Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

The Mercury sailed in, obeying orders.

“Please God he does not put us ashore and expect us to scale the walls,” Tradescant muttered into his neckerchief. He looked back at his men. They were waiting grim-faced for Tradescant to lead them; ahead of them were the high walls of the fort with the sharply etched windows where a dozen muskets waited for the English to come into range, clearly visible on the water which was brightening with the morning light and shielded neither by mist nor smoke.

Captain Pett sailed inward, obeying his orders to the letter, but with a man at his elbow with a telescope trained on the commander’s ship, waiting for a signal. At last the flag reluctantly fluttered out.

“Retreat ordered,” shouted the man with the telescope.

“Retreat!” Captain Pett bawled. At once the drum began to beat and the other English ships wheeled around and started forcing their way, against the prevailing wind, back out of the harbor mouth.

The rest of the fleet sent in barges and took the ships in tow. It was an ignominious end to an attack, but John caught a rope and made it fast, feeling as lighthearted as a lad. The desire for battle had been replaced completely with a profound longing for the safety and comfort of his home.

Elizabeth greeted John home with a touch of coolness. She had been painfully aware that he had left despite her wishes, and she had prayed every night that he would be spared so that he could come home and they could start again, start as friends and lovers again. But when he walked into the Canterbury cottage, not a scratch on him, his face tanned and smiling, and a small wagon of plants waiting outside in the lane, her most powerful feeling was deep irritation.

John sent the wagon on to Lord Wootton’s garden with orders to see that the plants were unloaded and watered, and came into the house asking for a bath and that his linen be burned on the kitchen fire.

“It’s lousy,” he said. “It has driven me mad for days.”

Elizabeth set water to heat, pulled out the big wooden washtub and set it on the stone flags of the floor. John stripped off his clothes and left them at a heap near the door.

“God be praised, I am glad to be home,” he said and gave her a smile. She did not smile back at him, nor did she come into his arms and put her face against his warm bare chest. John did not hold out his arms. He was afraid he might smell and he knew his head and his beard harbored lice. But he would have been glad of a greeting which was passionate, or even affectionate. Elizabeth pouring hot water into the tub offered a dutiful welcome, not an exciting one.

“I am glad to see you safe home,” she said calmly, and put on another pot of water to heat.

John tested the water with his foot and then stepped in. Elizabeth handed him the washball of herbs tied in cotton, and a bowl of sludgy soap.

“I was afraid you might be fired on, sailing past the Spanish coast,” she said. “There were rumors that the fleet would go against Spain.”

“I would have thought you would have been glad to see me put a cannonball into the heart of papistry,” John observed, sitting in a bath of soapy water and sponging the salty grime of several months’ voyage off his neck.

“Not if they fired back,” she said. “And anyway, I thought your quarrel was with the infidels.”

John splashed water into his face and puffed out like a grampus whale. “We had orders which could be read any way you wanted,” he said. “It makes no sense to me. When I leave the garden for any length of time I say to the gardeners, take care of this, and when this flowers do this. I don’t say to them, use your judgment, do as you wish. And that way, when I come home again, I know if they have done well or badly, and they know it too.”

“But the king?” Elizabeth asked.

John lowered his voice. “The king gave them orders which told them to attack the infidel and release our poor captured countrymen, and gave them secret orders to attack Spain, and then orders which were to be open which told them to respect Spain as an ally.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “This is dishonesty,” she said flatly.

John smiled, as if at an old half-forgotten joke. “It’s practice. But not principle.”

“It’s a sin.”

John looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re very sure what makes a sin and what does not, my wife. Are you setting up to be a preacher like your father?”

To his surprise she did not laugh and disclaim, as she would have done only a few years before. “I am studying my Bible more than I have done before,” she told him. “There is a lecturer who teaches me and some other women on Wednesday nights. He’s a man of much learning and wisdom too. And I find I am thinking of things with more care than when I was a girl full of folly.”

John bent his knees awkwardly in the little wooden tub to get his shoulders under the suds. “I don’t remember you as full of folly,” he remarked. “I always thought you were a God-fearing serious woman.”

Elizabeth nodded and again he saw the new gravity about her. “These are fearful times,” she said. “The plague seems to get worse every summer and no one can tell where it strikes. There are rumors about a king and a court who don’t walk in the way of the Lord. And a church which does not reproach them.”

John straightened and rose up from his bath, water cascading all over the floor. Elizabeth handed him a linen sheet and he threw it around his shoulders. She was carefully looking away as if the sight of her husband’s nakedness might lead her into sin. It was that turning away of her head which tripped John into irritation.

“We don’t repeat gossip about the king in this household,” he said flatly. And when Elizabeth was about to argue he held up his hand. “It’s not a matter of piety or truth, Elizabeth. It’s a lesson I learned from my lord. We don’t gossip against the king. The price is too high if you’re overheard. Whatever you are reading at your classes, you keep your mind on your Bible and off King James and his court, or you won’t go again.”

For a moment she looked as if she might argue. “Does this man preach against the authority of God vested in men over their wives?” he demanded.

She dropped her head. “Of course not.”

John nodded, hiding his sense of immense smugness. “Good.”

“You know that all I have ever wanted is for you to come home and stay home,” Elizabeth said, dragging the big bath toward the back door where it could be tipped into the yard. “If you had been home I would have had no time to go to meetings.”

John gave her a sharp look. “Don’t lay it at my door,” he said. “You can go where your conscience leads you as long as it does not take you into treason or into denying the authority of those set over you. All of those set over you. Me as your husband, my lord above me, the king above him, and God above him.”

She flung open the door so a cool wind blew in around John’s bare legs. “I would never deny God’s authority,” she said. “And I have not denied the authority of men. Mind you don’t catch cold.”

John turned abruptly and went to the bedroom to get dressed.

“Should we not transplant that chestnut?” J asked his father. John was leaning on his spade, watching his coltish fourteen-year-old son at work. “It must be getting too big for that box,” J said.

“I gave that to your mother the year we were married,” John said reminiscently. “Sir Robert and I bought a dozen of them – no, half a dozen. Five I planted for him at Hatfield and one I gave to your mother. She kept it in a pot at Meopham, and then I moved it into the carrying box when we went to Hatfield, with you so little on the bench seat of the wagon that your feet didn’t reach the board.”