It was a business contract, and it must be fulfilled. John turned his mind to the outrageously half-naked painted women of the old king’s court. He had seen them at New Hall when he was little more than a boy and remembered them still with an erotic mixture of disapproval and desire. He held the thought of them in his mind and moved towards Hester.
She had never been touched by a man who was in love with her, or she would have known at once that John was offering her the false coin of his body while his mind was elsewhere. But she too knew that the contract of marriage was not completed until consummation. She lay still and helpful beneath him while he pierced her and then brutally moved in the wound. She did not complain, she did not comment. She lay in silence while the pain went on and then suddenly stopped as he sighed and then moved away from her.
She rose up, biting her lip against the hurt, and wrapped a cloth tightly around her groin. There was only a little blood, she thought; it probably felt worse than it was. She thought that she would have taken the whole thing easier if she had been younger, fresher, warmer. It had been a cold-hearted assault and a cold-hearted acceptance. She shivered in the darkness and got back into bed beside her husband.
John had turned to lie on his side with his back to her as if he would shut out the sight of her and shut out the thought of her. Hester crept back under the covers, careful not to touch him, not to breach the space between them, and set her teeth against the pain, and against the bitterness of disappointment. She did not cry, she lay very still and dry-eyed and waited for the morning when her married life would begin.
‘I shall go to Oatlands this week,’ John remarked the very next morning at breakfast. Hester, seated beside Baby John, looked up in surprise. ‘This week?’
He met her gaze with bland incomprehension. ‘Yes.’
‘So soon?’
‘Why not?’
A dozen reasons why a newly wed husband should not leave his home in the first week of his marriage came to her. She folded her lips tightly on them. ‘People may think it looks odd,’ was all that she said.
‘They can think what they like,’ John retorted bluntly. ‘We married so that I should be free to do my work and that is what I am doing.’
Hester glanced at Frances, seated at her left, opposite Baby John. Frances’s white-capped head was bowed over her bowl, she did not look up at her father, she affected to be deaf.
‘There is the planting of the spring bulbs to finish,’ he said. ‘And pruning, and planning for winter. I have to make sure the silkworm house is sound against the weather. I shall be a month or so away. If you are in any need you can send for me.’
Hester bowed her head. John rose from his place and went to the door. ‘I shall be in the orchard,’ he said. ‘Please pack my clothes for me to go to Oatlands and tell the boy I shall want a horse this afternoon. I shall ride down to the docks and see if anything has come in for the king’s collection.’
Hester nodded and she and the two children sat in silence until the door closed behind John.
Frances looked up, her lower lip turned down. ‘I thought he would stay home all the time now you are married.’
‘Never mind!’ Hester said with assumed cheerfulness. ‘We’ll have lots to do. There’s a bonfire to build for Guy Fawkes’s day, and then Christmas to prepare for.’
‘But I thought he would stay home,’ Frances persisted. ‘He will come home for Christmas, won’t he?’
‘Of course,’ Hester said easily. ‘Of course he will. But he has to go and work for the queen in her lovely gardens. He’s a royal gardener! He can’t stay home all the time.’
Baby John looked up and wiped his milky moustache on his sleeve.
‘Use your napkin,’ Hester corrected him.
Baby John grinned. ‘I shall go to Oatrands,’ he said firmly. ‘Pranting and pranning and pruning. I shall go.’
‘Certainly,’ Hester said, and she emphasised the correct pronunciation: ‘Planting and planning and pruning are most important.’
Baby John nodded with dignity. ‘Now I shall go and look at my warities.’
‘Can I take the money from the visitors?’ Frances asked.
Hester glanced at the clock standing in the corner of the room. It was not yet nine. ‘They won’t come for another hour or so,’ she said. ‘You can fetch your school work, both of you, for an hour, and then you can work in the rarities room.’
‘Oh, Hester!’ Frances complained.
Hester shook her head and started to pile up the empty porridge bowls and the spoons. ‘Books first,’ she said. ‘And, Baby John, I want to see all our names written fair in your copybook.’
‘And then I will go pranting,’ he said.
Hester packed John’s clothes for him and added a few jars of bottled summer fruit to the hamper which would follow him by wagon. She was up early on the day of his departure to see him ride away from the Ark.
‘You had no need to rise,’ John said awkwardly.
‘Of course I had need. I am your wife.’
He turned and tightened the girth on his big bay cob to avoid speaking. They were both aware that since the first night they had not made love, and now he was going away for an indefinite period.
‘Please take care at court,’ Hester said gently. ‘These are difficult times for men of principle.’
‘I must say what I believe if I am asked,’ John said. ‘I don’t venture it, but I won’t deny it.’
She hesitated. ‘You need not deny your beliefs but you could say nothing and avoid the topic altogether,’ she suggested. ‘The queen especially is touchy about her religion. She holds to her Papist faith, and the king inclines more and more to her. And now that he is trying to impose Archbishop Laud’s prayer book on Scotland, this is not a time for any Independent thinker; be he Baptist or Presbyterian.’
‘You wish to advise me?’ he asked with a hint of warning in his voice which reminded her that a wife was always in second place to a man.
‘I know the court,’ she said steadily. ‘I spent my girlhood there. My uncle is an official painter there, still. I have half a dozen cousins and friends who write to me. I do know things, husband. I know that it is no place for a man who thinks for himself.’
‘They’re hardly likely to care what their gardener thinks,’ John scoffed. ‘An undergardener at that. I’ve not even been appointed to my father’s post, yet.’
She hesitated. ‘They care so much that they threw Archie the jester out with his jacket pulled over his head for merely joking about Archbishop Laud; and Archie was the queen’s great favourite. They certainly care what you think. They are taking it upon themselves to care what every single man, woman, and child thinks. That’s what the very quarrel is all about. About what every individual thinks in his private heart. That’s why every single Scotsman has to sign his own covenant with the king and swear to use the Archbishop’s prayer book. They care precisely what every single man thinks.’ She paused. ‘They may indeed question you, John; and you have to have an answer ready that will satisfy them.’
‘I have a right to speak to my God in my own way!’ John insisted stubbornly. ‘I don’t need to recite by rote, I am not a child. I don’t need a priest