Virgin Earth - Philippa Gregory

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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

      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.

      ‘He is in Edinburgh and all will be mended,’ the queen said with her complacent smile when she came upon John dead-heading the roses. She was concealing her boredom as best as she could. She was accompanied only by a few ladies, the old flirtatious, artistic, idle entourage was broken up. The more adventurous and more ambitious men were riding with the king. There was the smell of opportunity and advancement in the court of a king at war, and the young men had been sick of peace and a court devoted to marital love for so long. ‘It will all be resolved,’ the queen promised. ‘Once they meet him again he will charm them into seeing that they were wrong to march against him.’

      John nodded. ‘I hope so, Your Majesty.’

      She came close to him and lowered her voice. ‘We will not go to London again until it is all agreed,’ she confided. ‘Not even to my little manor at Wimbledon. We shall go nowhere near to Westminster. After the death of my Lord Strafford –’ She broke off. ‘They said they would try me after the Earl! Try me for treasonous advice!’

      John had to resist the temptation to take one of her little white hands. She looked genuinely afraid.

      ‘He should have stood against them,’ she whispered. ‘My husband should not have let them take Strafford, nor Laud. If he lets them pick us off one after another we will all be lost. And then he will be left all alone and they will have tasted blood. He should have stood against them for William Laud, he should have stood against them for Strafford. How can I be sure he will stand for me?’

      ‘Your Majesty, matters cannot go so far,’ John said soothingly.

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