Virgin Earth. Philippa Gregory
to that … I couldn’t say.’
‘But then what will Parliament do?’
The man slowly shook his head. Hester, seeing her husband on the edge of an outburst and the man still thinking his answer through, had to bite her lip to keep silent herself.
‘As to that … I couldn’t say either.’
John took a swift step to the door and then turned back. ‘So what is happening in the City? Is everything quiet?’
The country squire shook his head at the mystifying speed of change. ‘Well, the Lord Mayor’s trained bands are to be called out to keep the peace, the king’s men have all gone into hiding, the City is boarded up and ready for a riot or … something worse.’
‘What could be worse?’ Hester asked. ‘What could be worse than a riot in the City?’
‘War, I think,’ he said slowly. ‘A war would be worse than a riot.’
‘Between who?’ John asked tightly. ‘A war between who? What are you saying?’
The man looked into his face, struggling with the enormity of what he had to say. ‘War between the king and Parliament, I’m afraid.’
There was a brief shocked silence.
‘It has come to this?’ John asked.
‘So I am come to see the greatest sight of London which I promised myself I would see before I left, and then I am going home.’ George looked around. ‘There is even more than I thought.’
‘I will show it all to you,’ Hester promised him. ‘You must forgive our hunger for news. What will you do when you get home?’
He bowed courteously to her. ‘I shall gather the men of my household and train them and arm them so that they can fight to save their country from the enemy.’
‘But will you fight for the king or for Parliament?’
He bowed again. ‘Madam, I shall fight for my country. I shall fight for Right. The only thing is: I wish I knew who was in the right.’
Hester showed him the main features of the collection and then, as soon as she could, left him to open the drawers and look at the smaller things on his own. She could not find John in the house, nor in the orangery. As she feared, he was in the stable yard, dressed in his travelling cloak, waiting for his mare to be saddled.
‘You’re never going to court!’ she exclaimed.
‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I cannot bear having to wait for scraps of news like this.’
‘You are a gardener,’ she said. ‘Not a courtier, not a Member of Parliament. What is it to you whether the king is quarrelling with Parliament or not?’
‘I am on the edge of it all,’ John said. ‘I know too much to sit quietly at home and nurse up my ignorance. If I knew less of them then I would care less. If I knew more then I could decide better what to do. I am halfway between knowledge and ignorance and I have to settle on one side or the other.’
‘Then be ignorant!’ she said with sudden passion. ‘Get into your garden, John, and set seeds for the gardens at Wimbledon and Oatlands. Do the trade you were born to. Stay home where you are safe.’
He shook his head and took both her hands. ‘I won’t be long,’ he promised her. ‘I shall go over the river to Whitehall and find out the news and then come back home. Don’t fret so, Hester. I must learn what is happening and then I’ll come home. It is better for us if I know which way the wind is blowing. It is safer for us.’
She left her hands in his, enjoying the warmth of his callused palms. ‘You say that, but you are like a boy setting out on an adventure,’ she said shrewdly. ‘You want to be in the heart of things, my husband. Don’t deny it.’
John gave her a roguish grin and then kissed her quickly on both cheeks. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It’s true. Let me go with your blessing?’
She was breathless with the sudden casual embrace and felt herself flushing. ‘With my blessing,’ she repeated. ‘Of course you have my blessing. Always.’
He swung himself into the saddle and let the horse walk out of the yard. Hester put her hand to her cheek where his lips had briefly touched, and watched him go.
He had to wait for a place on the horse ferry at Lambeth, and then the traffic on the City side of the river was busier than he had ever seen it. There were hundreds of people milling around in the narrow streets, asking for news and stopping ballad sellers and pedlars of news-sheets to demand what they knew. There were armed groups of men marching down the road, pushing people aside and demanding that they shout, ‘Hurrah! for the king!’ But then down another road would come another group shouting, ‘Hurrah! for Pym! No bishops! No Papist queen!’
John drew his horse back into a sidestreet, fearful of being caught up in a fight, when he saw two of these groups heading towards each other. But the royalists wheeled off quickly to one side, as if they were on an urgent errand that took them away; and the others took care not to see them, and not to give chase. He watched them go and saw that they, like himself, were not ready for a fight yet. They didn’t even want a brawl, let alone a war. He thought the country must be filled with men like himself, like the honest Member of Parliament for Yeovil, who knew that they were in the grip of great times, and wanted to take their part in the great times, who wanted to do the right thing; but were very, very far from knowing what the right thing might be.
John’s father would have known. He would have been for the king. John’s father had had a straightforward faith that his son had never learned. John made a wry face at the thought of the certainties of the man and of his own confused layering of doubts, which left him now still mourning one woman, half in love with another, and married to a third; in the service of a king while his heart was with the opposition; always torn both ways, always on the fringe of everything.
The crowds grew thicker around the palace of Whitehall and there were armed guards looking grim and frightened with their pikes crossed at the doorways. John rode his horse round to an inn and left her in the stable, and then walked back to the palace, jostled all the way. The crowd was the same strange mix of people. There were beggars and paupers and ill-doers in rags and shabby old livery who were there to shout and perhaps collect a few coppers for their hired loyalty. There were working men and women, young apprentices, artisans and market people. There were the serious black-coated preachers of the independent churches and sectaries, and there were the well-to-do merchants and City men who would not fight themselves, but whose hearts were in the fight. There were sailors from the ships in port, shouting for Parliament since they blamed the king and his French wife for the dangers of the Dunkirk pirates, and there were members of the London trained bands, some of them trying to impose order and find their men, and others running wild and shouting that they would die to defend the rights of Parliament. This motley crowd had a motley chant which ranged from the catcalls and boos of those who did not know what they cared for, to the regular call of those who knew their cause: ‘No bishops! No queen!’, and the new call which had come about since the king had taken a sword into the House of Commons: ‘Privilege! Privilege!’
John fought his way to the front of the mob at the gates to the palace of Whitehall and shouted, over the noise, to the guard.
‘John Tradescant! The king’s gardener.’
The man shifted slightly, and John ducked under the pike and went in.
The old palace of Whitehall was the most disorganised of all the royal palaces, a jumble of buildings and courts and gardens, dotted with statuary and fountains and alive with birdsong. John, hoping to find a face he knew, made his way towards the royal apartments and then was brought short as he rounded a corner and nearly collided with the queen herself.
She was running, her cape flying behind her, her jewel box in her hands. Behind her