Virgin Earth. Philippa Gregory
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day that the queen had taken a fancy to him, and reflected on the wisdom of his wife who had warned him to avoid this conversation at all costs.
‘They know that it is the king’s wish,’ he said tactfully. ‘There is not a man or woman or child in the country who does not know that it is the king’s wish.’
‘Then it should need nothing more!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is he the king or not?’
‘Of course he is.’
‘Then his wish should be a command to everyone. If they think any different from him they are traitors.’
John thought intently of Hester and said nothing. ‘I pray for peace, God knows,’ he said honestly enough.
‘And so do I,’ said the queen. ‘Would you like to pray with me, Gardener Tradescant? I allow my favourite servants to use my chapel. I am going to Mass now.’
John forced himself not to fling away from her and from her dangerous ungodly Papistry. To invite an Englishman to attend Mass was a crime punishable by death. The laws against Roman Catholics were very clear and very brutal, and clearly, visibly, flouted by the king and queen in their own court.
‘I am all dirty, Your Majesty.’ John showed her his earth-stained hands and kept his voice level though he was filled with rage at her casual flouting of the law, and deeply shocked that she should think he would accept such an invitation to idolatory and hell. ‘I could not come to your chapel.’
‘Another time, then.’ She smiled at him, pleased with his humility, and with her own graciousness. She had no idea that he was within an inch of storming from the garden in a blaze of righteous rage. To John, a Roman Catholic chapel was akin to the doors of hell, and a Papist queen was one step to damnation. She had tried to tempt him to deny his faith. She had tried to tempt him to the worst sin in the world – idolatory, worshipping graven images, denying the word of God. She was a woman steeped in sin and she had tried to drag him down.
She closed the window on the cold air without saying farewell or telling him that he could rise. John stayed kneeling until he was sure that she had gone, and that the audience was over. Then he got to his feet and looked behind him. The two assistant gardeners were kneeling where they had dropped when the window opened.
‘You can stand,’ John said. ‘She’s gone.’
They scrambled to their feet, rubbing their knees and complaining of the discomfort. ‘Please God she does not look out of the window again,’ said the younger one. ‘Why will she not leave you alone?’
‘She thinks I am a faithful servant,’ J said bitterly. ‘She thinks I will tell her the mood of the people. What she does not realise is that no-one can tell her the truth since any word of disagreement is treason. She and the king have tied our consciences in knots and whatever we do or think or say we are in the wrong. It makes a man want to cut loose.’
He saw the gardeners looking at him in surprise. ‘Oh, waste no more time!’ John snapped impatiently. ‘We’ve kneeled enough for one day.’
The court always spent the long Christmas feast at Whitehall, so John was able to leave the royal gardens at Oatlands dormant under a thick frost, and go home to Lambeth in November and spend Christmas at home. The children had made him little presents of their own for Twelfth Night, and he gave them sweets and fairings bought from Lambeth winter fair. To Hester he gave a couple of yards of grey silk for a gown.
‘They had a blue silk too but I did not know what you would like,’ he said. He would have known exactly what Jane would have preferred; but he seldom observed what Hester was wearing. He had only a general impression of demure smartness.
‘I like this. Thank you.’
After the children had gone to bed, Hester and John stayed by the fireside, drinking small ale and cracking nuts in companionable domestic peace. ‘You were right about being cautious at Oatlands,’ John said. ‘In Lambeth the news was all of a war against Scotland. The northern counties are armed and ready, and the king has called a council of war. They say that the militia will be called up too.’
‘Do they really think that the king would go to war over a prayer book? Does he really think he can fight the Scots into praying with Archbishop Laud’s words?’
John shook his head in disagreement. ‘It’s more than the prayer book. The king thinks that he has to make one church for all his kingdom. He thinks one church will bind everyone together, bind us all together under his will. He has taken it into his head that if the Scots refuse their bishops then they will refuse their king.’
‘You’ll not have to go?’ Hester asked, going straight to the point.
John grimaced. ‘I may have to pay for a substitute to go soldiering in my place. But perhaps they will not muster the Lambeth trained bands. Perhaps I may be excused since I serve the king already.’
Hester hesitated. ‘You would not publicly refuse to serve, as a matter of conscience?’
‘It would certainly go against my conscience to fire on a man who has said nothing worse than he wants to worship his God in his own way,’ John said. ‘Such a man, be he Scots or Welsh or English, is saying nothing more than I believe. He cannot be my enemy. I am more like a Scots Presbyterian than I am like Archbishop Laud, God knows.’
‘But if you refuse you might be pressed to serve, and if you refuse the press, they could try for treason.’
‘These are difficult times. A man has to hold clear on to his conscience and his God.’
‘And try not to be noticed,’ Hester said.
John suddenly realised the contrast in their opinions. ‘Hester, wife, do you believe in nothing?’ he demanded. ‘I have never had a word from you of belief or conviction. All you ever speak of is surviving and avoiding awkward questions. You are married into a household where we have been faithful servants of the king and his ministers since the start of the century. My father never heard a word against any of his masters in all his days. I didn’t agree with him, that’s not my way; but I am a man of conscience. I hold very strongly to the belief that a man must find his own way to God. I have been a man of independent belief since I was old enough to think for myself, praying in the words of my own choosing, a Protestant, a true Protestant. Even when I have wavered in my faith, even when I have had doubts, profound doubts, I am glad to have those doubts and think them through. I have never run to some priest to tell me what I should think, to speak to God for me.’
She met his gaze with her own straight look. ‘You’re right. I believe in surviving,’ she said flatly. ‘That’s all, really. That’s my creed. The safest route for me and mine is to obey the king; and if I do happen to think differently to what he commands – I keep my thoughts to myself. My family works for noble and royal patrons, I was brought up around the court. I am loyal to my king and loyal to my God; but, like any courtier, my first interest is in surviving. And I fear that my creed is going to be as thoroughly tested as any other in the next few months.’
The press gang did not come for John. But he did receive a letter from the Mayor of London. John was to pay a tax demanded personally by the king to finance the war against the Scots. The king was marching north and desperately needed money to equip and arm his soldiers. And more soldiers would be coming, soldiers from Ireland, and mercenaries from Spain.
‘The king is bringing in Papists to fight against Protestants?’ John demanded, scandalised. ‘What next? French soldiers from his wife’s country? Or the Spanish army? What was the point of us defeating the Armada, fighting to stay free of Papist powers, if we now invite them in?’
‘Hush,’ Hester said. She closed the door of the parlour so that the visitors in the rarities room could not hear her husband’s