances was moved into her father and mother’s old room and Baby John had his nursery room to himself.
John had made no comment about the arrangements except to say that it should all be done as she wished. He did not show any grief at moving from his first wife’s bedroom, nor did he object to the cost of replacing the curtains and wall hangings throughout.
‘They are ten years old.’ Hester justified the expense.
‘It doesn’t seem so long,’ he said simply.
The children were dancing on the garden wall, waiting for them to come down the road from Lambeth.
‘Are you married?’ Frances demanded. ‘Where’s your new dress?’
‘I just wore this one.’
‘Am I to call you Mother?’ Frances asked.
Hester glanced at John. He had bent to scoop Baby John from the wall and was carrying him into the house. He took care not to reply.
‘You can call me Hester, as you always have done. I am not your mother who is in heaven, but I shall do my best to love you and care for you as well as she would have done.’
Frances nodded carelessly, as if she were not much concerned, and scrambled down from the wall and led the way into the house. Hester nodded, she was not disappointed in Frances’s lack of warmth. This was not a child who could easily ask for comfort; but no child needed love more than she did.
The new family went into the parlour and Hester seated herself in the chair on one side of the fire opposite John. Baby John sat on the rug before the fire and Frances hesitated, unsure where she should sit.
Without looking at Hester she sank to her knees before the warmth of the fire and then slowly leaned backwards against the arm of Hester’s chair. Hester dropped her hand gently on the nape of her stepdaughter’s neck and felt the tight, thin muscles of her neck relax at the touch. Frances let her head lean back against her stepmother’s touch, trusted her caress.
‘We shall be happy,’ Hester promised in an undertone to her brave little stepdaughter. ‘All will be well, Frances.’
At bedtime the household gathered for evening prayers and John read from the new book of common prayer, enjoying the rhythm of the language and the sense of security which came from using the same words at the same time of day, every day. The household, which had prayed aloud, speaking freely from their hearts under Jane, now bowed their heads and listened, and when the prayers were over they went about their work of bolting the doors for the night, damping down the fires, and snuffing the candles.
Hester and John went up the stairs together to the big bedroom for the first time. The housemaid was waiting in the room.
‘Cook thought you might want helping off with your gown, Miss Hester – Mrs Tradescant, I should say!’
Hester shook her head. ‘I can do it.’
‘And Cook sent up this tray for the two of you,’ the maid persevered. There had evidently been a strong sense in the kitchen that more should have been done to mark the occasion. ‘She brewed a wedding ale for you,’ the maid said. ‘And there’s some cake and dainty blackberry pudding.’
‘Thank you,’ Hester said. ‘And thank Cook too.’
John nodded and the maid left the room.
The couple looked at each other, their embarrassment dissolved by the maid’s intervention.
‘Clearly they think we should be carousing and singing,’ John said.
‘Perhaps they think they should be carousing,’ Hester observed astutely. ‘I imagine that not all the wedding ale is in these two tankards.’
‘Shall you have a drink?’ John asked.
‘When I’m ready for bed,’ she said, keeping her tone as light and inconsequential as his. She moved towards the bed and climbed up into it. She did not draw the bed curtains against him, but managed, in their shadows, to undress from her gown and to get into her night shift without embarrassment. She emerged with her hair still braided to put her fine gown in the press at the foot of the bed.
John was seated in his chair before the fire, drinking his wedding ale. ‘It’s good,’ he recommended. ‘And I’ve had a little cake too.’
She took up the tankard and sat opposite him, curling up her feet under her night shift. She sipped at the ale. It was strong and sweet. At once a heady sense of relaxation spread through her. ‘This is good,’ she said.
John laughed. ‘I think it probably serves its purpose,’ he said. ‘I was more nervous than for my first day at school and now I am feeling like a cock o’ the walk.’
Hester flushed at that single accidental bawdiness. ‘Oh.’
John buried his face in his tankard, as embarrassed as his new wife. ‘Go to bed,’ he said shortly. ‘I shall join you in a minute.’
She put her thin white feet down on the bare floorboards and went with her quick boyish stride to the bed. John did not turn around as she climbed in. He waited