The yew tree allée was overgrown but looked thick and bushy, throwing a welcome green shade against the brightness of the afternoon sunshine. The orangery which John’s father had rebuilt was dilapidated – the white paint was peeling and some of the ornamental woodwork had been wrenched off for the troopers’ campfires – but the silkworm house and the neighbouring gardener’s house were as Hester had left them, swept clean and bare and empty.
John left his son collecting firewood for the empty grate and unrolling their travelling cloaks for beds as he prowled around the deserted palace.
The strangest thing was the quiet. Instead of a bustling royal court filled with folly and flirtation, shouted orders, voices calling and musicians playing, there was nothing but the occasional rattle of a shutter banging in the breeze and the insistent coo of the wood pigeons nesting in the trees. The stable yard, which had housed more than a hundred horses, was empty, straws blowing in the yard, the stalls heaped with dung, stale water in the troughs.
The great front door was shut and bolted. John tried the massive brass handle and then stepped back. The king was due in a few days, surely there should be servants inside setting the palace to rights. Not a face showed at the windows, there was not a movement in the courts.
John went around to the kitchen quarters and to the bake-house. The fires were out, the place was silent. A heap of ash and a few scattered utensils showed that the cavalrymen had dined before they left, but all the food had been eaten by rats or mice and their droppings were heaped even on the kitchen tables.
John shook his head in wonder at the desolation of the place, at its transformation from the pinnacle of the social life of the kingdom, with the queen singing about the platonic ideal and the king going hunting on his high-bred Arab horses, to this shell. He turned and trudged back across the bowling green to the silkworm house.
Johnnie had brought up the pots from the riverside.
‘Good lad,’ John said with pleasure, glad of the chance to set about his work and restore normality at least to the flowerbeds. ‘Let’s take these up to the royal court. At least that can be looking right in a couple of days.’
They worked hard, side by side, and John enjoyed his son’s company. The boy had inherited the Tradescant gift with plants, he handled them as if he loved the touch of the silky white roots, the caress of damp earth. When he hefted a pot in his hand he could tell from the weight whether it needed watering. When he tipped a plant out into his palm he never knocked the blooms. When he set it into a hole and pressed down the earth there was something about his touch which was both precisely judged, and quite unknowing.
‘You may be the greatest gardener of us all,’ John said at the end of the second day as they walked homewards with their tools over their shoulders. ‘I don’t believe I had your way with plants when I was your age.’
Johnnie gleamed. ‘I love the plants. Not so much the rarities,’ he said.
‘Not the rarities?’ John asked, amazed.
His son shook his head. ‘What I’d rather do, more than anything else, would be to collect new plants, to go with you to the Americas, the West Indies, travel, find things, bring them home and grow them. The rarities – well, they just sit there, don’t they? Once they’re in place there is nothing more to do with them except keep them dusted. But plants grow and blossom and fruit and seed and then there’s next year to plant them again. I like how they change.’
John nodded. ‘I see.’
He was about to remark that the rarities played their part in the Tradescant family fortune when he heard hoofbeats on the drive. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Could it be the king?’
‘Could be.’
John turned and ran towards the silkworm house, cast down his tools, grabbed his coat and turned to run back to the palace. Johnnie danced on the spot. ‘Can I come? Can I come?’
‘Yes. But remember what I said about keeping silent.’
Johnnie fell into line behind his father, mirrored his father’s long stride, composed his face to a scowl of what he hoped was dignified discretion, and spoiled the effect only slightly by a great bounce at every fourth step as his excitement proved too much for him.
They ran round to the stable yard and there, in the dirty stall, was the king’s Arab, and a dozen other horses of his escort.
‘The king here?’ John asked a trooper.
‘Just arrived,’ the man said, easing the girth of his horse. ‘We had to stop at every village for him to touch people.’
‘Touch people?’
‘They turned out in dozens,’ the man said abruptly. ‘With all sorts of illnesses and sores and God knows what. And again and again he stopped and touched them, so that they would be cured. And they all went off, back to their hovels, back to their porridge of nothing and water, thinking that he had done them a great favour and that we were some kind of beast to imprison him.’
John nodded.
‘Who are you?’ the man asked. ‘If you want a favour of him, he’ll do it. He’s the most charming, generous, agreeable man to ever take a country into disaster and death and four years of war.’
‘I’m the gardener,’ John replied.
‘Then you’ll see him,’ the man said. ‘He went out to sit in the garden with his companions, while someone cooks his dinner, and sweeps his chamber, and makes everything ready for him so that he can dine in comfort and sleep in comfort. While I and my men do without.’
John turned on his heel and went round to the royal court.
The king was seated on a bench, his back against the warm brick wall, looking around him at the newly weeded, newly planted garden. Standing behind him were a couple of gentlemen that John did not know, another stranger strolled on the newly raked paths. When the king heard John’s footsteps he glanced up.
‘Ah …’ For a moment he could not remember the name. ‘Gardener Tradescant.’
John dropped to his knee and heard Johnnie behind him do the same.
‘Your w … w … work?’ the king asked with his slight stammer, gesturing to the dug-over beds.
John bowed. ‘When I heard you were coming to Oatlands I came to do what I could, Your Majesty. With my son: John Tradescant.’
The king nodded, his dark eyes half-lidded. ‘I thank you,’ he said languidly. ‘When I am returned to my proper place I shall see that you are returned to yours.’
John bowed again and waited. When there was silence he glanced up. The king made a small gesture of dismissal with his hand. John rose to his feet, bowed, and walked backwards, Johnnie skipping nervously out of the way as his father suddenly reversed, and then quickly copying him. John bowed again at the gateway to the garden and then stepped backwards till he was out of sight.
He turned and met Johnnie’s astounded face. ‘And that’s it?’ Johnnie demanded. ‘After we came here without being asked, and worked without pay for all this time to make it lovely for him?’
John gave a little snort of amusement and started to walk back to the silkworm house. ‘What did you expect? A knighthood?’
‘I thought –’ Johnnie started and then broke off. ‘I suppose I thought he might have some task for us, or he might be glad of us, he might see that we were loyal and thank us –’
John snorted again and opened the little white wooden door. ‘This is not a king who has plans or gives thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s one of the reasons he’s where he is.’
‘But doesn’t he realise that you needn’t have come at all?’
John paused for a moment and looked down at the stricken face of his boy. ‘Oh Johnnie,’ he said softly. ‘This is not the king of the broadsheet ballads and the church sermons. This is a foolish man who ran into the war because he would not take advice, and when he took advice at all, always chose the wrong people to guide him.
‘I came today as much for my father as for the king. I came because my father would have wanted to know that when the king came to his palace, the gardens were weed
ed. It would have been a matter of duty for him. It was a matter of pride for me. If I had freely chosen my way I would have been for the rights of working men and against the king. But I could not choose freely. I was in his service, and there have been some days – most days – when even seeing him as a fool I pity him from the bottom of my heart. Because he is a fool who cannot help himself. He does not know how to be wise. And his folly has cost him everything he owned.’
‘I thought he was a great man, like a hero,’ Johnnie remarked.
‘Just an ordinary man in an extraordinary place,’ John said. ‘And too much of a fool to know that. He was taught from birth that he was half-divine. And now he believes it. Poor foolish king.’
John and Johnnie stayed the month working at Oatlands. The cook that Parliament had sent with the king needed fresh vegetables and fruits from the kitchen garden and by picking and choosing from the overgrown beds the two Tradescants were able to send fresh food up to the house each day. The king was surrounded by a small court and his imprisonment seemed more like a guard of honour. He hunted, he shot at archery, he ordered John to roll the bowling green smooth so that they could play at bowls.
John was considering paying for some boys to help with the weeding and planting in winter greens, when the news came that the king was to be moved to Hampton Court. Within a few hours the horses were saddled and the retinue was ready to move on.
The king was in the garden, waiting to be told that his escort was ready. John found he could not keep away from the excitement of great events, and took his pruning hook to the climbers on the far wall of the royal court.
The king, strolling around with two of his courtiers, came upon John and paused to watch him work as the two men stood aside.
‘I shall see you repaid for this,’ he said simply. He smiled a sly little smile. ‘Sooner perhaps than you think.’
John jumped from his ladder and dropped to one knee. ‘Your Majesty.’
‘They may have defeated my army, but now they tear themselves apart,’ the king said. ‘All I must do is wait, p … patiently wait, until they beg me to come to the throne and set all to rights.’
John risked an upward glance. ‘Really, Your Majesty?’
The king’s smile transformed him. ‘Y … Yes. Indeed. The army will destroy P … Parliament, and then t … tear themselves apart. Already the army tells P … Parliament what it should do. When they have no enemy they have no c … common cause. All they could do was to destroy, it needs a k … king to rebuild. I know th … them. There is L … Lambert. He heads the f … faction against Parliament. He will lead the army against P … Parliament and then I will have w … won.’
John paused before he could find the words to reply. ‘So Your Majesty will greet them kindly when they come? And make an agreement with them?’
The king laughed shortly. ‘I shall w … win the argument, though I lost the b … battle,’ he said.
A trooper came to the garden gate. ‘We are ready to leave, Your Majesty,’ he called.
King Charles, who had never before this year ever done another man’s bidding, turned and went from Tradescant’s garden.
John and his son went down to the gatehouse to see them leave. John was half-expecting a summons to Hampton Court, but the king went by with only a flicker of recognition that his gardener was on his knees at the roadside.
‘And that’s it?’ Johnnie demanded again.
‘That’s it,’ John replied shortly. ‘Royal service. We’ll set things in order tomorrow and we’ll go home the next day. Our work here is done.’
They discovered why the king had been moved when they got home. The City was in uproar with the apprentices rioting in favour of the king’s return and the army had thought it safer to have him at Hampton Court with a larger garrison around him. Alexander Norman had sent Frances to the Ark for safety and forbidden her to return to the City until the riots were over – whether they were ended by the return of the king to his throne, the seizing of control by Parliament, or the arrival of Cromwell’s army. There were now three players in the game for England. The king, playing one side against the other and hoping; Parliament, increasingly directionless and fearful of its future; and the army, which seemed to be the only force with a vision of the future and the discipline and determination to make it happen.
The soldiers under Cromwell had forged their faith in themselves, in their cause, and in their God during the long, hard years of fighting; they were not men who would now welcome a compromise. They wanted their pay; but they also wanted the country new-made. They had worked out their beliefs and philosophy in between battles, on forced marches, on dark nights when the rain doused their camp fires. They had given up four years of peaceful life at home to fight for the causes of religious and political freedom. They wanted to see a new world in return for their sacrifice. They were under the command of Thomas Fairfax and John Lambert, two great generals who understood them and shared their beliefs, and marched them on the faithless, fearful city of London to ensure that Parliament did not bow to pressure and make a peace with a king who should be deep in despair and not radiant with hope.
Frances took her husband’s note to her father, who was hoeing the new vegetable bed. He looked at it briefly, and handed it back to her.
‘You’ll stay here,’ he said.
‘If I may.’
He tipped his hat over his eyes and grinned at his daughter. ‘I imagine we can endure your company. Will you keep an eye on Johnnie for me? I don’t want him marching up to Parliament with a pruning hook over his shoulder, thinking he is bringing the king home to his own.’
‘Mother is more afraid that it’ll be you running off to enlist.’
John shook his head. ‘I’ll not take up arms ever again,’ he said. ‘It’s not a trade I do well. And the king is not a captivating master.’
Alexander wrote almost daily, reporting the fluctuations in the mood of the city. But it was all resolved in August when the army, under the command of General John Lambert, marched into London and declared that they could and would make peace with the king. With the House of Lords they drew up proposals to which any king could agree. Cromwell himself took the proposals to King Charles at Hampton Court.
‘He will agree to them and be restored,’ Alexander Norman said over a comfortable bottle of wine on the terrace. Frances sat on a stool at her husband’s feet and he rested his hand on her golden-brown head. Hester sat opposite John, who was in his father’s chair – facing out over the garden, watching the fruit in the orchard gilded with the last rays of sunshine. Johnnie sat at the top of the terrace steps. At Alexander’s words he gave a radiant smile.
‘The king will be returned to his palaces,’ he said wonderingly.
‘Please God,’ said John. ‘Please God that the king sees where his interests lie. He told me that he would set the army against Parliament and conquer them both.’
‘Not with John Lambert in command,’ Hester remarked. ‘That man is not a fool.’
‘Can it all be as it was?’ Frances asked. ‘The queen come home, and the court restored?’
‘There’ll be some missing faces,’ Alexander pointed out. ‘Archbishop Laud for one, Earl Strafford.’
‘So what was it all for?’ Hester asked. ‘All these years of hardship?’
John shook his head. ‘In the end, perhaps it was to bring the king and Parliament to realise that they have to deal together, they cannot be enemies.’
‘A high price to pay,’ Frances said, thinking of the years when she and Hester had struggled on their own at the Ark, ‘to get some sense into that thick royal head.’
Autumn 1647
‘He’s gone,’ Alexander said flatly the moment he entered the kitchen door and surprised the Tradescants at breakfast. His horse stood sweating in the stable yard outside. ‘I came at once to tell you. I rode over. I couldn’t bear to wait. I couldn’t believe it myself.’
‘The king?’ John leaped to his feet and st
rode to the door, checked and turned back.
Alexander nodded. ‘Escaped from Hampton Court.’
‘Hurrah!’ Johnnie shouted.
‘My God, no,’ John said. ‘Not to the French? Not when they were so near agreement? The French haven’t rescued him? Kidnapped him?’
Alexander shook his head and dropped into John’s vacated seat. Frances put a mug of small ale beside him and he caught her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist in thanks. ‘I heard the news this morning and came straight here with it. I couldn’t bear even to write it. What days we live in! When will we ever see an end to these alarms!’
‘When will we ever see peace?’ Hester murmured, one eye on her husband who was standing at the window gazing out into the yard as if ready to run himself.
‘Who’s got him?’ John demanded. ‘Not the Irish?’
‘He just slipped away on his own, by the looks of it. There’s not word of him being broken out by soldiers. Just away with his gentlemen.’
‘Sir John Berkeley,’ John guessed.
Alexander shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘And where has he gone? France? To be with the queen and Prince Charles?’
‘If he has any sense,’ Alexander said. ‘But why break away now? When things were going so well? When they were so close to agreeing to what he wanted? When he had an agreement with the army that he could sign? All he had to do was wait. The City is for him, Parliament is for him, the army has nothing but fair demands, Cromwell has destroyed the opposition. He has nearly won.’
‘Because he always thinks he can do better,’ John exclaimed despairingly. ‘He always thinks he can do a little more by a grand gesture, a great chance. My father saw him ride out to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham when he was a young prince, and wild and reckless. He never learned the line between taking a risk and ripe folly. No-one ever taught him to take care. He likes the masque – the style and the action. He’s never seen that it is all pretend. That real life isn’t like that.’