Virgin Earth

John dropped to his knee as she saw him but she rushed towards him and he jumped to his feet as she pushed her jewel box at him.

‘Gardener Tradescant!’ she cried. ‘Take this!’ She turned to the king. ‘We must wait!’ she insisted. ‘We must face the rabble! We must face them down!’

The king shook his head and motioned for her to go on. Unwillingly, she went before him. ‘I t … tell you they have run mad!’ he said. ‘We must get out of the C … City! There’s not a loyal heart here. They have all run m … mad. We must go to Hampton Court and c … c … consider what to do! We must summon soldiers and take advice.’

‘We are running like fools from our own shadows!’ she shrieked at him. ‘We must face them and face them down or we will spend the rest of our life on the run.’

‘We are l … lost!’ he shouted. ‘L … lost! D’you think I want to see you dragged before the b … bar and impeached for treason? D’you think I want to see your h … h … head on a pike? D’you think I want to see the rabble take y … you, and the children, t … take you now?’

John joined the train of servants running behind them and followed them to the stables. All the way the quarrel between the king and queen grew more inarticulate as her French accent deepened with her temper and his stammer grew worse with his fear. When they reached the stable yard she was beside herself.

‘You are a coward!’ she spat at him. ‘You will lose this city forever if you leave it now. It is easier to run away than to retake. You must show them that you are not afraid.’

‘Ha … Hi … I fear nothing!’ He drew himself up. ‘N … Nothing! But I must have you safe and the children safe before I can m … make m … my m … move. It is your safety, Madam, that I am securing now. For myself I care nothing! N … ha … N … Nothing!’

John pressed forward and put the jewel box on the coach floor. He was reminded of the king’s odd mixture of shyness and boastfulness. Even now, with a mob hammering on the doors of the palace, the two of them were playing out their parts in a masque. Even now they did not seem to be completely real. John looked around, the servants were like an audience at a great play. No-one urged a course of action, no-one spoke. The king and queen were the only actors; and their script was a great romance of danger and heroism and lost causes and sudden flights. John felt his heart pounding at the noise of the crowd outside and knew the deep visceral fear of a mob. He had a sudden vision of them breaking down the gates and tumbling into the stable yard. If they found the queen beside her travelling coach with her jewel box beside her, anything could happen. The whole power of the royal family which the old Queen Elizabeth had so powerfully cultivated depended on the creation and maintenance of distance and magic and glamour. Let the people once see the queen swearing at their king like a French lace-seller, and the game would be up.

‘I will see you s … safe at Hampton Court and then I will return and crush these traitors,’ Charles swore.

‘You shall crush them now!’ she shrieked. ‘Now, before they gain their strength. You shall face them and defy them and destroy them or I swear I shall leave this kingdom and never see it again! They know how to respect a princess of the blood in France!’

At once the mood of the scene shifted. The king took her hand and bowed over it, his silky hair falling to shield his face. ‘N … never say it,’ he said. ‘You are q … queen of this country, queen of all the h … hearts. This is a faithful country, they I … love you, I love you. Never even th … think of leaving me.’

There was renewed shouting at the door. John, forgetting that he should stay silent, could not bear to see them taken like a pair of runaway servants in the stable yard. ‘Your Majesty!’ he urged. ‘You must either prepare for a siege or get the coach out! The crowd will be upon you in a moment!’

The queen looked to him. ‘My faithful Gardener Tradescant!’ she exclaimed. ‘Stay with us.’

‘G … Get up at the back,’ the king ordered. ‘Y … You shall escort us t … to safety.’ John gaped at him. The only thing he had thought to do was to bring the two of them to a sense of urgency.

‘Your Majesty?’ he asked.

The king handed the queen into the coach where the two little princes, Charles and James, white-faced and silent, were waiting, their eyes like saucers with terror. Then the nursemaids and the babies bundled in and the king climbed in himself. John slammed the door on them. He wanted to tell them that he could not possibly go with them but he heard the rising volume of the crowd at the gates and he was afraid that they might argue with him, command his service, question his loyalty, delay again.

John stepped back from the coach, waiting for it to draw away; but it did not move. Nobody would do anything without a specific order and the king and queen were arguing again inside.

‘Oh! Damnation! Drive on!’ John shouted, taking command in the absence of any authority, and swung himself up beside the footmen clinging on the back. ‘Westward, to Hampton Court. And drive steadily. Don’t for God’s sake run anyone down. But don’t stop!’

Even then the footmen hesitated at the stable doors.

‘Open the doors!’ John shouted at them, his temper at breaking point.

They leaped to obey the first clear order they had heard all day and the great wooden doors swung open.

At once the men and women in the very front of the crowd fell back, as the doors opened up and the coach pulled out. John saw they were taken aback at the sudden movement of the doors, at the progress of the fine horses, and the wealth and richness of the gilding on the royal coach. The king’s ornate carriage with the plumes of feathers on each roof corner, and the huge high-stepping Arab horses harnessed with tack of red leather and gold studs, still had the mystique of power, divine power, even with a traitorous Papist queen inside. But those in the front could not get back very far; they were held steady by the weight of the crowd behind them, still pushing forward.

The crowd had pikes but they were using them as banners, not yet as weapons. On each one was tied a white flag scrawled with the word ‘Liberty!’ and they jogged them up and down at the windows of the coach. John prayed that the queen kept her face turned down and for once in her life kept quiet. The prestige of the king might get them safely through the mob if she did not antagonise them.

John heard a frightened child crying from inside the coach. ‘Drive on!’ he ordered the coachman above the noise of the crowd. ‘Go steady!’, and he shouted as loud as he could: ‘Make way for the king! For the rightful king!’

‘Liberty!’ someone yelled, jabbing a pike dangerously close to his face.

‘Liberty and the king!’ John replied, and heard another voice at once echo the new slogan. The footman beside him flinched as someone spat. ‘Stay still, you fool, or they will drag you down,’ John muttered.

At any moment the mood of the crowd could change from boisterous protest to murder. John looked over the roof of the carriage to where the streets narrowed for the way out of town.

‘Make way for the rightful king!’ John shouted.

The crowd grew denser at the crossroads. ‘Keep going!’ John yelled at the coachman. He had an absolute certainty that if they stopped, even for a moment, the doors would be pulled open and the royal family dragged from the coach and torn apart on the very street. Once the mob learned that they could stop the king in his carriage, then they would know they could do whatever they wished. All that was holding them back was the old superstitious belief in the king’s power, the divinity of kingship that King James had preached and that Charles so passionately believed. The crowd kept reaching towards the coach as it crawled slowly past them but their hands would drop back as if they feared a burning from the gold paintwork. If they touched and snatched just once, then they would all know that the king was not a god, a vengeful god. If they found the courage to touch just once, they would snatch at everything.

‘Keep back,’ John shouted. ‘Make way for the king!’

Everything depended on the coach maintaining the painfully slow walking pace, and never checking, and never stopping, all the way westwards where the sun shone on the water in the open sewers, like a pointer to safety.

Someone pulled at his coat, nearly hauling him off balance. John grabbed tighter at the footman’s strap and looked down. It was a woman, her face contorted with rage. ‘Liberty!’ she cried. ‘Death to the Papists! Death to the Papist queen!’

‘Liberty and the king!’ John shouted back. He tried to smile at her and felt his lips stick on his dry teeth. As long as the queen kept her face hidden! ‘Liberty and the king.’

The carriage lurched over the cobbles. The crowd was thicker but the road further ahead was clear. Someone threw a handful of mud at the coach door but the crowd was too dense for them to start stoning, and though the pikes still jogged to the cry of ‘Liberty!’ they were not yet aimed towards the glass of the windows.

As the road went on, out of town, the crowd thinned, as John had hoped it would. Most of these people had homes or market stalls or even businesses in the City, there was nothing to be gained by following the coach out along the West Way. Besides, they were out of breath and tiring of the sport.

‘Let’s open the doors!’ someone exclaimed. ‘Open the doors and see this queen, this Papist queen. Let’s hear her prayers, that they’re so keen that we should learn!’

‘Look!’ John yelled as loud as he could. ‘An Irishman!’ He pointed back the way they had come. ‘Going into the palace! An Irish priest!’

With a howl the mob turned back and ran, slipping and sliding over the cobbles back towards the palace, chasing their own nightmares.

‘Now drive on!’ John yelled at the driver. ‘Let them go!’

The carriage gave a great lurch as the driver whipped the horses and they leaped forward, bumping on the cobbles. John clung like a barnacle on the back of the great coach, swaying on the leather straps, and ducked his head down as the wind blowing down the street whisked his hat away.

When they reached the outskirts of London the streets were quiet, the people either boarded inside their houses and praying for peace, or roaming in the city. John felt the slackening of tension around his throat and he loosened his grip on the footman’s strap and rocked with the sway of the coach all the way to Hampton Court.

The king was not expected at Hampton Court. There was nothing ready for the royal family. The royal beds and furniture, rugs and pictures were all left at Whitehall. The family stepped down before the solidly closed great doors of the palace and there was not even a servant to open up for them.

John had a sense that the whole world was collapsing around him. He hesitated and looked towards his monarch. The king leaned back against the dirty wheel of the coach, as if he were exhausted.

‘I did not expect this sort of welcome!’ Charles said mournfully. ‘The doors of my own palace closed to me!’

The queen looked pleadingly at Tradescant. ‘What shall we do?’

John felt an irritable sense of responsibility. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll find someone.’

He left the royal coach before the imposing grand front doors and went around to the back. The kitchens were in their usual careless state; the whole household always took a holiday during the king’s absence.

‘Wake up,’ John said, putting his head around the door. ‘The king, queen and royal family are outside waiting to be let in.’

It was as if he had set off a fire-ship among the cockle boats at Whitby. There was a stunned silence and then instantaneous uproar.

‘For God’s sake get the front door open and let him in,’ John said, and went back to the courtyard.

The king was leaning back against the coach surveying the high, imposing roofs of the palace as if he had never seen them before. The queen was still seated in the carriage. Neither of them had moved since John had left them, although the children were whimpering inside the coach and one of the nursemaids was praying.

John pinned a smile on his face and stepped forward and bowed. ‘I am sorry for the poor welcome,’ he said. As he spoke the great doors creaked open and a frightened-looking footman peeped out. ‘There’s a couple of cooks here, and a household of servants,’ John said reassuringly. ‘They’ll make Your Majesties comfortable enough.’

At the sight of a servant the queen brightened. She rose to her feet and waited for the footman to hand her down from the carriage. The children followed her.

The king turned to John. ‘I thank you for the service you have given us this day. We were glad of your escort.’

John bowed. ‘I am glad to see Your Majesty safe arrived,’ he said. At least he could say that with a clear conscience, he thought. He was indeed glad to get them safe out of London. He could not have stood by and seen the queen and the royal princes pulled out of their carriage by a mob, any more than he could have watched Hester and the children abused.

‘Go and see that there are r … rooms made ready for us,’ the king commanded.

John hesitated. ‘I should return home,’ he said. ‘I will give orders that everything shall be done as you wish, and then go to my home.’

The king made that little gesture with his hand which signified ‘No.’

John hesitated.

‘S … stay until we have some order here,’ the king said coolly. ‘Tell them to prepare our p … privy chambers and a dinner.’

John could do nothing but bow and walk carefully backwards from the king’s presence and go to do his bidding.

There was only so much that could be done. There was only one decent bed in the house fit for them; and so the king, queen, and the two royal princes were forced to bed down together in one bed, in the only aired linen in the whole palace. There was a dinner which was ample, but hardly royal; and no golden plate and cups for the service. The trappings of monarchy – the tapestries, carpets, gold plate and jewels, even the richly embroidered bed linen that always travelled with the king in his great progresses around the country – were still at Whitehall. All that was ever left in the empty palaces was second-rate goods, and Hampton Court was no exception. The queen ate off pewter with an air of shocked disdain.

Dinner was served by the kitchen staff and the lowly gentlemen of the household who maintained the palace in the king’s absence. They served it as it should be done, on bended knee, but all the ceremony in the world could not conceal that it was plain bread and meat on pewter plates on a plain board table.

‘You will escort the queen and I to Windsor tomorrow,’ the king said, when he had finished eating. ‘And from thence to Dover.’

Tradescant, who was seated at a lower table down the hall, got up from his bench and dropped to his knee on the stale rushes on the floor. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ He kept his head down so that he showed no surprise.

‘See that the horses are ready at dawn,’ the king ordered.

The royal family rose from their places at the top table and left the great hall by the door at the back of the dais. Their withdrawing room would be cold and smoky with a chimney which did not properly draw.

‘Are they running for it?’ one of the ushers asked John as he rose from his knees. ‘All of them?’

John looked appalled. ‘They cannot do so!’

‘Did they need to run from London? Like cowards?’

‘How can you tell? The mood of the rabble around Whitehall was angry enough. There were moments when I feared for their lives.’

‘The rabble!’ the man jeered. ‘They could have thrown them a purse of gold and turned them around in a moment. But if they run from London, will they run from the country? Is that why they’re going to Dover? To take a ship to France? And what will become of us then?’

John shook his head. ‘This morning I was taking leave of my wife in my stable yard at Lambeth,’ he said. ‘I hardly know where I am, let alone what is to become of the king and the queen and their kingdoms.’

‘Well I bet you they run for it,’ the young man said cheerfully. ‘And good riddance,’ he added under his breath, and then snapped his fingers at his dog and left the hall.

It was a long, cold journey to Dover; the royal family were muffled up inside the coach but John was standing in the footman’s place behind, holding on to the strap. By the time the coach rumbled in to Dover castle John was clinging on with fingers that were blue, his eyes running with tears from the cold wind in his face, every bone in his face aching as if he had an ague. From his place on the back of the coach he had heard, over the rumble of the wheels, the queen steadily complaining, all the way down the long frosty roads.

They slept that night in Dover castle, in better comfort; and then lingered undecided for a week. First they were waiting for news, then deciding to sail to France, missing the tide, changing their minds, waiting for more news. Courtiers slowly reassembled from the rout of London, noblemen were recalled from their country seats. Everyone had different advice, everyone was listened to with kingly courtesy, no-one could agree, no-one could act. Eleven-year-old Princess Mary, setting sail to live with her bridegroom in Holland, joined them during the week that they hesitated, havering between one choice and another, and found that the queen, her mother, was very bitter with her daughter for marrying a Protestant and leaving the family in such distress. Princess Mary made no undutiful replies to her mother, but sulked in eloquent silence.

A couple of heavy bags arrived at dawn from the Tower of London and John assumed, but did not ask, from the dour expression of the guard who never let them out of his sight, that the king was sending the country’s treasure overseas with his wife and that once again the most precious stones in England would be hawked around the moneylenders in Europe.

The king and queen finally came to a decision to separate. Princess Mary was bound for Holland in one ship, the queen and the three babies were to set sail for France in another: the Lion. The two princes – Charles and James – and the king were to stay in England and find a solution to the demands of Parliament. John and the other attendants waited at a distance on the quayside as the royal couple forced themselves to the brink of parting. The king held both her hands and kissed them tenderly.

‘You will not yield one inch to them,’ the queen said, her voice demanding and penetrating so that every man on the quayside could hear how the king of England was hag-ridden. ‘You will not make one concession. They must be brought to heel. They must know their master. You will not even speak with them without keeping me informed.’

Charles kissed her hands again. ‘No,’ he promised. ‘M … My love, my dear love. I will not have a m … moment when I do not think of you.’

‘Then think that I will never be able to come back until the traitor Pym is executed for treason,’ she said fiercely. ‘And think of your son and his inheritance which must be passed to him entire. And I shall raise such an army in Europe that if they will not agree they will be destroyed! So make no concessions, Charles, I will not permit it!’

‘My dear, d … dear love,’ he said quietly.

He raised his head from her hands and she kissed him full on the mouth as if to pledge him to an oath.

‘Don’t forget!’ she said passionately. ‘We have lost too much already by your weakness! Not one concession without my agreement. You must tell them that they will have to concede to us: Church, army, and Parliament. I am a queen, not a market trader to huckster over the price. Not one concession.’

‘God speed, m … my love,’ he said tenderly.

She smiled at him at last. ‘God bless you,’ she said. Without thinking of the effect it would have on the king’s waiting servants, she made the sign of the cross, the dreadful Papist gesture, over his head; and Charles bowed his head beneath the sign of the Anti-Christ.

Henrietta Maria picked up her full silk skirts and went carefully up the gangplank to the sailing ship. ‘And don’t forget,’ she called, raising her voice from the ship. ‘No concessions!’

‘No, my love,’ the king said sadly. ‘I would d … die rather than disappoint you.’

The ship moved away from the quayside and the king called for his horse. He mounted and rode alone, up the steep cliffs behind the little town, keeping the queen’s sail in sight, riding and waving his hat to her until the little ship was vanished into the pale mist lying sluggishly on the waves, and there was nothing for God’s anointed monarch to do but ride slowly and sadly back to Dover castle and write to his wife promising that he would always do whatever she thought best.

John subtracted himself carefully from the men who surrounded the king as they returned to break their fast in Dover castle. He ordered a horse from the tavern, and when he was ready to leave went to seek the king.

‘With Your Majesty’s permission I will go to my home,’ he said carefully. He saw at a glance that the king was in one of his moods of high drama. John did not want to be the audience to one of the tragic speeches. ‘I promised my wife I would only be away a matter of hours, and that was weeks ago. I must return.’

The king nodded. ‘You may travel w … with me for I am going to London.’

‘Back to the City?’ John was astounded.

‘I shall see. I shall see. Perhaps it is n … not too late. Perhaps we can agree. The queen would be pleased, d … don’t you think, if my next letter to her came from my palace at Whitehall?’

‘I am sure everyone would be pleased if you could reclaim your palace by agreement,’ John said carefully.

‘Or I could go to B … Bristol,’ the king said. ‘Or north?’

John bowed. ‘I shall pray for Your Majesty.’

‘I hope you will do … do more than that. I hope you will be with me.’

There was an awkward silence. ‘In these troubled times …’ John began.

‘In these troubled times a man must bid farewell to his wife and then do his duty,’ the king said flatly. ‘P … Painful duty. As I have done.’

John bowed.

‘You may go and bid her farewell and then j … join me.’

John bowed again, thinking rapidly of how he could escape from this service. ‘I am only a gardener,’ he said. ‘I doubt that I can assist Your Majesty better than by keeping your palaces in beauty. And when the queen returns I would want her to have a pretty garden to greet her.’

The king softened at that, but he had the needy anxiety of a man who hates to be left alone. The loss of the queen made him cling to anyone, and John’s presence was a reassuring reminder of the days of gardens and masques and royal progresses and loyal speeches. ‘You shall s … stay with me,’ he said. ‘I shall send you back to the garden when I have more men about me. In the meantime you shall write your f … farewell to your wife and join me. I am separated from my wife – you would not w … wish to be more happy than your king?’

Tradescant could see no escape. ‘Of course not, Your Majesty.’

He sent Hester a note before they left Dover.

Dear Hester,

I am commanded by His Majesty to stay with him until he takes up his new quarters, wherever they may be. We are travelling northwards at present and I will return home as soon as I am permitted, and write to you if not. Please keep my children and rarities safe. And preserve your own safety. If you think it best, you may store the rarities in the place you know, and take the children to Oatlands. These are troubled times and I cannot advise you at this distance. I wish I were with you. If I were free from my duty to my king, I would be with you.

He did not dare to say more for fear of someone stealing and opening the letter. But he hoped she would read between the lines and understand his reluctance to travel with the king and the two princes, and his deep anxiety that none of them, least of all the king, seemed to know where they should go or what they should do next.