Hester sank back in her chair and glanced down the table at her stepson. Johnnie was looking mutinous. She put out a hand to warn him to hold his silence, but the boy burst out:
‘It’s the greatest of things! Don’t you see? He’ll be safe in France by now, and they can beg his pardon from there! The queen will have an army ready for him to command, Prince Rupert will take the cavalry again. They said that he was defeated but he was not!’
John turned a dark look on his son. ‘You’re right about only one thing,’ he said sombrely. ‘He’s never defeated.’
‘That’s the wonderful thing about him!’
John shook his head. ‘It’s the worst.’
Alexander stayed for breakfast and then agreed to stay on for the rest of the week. John was restless all day and at mid-afternoon he went to find Hester.
She was in the rarities room, bringing the planting records up to date in the big garden book.
‘I can’t stay here, not knowing what’s going on,’ John said briskly. ‘I’ll go into Whitehall, see if I can hear some news.’
She put down her pen and smiled at him. ‘I knew you’d have to go,’ she said. ‘Make sure you come home, don’t be caught up in whatever is going on there.’
He paused in the doorway. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Oh! For what?’
‘For letting me go without badgering me with a dozen questions, without warning me a dozen times.’
She smiled but it did not reach her eyes. ‘Since you would go whether I give you leave or no, I might as well give you leave,’ she said.
‘That’s true enough!’ John said lightly and went from the room.
Whitehall was in a frenzy of gossip and speculation. John went into a tavern where he might find an acquaintance, bought a mug of ale and looked around for a face he knew. At a nearby table were a group of Africa merchants.
‘Mr Hobhouse! Any news? I have come up from Lambeth especially and all I can get is what I know already.’
‘You know that he’s gone to the Isle of Wight?’
John recoiled. ‘What?’
‘Carisbrooke Castle. He’s set himself up in Carisbrooke Castle.’
‘But why? Why would he?’
The merchant shrugged. ‘It’s not a bad plan. No-one can trust the navy, and if they declare for him how is Cromwell’s army going to lay hold of him? He could be snug enough at Carisbrooke, create his court, build his army, and when he is ready sail straight into Portsmouth. He must have had some secret arrangement with the governor Robert Hammond, though everyone thought that Hammond was a Parliament man through and through. The king must have had a deep plan. He’ll be waiting for the queen’s army from France and then we’ll be at war again, if anyone has the stomach for it.’
John briefly closed his eyes. ‘This is a nightmare.’
The merchant shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you how much money I am losing every day this goes on,’ he said. ‘I can’t induce men to serve, my ships are harassed by pirates in the very mouth of the Thames, and I never know when a ship comes in what price I can command on the quayside or what taxes I shall have to pay. These are times for a madman. And we have a mad king to rule over us.’
‘Not another war,’ John said.
‘He must have laid his plans very deep,’ the merchant said. ‘He was promising to agree with Cromwell and Ireton only the day before, he gave his word as a king. He was about to sign. What a man! What a false man! Y’know, in business we’d never deal with him. How would I manage if I gave my word and then skipped away?’
‘Deep-laid plans?’ John asked, seizing on the one unlikely feature.
‘So they say.’
One of the other merchants glanced up. ‘D’you know better, Mr Tradescant? You were at Oatlands with him, weren’t you?’
John sensed the sudden intensity of interest. ‘I was planting the garden. He hardly spoke to me. I saw him walk by, nothing more.’
‘Well God save him and keep him from his enemies,’ one of the men said stoutly and John noticed that while only a few months before the man would have been booed into silence or even thrown out of the tavern there were now a few men who muttered ‘Amen’ into the bottom of their mugs, and no-one who denied the wish.
‘So what happens now?’ John asked.
‘We wait on his whim,’ one of the merchants said sourly. ‘As we have been doing for this past year and a half. He was defeated fair and square but he still dances around the country and we still have to wait till he tells us what he will agree to. It makes no sense to me.’
‘He won’t lie down till he’s dead,’ one of the men said frankly. ‘Would to God that he might fall sick and die and then we could deal with his son, any of the sons. Anyone rather than this man.’
‘I’ll not ill-wish him,’ another man said stoutly.
‘Then why will he not come to the City and make an agreement?’ someone demanded. ‘God knows all we want is to have things at peace.’
John looked from one angry, worried face to another and drained his ale. ‘I must go back to my garden,’ he said. He had a sense of relief at the thought of the rarities room restored and the garden in its autumn order. ‘Whether the king has his own again or no, I have my work to do.’
‘You won’t go and garden for him at Carisbrooke?’ one of the men asked mischievously.
John did not rise to the bait. ‘I bid you good day,’ he said gently, took his hat in his hand and went out.
They learned the rest of the news in dribs and drabs over the week. The king had no deep-laid plans, just as John had suspected. King Charles had taken an impulsive leap into freedom at the very moment when he was about to sign the agreement with Cromwell which would have brought peace between king and Parliament and stability to the kingdom riven by civil war.
Cromwell had faced down his own army, the men who had fought for him in the long and bitter war. The men had told their commander and told Parliament that they expected more from the peace than a king restored to his own, they wanted changes. They wanted justice for the common people, and a living wage. They wanted Parliaments which would represent all the working men of the country and not just the gentry. Cromwell had taken the hard line against them, defending the king against his own men. He had shot the leaders for mutiny, he had made the men drop down their pamphlets into the mud, and then he had returned to Hampton Court with the blood of his own soldiers on his hands, to meet with Charles and conclude the other side of the bargain which would bring the king home. Cromwell had defeated the men who would have shouted against a restoration of the king, and then returned to the king for his signature on the document, as they had agreed it.
But Charles had gone. He had given his word, his word of honour as a king, and then slipped away in the night. He rode with two gentlemen to the New Forest where he had hunted so often with Buckingham in the old days, and taken a boat across to the Isle of Wight, putting his faith in the belief that the governor, Robert Hammond, would take his part on the slight evidence that Hammond had once said he disliked the Levellers in the army, because he was a nephew of one of the king’s chaplains, and cousin, many times removed, to the Marquess of Winchester.
‘He trusted a man because he knows his uncle?’ John asked Hester in despair as they sat by the fireside before going to bed.
She shook her head. ‘Oh, John. What else could he do but dodge and dive and scrape about?’
‘He could come to an agreement!’ John exclaimed. ‘And have his throne again!’
She picked up the sewing from her lap. ‘He is the king,’ she said. ‘He would not feel that he has to agree. He has always thought that others should agree with him.’
Hester was right. When the king arrived at Carisbrooke Castle and found that Governor Hammond imprisoned him, rather than hailing him as a hero, he gave his parole and immediately set to scheming. He sent secret messages to the Scots and told them that he was ready now to agree to the very things he had sworn he wou
ld never accept when he had been their prisoner. The Scots, tempted by the thought of a king who would accept their parliament and their church, secretly betrayed their allies, the English Parliament, and made a secret solemn engagement to restore Charles to his throne. In return he swore that for a trial period of three years he would abolish the position of bishops and run the English church on the Scottish model. He promised that all the senior posts in the land (and their fat fees) would be given to Scotsmen.
But Charles was no better at keeping his secrets than keeping his word. News of the agreement soon leaked out, especially when a proposal from the English Parliament was insultingly rejected by the king who was visibly, excessively, puffed up with confidence. Soon everyone knew that the king was dealing a false hand again.
‘He would make an alliance with the Scots Covenanters?’ Johnnie asked his father in bewilderment. ‘But he refused to agree with them for all those months at Newark.’
‘He has changed his mind,’ John said quietly. ‘He wants to make a new agreement. He wants to beat Parliament and Cromwell’s army at any price. He hated the covenanting Scots and could not agree with them, but they are now the only allies he can get. He is agreeing to things he denied completely only a few months ago. He refused them when he was their prisoner but now he has been seized by the English army he is looking kindly on the Scots again.’
Johnnie scowled. ‘So what does he believe in?’ he demanded in exasperation. ‘I thought that he would never give up the English church and the bishops. You told me he thought that was sacred. You told me he would never give up his rights as a king.’
‘I think now he is looking to survive,’ John said grimly. ‘And if he can get back on the throne then who can force him to keep to agreements he made when he was in prison?’
‘He would play false?’
John softened at the sight of his son’s distress. ‘A king must be on his throne,’ he said gently. ‘You can understand that he might think it was worth anything to get back to his place.’
‘And will he do it?’ Johnnie asked. ‘Will he come back to London? Will I see him on his throne?’
John shook his head. ‘They’ll never let him off the Isle of Wight again,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were General Cromwell.’
Spring 1648
John was in his garden, planting out his tender rarities which had wintered in the orangery. The great tufted American daisy was putting out fresh shoots from its rosette of leaves, and the Virginian woodbine was throwing out scarlet snaky shoots with little unfurling green leaves from its dry, dead-looking trunk. John thought for a moment of Suckahanna with the scarlet honeysuckle flowers in her dark hair, and the night-time scent of honeysuckle on their sleeping platform when he kissed her neck and crushed the flowers beneath his cheek. He patted the earth gently around the roots, saw that the climber could extend and find footholds on the strings hammered in to the rough wall and then turned his back on them to admire his tulip beds.
‘There is nothing, nothing to compare with them,’ he remarked to Hester as she came down the path towards him. Then he broke off abruptly at the sight of her face. ‘What’s wrong?’
He glanced towards the lane as if he feared a troop of horse there. Even with the king imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle no man could be certain that the nation would stay at peace. There were too many nations that might wish to meddle, there were too many armies that the queen or Prince Charles might prevail upon to muster.
‘I don’t know,’ Hester said, producing a letter from her apron pocket. ‘A letter. For you. From the Parliamentary commissioners.’
John scowled and held out his hand. He broke the seal, spread the paper, read it, and then read it again. He chuckled incredulously.
‘What is it?’ Hester demanded, trying to read upside down.
‘I am to go to Oatlands and make good,’ John said. ‘Who would have thought it? They want me to mend the walks in the vineyard garden and mow the bowling green, and make good.’ He paused and looked up at her. ‘How times change and yet change not at all,’ he observed. ‘I am gardener to Oatlands Palace still it seems, though there is no king and no court to see my work.’
‘You’ll go –’ she suggested, looking at him warily.
He folded the letter, very businesslike. ‘Of course. Why not?’
‘I thought you might have some feeling that you wouldn’t garden for them, where you had gardened for the king, and for her.’
John shook his head. Unconsciously he put out a hand and tucked a stray shoot of the Virginian woodbine beneath a guiding piece of twine nailed into the wall. ‘I’ve been torn all my life, Hester. I’m growing quite resigned to divided loyalties.’
‘Johnnie’ll take it hard,’ she said. ‘He’s held to being one of the king’s gardeners through all this time.’
‘We’re gardeners to the best gardens in the kingdom,’ John said firmly. ‘And Oatlands has always been one of the best. I’d stay faithful to my garden before I stayed faithful to any master, you know that. Especially a master as faithless and as changeable as the king. The garden comes first, Hester. If someone will pay me to plant it and tend to it I’ll go at once and I’ll take Johnnie to help me. He has to learn. King or no king, we have to work for our living. And our living is the gardens. Our great duty is to the gardens.’
‘But why would Parliament care for the gardens?’ Hester mused. ‘With so much else to do? And they were the queen’s own gardens. Unless they’re putting them in order for her return? And there’s been some secret agreement?’
John shook his head. ‘Could be. Or maybe they’re just men of sense. If the king never returns and Parliament owns Oatlands and all the other royal palaces, then they will sell it at a better profit if it is set in a handsome garden and not in a wilderness. But if the king comes back to his own again and finds it overgrown, then he will only make them pay to set it right.’
‘Will you be gone long?’ she asked.
‘A month at least,’ he replied. ‘I have duties now, Hester. I am gardener to the Parliamentary commissioners! I am a Parliament man!’
She laughed with him. ‘But Johnnie may not find it so easy to change masters,’ she warned.
‘Johnnie will have to learn,’ he ruled. ‘It is one thing to be a boy and love stories of Prince Rupert. It is another thing to be a man and to know that if you serve a master who changes as often as the weather then you had better not cleave too tight to him. The king is spinning like a weathercock. The rest of us must look to our own lives.’
April 1648, Oatlands Palace
A troop of Parliamentary horse was still quartered at Oatlands and John’s first action, after he had opened up his old house next to the silkworm house, was to find the commander and demand that the horses be banned from grazing in any of the courts or on the bowling lawns.
The commander was happy to agree and promised John the use of as many troopers as he needed to help him in the weeding and the setting of the garden to rights.
‘I visited your garden ten years ago,’ he said. ‘It was a wonderful sight. D’you still have that service tree? I remember it so well.’
‘Yes,’ John said. ‘It still grows. And we have many more rare trees that I have brought back from Virginia. I have a tulip tree with great green leaves that flowers with a blossom like a tulip as big as your head. I have a maple tree which has leaves of scarlet. I have a creeper called a passion flower since some say it shows the marks of Jesus. I have a beautiful new convolvulus, I can sell you the seeds for that, and a Virginian foxglove.’
‘As soon as I am discharged and in my own home again I shall come and see what you have for sale,’ the officer promised.
‘Where is your home?’ John asked.
‘Sussex, in the west of the county,’ the man replied. ‘I have a light, sandy soil, very fertile and easy to work. A little dry in summer perhaps, and I’m on the edge of the South Downs so I get a cold wind in winter; my Lenten lilies only come at Eas
ter. But my summer flowers last for longer than my neighbours’.’
‘You will grow almost anything then,’ John said encouragingly. ‘Some of my new Virginia plants can tolerate very cold weather and very hot summers since that is the weather of their home. They would do well with you. I have a creeper with leaves that turn as red as a cardinal’s cloak in autumn. It would look well against any wall, red as a rose.’
‘I should like to see it,’ the man said. ‘And what will you do here?’
‘Just set the place in order again,’ John said. ‘I was not ordered to do any planting.’
‘Is His Majesty to be brought here?’ Johnnie asked, driven to interrupting.
The officer heard the hero-worship in the boy’s voice and looked hard at him. ‘I think we should all pray that he never comes near any of his palaces again,’ he said sternly. ‘His greed has taken me and all my men away from our homes and our families and our gardens for six long years. He can rot in Carisbrooke Castle forever, for all I care.’
John leaned on his son’s shoulder and the boy obediently said nothing, only the scarlet flush up to his ears showed his distress.
‘But you were in his service,’ the man said irritably. ‘I suppose you’re all royalists.’
‘We’re gardeners,’ John said steadily. ‘And now I am gardening for Parliament. Still gardening. My enemies are inclement weather and pests. I need no other.’
Unwillingly the commander laughed. ‘I know no worse, actually,’ he said.
Summer 1648
There was a knock on the big front door of the Ark in mid-May and Hester, putting aside her working apron, went to open it with her usual sense of apprehension. But when she saw the visitor on the doorstep her expression turned to pleasure. ‘Major Lambert!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come to see our tulips?’