Virgin Earth

  Sarah shook her head in absolute refusal. ‘They would poison us and hack us up to eat,’ she said. ‘You may have been lucky, John Tradescant, that they chose to keep you alive. But they have been our enemies since we came here. At first we traded with them and gave them little trinkets for food and for goods. Then we tried to make them come and work for us, clear the land and dig the fields. But they were lazy and idle and when we whipped them they stole what they could and ran away. After that Bertram has shot at them whenever he has seen them. They are our enemies. I won’t have them near me.’

  ‘They have skills that you need to learn,’ John persisted. ‘This dinner you are eating is Powhatan food. You have to learn how they live in the forest in order to live here yourself.’

  She shook her head. ‘I shall live as a God-fearing Englishwoman and I shall make this land into a new England. Then they can come to me to learn.’ She closed her eyes briefly in a prayer. When she opened them she was looking sharply, critically, at John.

  ‘I have unpacked a shirt and pair of breeches belonging to Bertram,’ she said. ‘You can have them in return for the service you have done us by coming to our door in our time of need. You will not want to walk around half-naked as you are.’

  ‘This is how I live now,’ John said.

  ‘Not in a Christian home you don’t,’ she said sharply. ‘I cannot allow it, Mr Tradescant, it is not fit. It is lechery to show yourself like this to me. If my husband were well and in his right mind he would not permit it.’

  ‘I had no thought of lechery, Mrs Hobert –’

  She gestured to the clothes spread at the fireside. ‘Then dress yourself, Mr Tradescant, please.’

  John stayed with the Hoberts for a full week, dressed in English clothes again, but still barefoot. The shirt chafed at his neck, the breeches felt hot and constricting around his legs. But he wore them out of courtesy to Sarah’s feelings, and he did not feel he could leave her until Bertram was well again.

  The fever broke on the third night, and the next day Bertram was well enough to hobble down to the river, leaning on John’s arm.

  The little green tobacco shoots were showing through the earth of the nursery beds. Bertram paused and looked at them as dotingly as if they were sleeping children. ‘Here is my fortune, Tradescant,’ he said. ‘Here is my fortune growing. If we can survive the rest of this cold weather without starving, without falling to the savages, then this will be the making of me. I shall see it sold on the quayside at Jamestown. I shall see it packed and sailing for England. I shall hire a servant, a brace of servants, and I will make myself a life here.’

  ‘God willing,’ John said.

  ‘Stay with us,’ Hobert said. ‘Stay with us and you can take a share in this, John. I doubt I can manage without you and Sarah cannot do it all on her own. Francis has no skill with plants, I am afraid to let him touch them. If I am sick when they need planting out who is going to do the work? Stay with me and see my tobacco plants safely into the field.’

  ‘I can’t stay,’ John said as gently as he could. ‘I have made a different life for myself in this country. But I can come back to you and see that you are well. I’ll come back gladly and work for you. I’ll set out the seedlings for you and show you how the Powhatan plant their food crops so you never need go hungry again.’

  ‘You’ll come back to plant out my tobacco? You swear it?’

  ‘I swear,’ John said.

  ‘Then we won’t need food crops,’ Hobert said buoyantly. ‘We shall buy all we need with what I can earn from the tobacco. And I’ll see you right, John. Next season I shall come to your headright and work for you, as we promised, eh? As we always said we would do.’

  On that promise John left the Hoberts and crossed the river just above the falls where he could jump from boulder to boulder in the fast-moving stream. On the far side he stripped off the breeches and the shirt that he had been given and bundled them up into the crook of a tree. It reminded him of Suckahanna’s girlhood and her attempt to live in the two worlds. She used to wear a long gown and sometimes a bonnet in Jamestown, but when she was free in the woods she wore her buckskin pinny and nothing more.

  The air felt good on his skin again, he felt more of a man in his nakedness than he ever could do in his breeches. He stretched as if he were freed from a constriction greater than a linen shirt, and set off at the Powhatan hunting stride for his home.

  Suckahanna greeted him with the careful courtesy of a deeply offended wife. John neither explained nor apologised until they were alone on the sleeping platform, in the darkness of their house, when the soft sighs from both children showed that they were asleep.

  ‘I could not come back when I said I would come,’ he said to her smooth naked back. ‘Bertram was sick, his wife was hungry and their slave didn’t know what to do.’

  She said nothing and did not turn to him.

  ‘I stayed to feed a hungry woman and nurse a sick man,’ John said. ‘When I showed her how to get food and when he was better I came home again, as soon as I could.’

  He waited.

  ‘Would you have wanted me to leave them to die?’ he asked.

  At last she turned back to him. ‘Better now and by their own failure than later,’ she said simply.

  John gasped as the words struck him. ‘You speak like a heartless woman,’ he protested.

  She shrugged as if she did not much care whether he thought her heartless or kind; and then she turned her back on him again and went to sleep.

  Spring 1644, Virginia

  John did not go back to the Hoberts’ homestead for a month. He hunted with Attone and the other braves, he lived as a Powhatan. But there was a coldness between Suckahanna and him which the routine of ordinary life could not conceal.

  When he judged it was time for the planting out of Bertram’s tobacco he spoke to Attone, rather than Suckahanna.

  ‘My friend who was sick needs me to plant out his tobacco. I should go and help him now.’

  ‘Go then, Eagle,’ Attone said unhelpfully.

  ‘Suckahanna will be angry at my going.’

  ‘Stay then.’

  ‘I’m not asking for help –’

  ‘I’m not giving any.’

  John paused for a moment and bit back his temper. Attone was smiling. He loved to be annoying.

  ‘I’m telling you that I will be away for a while,’ John said patiently. ‘I am asking you to watch Suckahanna for me and fetch me if she is in any need. She will not send for me; she is angry with me. She would not send for me even if she needed me.’

  ‘She will be in no need. The game is coming back, the fish are spawning. What would she need you for? You can go to your smelly friends.’

  John gritted his teeth. ‘If one of the People was in trouble you would go to his help.’

  ‘Hobert is not one of the People. He is not one of mine.’

  John hesitated. ‘Nor is he mine,’ he said, conscious of the pain of divided loyalty. ‘But I cannot see him fail or fall sick or die of hunger. He was good to me once, and I have made him a promise.’

  ‘This is a path in a circle,’ Attone said cheerfully. ‘You are wandering like a man snow-blind, round and round. What is blinding you, Eagle? Why can you not walk straight?’

  ‘Because I am pulled two ways,’ John said grimly.

  ‘Then cut one string,’ Attone said briskly. ‘Before it tangles around your feet and brings you down.’ He rose to his feet and loped down the river towards the fish weir without looking back.

  The Hoberts’ house was amid a sea of green. Bertram had started planting the fields which ran between the house and the river and the absurd flop-leaved plants were three rows thick before the house.

  ‘John, thank God you’ve come!’ Hobert said, kneeling. ‘I was afraid you would fail us.’

  ‘Mr Tradescant, you are very welcome!’ Sarah said from further down the row.

  John, hot in his reclaimed breeches and shirt, waved at them both. r />
  ‘You should have a hat to shield you from the sun,’ Sarah scolded. ‘Men have died of sunstroke in this country.’

  John put his hand to his face and felt the heat radiating from his flushed skin. ‘It’s these clothes,’ he said. ‘How can anyone wear wool in this country in spring?’

  ‘It’s the vapours in the air,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘When we next go to Jamestown I will buy you a hat. We’ve only just come back from town.’

  ‘There was a letter for you,’ Bertram said, remembering. ‘I went into Jamestown to buy a hoe and to collect some money sent me from England. I called in at your inn and there was a letter for you there.’

  ‘For me?’ John asked.

  ‘It’s inside. I put it under the mattress you used last time to keep it safe.’

  John put his hand to his head.

  ‘There you are! Sunstroke!’ Sarah exclaimed triumphantly.

  ‘No,’ John said. ‘I just feel … It is so odd to have a letter …’

  He turned and went into the house, jumped up the ladder in one bound. In the loft bedroom was his straw mattress and underneath it was a travel-stained folded and sealed paper. John snatched it up and recognised Hester’s writing at once.

  A great pain shot through John at the thought of his family in Lambeth and a great fear that one of the children, Frances, or Johnnie, was sick or dead, or that the house had been lost to passing soldiers or the garden destroyed, or Hester herself … he pulled himself back from nightmare imaginings, broke the seal and smoothed out the paper.

  Lambeth, the New Year, 1644

  Dear Husband,

  Having heard no news from you I pray that your venture is going well and that you have found the land you wanted, cleared it and planted it. It is strange for me not knowing what the view is like from your window, nor what your kitchen is like, nor what the weather may be for you. I try to tell the children about what you are doing now but I do not know whether to tell them you are struggling through deep snow or digging in damp earth. We are reading Captain Smith’s True History in the evenings so that we may understand a little of your life, but I have to keep missing out some of his adventures as the children would be too afraid for you. I pray that you are right and that it is not such a savage place as he describes, and that the planters too have become more kindly and Christian in their doings.

  Here in Lambeth we are well but troubled, as is everyone in the kingdom, by the continuance of the war. Food is very scarce and there is no coal to be had at all. There has been petty fighting on the roads into London and we never know whether meat for the markets will be driven in or not. Our men are called up to serve in the City trained bands but they have not yet been sent outside the bounds of the City, so when they are stood down they come back to work. We try to keep the Ark and the gardens open as normal and we are trading a little. There are still people who want to live as if the war were not taking place and they still want to know that gardens are growing and that strange and rare beautiful things can still be seen. It is very pitiful to me when a young gentleman comes to order some seeds or plants or trees before he goes off to join either the king or the Parliament army, and I know that he is planting for his heir and does not expect to see the trees grow. It is at those times that I realise what wickedness this war is and will be, and I confess, I blame the king very much for standing so upon his rights and driving his people into rebellion.

  I did not think I would ever be able to say it, but I am glad you are not here, husband. I miss you and so do the children but I do not know how a man could keep his wits and bear the sorrow of this kingdom, especially one like you who had served the king and the queen and seen them reap the consequences of their folly. There are rights, God-given rights, on both sides of the argument and all a woman can wonder is why the two sides cannot come together and resolve to live in peace. But they cannot, they will not, and God help them we all suffer while they hammer out the victory one on the other. Parliament is now in alliance with the Scots and they have sworn to defend each other against the king. But the Scots are a long way away and the king’s armies are very close, and everyone seems to think he has the advantage. Also, he has now recruited a Papist Irish army and we are all most afraid of their coming.

  What seems more and more certain to me, when this is all over, is that we shall see the king in London again with his liberties barely trimmed, and those who have stood against him will have to pray God that he is more generous in victory than he was in peace time. Prince Rupert is said to be everywhere, and the other commander of the armies is the queen, so you can imagine how the king is advised between those two. Prince Maurice serves also and they have taken Bristol and Devizes this summer. Against the wealth of the king, the Parliament army makes a pitiful showing. The king has commanders who have fought all over Europe and know how it should be done, Prince Rupert has never lost a battle. Against them the Parliament puts ploughboys and apprentice lads into the fields and the gentlemen mow them down like barley. We hear constantly from the Parliament of little battles which are fought at places of no name and mean nothing but are hailed as great victories.

  However, the king has not yet approached London – and the City remains firmly against him. Your father-in-law Mr Hurte has provided his own regiment to defend the City, he says – as all the merchants do – that the king cannot rule the City again. But since all the other great towns of the kingdom are falling to the king one by one then clearly, London cannot hold out alone – especially if the queen prevails on her French relations to join her husband. If a French army marches on Westminster the Parliament will have been defeated indeed, and I think it will be harder to be rid of the French Papists than it was to invite them.

  Worse than the French Papists will be an Irish army. The great fear is that the king is planning all the time to flood the kingdom with Irishmen, but I cannot believe that such wickedness is in his mind. Not even he, surely, would sow such a whirlwind. If they could ever be prevailed upon to leave, what Englishman would ever trust the king’s word again?

  The king holds Oxford of course, and his friends hold garrisons all the way up the Great North Road to Scotland. The queen holds York, and while she is in the field I have no hope of peace. The king’s army must march on London soon, and those of us who know not what to think (and that is most of us) can only hope that the city surrenders quickly.

  The children are well, though running wild with neither school nor society to tame them. I will not let them go to the city which is full of the plague again, spread I am sure by the travelling soldiers who come and go from battle to village. I have had a one-way door set in our wall so that we can give food to passing paupers without any one of the servants having to open our front door. The bridge over the stream I have had made into a little drawbridge and we pull it up at night. I have completed the wall around the Ark and garden and sometimes I feel that I am a Mrs Noah in very truth, peering over the edge of the Ark as the waters of the end of the world arise and swirl around me. It is on such nights that I feel very lonely and very afraid and I wish that I were with you.

  Johnnie says that he will be a soldier and fight for the king. He has an etching of Prince Rupert on his black horse pinned to the head of his bed and makes most bloodthirsty prayers for his safety every night. He is a handsome, brave boy, as clever as any child in the kingdom. He is reading and writing in Latin and English and French, and I have set him to making the plant labels in English and Latin which he does without error. He misses you very much but he is proud of having a Virginia planter for a father, he thinks you are daily wrestling with bears and fighting Indians and prays for your safety every night.

  Frances is well too. You would hardly recognise her, she has grown in these last few months from a girl to a young woman. She wears her hair pinned up now all the time and her skirts very long and elegant. I always knew she would be beautiful but she has surpassed my hopes for her. She has such a dainty prettiness about her. She is as fair as her
mother, Mrs Hurte tells me, but she has a lightness of spirit which is all her own. Sometimes she is too flighty, I am aware of it, and I try to reprove her, but she is such a merry dear that I cannot be too strict. She manages the garden in your absence and I think you will be proud of her when you return. She has a real way with plants and growing things. I often think it is such a shame that she cannot take your place in very truth and be another Tradescant gardener as she always wished to be.

  It is her fate which is my greatest worry if the fighting should come near to London. I think that Johnnie and I could survive anything but a direct attack, but Frances is so pretty that she attracts notice wherever she goes. I dress her as plainly as I can and she always wears a cap on her head and a hood to cover her hair when she goes out, but there is something about her which turns men’s heads. I have seen her walk down the street and people simply look at her as if she were a flower or a statue, something rare and fine which they would like to take home with them. A wealthy man, whom I will not call a gentleman, visited the garden the other day and offered me ten pounds to give her to him. I had Joseph show him off the premises as quickly as you would wish, but it shows you the anxieties which I suffer over her. One of the kitchen maids – a fool – told Frances that the gentleman had taken a fancy to her and made an offer which was not of marriage, and before he had gone I am sorry to say that she climbed up on the garden wall, turned her back on him, and upended her skirts to show him her bum. I pulled her down and spanked her for indecency, and then thought she was crying most pitiably for shame, but when I had her right way up again I saw she could not speak for laughing. I sent her to her room in disgrace, and only when she was gone did I laugh too. She is a great mixture of minx and child and young lady, and I fancy the fine gentleman would have got more than he had bargained for.

  If I think there is a chance of the fighting coming any closer I shall send her up the river to Oatlands, but with the country in this turmoil I do not know where she could be most safe. My choice, of course, is to keep her close by me.