Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

But Charles had gone. He had given his word, his word of honor as a king, and then slipped away in the night. He rode with two gentlemen to the New Forest where he had hunted so often with Buckingham in the old days, and taken a boat across to the Isle of Wight, putting his faith in the belief that the governor, Robert Hammond, would take his part on the slight evidence that Hammond had once said he disliked the Levelers in the army, because he was a nephew of one of the king’s chaplains, and cousin, many times removed, to the Marquess of Winchester.

“He trusted a man because he knows his uncle?” John asked Hester in despair as they sat by the fireside before going to bed.

She shook her head. “Oh, John. What else could he do but dodge and dive and scrape about?”

“He could come to an agreement!” John exclaimed. “And have his throne again!”

She picked up the sewing from her lap. “He is the king,” she said. “He would not feel that he has to agree. He has always thought that others should agree with him.”

Hester was right. When the king arrived at Carisbrooke Castle and found that Governor Hammond imprisoned him, rather than hailing him as a hero, he gave his parole and immediately set to scheming. He sent secret messages to the Scots and told them that he was ready now to agree to the very things he had sworn he would never accept when he had been their prisoner. The Scots, tempted by the thought of a king who would accept their parliament and their church, secretly betrayed their allies, the English Parliament, and made a secret solemn engagement to restore Charles to his throne. In return he swore that for a trial period of three years he would abolish the position of bishops and run the English church on the Scottish model. He promised that all the senior posts in the land (and their fat fees) would be given to Scotsmen.

But Charles was no better at keeping his secrets than keeping his word. News of the agreement soon leaked out, especially when a proposal from the English Parliament was insultingly rejected by the king who was visibly, excessively, puffed up with confidence. Soon everyone knew that the king was dealing a false hand again.

“He would make an alliance with the Scots Covenanters?” Johnnie asked his father in bewilderment. “But he refused to agree with them for all those months at Newark.”

“He has changed his mind,” John said quietly. “He wants to make a new agreement. He wants to beat Parliament and Cromwell’s army at any price. He hated the covenanting Scots and could not agree with them, but they are now the only allies he can get. He is agreeing to things he denied completely only a few months ago. He refused them when he was their prisoner but now he has been seized by the English army he is looking kindly on the Scots again.”

Johnnie scowled. “So what does he believe in?” he demanded in exasperation. “I thought that he would never give up the English church and the bishops. You told me he thought that was sacred. You told me he would never give up his rights as a king.”

“I think now he is looking to survive,” John said grimly. “And if he can get back on the throne then who can force him to keep to agreements he made when he was in prison?”

“He would play false?”

John softened at the sight of his son’s distress. “A king must be on his throne,” he said gently. “You can understand that he might think it was worth anything to get back to his place.”

“And will he do it?” Johnnie asked. “Will he come back to London? Will I see him on his throne?”

John shook his head. “They’ll never let him off the Isle of Wight again,” he said. “I wouldn’t, if I were General Cromwell.”

John was in his garden, planting out his tender rarities which had wintered in the orangery. The great tufted American daisy was putting out fresh shoots from its rosette of leaves, and the Virginian woodbine was throwing out scarlet snaky shoots with little unfurling green leaves from its dry, dead-looking trunk. John thought for a moment of Suckahanna with the scarlet honeysuckle flowers in her dark hair, and the nighttime scent of honeysuckle on their sleeping platform when he kissed her neck and crushed the flowers beneath his cheek. He patted the earth gently around the roots, saw that the climber could extend and find footholds on the strings hammered in to the rough wall and then turned his back on them to admire his tulip beds.

“There is nothing, nothing to compare with them,” he remarked to Hester as she came down the path toward him. Then he broke off abruptly at the sight of her face. “What’s wrong?”

He glanced toward the lane as if he feared a troop of horse there. Even with the king imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle no man could be certain that the nation would stay at peace. There were too many nations that might wish to meddle, there were too many armies that the queen or Prince Charles might prevail upon to muster.

“I don’t know,” Hester said, producing a letter from her apron pocket. “A letter. For you. From the Parliamentary commissioners.”

John scowled and held out his hand. He broke the seal, spread the paper, read it, and then read it again. He chuckled incredulously.

“What is it?” Hester demanded, trying to read upside down.

“I am to go to Oatlands and make good,” John said. “Who would have thought it? They want me to mend the walks in the vineyard garden and mow the bowling green, and make good.” He paused and looked up at her. “How times change and yet change not at all,” he observed. “I am gardener to Oatlands Palace still it seems, though there is no king and no court to see my work.”

“You’ll go-” she suggested, looking at him warily.

He folded the letter, very businesslike. “Of course. Why not?”

“I thought you might have some feeling that you wouldn’t garden for them, where you had gardened for the king, and for her.”

John shook his head. Unconsciously he put out a hand and tucked a stray shoot of the Virginian woodbine beneath a guiding piece of twine nailed into the wall. “I’ve been torn all my life, Hester. I’m growing quite resigned to divided loyalties.”

“Johnnie’ll take it hard,” she said. “He’s held to being one of the king’s gardeners through all this time.”

“We’re gardeners to the best gardens in the kingdom,” John said firmly. “And Oatlands has always been one of the best. I’d stay faithful to my garden before I stayed faithful to any master, you know that. Especially a master as faithless and as changeable as the king. The garden comes first, Hester. If someone will pay me to plant it and tend to it I’ll go at once and I’ll take Johnnie to help me. He has to learn. King or no king, we have to work for our living. And our living is the gardens. Our great duty is to the gardens.”

“But why would Parliament care for the gardens?” Hester mused. “With so much else to do? And they were the queen’s own gardens. Unless they’re putting them in order for her return? And there’s been some secret agreement?”

John shook his head. “Could be. Or maybe they’re just men of sense. If the king never returns and Parliament owns Oatlands and all the other royal palaces, then they will sell it at a better profit if it is set in a handsome garden and not in a wilderness. But if the king comes back to his own again and finds it overgrown, then he will only make them pay to set it right.”

“Will you be gone long?” she asked.

“A month at least,” he replied. “I have duties now, Hester. I am gardener to the Parliamentary commissioners! I am a Parliament man!”

She laughed with him. “But Johnnie may not find it so easy to change masters,” she warned.