‘I shall be delighted,’ John said politely and watched Sir Henry recede into the distance without any regret as the ship slipped her ropes and drifted away from the shore.
Spring 1646, London
It was a homecoming as ordinary as any man might wish. John hired a carter at London dock to carry his barrels of seeds and roots, the two barrels of saplings, the chest of Barbados goods, and sat up on the wooden seat at the front of the cart as they jolted up the frozen lanes to Lambeth.
‘What’s the news of the war?’ John asked.
‘You’ll have heard that Chester surrendered?’
‘No?’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Virginia,’ John said. ‘Is the king truly defeated?’
‘Humbled to dust,’ the carter said feelingly. ‘And now pray God we can see some peace and order in this land and that crew of parasites run back to Rome where they came from.’
John tried to say ‘Amen’, but found the word did not come out. ‘I’ll pray for peace,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of war for a lifetime.’
‘And so have we all. And for some the war lasted longer than their lifetimes. How many Englishmen d’you think have died to persuade the king that we want to be governed by Englishmen and pray to God and not to bishops?’
John shook his head.
‘Thousands,’ the man said glumly. ‘Hundreds of thousands. How many more died of plague and hardship because of this damned struggle?’
John shook his head again.
‘Thousands more. And how many families d’you think have lost a son or a brother or a father?’
John shook his head in silence.
‘Every single family in the land,’ the carter said solemnly. ‘This has been a wicked, wicked war, a war without an enemy because we were fighting and killing ourselves.’
Hester was in the stable yard, tossing hay over the door to the horse, when she heard the rumble of the wheels and saw the cart rock as it rounded the corner into the yard. For a moment she saw only the barrels at the back and thought that John had sent some goods ahead, and then she dropped the pitchfork with a clatter on the cobbles as she recognised the man who got down from the carter’s seat and turned to face her.
He looked older than she remembered, and weary. The bear-grease stain had faded from his skin but he was still deeply tanned from the hard sun and wind. He had lost a couple of teeth during his time of near-starvation, and he had grown a brown moustache and beard which were flecked with grey. His eyes were sad, an unmistakable sadness which made Hester want to hold him and comfort him without even asking what had grieved him so. He looked as if he had lost something very dear to him and Hester wondered what blade in the new world had cut him so deep.
‘John?’ she said quietly.
He stepped forwards a little. ‘Hester?’
She realised that she was wearing her oldest working clothes, men’s thick boots and a brown scarf over her hair which was pinned carelessly on the back of her head. She could not have looked more functional if she had tried. She whisked her scarf off her head and tried not to seem embarrassed. She had always tried to be above vanity, especially with this man who had married his first wife for love and lost her while she was still in her youth and beauty.
Hester brushed the hay from her coat. ‘You are welcome home,’ she said.
He took two steps towards her and opened his arms to her and she went towards him and felt the intense relief of a man’s embrace after more than three years of loneliness.
‘Do you forgive me?’ he said urgently into her hair. She smelled of hay from the stable and the clean, familiar smell of soap from her skin, and lavender from her linen. ‘Can you forgive me for leaving you so unkindly and then disappearing like that?’
‘It’s you that should forgive me for refusing to go with you,’ she said quickly. ‘And I regretted it, John.’
He tightened his grip around her. ‘I have been unfaithful,’ he said quickly, to get the confession over and done with before he was tempted to lie. ‘I am sorry.’
She rested her head against his shoulder. ‘That’s the past,’ she said. ‘And in another country. You have come home to me, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She craned her neck to look up into his sad, weary face and realised that he was wearing the same bewildered expression of pain as when they had first met and he had not recovered from the loss of his first wife. ‘What happened, John?’
For a moment he was about to answer her, then they were interrupted by the carter. ‘I can’t unload these on my own,’ he said flatly. ‘And I can’t afford to wait here all day while you two kiss.’
Hester turned with a laugh. ‘I’ll find Joseph to help you.’ She rang the bell which hung at the corner of the yard. ‘You go in, John, you must be frozen, and Johnnie will be longing to see you. He’ll be in the kitchen eating his breakfast.’
John hesitated at the kitchen door, suddenly shy and hardly knowing how to approach his son who had been a boy of nine when he left and was now a youth of twelve. He opened the door slowly and put his head around it.
Johnnie was seated at the scrubbed kitchen table, his bowl of porridge before him, absently spooning it into his mouth, his eyes on his book propped on his mug of small ale. John took in the sight of his son, the fair head with the cropped golden hair, the light hazel eyes, the long nose in the long face and the sweet innocent mouth. You could see his mother in his colouring and the joy in his face, but he was every inch a Tradescant.
He glanced up as the draught from the half-open door blew into the kitchen and put down his book as if he was about to greet his stepmother. Then he saw it was a man looking in at him, and he hesitated.
Very slowly he rose to his feet, very cautiously he looked. John opened the door fully and stepped into the doorway.
‘Father?’ Johnnie asked uncertainly. ‘Is it really you?’
John took two swift steps across the kitchen floor and wrapped his boy in a tight hug and inhaled, half-weeping, half-kissing the top of his silky head. ‘It’s me. Praise God I am home with you, Johnnie, and you safe and well.’
Hester came in behind him and hung her cape on the hook. ‘Did you recognise him?’ she demanded.
Father and son answered ‘No!’ together and then laughed together. John made himself release his son, forced himself to let the boy go.
‘He is grown,’ Hester said proudly ‘And as much help to me in the garden as any man could be. And he is a scholar, he keeps the rarities and garden accounts now, and the planting records.’
‘And school?’ John demanded.
A shadow crossed Hester’s face. ‘The school has been closed this last year. The teacher was dismissed, some quarrel about theology. So we do the best we can at home.’
‘And where is Frances?’ John asked, looking round for her.
Something in Hester’s silence made him stop, fear gripping him. ‘Where is Frances? Hester, tell me. Please God, tell me that she is not lost.’
‘No! No!’ She rushed to reassure him. ‘She is well, in great beauty and well. It’s just … you were not here and I did not know you would return. I didn’t know what I should do for the best and I was at my wits’ end to keep her safe …’
‘Where is she?’ John shouted.
‘She’s married!’ Johnnie interrupted. ‘Safe at the Tower with Alexander Norman.’
‘She married Alexander Norman?’ John demanded.
Hester nodded, her eyes on his face.
‘Not my father’s executor? Not my uncle? Not that Alexander Norman?’
Hester gave the smallest confirming nod.
‘You married my daughter off to a man old enough to be her father? A friend of her grandfather?’
‘I did.’
‘It was her choice,’ Johnnie said stoutly. ‘And she is happy.’
‘By God, this is most ill-done!’ John swore. ‘I can’t believe it! When did this happen?’
> ‘A year ago,’ Hester said quietly.
‘Why?’ he asked blankly. ‘Why did you let it happen? Why did you not write to ask for my permission?’
She turned away from him and tied her house apron around her waist as if she was weary of the whole conversation. ‘I could not be sure of keeping her safe,’ she said. ‘Before Cromwell had the ruling of the army no woman was safe on the streets. I never knew whether the king would retake London or no and then there would have been the cavaliers to face as well. The apprentices rioted every other night, I could not let her step out of the front door.’
‘You could have taken her to Oatlands!’ he flung at her.
She turned at that. ‘Oatlands!’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘What do you think the palaces are like now? Oatlands was Prince Rupert’s head-quarters! D’you think I could keep a pretty girl safe in a barracks? She was as much at risk there as in the stews of the City.’
‘You could have put her on a ship to me!’
She blazed up at that. ‘And where were you? I had two letters from you in three years, one parcel of Indian goods and one consignment of plants. What was I to imagine? I didn’t even know if you were alive or dead. I had to take all the decisions on my own and I did what I thought was the best. Alexander offered her a home and promised me that he would love her and keep her safe. And she wanted to marry him. She accepted him on her own account. And they are happy, anyone can see that.’
‘I shall get her home,’ John swore. ‘I shall have the marriage annulled. She is not to be his wife.’
‘She is expecting his baby.’ Hester spoke calmly as her heart hammered in her ears. ‘She will come home for the confinement, and she visits us often. But she will not leave her husband, even at your bidding, John.’
He flung out of the room at that and she heard him stride across the hall. Johnnie shot one scared look at her and she put her hand on his shoulder. There was a great bellow from the rarities room: ‘Mother of God! Where are the rarities? What have you done?’
Hester turned Johnnie on his heel and pushed him gently towards the kitchen door. ‘Wrap up warmly and go and sweep the snow off the trees,’ she said.
‘What will you do?’
‘I shall have to explain to him how we live now. It will be hard for him to understand.’
‘Then he should never have gone away,’ Johnnie said.
They had a bitter row in the half-empty room. John in his horror at the changes could not even hear that the finest of the rarities were safely in hiding. Every confession that Hester had to make, that she had sold one or other of the treasures for food, merely heightened his anger by a further notch.
‘You have betrayed me!’ he yelled at her. ‘You have betrayed my trust, my sacred trust in you. You have sold my treasures, you have sold my daughter!’
‘What was I to do?’ Hester shouted back, as angry as him. ‘You were gone. This summer I was going to tell your son that I feared you must be dead. I had to survive without you. I had to manage somehow. We had one true friend in the whole world and Frances loves and trusts him. She wasn’t sold. He took her without a dowry.’
‘Sweet God! Am I supposed to be grateful for this charity? He was a friend of her grandfather! A man in his dotage!’
‘And where have you been?’ Hester turned from the window and suddenly rounded on John. ‘For all that you are full of what I have done and failed to do, what do you have to show for three years away? What treasures did you bring back? A barrel of plants and a handful of feathers! The last coins I sold were to buy your passage home when Johnnie and I had not tasted meat for weeks! How dare you accuse me of failing you! It is you that have failed me!’
‘You have no idea! You have no idea how I have lived and what I have been trying to do.’
‘With some woman? Some Jamestown drab in an inn? Have you been bunked up all these years, spending our money and doing nothing?’
‘I’ve been in the woods, I’ve been searching to understand what I should do –’
‘And the woman?’
‘What of her?’
‘Her name. Tell me her name.’
‘Suckahanna,’ he said unwillingly.
Hester screamed in shock and clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘You have bedded an Indian? A savage?’
His hand flew out before he knew it, he slapped her face hard. She jerked back and her head banged against the knob of the shutter with a horrible thud. She dropped without another sound, knocked unconscious. For a moment he thought he had killed her and knew a fierce, terrible joy that the woman who had abused Suckahanna should be silenced at once, a feeling instantly succeeded by complete remorse. He dropped to his knees beside her and lifted her up from the floor.
‘Hester, wife, forgive me …’
Her eyelids fluttered and then opened. ‘Take your hands from me,’ she spat. ‘You are a foul adulterer. I won’t have you touch me.’
Hester made up her bed in Frances’s old room and moved her clothes out of the master bedroom that night. She cooked a modest dinner for John, she produced a beautifully pressed suit of clothes and set about sewing him a new shirt. She behaved in every way like an obedient and dutiful wife. But he had knocked the love out of her with one impulsive blow, and he did not know how to get it back.
It was as if the heart had gone out of her and out of the house altogether. The garden was neglected, the topiary and the knot garden hedges were growing out and losing their shape. The gravel on the paths was no defence against the constantly springing weeds. The warm nursery beds by the house had not been prepared with sieved earth for the coming of the new season as they should have been. The fruit trees had not been properly pruned in the autumn. Even the chestnuts had not all been planted and grown on ready for sale in the early summer.
‘I couldn’t do it all,’ Hester said stubbornly as she saw John look critically over the garden from the terrace. ‘I had no boys, I had no money. We all did what we could but this garden takes a dozen men to keep. Joseph and Johnnie and Frances and I couldn’t do it.’
‘Of course not, I understand,’ John said and he turned away to brood in the half-empty rarities room, and walk with his limping stride around the frozen garden.
Johnnie unpacked the Virginian saplings and left them in their barrels by the house wall. The ground was too hard to dig them in. One of them had died from the salt winds of the voyage but the other four looked strong and likely to put out green leaves when the weather improved.
‘What are they?’ Johnnie asked.
His father’s face lit up. ‘Tulip trees, they call them. They grow as round and shapely as a horse chestnut but they have great flowers, white, waxy flowers, as big as your head. I have seen them grow to such a height and breadth –’ He broke off. Suckahanna had showed it to him. ‘And these are maple trees.’
Johnnie rolled the big barrels of seeds and roots into the orangery and set to work unpacking them and planting them up in pots of sieved earth ready to be set outside and watered when the spring frosts ended. John watched him, disinclined to work himself, horribly quick to criticise when his son dropped a seed or was clumsy with a root.
‘Have you never been taught how to do this properly?’ he demanded irritably.
His son looked up at him, his resentment veiled. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said formally.
Hester appeared in the doorway and took in the scene in one quick glance. ‘Can I have a word with you, husband?’ she asked, her voice very even.
John walked towards her and she drew him out of earshot, into the garden.
‘Please don’t correct Johnnie so harshly,’ she said. ‘He’s not used to it, and indeed he is a good boy and a very hard worker.’
‘He is my son,’ John pointed out. ‘I shall teach him what is right.’
She bowed her head. ‘Of course,’ she said coldly. ‘You must do as you wish.’
John waited in case she should say any more and then he flung himself away from her and stamped into t
he house, his feet hurting in his boots, knowing himself to be in the wrong, not knowing how to make things right.
‘I shall go to London,’ he said. ‘I shall complete my commissions for Sir Henry. It’s clear that we have to make our fortune some other way than by the garden and the rarities since the rarities are gone and the garden half-ruined.’
Hester went back into the orangery. Johnnie raised his eyebrows at her.
‘We all have to become acquainted with each other again,’ she said as equably as she could. ‘Let me help you with that.’
For days John walked around the grounds, trying to accustom himself to the smaller scale of England, trying to accept a horizon which seemed so very close, trying to enjoy his continuing ownership of twenty acres when he had been free to run in a forest which went on forever, trying to be glad of a plain, forthright wife and a bright, fair son and not to think of the dark beauty of Suckahanna and the animal grace of her boy. He arranged the Indian goods in the half-empty rarities room, feeling the arrow head come so easily into his hand, rubbing the buckskin shirt between his finger as if something of the warmth of Suckahanna’s skin might still linger.
He made a little money on his commission for Sir Henry and he bought a couple of fine paintings, crated them up and sent them out to him. When the ship came back, in four months’ time or so, it would bring him another note of credit and perhaps some more barrels of sugar for John to sell. He drew some satisfaction from being able to make some money, even in these difficult times, but he thought he might never feel a sense of freedom or joy ever again.
Hester did the only thing she knew how to do, and tackled the practical problems of the situation. She asked him to walk with her to Lambeth and took him straight to the best bootmaker still working in the village. He measured John’s feet and then looked at the bare soles with horror. ‘You have feet like a Highlander, if you’ll excuse me saying so.’