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No trace of her relief appeared on Hester’s face. ‘I will send for him at once,’ she said. ‘He may not even have arrived at Oatlands yet. He left only this morning. I may catch him on the road, and tell him to come back.’
The gentleman usher nodded.
‘Can I offer you some refreshment?’ Hester asked. ‘A glass of wine?’
The gentleman usher shook his head. ‘I shall return to Whitehall,’ he said. ‘These are difficult times.’
‘Very difficult,’ Hester agreed with feeling. She showed him to the door and then went to the stables to find John. He was leaning against the pump in the stable yard, enjoying the early warm sunshine on his face.
‘Frances came flying out as if all the devils in hell were at the door,’ he said carelessly. ‘Why are you so fearful?’
‘I thought it might have been the press gang or the tax collectors, or a message from the court that you would be safer to miss,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know what I fear except I am uneasy, I am afraid for us. If the king’s own advisor can be on trial for his life then the king can protect no-one. Indeed, it’s the loyal servants of the king who are the most endangered. And we have been known as royal servants for two generations. I don’t want this family suddenly named as enemies of the people of England because we have taken royal gold. We all have to make our own safety in these days.’
John put his hand on her shoulder. It was his first ever gesture of affection. Hester stood very still, as if she had been approached by a wary wild animal and did not want to scare it away. She felt herself lean, very slightly, towards his caress.
‘You’re very careful for me,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’
She could have stood like that, in the warm sunny yard with his hand on her shoulder, forever. But John dropped his hand. ‘So who was it?’
‘It was a message from the court. The king is buying a manor at Wimbledon for the queen and they want you to design a garden.’ She paused for a moment. ‘The king’s advisor and chief minister is at bay before his enemies and on trial for his life, and yet the king has time to send to you to tell you to make a new garden.’
‘Well, at least that solves the problem of selling seeds and plants,’ he said. ‘If I am making a new royal garden we will need all our stocks. We’re back in profit, Hester. Am I to go at once?’
‘I said you were on the road to Oatlands, before I knew what the message was. So you can go today or tomorrow.’
‘So our troubles are over!’ John exclaimed happily. ‘A new garden to design, and all our seedlings and plants bought by the king.’
‘I don’t think our troubles will be over that quickly,’ Hester said cautiously. ‘Take great care, John, when you meet the king and queen.’
When John got to Wimbledon the king and queen were not to be found.
‘Their Majesties are walking privately in the garden,’ one of the courtiers told him. ‘They said you were to go and meet them there. You may approach Their Majesties.’
John, accustomed to the ways of the court, expected to find twenty to thirty people with the king and queen walking privately, but for once they were indeed alone, just the two of them, with her hand in the crook of his arm and her embroidered silk skirts brushing against his legs as they walked together.
John hesitated, thinking that for once they might have chosen to be alone and might be enjoying their privacy. But when they turned at the edge of the grass court and saw him the queen smiled and the king beckoned him forward with one of his little gestures. Although they wished it to be always understood that they were very much in love, they preferred each other’s company before an audience. The queen liked to be seen publicly basking in the king’s adoration, even more than she enjoyed a private moment.
‘Ah, Gardener Tradescant!’ the queen said. John bowed low and dropped to one knee. The king flicked his finger to permit John to rise and John got up. At once he saw that they were not having a carefree stroll in the garden. The queen was flushed and her eyelids were red, the king looked pale and strained.
‘Your Majesties,’ John said warily.
‘The king has bought me this pretty house to take our minds off our troubles,’ the queen said in her lilting accent. ‘We are much troubled, Gardener Tradescant. We want to be diverted.’
John bowed. ‘It could be a fine garden,’ he said. ‘The soil is good.’
‘I want it done all new,’ the queen said eagerly. ‘A pretty style to match the house.’ She gestured back at the manor house. It was a handsome place new-built of red brick, with two arching flights of steps down from the terrace and gardens terraced down the slope. ‘I want many fruit trees. The king and I will come here in midsummer to escape from the noise and fuss of the court and we will eat fruit off the trees and grapes off the vine and melons off the …’ She broke off.
‘Off the ground,’ the king suggested. ‘They g … grow on the g … ground, do they not, Tradescant?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ John said. ‘My father learned the way of making them grow rich and ripe when he was with Sir Henry Wootton at Canterbury, and he taught me the way. I can grow you melons here and all sorts of fruit.’
‘And pretty flowers,’ the queen added. ‘White and blue flowers in the knot garden.’
John bowed his assent, keeping his face hidden. White and blue were the flowers of the Virgin Mary. The queen was asking for a Papist knot garden on the very edge of a London on the brink of revolt.
‘We need somewhere to retire in these troubled times,’ the king said. ‘A little hidden garden, Tradescant. Somewhere that we can b … be ourselves.’
The queen stepped to one side to look at a neglected watercourse, lifting her silk dress carefully away from the wet ground.
‘I understand,’ John said. ‘Will you be here only in summer, Your Majesty? It helps me if I know. If you are not to be here in autumn then I do not need to plant for that season.’
‘Yes,’ the king said. ‘A summertime p … place.’
John nodded and waited for further orders.
‘It pleases me to give her a p … pretty little h … house of her own,’ the king said, watching the queen at the end of the little terrace. ‘I have great work to do – I have to d … d … defend my crown against wild and wicked men who w … would pull me down, I have to d … defend the church against levellers and s … and s … and sectaries and Independents who would unstitch the very fabric of the country. It is all for m … me to do. Only I can preserve the country from the m … madness of a few wicked men. Whatever it costs me, I have t … to do it.’
John knew he should say nothing; but there was such a strange mixture of certainty and self-dramatisation in the king’s voice that he could not remain silent. ‘Are you sure that you have to do it all?’ he asked quietly. ‘I know some sectaries, and they are quiet men, content to leave the Church alone, provided that they can pray their own way. And surely, no-one in the country wants to harm you or the queen, or the princes.’
Charles looked tragic. ‘They d … do,’ he said simply. ‘They drive themselves on and on, c … caring nothing for my good, c … caring nothing for the country. They want to see me cut down, cut down to the size of a little P … Prince, like the D … Doge of Venice or some catspaw of Parliament. They want to see the p … power my father gave me, which his aunt g … gave him, cut down to n … nothing. When was this country t … truly great? Under King Henry, Queen Elizabeth and my f … father King James. But they do not remember this. They don’t w … want to. I shall have to fight them as traitors. It is a b … battle to the death.’
The queen had heard the king’s raised voice and came over. ‘Husband?’ she inquired.
He turned at once, and Tradescant was relieved that she had come to soothe the king.
‘I was saying how these m … madmen in Parliament will not be finished until they have destroyed my ch … church and destroyed my power,’ he said.
John waited for the queen to reassure him that nothing so bad was being plotted. He hoped that she would remind him that the king and queen he most admired – his father James, and his great-aunt Elizabeth, had spent all their lives weaving compromises and twisting out agreements. Both of them had been faced with argumentative parliaments and both of them had put all their power and all their charm into turning agreements to their own desire, dividing the opposition, seducing their enemies. Neither of them would ever have been at loggerheads with a force which commanded any power in the country. Both of them would have waited and undermined an enemy.
‘We must destroy them,’ the queen said flatly. ‘Before they destroy us and destroy the country. We must gain and then keep control of the parliament, of the army and of the Church. There can be no agreement until they acknowledge that Church, army, and Parliament is all ours. And we will never compromise on that, will we, my love? You will never concede anything!’
He took her hand and kissed it as if she had given him the most sage and level-headed counsel. ‘You see how I am advised?’ he asked with a smile to Tradescant. ‘You see how w … wise and stern she is? This is a worthy successor to Queen Elizabeth, is sh … she not? A woman who could defeat the Sp … Spanish Armada again.’
‘But these are not the Spanish,’ John pointed out. He could almost hear Hester ordering him to be silent while he took the risk and spoke. ‘These are Englishmen, following their consciences. These are your own people – not a foreign enemy.’
‘They are traitors!’ the queen snapped. ‘And thus they are worse than the Spanish, who might be our enemies but at least are faithful to their king. A man who is a traitor is like a dog who is mad. He should be struck down and killed without a second’s thought.’
The king nodded. ‘And I am s … sorry, Gardener Tradescant, to hear you sympathise with them.’ There was a world of warning despite the slight stammer.
‘I just hope for peace and that all good men can find a way to peace,’ John muttered.
The queen stared at him, affronted by a sudden doubt. ‘You are my servant,’ she said flatly. ‘There can be no question which side you are on.’
John tried to smile. ‘I didn’t know we were taking sides.’
‘Oh yes,’ the king said bitterly. ‘We are certainly t … taking sides. And I have paid you a w … wage for years, and you have worked in my h … household, or in the household of my dear D … Duke since you were a boy – have you not? And your f … father worked all his life for my advisors and servants, and my f … father’s advisors and servants. You have eaten our b … bread since you were weaned. Which side are you on?’
John swallowed to ease the tightness in his throat. ‘I am for the good of the country, and for peace, and for you to enjoy what is your own, Your Majesty,’ he said.
‘What has always b … been mine own,’ the king prompted.
‘Of course,’ John agreed.
The queen suddenly smiled. ‘But this is my dear Gardener Tradescant!’ she said lightly. ‘Of course he is for us. You would be first into battle with your little hoe, wouldn’t you?’
John tried to smile and bowed rather than reply.
The queen put her hand on his arm. ‘And we never betray those who follow us,’ she said sweetly. ‘We are bound to you as you are bound to us and we would never betray a faithful servant.’ She nodded at the king as if inviting him to learn a lesson. ‘When a man is ready to promise himself to us he finds in us a loyal master.’
The king smiled at his wife and the gardener. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘From the highest servant to the 1 … lowest, I do not forget either loyalty or treachery. And I reward b … both.’
Summer 1641 (#ulink_bb3d8cc3-8097-5365-a63e-7a418230945f)
John remembered that promise on the day that the Earl of Strafford was taken to the Tower of London and thrown into the traitors’ prison to be executed when the king signed the Act of Attainder – his death warrant.
The king had sworn to Strafford that he would never betray him. He had written him a note and gave him the word of a king that Strafford would never suffer ‘in life, honour or fortune’ for his service – those were his exact words. The most cautious and wily members of the Privy Council fled the country when they recognised that Parliament was attacking the Privy Council rather than attacking the king. Most of them were quick to realise too that whatever the king might promise, he would not raise one hand to save a trusted servant from dying for his cause. But the Bishop of Ely and Archbishop William Laud were too slow, or too trusting. They too were imprisoned for plotting against the safety of the kingdom, alongside their ally Strafford in the Tower.
For all of the long spring months, Parliament had met on Strafford’s case and heard that he had recommended bringing in an army of Irish Papist troops to reduce ‘this kingdom’. If the king had interrupted the trial to insist that Strafford was referring to the kingdom of Scotland he might have saved him then from the executioner. But he did not. The king stayed silent in the little ante-room where he sat and listened to the trial. He did not insist. He offered, rather feebly, to never take Strafford’s advice again as long as the old man lived if they would but spare his life. The Houses of Parliament said they could not spare his life. The king struggled with his conscience for a short, painful time, and then signed the warrant for Strafford’s execution.
‘He sent little Prince Charles to ask them for mercy,’ Hester said in blank astonishment to John as she came back from Lambeth in May with a wagon full of shopping and a head full of news. ‘That poor little boy, only ten years old, and the king sent him down to Westminster to go before the whole Parliament and plead for the Earl’s life. And then they refused him! What a thing to do to a child! He’s going to think all his life that it was his fault that the Earl went to his death!’
‘Whereas it is the king’s,’ John said simply. ‘He could have denied that Strafford had ever advised him. He could have borne witness for him. He could have taken the decision on his own shoulders. But he let Strafford take the blame for him. And now he will let Strafford die for him.’
‘He’s to be executed on Tuesday,’ Hester said. ‘The market women are closing their stalls for the day and going up to Tower Hill to see his head taken off. And the apprentices are taking a free day, an extra May Day.’
John shook his head. ‘So much for the king’s loyalty. These are bad days for his servants. What’s the word on Archbishop Laud?’
‘Still in the Tower,’ Hester said. She rose to her feet and took hold of the side of the wagon to clamber down but John reached out his arms and lifted her down. She hesitated for a moment at the strangeness of his touch. It was nearly an embrace, his hands on her waist, their heads close together. Then he released her and moved to the back of the wagon.
‘You’ve bought enough for a siege!’ he exclaimed, and then, as his own words sunk in, he turned to her. ‘Why have you bought so much?’
‘I don’t want to go into market for a week or so,’ she said. ‘And I won’t send the maids either.’
‘Why not?’
She made a little helpless gesture. He thought he had never before seen her anything other than certain and definite in her movements. ‘It’s strange in town,’ she began. ‘I can’t describe it. Uneasy. Like a sky before a storm. People talk on corners and break off when I walk by. Everyone looks at everyone else as if they would read their hearts. No-one knows who is a friend and who is not. The king and Parliament are splitting this country down the middle like a popped pod of peas and all of us peas are spilling out and rolling around and not knowing what to do.’
John looked at his wife, trying to understand, for the first time in their married life, what she might be feeling. Then he suddenly realised what it was. ‘You look afraid.’
She turned away to the edge of the wagon as if it were something to be ashamed of. ‘Someone threw a stone at me,’ she said, her voice very low.
‘What?’
‘Someone threw a stone as I was leaving the market. It hit me in the back.’
John was dumbfounded. ‘You were stoned? In Lambeth?’
She shook her head. ‘A glancing blow. It was not thrown to hurt me. I think it was an insult, a warning.’
‘But why should anyone at Lambeth market insult you? Or warn you?’
She shrugged. ‘You’re well-known as the king’s gardener, the king’s man, and your father before you. And these people don’t inquire where your heart lies, what you think in private. They think of us as the king’s servants, and the king is not well-regarded in Lambeth and the City.’
John’s mind was whirling. ‘Did it hurt you? Are you hurt?’
She started to say ‘No’, but she stumbled over the word and John, without thinking, caught her into his arms and let her cry against his shoulder as the torrent of words spilled out.
She was afraid, very afraid, and she had been afraid every market day since Parliament had been recalled and the king had come home defeated from the war with the Scots. The women would not always serve her, they overcharged her and leaned on the scales when they were weighing out flour. And the apprentice boys ran after her and called out names, and when the stone had struck her back she had thought it would be the first of a hail of stones which would hit her and knock her from the box of the wagon and beat her down in the street.
‘Hester! Hester!’ John held her as the storm of crying swept over her. ‘My dear, my dear, my little wife!’
She broke off from crying at once. ‘What did you call me?’
He had not been aware of it himself.
‘You called me little wife, and your dear –’ she said. She rubbed her eyes, but kept her other hand firmly on his collar. ‘You called me dear, you’ve never called me that before.’
The old closed look came down on his face. ‘I was upset for you,’ he said, as if it was a sin to call his own wife an endearment. ‘For a moment I forgot.’
‘You forgot that you had been married before. You treated me like a wife you are … fond of,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘I am glad,’ she said softly. ‘I should like you to be fond of me.’
He disengaged himself very gently. ‘I should not forget I was married before,’ he said firmly, and went into the house. Hester stood beside the cart, watching the kitchen door closing behind him, and found she had no more tears left to cry but only loneliness and disappointment and dry eyes.
Summer 1641 (#ulink_44ba5206-4d93-50f4-9e0b-278e15efcb64)
Hester did not go to market again all summer. And she had been right to fear the mood of the village of Lambeth. The apprentice boys all ran wild one night and the fever was caught by the market women and by the serious chapel goers, who made a determined mixed mob and marched through the streets shouting, ‘No popery! No bishops!’ Some of the loudest and most daring shouted, ‘No king!’ They threw a few burning brands over the high walls of the empty archbishop’s palace, and made a half-hearted attempt at the gates, and then they broke the windows down Lambeth High Street at every house that did not show a light at the window for Parliament. They did not march down the road as far as the Ark and John thanked God for the luck of the Tradescants, which had once again placed them on the very edge of great events and danger and yet spared them by a hair’s breadth.
After that, John sent the gardener’s lad and the stable lad together to market and though they often muddled the order and stopped for an ale at the taverns, at least it meant that any muttering about the king’s gardener was not directed at Hester.
John had to go to Oatlands and before he went he ordered wooden shutters to be made for all the windows of the house, especially the great windows of Venetian glass in the rarities room. He hired an extra lad to wake at nights and watch out down the South Lambeth road in case the mob came that way, and he and Hester went out one night in the darkness with shaded lanterns to clear out the old ice house, and put a heavy bolt on the thick wooden doors to make a hiding place for the most valuable of the rarities.
‘If they come against us you will have to take the children and leave the house,’ he ordered.
She shook her head and he found himself admiring her cool nerve. ‘We have a couple of muskets,’ she said. ‘I won’t have my house overrun by a band of idle apprentice lads.’
‘You must not take risks,’ he warned her.
She gave him a tight, determined smile. ‘Everything is a risk in these days,’ she said. ‘I will see that we come safe through it all.’
‘I have to leave you,’ John said anxiously. ‘I am summoned to Oatlands. Their Majesties will visit next week and I have to see the gardens are at their best.’
She nodded. ‘I know you have to go. I shall keep everything safe here.’
John was at Oatlands ready for the full court, but the queen came alone. The king and half the court were missing, and the rumour was that he had gone north to negotiate with the Scots himself.
