Virgin Earth Read online

  A tobacco ship called in at the quay to load their crop the next day and John sent a note to Hester at Lambeth and packed his seeds and roots into a watertight barrel addressed to her.

  Dear Wife,

  I hope this reaches you in good health and fortune. I am on my way to Jamestown after many months living in the forest. I have no money. Please send a note of credit for me to draw twenty pounds for my board and lodging and journey home. I shall come home as soon as I receive the money.

  John flinched a little at the bareness of the note but he did not feel he could, in all conscience, offer any explanation or any reassurance of love. He feared that perhaps Hester would be hard-pressed to find twenty pounds to pay into a London goldsmith so that the note of credit could be good in Virginia, but he could not bring himself to offer advice as to what she might sell from the collection. He had been too long away. He did not know if she had been able to keep the collection safe. He did not even know for certain that she was still at the Lambeth address. He felt as if he were pitching a rope into darkness and hoping that someone on an unseen quayside might catch it and haul him in. He paused before signing his name. If anyone would haul him in, it would be Hester.

  I trust you, Hester, and when I come home I shall thank you for your care of me and mine.

  He signed his name and ran down to the wooden pier and thrust the note at the captain. ‘Please see that she receives it,’ he said. ‘I am trapped here unless she can send me my fare home.’ He looked at the ship. ‘Unless I could work a passage?’

  The captain laughed in his face. ‘Work your passage? You’re a seaman, are you?’

  ‘No,’ John said.

  ‘If you want to go home, mister, you’ll have to pay for your voyage, same as anyone.’

  ‘She’ll reward you for bringing the note,’ John promised him. ‘Please see that she receives it.’

  The captain tucked it carelessly into his jacket. ‘Oh aye,’ he said and shouted to the sailors to let go.

  The current of the river caught the ship and she pulled away from the quayside. John watched the sails unfurl and heard the shouted orders and the creaks of the rope and timbers as the ship got underway.

  ‘How long before you hear?’ the planter asked him.

  ‘It can’t be quicker than four months,’ John said. ‘A voyage there and back, if she has the money, that is.’

  The man grinned. ‘I could use a hand to work the crop,’ he said.

  John nodded. Labour was notoriously hard to find in Virginia. He would have to be a hired hand until Hester sent him a note of credit and he could become a gentleman again.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I have to go to Jamestown first. I have a promise to keep.’

  John saw the governor for a brief snatched moment as the great man strode from the new assembly room to the governor’s mansion. John hobbled after him in his ill-fitting shoes. ‘Sir William?’

  The young man turned, took in John’s humble clothes and strolled on. ‘Yes?’ he threw over his shoulder.

  ‘I am John Tradescant, gardener to the king.’ John followed him. ‘I was planting my headright up the river when the Powhatan saved me from starving. I lived with them for years. I have come to Jamestown to ask for clemency for Opechancanough.’

  Sir William blinked at the extraordinary story and hesitated. ‘Clemency?’

  ‘He’s an old man, and he could see no way forward for his people. If they had been allowed to settle fairly after the first uprising he would not have felt so driven. They’re ready to make peace now, a lasting peace, if we could only give them the land they need.’

  ‘You are a spokesman for them?’ Sir William asked. ‘You’re on their side?’

  Almost imperceptibly a couple of soldiers from the assembly doors edged a little closer.

  ‘No,’ John said. ‘They have expelled me. I am an Englishman and as soon as I can I shall return to London. But I owe them a debt of gratitude. They took me in and they fed me when I was near to death of starvation. I should like to repay my debt to them and indeed, Sir William, I think they have not been treated fairly by us.’

  The young man hesitated for only a moment, then he shook his head. ‘This is a new country,’ he said. ‘We are exploring all the time, south and north and west. The Powhatan, and the other savages, have to know that this is our country now, and if they fight against us, if they break the peace, then death is the only response.’

  ‘The peace was here before we arrived,’ John said quickly. ‘The country was here before we came. The Powhatan were here before we came. Some might say that it was their country.’

  Sir William looked sharply at John. ‘Then that man would be a traitor to England and the king of England,’ he said. ‘You say you were servant to the king himself. He’s not a man who accepts half-loyalty, and neither do I.’

  John thought for a moment of his long-distant court life and the king who could not distinguish between half-loyalty and play-acting and reality. ‘I am faithful to the king,’ he said. ‘But it is a bad example to kill the king of the Powhatan. He should be like all kings – inviolate.’

  ‘This is not a king,’ Sir William said with sudden impatience. ‘This is a savage. You insult His Majesty by the comparison. The person of a king is sacred, he stands only below God himself. This dirty old Indian is a savage and we shall hang him.’

  He turned abruptly from John and walked away.

  ‘He was a king to us only a few years ago,’ John said staunchly. ‘Pocahontas was a princess. She was invited to London and treated as a princess of royal blood. I know. I was there and I saw it. The Powhatan then were a free and equal people and their royal family was as sacred as ours.’

  The governor shook his head. ‘Not any more,’ he said simply. ‘They’re less than animals to us now. And if you choose to go back to them, then tell them this: that there is no place for them in this country. Tell them they will have to go –’ he gestured ‘– south or further west and keep on travelling. It’s our land now and we won’t share it.’

  Autumn 1645, England

  Hester received John’s letter asking for his fare home in the second week of September. The sailor who brought it was given a penny for his trouble and some thin soup at the kitchen door. Hester took the letter into the rarities room – the tiny fire was burning in there and the light from the tall Venetian windows was good. But she also had a superstitious sense that this was the rarest thing of all – a letter from her husband.

  It was crumpled from its resting place inside someone’s jacket and grubby as if it had been dropped somewhere and forgotten for a little while. Hester looked at the folded outside of the paper and the tiny splash of wax which sealed it, as if she would read every inch of the paper as well as the message inside. Then she sat at the desk that was set in the window for the convenience of artists who might come to draw the specimens in the collection, and broke the seal.

  Dear Wife,

  I hope this reaches you in good health and fortune. I am on my way to Jamestown after many months living in the forest.

  Hester paused. She had thought John was living in a planter’s house, such as were illustrated in the books about Virginia. A little house made of half-sawn timbers with wood shingles for a roof. What could he mean about living in the forest?

  I have no money. Please send a note of credit for me to draw twenty pounds for my board and lodging and journey home. I shall come home as soon as I receive the money.

  Hester raised her head from the smudged words. The Virginia venture had ended then, as she had said it would, in bankruptcy and disaster. There was no profitable crop of tobacco. There was no refuge from the uncertainty of a country at war. John had failed completely, failed so badly that he could not even come home unless she sent him his passage money.

  I trust you, Hester, and when I come home I shall thank you for your care of me and mine.

  Hester pressed her finger to her lips and then put it down, as if making a