Virgin Earth. Philippa Gregory
He speaks to me then. And I honour Him then.
‘I use the prayer book well enough – but I don’t believe that those are the only words that God hears. And I don’t believe that the only men God attends are bishops wrapped up in surplices, and I don’t believe that God made Charles king, and that service to the king is one and the same as service to God. And Jane –’ He broke off, suddenly aware that he should not speak to his new wife of his constant continuing love for her predecessor.
‘Go on,’ Hester said.
‘Jane’s faith never wavered, not even when she was dying in pain,’ John said. ‘She would never have denied her belief that God spoke simple and clear to her and she could speak to Him. She would have died for that belief, if she had been called to do so. And for her sake, if for nothing else, I will not deny my faith.’
‘And what about her children?’ Hester asked. ‘D’you think she would want you to die for her faith and leave her children orphans?’
John checked. ‘It won’t come to that.’
‘When I was at Oatlands only six months ago, the talk was all about each man’s faith and how far each man would go. If the king insists on the Scots following the prayer book he is bound to insist on it in England too. If he goes to war with the Scots to make them do as he bids, and some say he might do that, who can doubt that he will do the same in England?’
John shook his head. ‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘Nonsense and heartache about nothing.’
‘It is not nothing. I am warning you,’ Hester said steadily. ‘No-one knows how far the king will go when he has to protect the queen and her faith, and to conceal his own backsliding towards popery. No-one knows how far he will go to make everyone conform to the same church. He has taken it into his head that one church will make one nation, and that he can hold one nation in the palm of his hand and govern without a word to anyone. If you insist on your faith at the same time as the king is insisting on his, you cannot say what trouble you might be running towards.’
John thought for a moment and then he nodded. ‘You may be right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘You are a powerfully cautious woman, Hester.’
‘You have given me a task and I shall do it,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘You have given me the task of bringing up your children and being a wife to you. I have no wish to be a widow. I have no wish to bring up orphans.’
‘But I will not compromise my faith,’ he warned her.
‘Just don’t flaunt it.’
The horse was ready. John tied his cape tightly at the neck and set his hat on his head. He paused; he did not know how he should say farewell to this new, common-sense wife of his. To his surprise she put out her hand, as a man would do, and shook his hand as if she were his friend.
John felt oddly warmed by the frankness of the gesture. He smiled at her, led the horse over to the mounting block and got up into the saddle.
‘I don’t know what state the gardens will be in,’ he remarked.
‘For sure, they will appoint you in your father’s place when you are back at court,’ Hester said. ‘It was only your absence which made them delay. It is out of sight, at once forgotten with them. When you return they will insist on your service again.’
He nodded. ‘I hope they have not mistook my orders while I was gone. If you leave a garden for a season it slips back a year.’
Hester stepped forward and patted the horse’s neck. ‘The children will miss you,’ she said. ‘May I tell them when you will be home?’
‘By November,’ he promised.
She stepped back from the horse’s head and let him go. He smiled at her as he passed out of the stable yard and round the path which led to the gate. As he rode out he had a sudden sense of joyful freedom – that he could ride away from his home or ride back to it and that everything would be managed without him. This was his father’s last gift to him – his father who had also married a woman who could manage well in his absence. John turned in his saddle and waved at Hester who was still standing at the corner of the yard where she could look after him.
John waved his whip and turned the horse towards Lambeth and the ferry. Hester watched him go and then turned back to the house.
The court was due at Oatlands in late October so John was busy as soon as he arrived planting and preparing the courts which were enclosed by the royal apartments. The knot gardens always looked well in winter, the sharp geometric shapes of the low box hedging looked wonderful thinned and whitened by frost. In the fountain court John kept the water flowing at the slowest speed so that there would be a chance for it to make icicles and ice cascades in the colder nights. The herbs still looked well, the angelica and sage went into white lace when the frost touched their feathery fronds behind the severe hedging. Against the walls of the king’s court John was training one of his new plants introduced from the Ark: his Virginian winter-flowering jasmine. On warm days its scent drifted up to the open windows above, and its colour made a splash of rich pink light in the grey and white and black garden.
The queen’s orangery was like a jungle, packed tight with the tender plants which would not survive an English winter. Some of the more handsome shrubs and small trees were planted in containers with loops for carrying poles and John’s men lifted them out to the queen’s garden at first light, and brought them in again at dusk so that even in winter she would always have something pretty to see from her windows. John placed a lemon and an orange tree, both trained into handsome balls, on either side of the door to her apartments, like aromatic sentries.
‘These are pretty,’ she said to him from her window one day as he was supervising the careful placing of some little trees in the garden below.
‘I beg your pardon, Your Majesty,’ John said, pulling off his hat, recognising the heavily accented voice of Queen Henrietta Maria at once. ‘They should have been in their places before you looked out.’
‘I woke very early, I could not sleep,’ she said. ‘My husband is worried and so I am sleepless too.’
John bowed.
‘People do not understand how hard it is sometimes for us. They see the palaces and the carriages and they think that our lives are given up to pleasure. But it is all worry.’
John bowed again.
‘You understand, don’t you?’ she asked, leaning out and speaking clearly so that he could hear her in the garden below. ‘When you make my gardens so beautiful for me, you know that they are a respite for me and the king when we are exhausted by our anxieties and by our struggle to bring this country to be a great kingdom.’
John hesitated. Obviously it would be impolite to say that his interest in the beauty of the gardens would have been the same whether she was an idle vain Papist – as he believed – or whether she was a woman devoted to her husband and her duty. He remembered Hester’s advice and bowed once more.
‘I so want to be a good queen,’ she said.
‘No-one prays for anything else,’ John said cautiously.
‘Do you think they pray for me?’
‘They have to, it’s in the prayer book. They are ordered to pray for you twice every Sunday.’
‘But in their hearts?’
John dipped his head. ‘How could I say, Your Majesty? All I know are plants and trees. I can’t see inside men’s hearts.’
‘I like to think that you can give me a glimpse of what common men are thinking. I am surrounded by people who tell me what they think I would like to hear. But you would not lie to me, would you, Gardener Tradescant?’
John shook his head. ‘I would not lie,’ he said.
‘So tell me, is everyone against the Scots? Does everyone see that the Scots