Virgin Earth Read online

  A couple of times Lord Lambert came from his house at Wimbledon to see any new additions to the garden or the rarities room and sometimes stayed for dinner to talk with the other guests. Sometimes men brought curiosities, or things that they had designed or built. Often at these talks Ashmole would lead the discussion, his classical education and his acute mind prompting him to take the part of host in John’s house.

  ‘I don’t like how Mr Ashmole puts himself forward,’ Hester remarked to John as she carried another couple of bottles of wine into the dining room.

  ‘No more than any other man,’ he answered.

  ‘He does,’ she insisted. ‘Ever since he catalogued the collection you would think that it was his own. I wish you would remind him that he was nothing more than your assistant. Frances knows her way round the collection better than he does. Even I do. And Frances and I kept it safe through three wars, while he was at Oxford living off the richness of the court.’

  ‘But neither Frances nor I know Latin like Mr Ashmole,’ John reminded her gently. ‘And he worked very hard for nothing more than my thanks. I couldn’t have completed the task without him, you know, Hester. And he’s a coming man, mark my words. He’ll do great things.’

  Hester gave John a brief, sceptical look and said nothing more but turned to go back to the kitchen.

  ‘Is Alexander coming downstairs tonight?’ John asked her. It was Alexander’s habit now to join the men in the evening after they had dined so that he could listen to their talk. He wore his gown with a rich robe wrapped round his shoulders against the cool evening air. He was often too breathless to speak but he liked to listen to the men discussing, he liked to follow the arguments especially when they talked of astronomy and the new discoveries of the stars.

  Hester shook her head. ‘He’s too weary,’ he says. ‘Frances will sit with him upstairs.’

  The Normans stayed at the Ark through the summer, but still Alexander grew no better. They all maintained the gentle fiction that he would improve when the colder weather came, as before they had pretended that he would be better when he felt the summer sun.

  When he said he wanted to go home in August Frances did not argue with him, though the summer months were the most dangerous for the plague in the City. She simply sent the garden boy to the river to hail a boat to take them down to the Tower and told the stable lad to harness the cart.

  ‘He’s very ill,’ Hester cautioned her. ‘He’s too ill to make the journey. You should stay here.’

  ‘I know,’ Frances said simply. ‘But he wants to be home.’

  ‘Settle him in and as soon as he is feeling better you come back here,’ Hester said. ‘There’s plague in the City, I’d rather you were here.’

  Frances shook her head. ‘You can see as well as I can that he will not feel better, even when he is home. I will stay with him until the end.’

  ‘Oh, Frances.’

  ‘I knew that this was likely to happen when I married him,’ Frances said. Her eyes were filled with tears but her voice never faltered. ‘And he knew it too. We were neither of us such fools as to think that I would not lose him. We were prepared for this from our wedding day. He warned me of it. I have no regrets.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Hester decided. ‘You’ll need someone to run the house while you nurse him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Frances said. ‘I’ll want you with me.’

  Alexander died in his bed, as he had wanted, with Hester at the foot of the bed and Frances holding his hand. He whispered something and she could not hear what he said. She leaned a little closer to hear the words.

  ‘What is it, my love? Say it again?’

  ‘You were the sweetest –’ he paused for a breath and Frances leaned a little closer. ‘The sweetest flower in all of John’s garden.’ He smiled at her for a moment, then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  Frances buried her husband in the church where they had been married and walked back to her house with her father and stepmother on either side of her.

  Hester had ordered in a dinner from the nearby bake-house and Alexander’s apprentices, his family from Herefordshire, and his friends from the City drank to his memory, ate their dinner and then left.

  The house was oddly silent without the tapping of hammers from the yard and continual rasp of the saws.

  ‘Have you thought what you would like to do?’ John asked his daughter gently. ‘Have you thought where you would like to live? Alexander left you well-provided, and you can sell this house. The sale of the business is already agreed.’

  ‘I had thought,’ she said. ‘If you would allow it – I should like to come home.’

  ‘To the Ark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  John found that he was beaming with delight. ‘That would give me much joy,’ he said simply.

  Autumn 1658

  In early September John was wakened at dawn by the noise of the rising wind.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not at sea today,’ he said to Hester.

  He went to the window and saw the trees in the orchard and the avenue flailing their boughs at the sky where the clouds raced overhead.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ Hester said sleepily.

  There was a clatter from the stable yard.

  ‘I’m awake now,’ John said. ‘I’ll get up and see that everything’s safe. We’re in for a storm.’

  He spent the day with the lad and Joseph pinning back the creepers and staking the plants which were already rocking in the earth, pulling at their roots. Frances took a sharp knife and went around the garden mercilessly pruning the climbing roses so that the long boughs would not tear the stalks from the soil. She came in for dinner at midday with her arms scratched above her gloves and her hair tumbled about her shoulders.

  ‘Frances Norman,’ said Hester, disapprovingly.

  ‘It’s wild out there,’ Frances said. ‘My cap blew off.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Hester said.

  ‘We’re going to lose half the apples,’ John said irritably. ‘What a foul wind.’

  ‘And the plums,’ Frances said. ‘I’ll pick as many as I can get this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll come out and help,’ said Hester. ‘I don’t expect any visitors this afternoon, no-one would take a boat on the river unless they had to.’

  John had thought that the wind might drop as night fell; but it grew stronger and wilder, and it started to rain. Hester went round the house fastening shutters but still they could hear the thud of the wind against the leaded panes of glass, and in the rarities room they could see the great panes creaking as they moved in their frames.

  ‘I hope to God they don’t crack,’ John said. ‘We’ll close the shutters behind them, then at least if they smash the rarities will still have some protection. If I had thought I could have boarded up the house this morning.’

  They had an ill-cooked supper. A great gust of wind had come down the chimney and blown soot all around the kitchen. While they ate they heard the clatter of a slate falling from the roof into the stable yard.

  Frances declared that she was going early to bed and putting her head under her pillow, and Hester followed her example; but John prowled around the creaking house for half the night, feeling that his Ark was rocking in high seas and that the master should be awake.

  In the morning there was less damage than they had feared. The Virginian creeper was stripped of its rosy leaves and would make no show to attract buyers, and there were fallen fruit and broken boughs all down the orchard. The chestnuts had been ripped from the trees too early and they might not ripen, and they had lost most of the apple and plum crop. But the house was still standing and the windows were unbroken, and only a few slates had gone missing from the roof.

  ‘I shall go into Lambeth and order the builder to come,’ John said. ‘He’ll be a busy man this day, I should think.’

  He rode Caesar down the lane to Lambeth and thought that the crowd in the market was agog with news of the storm damage