J agreed, remembering his father’s regular warnings against gossip that could be overheard as treason.
‘Then I’ll say no more,’ the carter remarked. ‘And see how you like it when they knock on your door and tell you that now there is a monopoly declared on the dirt in your garden and you have to pay a fine of ten per cent to some courtier if you want to plant in it. Because that’s what’s happened to every other trade in the kingdom while the king taxes the traders but won’t call a parliament which could tax the gentry for their rents.’
The man paused, waiting for a shocked response. J discreetly kept silent.
‘You’ll have heard that the Scots have sworn they won’t read their prayers from the new book?’
‘No?’
The man nodded. ‘All of ’em. Taken against Archbishop Laud’s prayer book. Say they won’t read a word of it. Archbishop is put out. King is put out. Some say he’ll make ’em, some say he can’t make ’em. Why should a king order what you say to God?’
‘I don’t know,’ J said tactfully. ‘I’ve no opinion on the matter.’ And he tipped his hat over his eyes and dozed as the wagon jolted down the familiar road to his home.
He did not lift his hat as they went down the South Lambeth road towards the common; but he looked sharply all around him from under the brim. It was all well. His father’s house still stood proudly, set back from the road, the little bridge spanning the stream that ran alongside the road. It was a handsome farmhouse in the old timbered style, but on the side of the house was the ambitious new wing, commissioned by his father for the housing of the rarities, their great collection of oddities from the monstrous to the miniature. At the back of the house was the garden which made their name and their livelihood, and the rarities room overlooked the garden through its great windows of Venetian glass. J, taught by a long-standing habit, looked at the ground as the cart drove around the south side of the building so that he did not see his father’s vainglorious stone crest, affixed to the new wing in defiance both of the college of heralds and of the simple truth. They were not Tradescant esquires and never had been, but John Tradescant, his father, had drawn up and then commissioned a stonemason to carve his own crest; and nothing J could say could persuade him to take it down.
J directed the carter past the rarities room, where the terrace overlooked the orderly gardens, on to the stable yard so that the plants could be unloaded directly beside the pump for watering. The stable lad, looking out over the half-door, saw the waving tops of small trees in the cart and shouted, ‘The master’s home!’ and came tumbling out into the yard.
They heard him in the kitchen and the maid came running up the hall and flung open the back door as J mounted the steps to the terrace and stepped into his house.
At once he recoiled in surprise. A woman he did not know, dark-haired, sober-faced, with a pleasant confident smile, came down the stairs, hesitated when she saw him looking up at her, and then came steadily on.
‘How d’you do,’ she said formally, and gave him a small nod of her head, as if she were a man and an equal.
‘Who the devil are you?’ J asked abruptly.
She looked a little awkward. ‘Will you come in here?’ she said, and showed him into his own parlour. The maid was on her hands and knees lighting the fire. The woman waited until the flame had caught and then dismissed the girl with a quick gesture of her hand.
‘I am Hester Pooks,’ she said. ‘Your father invited me to stay here.’
‘Why?’ J demanded.
Hester hesitated. ‘I imagine you don’t know …’ She broke off. ‘I am very sorry to have to tell you that your father is dead.’
He gasped and swayed. ‘My father?’
She nodded, saying nothing.
J dropped into a chair and was silent for a long moment. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised … but it is a dreadful shock … I know he was a great age, but he was always …’
She took a chair opposite him without invitation, and sat quietly, folding her hands in her lap. When J turned to her she was waiting, judging her time to tell him more.
‘He didn’t suffer at all,’ she said. ‘He grew very tired, over the winter, and he went to bed to rest. He died very peacefully, just as if he fell asleep. We had brought many of his flowers into his room. He died surrounded by them.’
J shook his head, still incredulous. ‘I wish I had been here,’ he said. ‘I wish to God I had been here.’
Hester paused. ‘God is very merciful,’ she said gently. ‘At the moment of his death he thought that he saw you. He was waiting and waiting for you to return, and he woke as his bedroom door opened, and he thought that he saw you. He died thinking that you had come safe home. I know that he died happy, thinking that he had seen you.’
‘He said my name?’ J asked.
She nodded. ‘He said: “Oh! You at last!”’
J frowned. The old fear that he was not first in his father’s heart returned to him. ‘But did he say my name? Was it clear that he meant me?’
Hester paused for a moment and then looked into the gentle, vulnerable face of the man that she meant to marry. She lied easily. ‘Oh yes,’ she said firmly. ‘He said: “Oh! You at last!”, and then as he lay back on the pillow he said “J.”’
J paused, and took it all in. Hester watched him in silence.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to go on without him. The Ark, and the gardens, the royal gardens – I have always worked beside him. I have lost my employer and my master as well as my father.’
She nodded. ‘He left a letter for you.’
J watched her as she crossed the room and took the sealed letter from a drawer in the table.
‘I think it’s about me,’ she said bluntly.
J paused as he took it from her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.
She took a little breath. ‘I am Hester Pooks. I’m all but alone in the world. Your father liked me, and my uncle told him I had a good dowry. I met him at court. My uncle is a painter, commissioned by the queen. My family is a good family, all artists and musicians, all with royal or noble patrons.’ She paused and smiled. ‘But not much money. Your father thought I might suit you. He wanted to make sure that there was someone to bring up his grandchildren, and to keep them here. He didn’t want them living in London with your wife’s parents. He thought I would marry you.’
J’s jaw dropped open. ‘He has found me a wife? I’m a man of thirty years of age and he found me a wife as if I were a boy? And he chose you?’
Hester looked him squarely in the face. ‘I’m no beauty,’ she said. ‘I imagine your wife was lovely. Frances is such a pretty girl, and they tell me she takes after her mother. But I can run a house, and I can run a business, I love plants and trees and a garden, and I like children, I like your children. Whether or not you want to marry me, I should like to be a friend to Frances in particular. It would suit me to marry you and I wouldn’t make great demands on you. I don’t
