Virgin Earth (17 page)

Elizabeth, pulling her nightgown over her head and only then dropping her skirt and shift, did not answer. John was too wise to demand a reply. He watched her kneel at the foot of the bed to say her prayers and closed his own eyes and muttered his thanks for blessings. Only when Elizabeth was in bed, tying the ties of her nightcap under her chin, did she say, suddenly, “And who is the governor of this new land?”

John was taken aback. “Sir George,” he said. “Newly appointed. Sir George Yeardley.”

“A courtier. Exactly,” she said and blew out her candle with an emphatic puff. They lay for a moment in silence in the darkness, and then she spoke: “It’s not a new land at all. It’s the same land but in a different place. I won’t go, John. It’s just another form of service. We risk everything, we gamble our savings, our livelihood, and even our lives. We put ourselves in grave danger in a country — one of the few in the whole world where you could not earn a living doing your own trade; no one will want a gardener there, it’s farmers they need — we put our son into a forest filled with unknown dangers, and we try to make a living from a land that no one has farmed before. And who makes the profits? The governor. The Virginia Company. And the king.”

“It’s their land,” John said mildly. “Who else should make the profits?”

“If it’s their land then they can take the risks,” Elizabeth declared bluntly. “Not I.”

Elizabeth’s determined opposition to the Virginia venture could not prevent John investing money. While she watched, with her mouth in a hard ungenerous line, he counted over twenty-five gold sovereigns for two shares. Captain Argall promised that two men — poor men who could not find their own passage money — would be sent on John’s account, and that the land granted to them on arrival in Virginia would be held in part for John.

“You’ll be a squire of Virginia yet,” Argall said to him, stowing the purse of gold beneath his coat with a swift glance at Elizabeth’s stony face. “I shall pick you out a good piece of land, west of Jamestown, inland, upriver. I shall call it Argall Town.”

He broke off as Elizabeth snorted quietly at his presumption.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Excuse me,” Elizabeth said swiftly. “I sneezed.”

“I shall call it Argall Town,” Captain Argall repeated. “And there will always be a welcome there for you, John.” He glanced down at J’s adoring uplifted face. “And for you, J,” he said. “Never forget that you are a landowner in the new world, in virgin earth. When you are weary of this old country you have your stake in the new. When you want to be away from here, there will be your headright in virgin land.”

J nodded. “I won’t forget, sir.”

“And I shall take you to meet Princess Pocahontas,” Argall promised. “She is visiting in England and she has a kindness for me. I shall introduce you to her.”

J’s eyes grew rounder and his mouth dropped into a perfect circle of astonishment.

“She would not want to be troubled with us,” Elizabeth said quickly.

“Why not?” Captain Argall asked. “She would be delighted to make your acquaintance. Come up to London next week and I will introduce you. It is a promise.” He turned to J. “I promise you, you shall meet her.”

“Time for him to go to school,” Elizabeth interrupted firmly. “I am surprised, husband, that you linger so long.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Argall said, taking the hint. “And thank you for your hospitality, Mrs T. It’s always a pleasure to be entertained by such a lady.”

Elizabeth nodded, still unsmiling. “I wish you well in your ventures,” she said. “I hope that you make a profit, especially as it is our money you are venturing.”

Argall laughed without embarrassment. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he reminded her and took her hand in the way she disliked, and kissed it. Then he clapped John on the shoulder and the two men left the house with J bobbing behind, like an agitated duckling in the wake of two grand swans.

Argall was as good as his word and John took his son to London to see the Indian princess, traveling up on a wagon taking fruit to London market, staying overnight, and coming down the next day on the empty wagon.

Elizabeth tried not to encourage J’s excitement, but she could not hide her own interest. “Was she black?” she asked.

“Not at all!” J exclaimed. “Just brown, a beautiful lady, and she had a little baby on her knee. But she didn’t wear bear skins or anything, just ordinary clothes.”

“J was bitterly disappointed,” John said with a smile to his wife. “He expected something very savage and strange. All she is, is a pretty young woman with a little son. She calls herself Rebecca now and is baptized and married. You would pass her in the street and think nothing more but that she was a fine tall woman, a little tanned.”

“She said that there are boys and girls of my age who live in the forest and hunt deer,” J said. “And that they can fire a bow and spear a fish from four years old! And that they can make their own pots and sew their own clothes from deer hide, and—”

“She was making it up to amuse you,” Elizabeth said firmly.

“She was not!”

“She truly wasn’t,” John said gently. “I believed every word she said and I should so like to go, Elizabeth. Not to settle there, but just to take a look at our land and see what the prospects are. Not as planters to be there forever, but just to take a little run over there and see what the land is like. It sounds very fine—”

“A little run?” Elizabeth demanded. “You speak of the ocean as if it were the cart track to your orchards. Lord Wootton could not spare you from his garden. I could not spare you now we are settled here. It is six weeks at sea on a huge sea. Why can you not stay in the same place, John? Why can you not be at peace?”

He had no reply for that, and she knew he would have no reply.

“I am sorry,” he said at last. “I just long to see all there may be for me to see. And a new land would have new plants, don’t you think? Things that I might never have seen before. But you are right. I have my garden here, and Lord Wootton’s garden, and the house, and you and J. It is enough for me.”

Summer 1618

Elizabeth had prevented John from uprooting the whole family and setting off for Virginia, but when he had an invitation to go venturing to Russia — of all places — and it came with the blessing of his master and a recommendation that he should go, there was little she could do to stop him. It was the king’s business at the top of it, so no man in the country could refuse. The king wanted a new trade route to China and thought that Sir Dudley Digges might find one by making an agreement with the Russians. A loan of English gold coaxed from the coffers of the Muscovy and East India Companies was supposed to help.

Sir Dudley was a firm friend of Lord Wootton who wanted new plants for his garden. Sir Dudley said he needed a useful man and a seasoned traveler, not a gentleman who would be too proud to work, and not some dolt of a workingman who would be of no use in an emergency. Lord Wootton said he could have Tradescant, and Tradescant was as ready to leave as a bagged hare when the hounds are giving tongue.

All she could do was to help him pack his traveling bag, see that his traveling cloak was free of moth holes and tears and go down to the dockside at Gravesend with J — now a tall boy of ten years, and a King’s Scholar at Canterbury — at her side to wave farewell.

“And beware of the cold!” Elizabeth cautioned again.

“It may be Russia, but it is midsummer,” John replied. “Do you keep yourselves well, and J, mind your studies and care for your mother.”

The dockers scurried about, pushing past Elizabeth and her son. With a moment’s regret John saw that there were tears in her eyes. “I shall be back within three months,” he called over the widening gulf of water. “Perhaps earlier. Elizabeth!
Please
don’t fret!”

“Take care!” she called again but he could hardly hear her as the rowing barges took hold of the lines and the sailors cursed as they caught the ropes flung from the shore. Elizabeth and her son watched the boat move slowly downriver.

“I still don’t understand why he has to go,” J said, with the discontent of the schoolboy.

Elizabeth looked down at him. “Because he does his duty,” she said, with her natural loyalty to her husband. “Lord Wootton ordered him to go. It is unknown country; your father might find all sorts of treasures.”

“I think he just loves to travel,” J said resentfully. “And he doesn’t care that he leaves me behind.”

Elizabeth put her arm around her son’s unyielding shoulders. “When you are older you shall travel too. He will take you with him. Perhaps you will grow to be a great man like your father and be sent by lords on travels overseas.”

Baby J — her baby no longer — disengaged himself from her arm. “I shall go on my own account,” he said stiffly. “I shall not wait for someone to send me.”

The ship was in midriver now; the sails which had been slack when sheltered in the dock flapped like sheets on washing day. Elizabeth gripped her son’s arm.

“He is old to go venturing,” she said anxiously. “So far, and into such regions. What if he is taken ill? What if they get lost?”

“Not he,” J said with scorn. “But when I travel I shall go to the Americas. A boy at school has an uncle there and he has killed hundreds of savages and is planting a crop of tobacco. He says that a man who wants land can just cut it from the forests. And we have our land there. Father is going in the wrong direction; he should be going to our lands.”

Elizabeth’s eyes were still on the ship, which was picking up speed and moving smoothly downriver. “It’s never been owning land for him,” she said. “Never building a house or putting up a fence. It has always been discovering new things and making them grow. It has always been serving his lord.”

J pulled at her arm. “Can we have some dinner before I have to go back?”

Elizabeth patted his hand absently. “When he’s gone,” she said. “I want to see the ship out of port.”

J pulled away and went to the waterside. The river was sucking gently at the green stones. In the middle of the water, unseen by the boy, a beggar’s corpse rolled and turned over. The harvest had failed again and there was starvation in the streets of London.

In a moment Elizabeth joined him. Her eyelids were red but her smile was cheerful.

“There!” she said. “And now your father gave me half a crown to buy you an enormous dinner before we take the wagon home.”

John watched from the deck of the ship as his wife and son grew smaller and smaller, and then he could no longer pick them out at all. The sense of loss he felt as the land fell away was mingled with a leaping sense of freedom and excitement as the ship moved easily and faster and the waves grew greater. The voyage was to take them northward, hugging the coast of England, and then eastward, across the North Sea to the high ice-bound coast of Norway, and then onward to Russia.

Tradescant was as much on deck as any of the ship’s watch, and it was he who first spotted a great fleet of Dutch fishing ships taking cod and summer herring just south of Newcastle.

They weighed anchor at Newcastle and Tradescant went ashore to buy provisions for the journey. “Take my purse,” Sir Dudley offered. “And see if you can get some meat and some fish, John. My belly is as empty as a Jew’s charity box. I’ve been sick every day since we left London.”

John nodded and went ashore and marketed as carefully as Elizabeth might. He bought fresh salmon and fresh and salted meats, and by noising Sir Dudley’s name and mission much around Newcastle he was able to lead the Lord Mayor himself on a visit to the ship. And the Lord Mayor brought a barrel of salted salmon as a timely present for his lordship. When the ship was provisioned again they set out to cross the North Sea but the wind veered to the northwest and started to rise before they were more than a day out of port, skimming the white tops off the gray waves which grew steeper and more frequent.

Sir Dudley Digges was sick as a dog from the moment the wind veered, and many of his companions stayed below too, groaning and vomiting and calling on the captain to return to shore before they died of seasickness. John, rocking easily to the movement of the boat, stood in the prow and watched the waves come rolling from the horizon and the ship rise up and then fall down, rise up and fall down, again and again. One night, when Sir Dudley’s own manservant was ill, John sat at his bedside, and held his head as he vomited helplessly into the bowl.

“There,” said John gently.

“Good God,” Sir Dudley groaned. “I feel sick unto death. I have never felt worse in all my life.”

“You’ll survive,” John said with rough kindliness. “It never lasts longer than a few days.”

“Hold me,” Sir Dudley commanded. “I could weep like a girl for misery.”

Gently John raised the nobleman off the narrow bunk and let his head rest on John’s shoulder. Sir Dudley turned his face to John’s neck and drew in his warmth and strength. John tightened his grip and felt the racked body in his arms relax and slide into sleep. For an hour and more he knelt beside the bunk holding the man in his arms, trying to cushion him from the ceaseless rolling and crashing of the ship. Only when Sir Dudley was deeply, fast asleep, did John draw his numbed arm away and lay the man back down on his bed. For a moment he hesitated, looking down into that pale face, then he bent low and kissed him gently on the forehead, as if he were kissing Baby J and blessing his sleep, and then he went out.

As they drew farther north the wind wheeled around and became more steady but Sir Dudley could keep down no food. The little ship was halfway between Scotland and Norway when the captain came to Sir Dudley, who was wrapped in a thick cloak and seated on the deck for the air.

“We can go back or forward as you wish,” the captain said. “I don’t want your death on my conscience, my lord. You’re no seafarer. Perhaps we’d best head for home.”

Sir Dudley glanced at Tradescant, one arm slung casually around the bowsprit, looking out to sea.

“What d’you think, John?” he asked. His voice was still faint.

Tradescant glanced back and then drew closer.