Hester turned away from her and looked out of the window again. In the thick windowpane she could see, simultaneously, Alexander strolling in the garden and the reflection of her own face. She looked grim. She looked like a woman struggling under the weight of many worries, and still fighting them.
“What did he say that was so ridiculous?” Frances asked gently. She came beside her stepmother and slipped her arm around the older woman’s waist. Hester saw that smooth prettiness beside her own worn face and felt a deep pang of envy that her own beauty was past, and at the same time a glow of joy that she had brought that unloved, frightened little girl into this rare, beautiful being.
“He said that you were a young woman grown,” Hester said. She felt Frances at her side. The girl was a girl no longer, her breasts were filling out, the curve of her waist would fit a man’s hand, she had lost her coltish legginess, she was, as Alexander had seen but her stepmother had not, a young woman.
“Well, I am,” Frances said, as one stating the obvious.
“He said you should be married,” Hester said.
“And so I shall be, I suppose.”
“He thought sooner rather than later,” Hester said. “Because these are dangerous times. He thinks you should have a husband to take care of you.” She had thought that Frances would pull away and laugh her reckless laugh. But the girl rested her head on her stepmother’s shoulder and said thoughtfully: “You know, I think I would like that.”
Hester pulled back to look at Frances. “You still seem like a little girl to me.”
“But I am a young woman,” Frances pointed out. “And when I go into Lambeth the men shout at me, and call things to me. If Father were at home then it would be different, but he is not home, and he is not coming home, is he?”
Hester shook her head. “I have no news of him.”
“Then if he does not come home, and if the war goes on, and so everything is still so uneasy…”
“Yes?” Hester asked.
“If our lives don’t get easier then I would like a husband to care for me, and to care for you and Johnnie. I think we need a man in this house. I think we need a man to care for us.”
There was a long silence. Hester looked into the beautiful face of her stepdaughter and thought that perhaps the first of her promises to this girl’s grandfather, John Tradescant, was nearly fulfilled. She had brought up his granddaughter to be a beautiful woman and within a year or two there would only be Johnnie and the treasures for her to guard.
Alexander Norman strolled in the grounds for an hour before he came in to dinner. He found Hester laying the table in the parlor with Frances helping her. Johnnie was showing a visitor around the rarities.
“I think I made a sale for you,” he said informally as he came in the door. Hester glanced up at his entrance and was relieved to see his familiar, reassuring smile. “A young man from Kent, inquiring about fruit trees. I spoke warmly about John’s plums and handed him over to your gardener. I left him writing down an order for a score of trees and being paid in gold.”
Frances laughed and clapped her hands. “Excellent, Uncle Norman! Now all we have to do is to teach you to weed and you shall come and work for us every day.”
“Twenty trees is a very good sale,” Hester agreed. “Especially in these times, when no one can put their mind to gardening. You did say that he had to arrange his own transport?”
“I did. I know you can’t undertake delivery.”
“If we had anyone we could spare I still wouldn’t send them. I can’t risk losing my horse and cart.” Hester turned to Frances. “Fetch Johnnie, and tell Cook that she can serve dinner.”
Frances nodded and went out of the room.
Alexander held out his hand. “Am I forgiven for my stupidity?”
Hester took his hand. “And you must forgive me. It’s a curiously uncomfortable mistake for a woman to make. If I’d had more experience I would have known how a man usually proposes to a woman.”
He smiled at her and did not release her hand for a moment. “And the matter of Frances’s future?”
Hester shook her head and withdrew her hand. “She’s too young yet,” she said stubbornly. “Ask again in a year or two. I must warn you I would rather see her with a young husband in a little house of her own, starting her own life.”
He nodded. “I understand. But young men are not safe choices these days. Whether he’s a royalist or for Parliament he’s likely to be called to serve his master, and there are no little houses where young people can be sure that they will be left to live at peace in this kingdom any more.”
“When the war ends…”
“When the war ends we shall know whether she should look for a husband at Parliament or at court. But what if it trails on for years? I tell you, cousin, there are stores in the Tower promised to the Parliament army, and stores to match that in royalist hands enough to keep this war going for another twenty years. Parliament is not likely to surrender – that would be to sign their own death warrants for treason – and the king is not a man to come to terms with them.”
Hester nodded. For a moment she looked haggard with worry. “If she is in any danger I shall send her to you,” she promised. “I know you would take care of her.”
Alexander gave a small formal bow. “I would lay down my life for her,” he said simply. “And I love her so much that I would put her interests before mine. If they make peace, or if she falls in love with a man of her own age who could keep her safe, I will not stand in her way, nor even remind you of this conversation.”
A few days after Alexander Norman’s visit Hester, glancing out of the window, saw a stranger slip around the corner of the house and head for the kitchen door. She got up from the hearth, took off her rough hessian apron, and went to see what he wanted.
He was standing on the back doorstep. “Mrs. John Tradescant?” he asked.
The hair on the back of Hester’s neck prickled. “Yes,” she said levelly. “And who is asking?”
He slipped in around the doorframe, so that he was in the kitchen. “Shut the door,” he whispered.
Hester did not make a move to obey him. “There is a stout man in my employ within earshot,” she said. “And half the neighborhood would come running down the road if I called. You had better tell me your business, and swiftly.”
“Not my business. The king’s.”
Hester felt dismay like a blow in the belly. Slowly, she shut the door. “Come in,” she said, and led the way into the rarities room.
“Can we be overheard?” he asked, looking around but not seeing the hanging flags, the dangling birds’ skeletons, the whale’s head, the polished cases crammed with goods.
“Only if I scream,” Hester said with sour humor. “Now, what is it?”
The man put his hand inside his jacket and showed her a glint of gold. “Do you recognize this?”
It was one of the king’s favorite rings. Hester had seen it on his finger many times. “Yes.”
“I am here by the orders of a lady – we need not say her name – who has brought to London the king’s Commission of Array. You know what that means.”
“Not the least idea,” Hester said unhelpfully.
“It’s a summons. A summons to the king’s standard. It’ll be read aloud at Whitehall when our army is at the city gates. You have to play your part. Your husband is commanded to proclaim the king’s authority in Lambeth and order out the loyal men for His Majesty as soon as he is given the word.”
“What lady?” Hester asked flatly.
“I said we need not say her name.”
“If she’s asking me to risk my neck she can tell me her name,” Hester persisted.
He put his mouth to her ear and Hester smelled the familiar scent of sandalwood that the young men of court used as pomade. “Lady d’Aubigny,” he whispered. “A great lady and the widow of a hero. Her lord fell at Edgehill and she is trusted by the king to call out the royalists of London to fight for him. And she is trusting you.”