Virgin Earth (16 page)

That silenced her for a moment, as she saw the depth of his loss.

“But what about us?” she asked. “I don’t want to lose this house, John, and J is happy here. We have put down roots here just as the plants in the garden have done. You said you would plant the chestnut here this spring and that we would sit under its branches when we are an old married couple.”

He nodded. “I know. I’m forsworn. That’s what I promised you. But I can’t bear it here without him, Elizabeth. I have tried and I cannot. Can you release me from my promise that we should stay here, and let us make another home? Back in Kent?”

“Kent? What d’you mean? Where?”

“Lord Wootton wants a gardener at Canterbury and asked me if I would go. He has the secret of growing melons which I should be glad to learn; his gardener has always teased me that only Lord Wootton in all of England can grow melons.”

Elizabeth tutted with irritation. “Forget the melons for a moment if you please. What about a house? What about your wages?”

“He’ll pay me well,” John said. “Sixty pounds where my lord paid me fifty. And we will have a house, the head gardener’s house. J can go to the King’s School in Canterbury. That’ll be a fine thing for him.”

“Canterbury,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “I’ve never lived in a market town. There’d be much society.”

“We could start there at once. He asked me on the death of my lord and I said I would tell him within the quarter.”

“And will you not love Lord Wootton as you loved the earl?” Elizabeth asked, thinking it would be an advantage.

John shook his head. “There will never be another lord for me like that one.”

“Let’s go, then,” she said with her typical sudden decisiveness. “And we can plant the chestnut sapling in Canterbury instead of Hatfield.”

November 1612

John was working in Lord Wootton’s garden, hands among cold clods of earth, when he heard the bell tolling. On and on it went, a funeral bell. Then he heard the rumble of cannon fire. He stood up, brushed the mud on his breeches, and reached for his coat where it was hooked over his spade.

“Something’s happened,” he said shortly to the garden lad who was working beside him.

“Shall I run into town and bring you the news?” the boy asked eagerly.

“No,” John said firmly. “You shall stay and work here while I run into town and find out the news. And if you are not here when I get back it will be the worst for you.”

“Yes, Mr. Tradescant,” the boy said sulkily.

The bell was ever more insistent.

“What does it mean?”

“I’ll find out,” John said and strode out of the garden toward the cathedral.

People were gathered in gossiping circles all the way down the road but John went on until he reached the cathedral steps and saw a face he recognized — the headmaster of the school.

“Doctor Phillips,” he exclaimed. “What are they ringing for?”

The man turned at the sound of his name and John saw, with a shock, that the man’s face was wet with tears.

“Good God! What is it? It’s not an invasion? Not Spain?”

“It’s Prince Henry,” the man said simply. “Our blessed prince. We have lost him.”

For a moment John could not take in the words. “Prince Henry?”

“Dead.”

John shook his head. “But he’s so strong, he’s always so well—”

“Dead of fever.”

John’s hand went to his forehead to cross himself, in the old superstitious forbidden sign. He caught his hand back and said instead, “Poor boy, God save us, poor boy.”

“I forgot, you would have seen him often.”

“Not often,” John said, his habitual caution asserting itself.

“He was a blessed prince, was he not? Handsome and learned and godly?”

John thought of Prince Henry’s handsome tyrannical disposition, of his casual cruelty to his dark little brother, of his easy love of his sister Elizabeth, of his royal confidence, some would say arrogance. “He was a boy born to rule,” John said cleverly.

“God save Prince Charles,” Doctor Phillips said stoutly.

John realized that the little eleven-year-old lame boy who ran after his brother and could never get nor keep his father’s attention would now be the next king — if he lived.

“God save him indeed,” he repeated.

“And if we lose him,” Doctor Phillips said in an undertone, “then it’s another woman on the throne, the Princess Elizabeth, and God knows what danger that would bring us now.”

“God save him,” John repeated. “God save Prince Charles.”

“And what is he like?” Doctor Phillips asked. “Prince Charles? What sort of a king will he make?”

John thought of the tongue-tied boy who had to be taught to walk straight, who struggled so hard to keep up with the older two, who knew himself never to be beloved like them, never to be handsome like them. He wondered how a child who knew himself to be second best and a poor second at that would be when he was a man and was first in the land. Would he take the people’s love and let it warm him, fill the emptiness in that ugly little boy’s heart? Or would he be forever mistrustful, forever doubting, always wanting to seem braver, stronger, more handsome than he was?

“He’ll be a fine king,” he said, thinking that his master would not be there to teach this king, and how the boy would learn the Tudor guile and the Tudor charm with only his father to advise him and the court filled with men picked for their looks and their bawdiness and not for their skills. “God will guide him,” Tradescant said hopefully, thinking that no one else would.

September 1616

The new cottage at Canterbury was little bigger than their first home at Meopham but Elizabeth did not complain, as the front door opened to a proper city street and the finishing of the house was elegant. They cooked and ate and lived in the large ground-floor room and Elizabeth and John slept in a curtained four-poster bed in the room next door. J, now a boy of eight years old, went up the shallow stairs to a pallet bed in the attic. During the day John went and gardened for Lord Wootton, and J went to Dame School where, for a penny a week, he was taught to read and write and to figure sums. They both came home for their dinner at four o’clock on the darkening autumn afternoons, John with a spade over his shoulder, J with his schoolbook clutched under his arm.

Elizabeth, slicing parsley for the soup one afternoon, heard three, not two, sets of boots stamping off mud in the porch of the little cottage and put her sacking apron off in the expectation of company. She opened the front door to John, to her son, and to a young man, brown-faced and smiling, with the unmistakable swagger and roll of a seafaring man.

“Captain Argall,” Elizabeth said without pleasure.

“Mrs. Tradescant!” he exclaimed and swept into the house, kissing her heartily on one cheek and then the other. “The most beautiful rose in all of John’s gardens! How are you?”

“Very well,” Elizabeth said, disengaging herself and going back to the kitchen table.

“I have brought you a handsome ham,” Sam Argall said, looking at the stewpot and sliced vegetables without much enthusiasm. J, his face a picture of moonstruck admiration, produced the leg of ham from behind his back and dumped it on the table. “And a taste of paradise too,” Sam Argall went on, offering a flask of rum. “From the Sugar Islands, Mrs. Tradescant. A taste of sweetness and strength that will bring a taste of the tropics even here, to chilly Canterbury.”

“I find the weather very mild for the time of the year,” Elizabeth said stoutly. “Do sit down, Captain Argall. J will fetch you a glass of small ale if you would like one. We do not serve strong liquors in this house.”

J rushed to do his mother’s bidding while John and Sam sat at the table and watched Elizabeth slice the last pieces of parsley and toss them into the pot hanging over the fire.

There was a silence while they drank. Elizabeth busied herself with setting out the wooden bowls and a knife at each place, and a loaf of bread in the center of the table.

“Sam is to be master of a great venture,” John began at last.

Elizabeth stirred the pot and prodded one of the floating parsnips to see if it was cooked.

“A great venture, and he has offered me a place,” John said.

Elizabeth poured the broth into the three bowls, for the captain, for her husband, for her son, and stood behind them to wait on them. John saw that she would not sit and eat with them as she always did when it was just him and J at the dinner table. He read, correctly, her absolute opposition to Sam Argall and all the adventure and risk that he stood for, concealed behind chilly courtesy.

“Virginia!” Sam Argall exclaimed, blowing on his bowl. “Mrs. Tradescant, I have been entrusted with a great task. I am appointed Deputy Governor of Virginia and Admiral of the Virginia seas.”

“Will you say grace, husband?” Elizabeth asked repressively.

John bowed his head over the bread and Sam, remembering Elizabeth’s strictness in matters of religion, quickly closed his eyes. When he had finished John picked up his spoon and nodded to Sam.

“Amen,” Sam said briskly. “I have come to ask John here to go venturing with me, Mrs. Tradescant. You shall be landowners, madam, you shall be squires. For every place you take on the ship with me you shall have a hundred acres of your own land. For the three of you that will be three hundred acres! Think of that! You, the mistress of three hundred acres of land!”

Elizabeth’s face was as unmoved as if she were thinking of three yards. “This is three hundred acres of good farmland?”

“It’s prime land,” Argall said.

“Cleared and ploughed?”

There was a brief silence. “Mrs. Tradescant, I am offering you virgin land, a virgin land rich with woodland. Your land is standing with tall trees, wonderful rare bushes, fruiting vines. First you cut your own timber and then you build yourself a handsome house. A mansion, if you like. Built of your own timber!”

“A mansion from green wood?” Elizabeth asked. “Built by a man in his forties, a woman, and an eight-year-old boy? I should like to see it!”

He pushed his bowl away and cut a slice of the ham. Elizabeth, the very model of wifely obedience, poured the jug of small ale and stepped back, folding her hands on the front of her apron, her eyes cast down.

“What would we grow?” J asked.

Captain Argall smiled down at the bright face of the boy. “Anything you wish. The land is so rich, you could grow anything. But who knows? You might find gold and never trouble yourselves to plant anything ever again!”

“Gold?”

“I thought the first shipment of rocks was nothing more than fool’s gold?” Elizabeth asked. “They tipped it out below the Tower and picked it over and found nothing but quartz. And there it stood for many a long day, a little monument to folly and greed.”

“No gold yet. Not yet, Mrs. T,” Captain Argall said. “But who can say what there might be deeper in the mountains? No one has gone farther than the shoreline and up the rivers a little way. What could be there? Gold? Diamonds? Rubies? And what need have we of these anyway while we can grow tobacco?”

“Why d’you dislike the idea so much, Elizabeth?” John asked her directly.

She looked from him to J’s excited face and Captain Argall’s determined good humor. “Because I have heard travelers’ tales before, but I have heard nothing good of this plantation,” she said. “There’s Mistress Woods at Meopham who lost two brothers to Virginia in the starving time when half the settlement died of hunger. She told me that they were digging over the graveyards looking for meat, reduced to worse than savagery. There’s Peter John who paid for his own passage home and kissed the ground at London docks, he was so glad to be alive. He said the forest was filled with Indians who could be kind or wicked as the mood took them, and only they knew whether they were your enemy or friend. There’s your own friend, Captain John Smith, who swore that he would live the rest of his days there, and yet he was brought home a cripple—”

“John Smith would never say a word against Virginia!” Argall interrupted. “And he was hurt in an accident which could have happened anywhere. He could have been boating on the Thames.”

“He was hurt in an accident but only after he had fought against Indians and been captured by them and been so close to death by execution that he near died of fear,” Elizabeth maintained stoutly.

“The Indians are at peace now,” Argall said. “And I have played my part in that. Princess Pocahontas is Mrs. Rebecca Rolfe now and all the Indians are coming into Christian schools and living in Christian homes. You’re speaking of old fears. It was hard in the early years but it is all at peace now. Pocahontas is married to John Rolfe and other Indians and white men will marry. In a few years all the wars will be forgotten.” He glanced down at J’s attentive face, drinking in the stories. “You will have an Indian playmate to show you the paths through the woods,” he promised. “Perhaps an Indian maid to be your sweetheart.”

The boy blushed scarlet. “How did Princess Pocahontas come to marry Mr. Rolfe?” he asked.

Sam Argall laughed. “You know the story as well as me!” he exclaimed. “I captured her and held her hostage, and all the while she was weaving her spell and capturing John. So go to bed and dream of it, young J. Your mother and father and I will talk more of it later.”

“I have to sleep too,” John said. He and J lifted the board from the trestle legs of the table and stacked it to one side of the little room.

“I hope you will sleep well here?” Elizabeth asked, laying a straw mattress and an armful of bedding in the space.

“Like a babe in a cradle,” Captain Argall assured her. He kissed her hand in his flirtatious way and ignored her lack of response. “Good night.”

Elizabeth watched J go up the stairs to his little bed in the attic and then drew the curtains of the four-poster around her and John.

“I’d have thought you would have leaped at the chance of a fresh start in the new world,” John remarked as he got into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. “You who always want us to be freeholders. We would be freeholders in Virginia of land we could only dream of here. Three hundred acres!”