All day they traveled as Attone led them closer to the sea, where the mosquitoes rose in clouds from the sodden grass and reeds and the trees bowed down low over dark, silty, salty water. At night they found some ground only a little higher than the tidewash. “Here,” Attone said. “Make shelters but no fires.”
An old woman died in the night, and they piled a heap of stones over her face.
“We move on,” Attone said.
All day they traveled at that punishing pace. An old man and an old woman stopped at the side of the trail and said they would go no further. Attone left them with a bow and arrow to do what damage they could to the pursuers, and with a tiny sliver of sharpened bark to open their veins rather than be captured. None of them stopped to say goodbye. The safety of the People was greater than the farewells of individuals. Attone wanted to get the People away.
On the third day they reached a small hill deep inside the swamp and Attone gave the order that they could rest. There was nothing to eat except some dried flour which they mixed cold with the marshy water. Attone sent out scouts, empty bellied, to go down the trail and see if they were followed. When they returned and said that the trails were safe he sent them out again. Only when the third party had come back on the fifth day did he say that the women could light fires and start to collect food and the men could go hunting.
“What happens now?” John asked one of the old women.
“We live here,” she said.
“In the middle of a foul swamp?”
She gave him a look which told him as clearly as words that she despised his weakness. “In the middle of a foul swamp,” she said.
Summer 1644, England
Alexander’s predictions seemed correct. Through the spring and early summer gossip, wild surmise and news filtered back to London, and finally to Lambeth, of small battles all around the country and then finally, in July, a dreadful battle at Marston Moor. Alexander wrote to Hester:
I cannot come out to see you, I am so busy with the demands of the ordnance. There has been a major battle in Yorkshire and it has gone the way of Parliament. I hear that Prince Rupert has met Cromwell himself, and it was Cromwell that triumphed. In haste… Alexander
Hester waited for news for another few days and then one of her neighbors rapped on the door to say that she was going up to the House of Commons to see the king’s standards. “Forty-eight royal standards laid for all to see on the bar of the House,” she said. “I’ll take Johnnie along with me. The boy should see it.”
Johnnie shook his head. “Is Prince Rupert’s standard taken?” he asked.
“You shall see it,” the woman promised. “Stained with his own blood.”
Johnnie’s brown eyes grew bigger in his pale face. “I don’t want to see it,” he said stubbornly, and then remembered his manners. “But thank you very much for inviting me, Mrs. Goodall.”
She bridled for a moment. “I hope you’re not siding with the enemy?” she said sharply. “The king has forced us to this battle and now he is defeated and good riddance to him.”
Hester stepped forward and laid her hand on her stepson’s shoulder. “He’s still the king,” she said.
Mrs. Goodall looked angrily at her. “Some say that a king who is his people’s woe is no king. The law that says he is king says that he rules for our good, not for our regret. If he does not please us then he is no king at all. There are those who are saying that he should die in one of his bitter battles and we would be a happier land without him.”
“Then his son would be king,” Hester said steadily. “There would still be a king.”
“Of course you were at court,” the woman remarked pointedly. “Enriched by the pack of them.”
“I worked there as many did,” Hester said. She sounded defensive and her hand tightened on Johnnie’s shoulder as if to draw courage from his narrow little bones. “But I have taken neither one side nor the other. All I have wanted from the beginning is peace.”
“So do we all,” the woman agreed. “And there can be no peace with that man or his son on the throne again.”
“You may be right,” Hester said, swiftly stepping back and drawing Johnnie back with her. “Please God we shall have peace at last and our men can come home.”
October 1644, England
On a cold day in the middle of October, Alexander Norman rode to Lambeth between frosty hedges on icy tracks. Frances was on the lookout for him and ran out into the stable yard with her cape around her shoulders to take his horse and send Alexander into the parlor, to the warmth of the fire.
Hester had mulled wine to greet him. He took a deep draft and set it down. At once Hester knew that he had something important to say. “Is it peace?” she asked. “Has the king surrendered?”
“No,” he said. “He’s taken Salisbury, it looks like he’s rallying again. But it’s not that I came about. It is time for me to speak to you about another matter.”
“Frances,” Hester said, knowing at once what Alexander Norman meant.
“Frances,” he replied.
“I wrote to her father,” Hester said. “I did not tell him what you had said. But I told him of my worries about keeping her safe. I thought he might make some suggestion.” She paused. “I have not had a reply. Nothing since that consignment of Indian goods and a barrel of plants.”
“I don’t want to wait for his reply,” Alexander said. “Whether it is for me or against me.”
Hester nodded, taking in the determined tone. “Why now?” she asked. “After waiting so long?”
“Because the girl is seventeen next year, because I am fifty-five next year, because peace is as far away as ever. If she waits for peace to come she will lose her young womanhood. She might have to wait another four years, she might wait twenty.”
“Is that what they’re saying in the Tower?”
“They’re saying that the king will do anything and everything before he surrenders. He’s suffered some bitter defeats and he’s still summoning help from the Irish, from the Scots, from the French. Nothing will stop him, no defeat can stop him. He has to be king if he is anything. And he has nothing to lose by fighting and fighting forever. And Parliament cannot stop without his surrender. Lord Manchester said it himself in the House of Parliament – they have to go on fighting until the king is completely and utterly defeated, or they are lost. The two sides – King and Parliament – have made the stakes so high that one of them has to be completely defeated, there is no middle course for either anymore.”
“I see that,” Hester said.
“He has taken Salisbury this week and he still holds Oxford. As they go into winter quarters nothing is decided. I thought Marston Moor would be the end of the war but nothing will end it until Parliament is routed and the members hanged for treason, or the king dead.”
Out of habit Hester glanced at the closed door. “Hush.”
Alexander shook his head. “It’s widely said now. People in London think there’s no stopping him, no dealing with him, and the mood is getting bitter. But until he’s either killed in battle or victorious the war cannot end. I have orders for barrels for gunpowder which will supply the army for the next ten years. It will be a long war, Hester. You cannot doubt it.”
Hester poured him another glass of mulled wine.
“So I am asking for your permission to propose marriage to her,” he said. “If you refuse me permission I shall wait until she is twenty-one and can please herself.”
Hester sighed. “You can ask her now,” she said. “I promised her grandfather that I would care for her and keep her safe, and before God I cannot see how to keep her safe in these times. The garden earns nothing, and the rarities are hidden away and we have nothing to show, and no visitors to show it to. I can barely feed her, we live off fruit and vegetables from the garden. If I could pack her away safely like the precious rarities to bring out when peace comes I would do so. You can ask her, Cousin Norman, and I will abide by her decision.”