Philippa Gregory: Virgin Earth

John took his gardening cape hung on a hook near the door, wrapped it around her shoulders, then turned and looked out over the garden, leaning on the rail of the terrace. He thought of the many hours his father had spent, leaning on the rail and looking out at his trees, at his beloved chestnut avenue.

The night was kind to the garden, the trees were as beautiful as black lace against the sky which was slowly growing blue. Somewhere amid the rare plum trees a robin was starting to sing, its haunting ghostly song enhancing the silence. Farther down the orchard a duck, disturbed in its sleep beside the lake, quacked once briefly and then was still.

John leaned his head in his hands and blotted out the garden. “He will have it all when I am gone, Hester. He was witty and helpful, and I thought I was doing a clever thing. And now my head is fit to split and I know that you are married to a fool. There will be no Tradescant collection to carry my father’s name to future generations, they will call it the Ashmolean and we will all be forgotten.”

He thought for a moment that she would cry out against him and beat him, but she had turned away and was reading the document by the light of the setting moon. In the pallor of the moonlight she looked sick with the shock. “I have broken my promise to your father,” she said in a low voice. “I told him I would guard your children and guard the rarities. I lost Johnnie and now I have lost the rarities too.”

John shook his head. “You lost nothing,” he said passionately. “Johnnie died thinking kings were glorious heroes, not timeserving lechers. He died because he could not bear to live in the new world that the time-servers were making. And it was me that did this; not you. I did it all from my own folly. Because I thought Ashmole was cleverer than me. That’s why I was glad to be his friend. That’s why I wanted his help with the catalogue of the treasures. And now I wish to God I had inherited my father’s caution as well as his treasures. Because I could not keep the one without the other.”

“It might fail,” she said. “This – paper. We could say you were drunk when you signed…”

“I would have to prove more than being drunk. I would have to prove that I was mad for it to fail,” he said. “And being a fool is not the same as being mad.”

“We could cut off the seal, and the signature, and deny it…”

He shook his head again, not answering for a moment. “We can try but he has the law on his side, and he knows the lawyers. I think there is no escape from my folly. I have failed you and I have failed my father.” He thought for a moment. “I had no heir,” he continued with deep sorrow. “No one to come here after me. And now there will be nothing here, anyway.

“I thought my father’s name, my name, my son’s name would live forever,” he said wonderingly, looking out over the dark garden, thinking of the riches hidden safe in the frozen soil, waiting for the sun. “I thought everyone who ever planted a garden would know of us three, would be glad of what we had done. I thought every garden in England would grow a little brighter because of the plants we had brought home. I thought that as long as people loved their gardens and loved trees and shrubs and flowers there would be people who would remember us. But I have thrown it all away. My life’s work, my father’s life’s work: it will all mean nothing. Elias Ashmole will have it all and we will be forgotten.”

Hester stepped forward so she could lean her head on his shoulder, the warmth of her body was familiar and comforting. He put his arm around her and held her close. A little breeze went through the orchard and Tradescant’s trees; fifty-seven new plum trees, forty-nine new apple trees, forty-nine new pear trees, twenty-four new cherry trees moved their branches in a gentle dance. Before them the great branches of the chestnut avenue bobbed, their up-winging boughs carrying the hidden sweet spikes of their buds, their proud, broad trunks strong and still. In the orangery, safe in the warmth, were the rare and tender plants, the exotic, precious plants which the Tradescants, father and son, had brought from all over the world for the gardeners of England to love.

“We will be forgotten,” John whispered.

Hester leaned back and picked a sweet-scented winter-flowering jasmine bud, one of the first ever grown in England. The unfurling petals were cream in the yellow moonlight. The tears were hot on her cheeks, but her voice was confident.

“Oh no, they will remember you,” she said. “I think the gardeners of England will remember you with gratitude one hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years from now, and every park in England will have one of our horse chestnut trees, and every garden one of our flowers.”