John took her hand again, kissed it and then caught her to him and held her hard against him. “I shall come back!” he said passionately. “Trust me, Hester. I shall come back to you. And God willing we will make this country a place where poor men can be free.”
He came back within a fortnight. All three men who had been so powerful in Hester’s life came back to their separate destinations: John Lambert to the Tower on a charge of high treason, Charles Stuart to Dover and the road to London lined with people crowding to touch his sacred hand, and John, head drooping, home to the Ark.
Caesar clip-clopped toward his stable, his ears back, his head low. John dropped off his back in the stable yard and fell to his knees as his legs buckled under him. The garden lad ran to raise him and shouted for Cook. She took one look out of the kitchen door and called for Frances and Hester who were tidying the rarities room.
Hester ran out to the terrace and then round the corner to the stable yard to find John seated on the mounting block, rubbing his stiff muscles. He tried to get to his feet when he saw her, but she went to him and put her arms around him.
“Are you injured?”
“Heartsick.”
“Hurt in your body?”
“No.”
“Your legs?”
“I’m just stiff. I’m too old, Hester, to ride all day and all night.”
“Was there a battle?”
“There was a skirmish. We were hopelessly outnumbered. On the day when it mattered, when it mattered more than anything in the world, there were not enough men ready to stand up and fight for their liberty.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held his weary head close to her heart. She found she was rocking him as she used to rock Johnnie when he woke from a nightmare.
“There was hardly anyone there,” John said flatly. “Lambert was captured almost straight away. They didn’t even bother with us. It was him they wanted. He would have got away but his horse was tired, we were all tired. And discouraged. Because when it really mattered there were not enough men ready to stand up and fight for their liberty.”
He pulled back and stared up into her face as if she could answer him. “Why is it?” he demanded. “Why is it that people can see so clearly when it is a question of their safety or their wealth, or their comfort? But when it is a question of their freedom they leave it for someone else to defend. They don’t see how they come to their freedom. They don’t realize that if the bargees at Wapping are unjustly taxed and the miners in the Forest of Dean are excluded from their rights, if the commoners are driven from the commons and the rich and the mighty encroach, then we are all at risk – even if it is not our own gardens which are taken. Even if it is not yet our rights which are threatened. Why don’t people see it? When governments persecute the sick, the poor, the women, then everyone has to stand up and defend them. Why don’t people see that?”
Hester looked into his angry face for a moment and then pulled him back to her and held him against her heart. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “You would think people would know by now that when there is an evil you should stop it at once.”
Summer 1660
Charles Stuart, who was to be known as Charles the Second, came home to a country mad with joy. People wanted to get back to a system that everyone knew, many of them hoped to gain from a change of government: a chance to settle old scores and regain old ground. Quakers, sectaries, Roman Catholics and a number of old women who could be named as witches by spiteful neighbors felt the brunt of popular confidence which expected the new king to restore the old persecutions as well as freedoms. Commoners all around the country helped themselves to firewood, poached from the royal forests and the derelict parks, and there was a great rush of burglary from the empty palaces before the new royal servants came to stock-take.
The new king set up a new Privy Council and the great English cake of rewards and places was sliced up between royalists and their friends; but Charles took some care to see that experienced men and those from wealthy or noble families were recruited to office whatever they had done in the wars against his father. Those who had been party to the trial and execution of his father only lost their places of power and were fined, if they fled England.
“I think he’ll release John Lambert,” Frances said, bent over a newspaper spread out on the kitchen table. “It says here that the House of Lords seeks his death but the House of Commons wants him reprieved.”
“Will he be free?” Hester asked, looking up from shelling peas.
Frances shook her head. “It doesn’t say. But if I was Charles Stuart I don’t think I’d want Lord Lambert at the head of a regiment again.”
A month after the king was restored to the throne Elias Ashmole asked and got the place of a Windsor Herald. He came to visit the Ark wearing his new regalia, to suggest that John should publish a new edition of the catalogue.
“It should be dedicated to His Majesty,” Elias urged John as they sat on the terrace in the sunshine and looked over the garden which was in full summer bloom. “Think, if he were to come to visit! His father did, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” John said. “With the queen.”
“I hear she’s coming from France in the autumn,” Ashmole said enthusiastically. “We should have a new edition published by then. I’ll pay for it, if you wish. I have some money put by.”
“I can pay!” John said, nettled. “I’ll compose a dedication.”
“I have one already,” Elias said and produced from the deep pocket of his coat a folded manuscript. “Here.”
John spread the paper on the table.
To the sacred majesty of Charles the II
John Tradescant, His Majesties most obedient and most loyal subject in all humility offereth these collections.
Frances, looking over John’s shoulder, let out a little gurgle of laughter. “I don’t know if you’re his most obedient subject,” she remarked. “He surely has some servants that didn’t spend the wars as far away as they could get.”
John turned his laugh into a cough. “Frances, go about your business,” he said sternly and turned to Elias. “I apologize.”
“A flighty woman,” Ashmole said disapprovingly. “But if there is any question about your loyalty then you cannot affirm it too loudly, you know, John.”
John nodded.
“Fortunately you have the record of your son’s service,” Elias remarked. “You could always say he died at Worcester. Or died here of his wounds.”
Hester, coming to the terrace with a tray and three glasses of madeira wine, checked at that and exchanged a shocked look with her husband.
“We wouldn’t do that,” John said briefly. He got to his feet and took the tray from Hester’s hands. “Look at this that Mr. Ashmole has prepared for the printer for me. A new dedication for the front of the catalogue. Dedicated to His Majesty.”
She leaned over the table and read it carefully. To his surprise when she straightened up there were tears in her eyes.
“Hester?”
She turned a little away from the table so Elias Ashmole could not see her face. John followed her.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
“I was just thinking how proud Johnnie would have been,” she said simply. “To see our name on the same page as the king’s. To have the collection dedicated to the king.”
John nodded. “Yes, he would have been,” he said. “His cause won the war in the end.” He turned to Elias Ashmole. “I thank you for your help, Elias. Let’s get it printed at once.”
Elias nodded. “I’ll deliver it to the printers on my way home,” he said cheerfully. “It’s no trouble. I’m glad you approve.”