Virgin Earth

by Philippa Gregory

  Mordaunt checked suddenly as Hester came up the steps to the little wooden terrace. ‘Ssshh! Hush!’ he hissed.

  Hester glanced interrogatively at John.

  ‘This gentleman is leaving,’ John said. ‘I’ll show him out.’

  Mordaunt hesitated. ‘When he of whom we were speaking comes back to London you will regret that you did not assist me,’ he warned.

  John nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and showed the man through the double doors of the terrace and into the hall. Frances emerged from the kitchen and stood beside Hester as John eased their unwelcome guest towards the front door.

  ‘When he of whom we were speaking is in his rightful place again then there will be a grave reckoning,’ Mordaunt threatened. ‘When he is where he should be then he will want to know where you were on the day of which I have spoken.’

  ‘If you mean Charles Stuart,’ Frances’s voice rang out clearly in the hall, ‘then calling him “he of whom you were speaking” is hardly a brilliant disguise. And if that is your idea of deep concealment then I don’t anticipate great success, on the day of which you have spoken, or any other day, actually.’

  Mordaunt exchanged one angry look with her, crammed his hat on his head and flung open the front door. ‘When he of whom we were speaking is where he belongs again, then women, especially interfering spinsters, will be kept where they belong,’ he said crossly to Frances and stormed out of the door.

  Frances lifted up her skirts and ran after him to stand on the front step. ‘And we all know where Charles Stuart likes his women!’ she shouted down the street to his rapidly retreating back. ‘Up against a wall!’

  ‘Should I warn Major General Lambert?’ John asked Hester as they prepared for bed that night.

  ‘That Charles Stuart is preparing an uprising?’ she asked. She twisted her hair into a loose knot and tied her cap on her head. ‘He must know already. There’s been nothing but promises of another royal invasion ever since Cromwell died.’

  ‘I don’t like to be a spy,’ John said uneasily. ‘But I don’t like being drawn in.’

  Hester chuckled. ‘I doubt they’ll come again for help to you after what Frances said.’

  John shook his head, smiling. ‘What a fishwife!’ he said. ‘What ever would Alexander have thought?’

  ‘He knew her,’ Hester said. ‘It would have come as no surprise to him. She was never a docile girl.’

  ‘She’s a complete trooper,’ John said. ‘I think you must have brought her up very badly, my wife.’

  Hester gleamed at him and got into bed. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘But she’s a woman who knows her own mind. Give me credit for that at least.’

  In the morning John wrote a note to John Lambert and sent it to him at Whitehall.

  Your lordship,

  I have heard that there is to be an uprising for Charles Stuart on 1 August. I know no more than this, and I wish with all my heart that I did not know this.

  John Tradescant.

  He received a reply brought by one of Lambert’s troopers, a man with a head like a cannon ball and a wide toothless grin.

  Mr Tradescant,

  If this is the first you have heard of the uprising then you are too much out of the way in Lambeth. They came to try to recruit me for it in June.

  In any case, thank you for your loyalty to our great republic.

  Lambert.

  Lambert might joke about the royalist indiscretion but there was enough support for their cause for there to be uprisings all over the country. Every village, every town, was divided again between men who would fight for their liberties and men who would fight for their king. Some of them wanted a more lasting solution than a succession of argumentative parliaments. Some of them wanted a return to the old days of inefficient tax collection, and sports in the churchyard on Sunday. Some of them wanted the rich rewards that an incoming monarch must bring. Some of them hoped to get their old places back. Some were Roman Catholics, gambling on the widespread belief that the Stuarts were always Papists. One or two may even have believed that the libertine in the Hague was the best hope for the country. None of the fights came to more than a few broken windows and a couple of brawls except in the case of Sir George Booth at Chester.

  The parliament, in grave fright at the news of an armed uprising, ordered five regiments to march to Cheshire led by Major General Lambert. Lambert left his botanical paintings, his rare garden, his orange garden, and his ornamental pheasants, kissed his wife goodbye and rode at the head of his restored regiment westwards.

  He met Sir George Booth’s army at Winnington Bridge. Booth had one thousand men under the royal standard and Lambert had his full complement of four thousand. The outcome could not be in doubt. There was a brief, efficient battle which was notable for its economy and discipline. Only thirty men died and the rebellion was over. Lambert held his troops in tight order and there was no cruelty or looting or taking quarter. The royalist army were relieved of their weapons with careful courtesy and sent back to their homes.

  Sir George Booth fled the battlefield disguised as a woman but was arrested when an inn keeper noticed that his ‘lady’ guest had called for a barber and a razor.

  ‘Inspired,’ Lambert said briefly, and ordered that Sir George Booth be taken to London for his trial for treason.

  Lambert’s popularity rose and he was declared the saviour of the nation in every ale shop and tavern down the Great North Road. More particular were the thanks of the Quakers who came under his protection while he scotched the last of the royalist rebellions. By the end of August he was recognised as the greatest man in the kingdom and a grateful parliament voted him a gift of one thousand pounds.

  Autumn 1659

  In September, on his way back to London down the North Road, Lambert sent John Tradescant a note which read:

  You may not have heard that John Mordaunt has left England to join the court of Charles Stuart at the Hague. He has had so many disappointments that I dare say one was no more memorable than another. Whatever happens in the future, Mordaunt’s enmity will not be anything to fear.

  Before Lambert returned to London his army sent another petition to the House of Commons. Their list of requests was coming to be known as the ‘Grand Old Cause’, the cause of the Ironsides, the cause of the Levellers, the cause of the republicans. They demanded godly reforms, a proper command structure for the army, Parliament to be run by elected members advised by a senate, and court martial law in the army.

  The House of Commons, always an unfaithful friend when the victory had been won, decided that the army was demanding reforms rather than requesting, and was probably marching on Parliament to seize power. In a frenzy of panic they ordered that the doors should be shut and Major General Lambert, so recently their hero, should be regarded as an enemy of Parliament and arrested for treason.

  In early October John Tradescant received a magnificent order for spring bulbs from John Lambert who gave Wimbledon House as his address.

  ‘So he’s exiled again,’ John observed to Hester. ‘They don’t have the courage to send him to the Tower but they don’t dare let him near Parliament. They must be mad not to make him Lord Protector.’

  ‘They’re terrified,’ she said. ‘They think of nothing but saving their own skins. A parliament run by Lambert would reform them out of existence. He has no patience with time-servers. Did he write all this to you?’

  ‘No, it’s just an order for bulbs.’

  ‘Then how d’you know he’s in exile?’

  John grinned. ‘He always orders too many when he has been thrown out of power. He couldn’t plant all these if he had three autumns under house arrest.’

  John could have sent the lad with the three sacks of bulbs but his curiosity was too great. He himself drove the cart into the stable yard at Wimbledon and was directed to the pheasant garden where his Lordship was feeding his birds.

  Lambert, holding a basket of grain, was surrounded by his ornamental pheasants, the
ir plumage brilliant in the autumn sunshine. He turned quickly when he heard a footstep on the gravel behind him, but when he recognised John he smiled his sweet smile. ‘Ah, Mr Tradescant, have you brought my bulbs yourself?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ John said. ‘I am sorry to learn that you are confined here.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lambert said equably. ‘Fortunes rise and fall in politics as well as in battles. In any case you find me bidding farewell to my birds now because I expect to be summonsed today.’

  ‘To battle or to politics?’ John asked.

  Lambert grinned. ‘They’re much the same.’ He cocked his head. ‘Listen. D’you hear anything?’

  John listened, then heard the steady beat of a company of horse in trot, and the jingle of armour. ‘Soldiers,’ he said.

  ‘Then I think this is my summons,’ Lambert remarked and John could hear the exultant joy in his voice at the prospect of action. ‘Ask them at the stables to saddle my charger for me, would you, Mr Tradescant? I don’t think I’m going to be able to plant bulbs today.’

  ‘Can I come too?’ John asked.

  Lambert laughed. ‘If you wish it. D’you have any idea where we are going?’

  ‘No,’ John confessed.

  ‘Then you’re as wise as I.’

  John pulled Caesar from the shafts of the cart, borrowed a saddle from Lambert’s groom and waited beside the company of Lambert’s horse for the few moments until the general came out of the house.

  ‘What’s going on?’ John asked one of the troopers.

  ‘They’ve called out the other regiments against us,’ the man said shortly. ‘It’s between our major general and the Members of Parliament. They’ve reneged on every promise they’ve ever given us and when we protest they call it treason. Now they’ve gone to ground in the Houses of Parliament with two regiments thrown around it and the Parliamentary Horse Guards leading the defence and saying that we must disband. Telling us to throw down our arms as traitors. Us who beat the king for them, then beat the Scots for them, and then beat Charles Stuart for them, and only last month beat George Booth for them. Us, disband! And hand over the general too! So they can throw him into the Tower beside Booth who fought against us!’

  ‘And left the battlefield in a petticoat,’ someone added to a rumble of laughter.

  ‘And what can you do?’ John asked. ‘They’re the Parliament, and if they’ve got the Horse Guards out …’

  ‘It’s what he can do,’ the trooper replied, nodding towards Lambert, who swung into the saddle and trotted down the road at the head of his troop.

  ‘What can he do?’ John asked.

  The trooper grinned. ‘Anything he likes, is my guess.’

  The troop fell in behind the general, bits jingling, hooves clattering on the dry road, and John, with a delicious sense that he should not be tagging on as a spectator, followed behind with Caesar pulling at the reins, his neck arched and tail held high at the prospect of action.

  When they reached Scotland Yard at the side of the Palace of Whitehall he saw that the trooper was right, and his sense that he would have been safer to go straight home was right too. It was going to be an ugly scene, a pitched battle between the Parliamentary Horse Guards and Lambert’s regiments at the very gateway to the Houses of Parliament. John reined back Caesar, who pulled against the bit as if he too knew that fighting was likely and was ready for the charge.

  ‘Halt!’ commanded Lambert and his personal standard dipped to show the signal. The troop of horse halted with a clatter of hooves on the cobbles.

  The regiment before the Houses of Parliament tightened their grip on their pikes, blew on the fuses of their muskets and waited for the order to fire. A horse in Lambert’s regiment moved restlessly against a too-tight rein, and the chink of the bit was very loud in the silence. There was a long pause as one English regiment eyed another and waited for the command to attack.

  John could hear his breathing light and rapid as he sat in the saddle. Any moment he thought he would see the muskets lifted and hear the dreadful crack of their firing. There were probably cannons nearby too, and the Parliamentary Horse Guards had the advantage of being in defence, and near to the stout walls of Whitehall, while Lambert’s men were drawn up in the road.

  There was a long, long pause as the two troops faced each other, then John Lambert slid from his saddle and dropped to the ground, his spurs ringing as they tapped the cobblestones. He tossed his bridle to his standard bearer and walked forwards as if he were strolling in his orange garden. He left the sheltering ranks of his men, and out across the cobbled gulf which separated the two regiments, as if the men on the other side were not poised to take aim, as if they were not waiting for the order to shoot him down. He smiled at them as if they were his own regiment, his own trusted men. He smiled at them easily and pleasantly, as if he were glad to see them, as if he were greeting them as old friends.

  ‘My God, what is he going to do?’ John whispered to himself.

  Lambert halted immediately before their commander and looked up at the officer high above him on the big horse, his hand ready-tightened on his sword ready to draw and sweep down in the killing blow. It was a big horse. The man was sixteen hands above Lambert, the general had to look upwards, his eyes screwed up against the evening sunlight.

  ‘Dismount!’ Lambert said easily, almost conversationally. There was a moment’s pause. Soldiers in both troops held their breath to see what the outcome would be. The officer looked down at the unarmed man before him, Lambert smiled up at him. Then the officer dropped his reins and jumped down from the saddle.

  At once there was a roar of approval from Lambert’s men and the Parliament guards broke ranks and trotted towards Lambert’s regiment to be greeted with smiles and handshakes and laughter. Lambert shook hands with the officer, exchanged a few brief words and then strolled back to his horse, swung into the saddle and then turned to face the men.

  ‘Fall in,’ he said pleasantly as if for a routine parade. He nodded to his standard bearer. ‘Take my compliments to the Members of the House of Commons and advise them that I have the keys to the House and they must leave. They are no longer welcome. The country will be ruled by a Committee of Safety. We are going to have justice and freedom in this country. And it starts now.’

  Lambert had not allowed for General George Monck, out of touch in Scotland, and jealous as a sick dog of his charismatic rival. As soon as he heard of the triumph at Whitehall he sent word to London that as commander of the Parliamentary army in Scotland he did not accept the Committee of Safety and that he was declaring war, and marching south to restore the banned MPs.

  ‘War?’ Hester demanded. ‘But why?’

  ‘He says he’s going to restore Parliament,’ John said, reading the latest news-sheet.

  ‘Then why did he not do it before?’ Hester asked. ‘Why did he not declare war on Cromwell?’

  ‘Because this is a man who thinks he can be Cromwell,’ John said astutely. ‘He thinks he can put himself at the head of the army and in a little while command Parliament as well.’

  ‘Shall we box up the rarities?’ Hester asked John wearily.

  John thought for a moment. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But we may have to. General Monck’s troops learned their discipline burning out royalists in Scotland.’

  ‘He’s for Parliament. He fought against Charles Stuart,’ she said. ‘Why can he not allow Lambert and the Committee of Safety to bring in their reforms? Why cannot people in this country be given a chance to have the government and the justice they deserve?’

  ‘He believes in nothing, he’s a professional soldier,’ John said bitterly. ‘He fought for King Charles before he saw that Cromwell would win and so changed sides. Then he saw what Cromwell did. He saw one man come to power, nearly to kingship at the head of the army. He won’t trust John Lambert not to do the same. And he’ll be thinking there’s a chance for him.’

  ‘John Lambert is the only man you could trust with that power
,’ Hester said. ‘He’s never broken his word, not once, not in all these difficult times.’

  ‘And he paid us for the daffodils that I took to him that day,’ John said. ‘I hope to God he is able to plant them.’

  Lambert never did plant the daffodils that John brought him. In planting time in November, he obeyed his orders from the Committee of Safety to protect England against General Monck and marched north to meet him at the head of eight thousand men.

  He would not attack at once. General Monck had been a comrade in arms, and they were both parliamentarians. Lambert believed, trustingly enough, that it must be a misunderstanding. He wrote to Monck to try to explain, to try to convince him of the plans of the Committee of Safety, to persuade him that at last England had a chance to make a free and just society.

  Monck pretended to consider, wrote and argued by letter with Lambert, while the Committee in London scraped around trying to find money to pay the soldiers under Lambert’s command. They sent nothing. Lambert was caught between the deceit of General Monck and the incompetence of the Committee. He would not attack General Monck when they were still in debate, and by the time he realised that the general was spinning out the argument as a tactic, his army had melted away, and the general had won without a shot being fired.

  When he should have been planting his orange-hearted narcissi in his orange garden at Wimbledon House he was watching his army disappear down the Great North Road, knowing that he had been tricked by Monck and betrayed by London.

  ‘What will happen to him?’ Hester asked John.

  John scowled. ‘Monck has had him accused of treason,’ he said miserably. ‘Treason against the old parliament, who were so lazy and incompetent that no-one cared when Lambert locked them out. Now they’ll call themselves martyrs, no doubt. And they’ll call him a traitor. Once he’s in the Tower it’s not a very long walk to the scaffold.’