If ever they were visited by one of the more dour radicals or sectaries who complained of the riot of wealth and color in the rarities room or in the garden around the house, John would bring him over here and show how, in these beds, he was using his skills in the service of the people and of God.
Johnnie was at the far end of the garden where they had planted row upon row of saplings, ready for sale, and where they had a chestnut tree at each corner. White sheets were laid under the trees and Johnnie came every day at dawn and dusk to get the very best of the nuts before the squirrels ate them.
“Hey!” John called from the door to the garden. “Message from Alexander.”
Johnnie looked up and came through the garden at a run, his face ablaze with joy and hope. “The king’s reached York? I can go to him?”
John shook his head and mutely held out the note.
Johnnie took it, opened it, read it. John saw the energy and joy drain out of his son as if a leech of grief had suddenly fastened on his heart.
“Defeated,” he said, as if the word was meaningless. “Defeated at Dunbar. Where is Dunbar?”
“Scotland,” John said gruffly. “South of Edinburgh, I think.”
“The king?”
“As you see, he doesn’t say. But it’s over,” John said gently. “That was his last throw of the dice. He’ll go back to France, I suppose.”
His son looked up at him, his young face bewildered. “Over? D’you think he’ll never try again?”
“He can’t keep trying,” John exclaimed. “He can’t keep coming back and coming back and upsetting the country. He has to know that it was over for his father and it is over for him. Their time has gone. The English don’t want a king anymore.”
“You made me stay and wait,” Johnnie said with sudden sharp bitterness. “And I stayed and waited, like hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other men. And while I stayed and waited he didn’t have enough men. So he was defeated, while I stayed at home, waiting for your leave to go.”
John put his hand on Johnnie’s shoulder but the younger man shrugged it off and took a few steps away. “I betrayed him!” he cried out, his voice breaking. “I stayed at home obeying my father when I should have ridden out to obey my king.”
John hesitated, choosing his words with care. “I don’t think it was a close-run thing. I don’t think hundreds of men would have made a difference. Since Cromwell and Lambert have had command of the army they have rarely lost a battle. I don’t think your being there would have made a difference, Johnnie.”
Johnnie looked back at his father and his dark, beautiful young face was filled with reproach. “It would have made a difference to me,” he said with simple dignity.
He came into dinner in silence. In silence he went to bed. At breakfast the next morning his eyes were somber and there were dark shadows underneath them. The light had gone out of Johnnie once again.
Hester put her hand on his shoulder as she rose from the table to fetch some more small ale.
“Why don’t you go to Wimbledon today?” she asked him gently. “Your next crop of melons must be nearly ready to pick.”
“What should I do with the fruit?” he asked miserably.
Hester glanced toward John for help and saw the smallest shrug. “Why don’t you pack them up,” she suggested. “And send them to Charles Stuart in Edinburgh. Don’t put your name inside,” she stipulated cautiously. “But you could at least send them to him. Then you would know that you had served him as you should serve him. You’re not a soldier, Johnnie, you’re a gardener. You could send him the fruit you have grown for him. That’s how you serve him. That’s how your father served his father, and your grandfather served King James himself.”
Johnnie hesitated for only a moment then he looked to his father. “May I go?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes,” John said in relief. “Of course you can go. It’s a very good thing to do.”
Spring 1651
In the cold, dark days of February John was glad to go to London and stay with Frances, or with Philip Harding, or Paul Quigley, and join the men in their discussions. Sometimes one of the physicians would conduct an experiment and summon the gentlemen to watch so that they might comment on his findings. John attended an evening in which one of the alchemists attempted to fire a new glaze for porcelain.
“John should be the judge,” one of the gentlemen said. “You have some porcelain in your collection, haven’t you, John?”
“I have some china dishes,” John said. “They range in size from as big as a trencher to so small that a mouse could dine off it.”
“Very fine?” the man asked. “You can see light through them, can’t you?”
“Yes,” John said. “But strong. I’ve never seen the like in this country. I think we don’t have china clay which is fine enough.”
“It’s the glaze,” said another man.
“The heat of the furnace,” suggested another.
“Wait,” said the alchemist. “Wait until the furnace is cooled enough and you shall see it.”
“A drink while we wait?” someone suggested and the maidservant brought a bottle of Canary wine and glasses, and they drew up high stools to sit companionably around the alchemist’s working bench.
“Have you heard that Oatlands Palace is to be taken down?” one of the men asked John. “You planted the gardens there, didn’t you?”
John checked in the act of drinking. “Taken down?” he repeated.
Another man nodded. “They can’t sell it. It’s too big for a private residence, and it needs too much work done. It’s to be destroyed.”
“But – the gardens?” John stammered.
“You should petition Parliament,” one of the mathematicians recommended. “Ask them if you may uproot your plants before they start to knock the whole thing down. You have some rarities there, don’t you?”
“Indeed I have,” John said, astounded. “There are some very precious things in the royal courts.” He shook his head. “Every day there is something new but I would never have thought that they would raze Oatlands.”
John raised the matter of Oatlands’ gardens with a Parliament man who visited the Ark to see the rarities and in a few days he received a commission to supervise the selling of the specimen plants from the garden before the demolition of the house. He might take a tithe of the profit and any plants he chose as payment for his trouble, and he was ordered to sell the rest.
“I’ll stay there for a week or so, until the work is done,” he told Hester.
“I shall miss our little house there,” she said. “I liked knowing we had a place out of the city, a refuge.”
“Such a waste,” John said. “All that work in the gardens, all that beauty in the house. And the new orangery and the silkworm house! All for nothing.”
“Shall you take Johnnie with you?” Hester asked. “It might do him good to have a change of scene.”
“Yes,” John said. “I’ll take the cart too. I’ll bring back some of the chestnut trees if any have survived this winter. And there were some handsome climbers as well which I might be able to cut back from the walls and transplant.”