Virgin Earth Read online

  The peace brought gardeners back to the orchards and flowerbeds, and men of inquiring minds into the rarities collection. Takings at the door grew every day, and the order book for Tradescant flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetables grew full. John’s reputation for strange, beautiful and exotic plants was established and he was gaining increasing respect for his experiments with new vegetables and fruit. He grew potatoes and Indian corn and peaches, nectarines, cherries, grapes for eating and for wine and for drying as raisins; and the scientists and philosophers who dined at the Ark would ask to try the new vegetables and fruits for their dinner.

  In the autumn John Lambert came home from Scotland and visited the garden at the Ark and admired John’s new collection of cyclamen which he had in a new bed under the chestnut trees. Lambert kneeled down in the dirt of the avenue to look at them, their delicate little petals folded back like a nun’s coif. He greeted Johnnie without remarking on the scar beneath his eye, and kissed Hester’s hand without mentioning the package of tulips or the hidden note.

  ‘I’m glad to see your boy is home,’ was all he said to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘And I was glad to see you are now Lord Lambert.’

  ‘Aren’t I grand?’ he asked her with a smile, and then turned to walk around the flowerbeds with John.

  ‘You gardened for the queen at Wimbledon House, did you not?’ he asked when they were seated on the terrace, looking out over the chrysanthemums planted thickly in the beds before the house to give the garden some early autumn colour.

  ‘I did,’ John said. ‘We planned it and I even planted the beds by the house, a knot garden, and a watercourse; but they had very little time there. She wanted it as a retreat, I was going to make a flowery mead down by the river, I should think it’s a hay meadow now.’

  ‘What d’you think of the soil and the situation? There are some good plants still growing.’

  ‘It would have been a most pretty garden,’ John said. ‘I still have the plans for planting. Johnnie goes up there every summer.’

  ‘I have bought it for my own use. I want a country house not too far from London. I should like to see what you had planned for it.’

  ‘You have it? Well that’s –’ John broke off.

  ‘A surprise,’ John Lambert finished diplomatically for him. ‘I think so too. I certainly didn’t ever think to find myself in a queen’s house, but I think it will suit me very well. I was especially interested to know if any of your plantings have survived. I’d be sorry to spoil a bed of rarities through my own ignorance.’

  ‘Johnnie told me that some things are still there. I know the trees have done well, and Johnnie told me that the horse chestnuts are growing and the fruit trees in the orchards.’

  ‘Horse chestnuts?’ John Lambert asked with a gleam.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mature?’

  John thought for a moment. ‘They’d be, oh, fifteen years old now.’ He laughed. ‘They’ll be flowering and coming into their full beauty. I think you’ll find you have a bargain in the garden. And I had planted plum and medlar and quince apples and pears; also the Tradescant great black cherry, and espaliered peaches.’

  Hester came out on to the terrace with a bottle of wine and two glasses, Johnnie washed and tidy behind her. ‘Will you stay for dinner, Lord Lambert?’ she asked. ‘Elias Ashmole and his wife are staying with us at the moment, and we expect some other guests too.’

  ‘Thank you, I would like to,’ he said.

  ‘His lordship has bought Wimbledon House,’ John told her. ‘Johnnie, would you go and see if you can find the garden plans for me? They were in the documents in the rarities room.’ He looked directly at his son and spoke with emphasis. ‘We must be glad that one of our gardens has been bought by a man who will love it,’ he said firmly.

  It was as if the boy had not heard him.

  ‘That’s the queen’s house,’ Johnnie said bluntly.

  Lambert heard the repressed passion behind the words and replied very calmly. ‘It was confiscated, as are all the royal houses and palaces. And now I have bought it. I paid good money for it, Johnnie. It was a proper transaction, not booty. I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘It wasn’t the king’s house, it was the queen’s,’ Johnnie insisted. ‘She’s never been tried for treason, her estates have never been sequestrated. How can anyone have her house? It has nothing to do with the royal palaces. It’s her own house.’

  Hester glanced at John.

  ‘Her fortunes go with her husband,’ Lambert answered. ‘That’s the law, Johnnie. And all royalists have lost their houses.’

  ‘Fetch the plans for me.’ John tried to stem the rise of his son’s temper.

  ‘Fetch the damned things yourself!’ Johnnie burst out. ‘I’ll have no part in robbing the queen of her own. I won’t pretend that it’s not thievery to live in a queen’s palace and steal her fruits! It’s nothing better than looting! It’s a dead king’s goods!’

  He flung out of the house and ran down the shallow steps into the garden, they saw him tear down the avenue and through the gate towards the lake. There was an appalled silence.

  ‘I apologise,’ John said. ‘He will be disciplined, your lordship. He will apologise to you himself. He doesn’t realise the gravity of what he is saying.’ John shot a swift look at Hester, asking for help. At the very least Johnnie was guilty of appalling rudeness; at the worst, treason.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Hester said in a whisper. ‘He’s still very young, you understand. And distressed. I would not have had him speak so to anyone, you least of all. He does realise that the war is over. He is not an active royalist. We are all of us loyal to Parliament here.’

  Lambert leaned back against his chair and took up his glass of wine. ‘Oh, there’s no need to apologise,’ he said gently. ‘There are many who feel as he does up and down the country, it’s bound to take some time for feelings to die down. And there have been enough trials for treason. The lad has strong feelings and it’s hard to lose two battles by – what is he? – twenty? Did he get that scar at Worcester?’

  ‘Yes. A scratch from a pike,’ Hester said. ‘Thank God it missed his eye. It was all but healed up by the time he came home. And he’s only eighteen. I am sorry, your lordship. He spent his youth in the shadow of the war.’

  ‘He’s at an age when you see things in black and white,’ Lambert said easily. ‘Things are not so simple in real life. If Charles Stuart would make half the promises to us that he made to the Scots then he could have come home to his throne. But we can’t trust him. Those of us who dealt with his father remember that the Stuarts find it easier to promise than to deliver. And the son is even worse than the father for reneging on his debts and word. He’s not much of a model for Johnnie to set his heart on.’

  ‘I know,’ Hester said sadly. ‘But I can’t seem to persuade him.’

  Johnnie did not reappear for dinner and Hester laid the table, served the gentlemen, and dined on her own in the kitchen before she went out to look for him.

  She knew where to go. He was lying in the little rowing boat, his long legs over the back of the boat, gazing up at the sky where a few silver stars were showing against the pale blue.

  Hester sat at the foot of the tree where she used to bring him to feed the ducks when he had been such a happy little boy. She observed the gently moving boat for a few moments before she spoke.

  ‘That was ill-done, Johnnie. You will have to apologise to Lord Lambert. He is a good man and he has been kind to me.’

  The boat rocked a little as he leaned forwards, saw her, and then reclined again. ‘I know I was in the wrong. I will beg his pardon for speaking out.’

  ‘It’s foolish to fly out like that. You said enough to be tried for treason tonight.’

  ‘No more than thousands of others.’

  ‘Even so.’

  The rocking of the little craft steadied and slowed.

  ‘I know,’ Johnnie said. ‘I am sorry. I will