Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

“It’s not that.” Johnnie’s voice came over the still water, she could barely see the boat now in the twilight. “All that you say about him is true. I was with him at Worcester long enough to see that he is light, as you say. Lighthearted and lightweight. But I don’t grieve for the loss of him as a man, I grieve for the loss of everything that kingship means. The loss of the court, the loss of a nation under one ruler, the loss of the beauty of the Church and music and color, the loss of certainty of every man having a master. The loss of the gardens, the loss of the palaces. The loss of our gardens.”

“We still have the Ark,” she said.

“One little garden, more like a farm than a garden,” he said dismissively. “We’re getting a grand reputation for growing onions. This is nothing to a family which had Oatlands, or Hatfield, or Theobalds. Even Wimbledon. All we have now is a tiny patch of ground and no one plants great gardens anymore.”

“They will do again,” she said. “The country is at peace once more, they will plant gardens again.”

“They’ll plant turnips,” Johnnie predicted. “And marrows. Like father is growing for them. I saw Oatlands Palace and I saw them uproot it, rose by rose. And now the building is pulled down and they made a canal bed with the stone. They didn’t even try to make another building of beauty. There’s nothing for me to do with my life, there’s nothing to do in this country anymore. I am a gardener, a gardener who needs great palaces. A physic garden and a vegetable patch is not enough for me.”

“You’ll find something,” Hester urged him. “You’ll find your own way, even if it is not our garden, nor a garden fit for a king. You’re young, you will find your way.”

“I’ll never be a king’s gardener in England,” he said slowly. “That was my inheritance and now I can’t have it. There is nothing left for me.”

The boat was drifting away a little to the other side of the lake. Hester paused, taking in the tranquility of the scene: the sky slowly turning from blue to indigo, the color of Tradescant spiderwort. The stars were like silver pinheads against navy cloth. The evening air was cool against her cheek, sweet with the scent of windfall apples, and late-flowering wallflowers.

“We spent hours and hours here together when you were a little boy,” she said tenderly. “You used to beg to come down here to feed the ducks. D’you remember?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I remember feeding the ducks.”

She waited, and when he did not say any more, she rose to her feet. “Shall I stay with you?” she asked him tenderly. “Would you like some company?”

“No,” he said and his voice seemed to come from a long way over the still water. “I’ll spend a little time on my own, Mother. I’ll come home when I can be merry again.”

Johnnie was not at breakfast.

“Where is he?” John demanded. “I would have expected him to apologize to Lord Lambert last night.”

“He may have gone into Lambeth and had a late night,” Hester replied diplomatically and she spoke over her shoulder to Cook. “Would you call Johnnie, Cook?”

Mary Ashmole, a paying guest for the season, helped herself to a slice of ham. “Young men,” she remarked indulgently.

They could hear Cook laboring up the stairs and then the creak of the floorboards over their heads as she opened Johnnie’s door, and then her coming down the stairs again. Her face when she came into the dining room was bright with mischief. “He’s not there!” she announced, smiling. “And his bed’s not been slept in.”

Hester’s first thought was not of the ale houses of Lambeth, but that he had run away to join Charles Stuart’s court, ridden to the docks and taken a ship to Europe to be with the prince. “Is his horse in the stable?” she asked urgently.

John took one look at her white face and went quickly from the room. Mary Ashmole rose, hesitated.

“Please don’t disturb yourself, Mrs. Ashmole,” Hester said, recovering. “Do finish your breakfast. I expect my son stayed with friends and forgot to send a message.”

She followed John to the stable yard. Caesar’s head was nodding over the stable door. John was questioning the stable lad.

“He didn’t take his horse out last night,” he said to Hester. “No one has seen him since yesterday.”

“Send the boy down to Lambeth and see if he went there,” Hester said.

“This could be much ado for nothing,” John warned her. “If he is drunk under an ale-house table he won’t thank us for sending a search party out.”

She hesitated.

“If he’s not back by midday I’ll go down to Lambeth myself,” John decided.

At midday John took Caesar and rode down to the village but soon came home again. Johnnie had not been in the ale house, and was not staying with any of his friends in the village.

“Perhaps he was walking to Lambeth and had some accident on the road,” Hester suggested.

“He’s not a baby,” John said. “He knows how to fight. And run. Besides, you know Johnnie: he’d always ride rather than walk. If he was going any distance he’d take his horse.”

“If there was a gang of thieves?” Hester suggested. “Or a press gang?”

“The press gang wouldn’t take him, he’s obviously a gentleman,” John said.

“Then where can he be?” Hester demanded.

“You saw him after dinner,” John said. “Did he say anything?”

“He was in his boat,” she said. “He always goes there when he wants to be alone and to think. He knew he was wrong to speak out to Lord Lambert, he promised he would apologize to you and to his lordship. I asked him if he wanted me to stay with him and he said he would come home later.”

She paused. “He said he would come home,” she said. Her voice sounded less and less certain. “He said he would come home when he was merry again.”

John suddenly scowled as if he had been struck by a pang of pain. He crossed the yard and took her hand. “Go and sit with Mary Ashmole,” he ordered.

“Why?”

“I’m just going to have a look round, that’s all.”

“You’re going to the lake,” she said flatly.

“Yes, I am. I’m going to check that the boat is tied up and the oars stowed and then we will know that he rowed ashore and met with some mischance, or changed his mind about coming home.”

“I’ll come too,” she said.

John recognized the impossibility of ordering Hester indoors, started to walk toward the avenue, Hester at his side.

Even in autumn the orchard was too lush for the lake to be seen from the main avenue. Hester and John had to turn away from the chestnut trees to the path that ran westward before they could see the unruffled pewter surface of the water.

It was very quiet. The birds were singing. At the sound of their footsteps a heron rose up from the water’s edge and flapped away with its ungainly legs trailing and its long neck working like a pump handle with each arduous wingbeat. The surface was like a mirror, reflecting the blue sky, untroubled by any movement except the speckling of flies and the occasional plop of a rising fish. The boat floated in the middle of the lake, the oars shipped, its painter trailing in the water tying it to the reflected boat bobbing below.

For a moment Hester thought that Johnnie had fallen asleep in the bottom of the boat, had curled his long legs up inside the little rowing boat and that when they called out his name he would sit up, rub his eyes, and laugh at his folly. But the boat was empty.

John paused for a moment and walked out along the little landing stage and looked down into the water. He could see green weed and the gleam of a brown trout but nothing else. He turned and walked steadily back to the house.