John dropped to his knee as she saw him but she rushed towards him and he jumped to his feet as she pushed her jewel box at him.
‘Gardener Tradescant!’ she cried. ‘Take this!’ She turned to the king. ‘We must wait!’ she insisted. ‘We must face the rabble! We must face them down!’
The king shook his head and motioned for her to go on. Unwillingly, she went before him. ‘I t … tell you they have run mad!’ he said. ‘We must get out of the C … City! There’s not a loyal heart here. They have all run m … mad. We must go to Hampton Court and c … c … consider what to do! We must summon soldiers and take advice.’
‘We are running like fools from our own shadows!’ she shrieked at him. ‘We must face them and face them down or we will spend the rest of our life on the run.’
‘We are l … lost!’ he shouted. ‘L … lost! D’you think I want to see you dragged before the b … bar and impeached for treason? D’you think I want to see your h … h … head on a pike? D’you think I want to see the rabble take y … you, and the children, t … take you now?’
John joined the train of servants running behind them and followed them to the stables. All the way the quarrel between the king and queen grew more inarticulate as her French accent deepened with her temper and his stammer grew worse with his fear. When they reached the stable yard she was beside herself.
‘You are a coward!’ she spat at him. ‘You will lose this city forever if you leave it now. It is easier to run away than to retake. You must show them that you are not afraid.’
‘Ha … Hi … I fear nothing!’ He drew himself up. ‘N … Nothing! But I must have you safe and the children safe before I can m … make m … my m … move. It is your safety, Madam, that I am securing now. For myself I care nothing! N … ha … N … Nothing!’
John pressed forward and put the jewel box on the coach floor. He was reminded of the king’s odd mixture of shyness and boastfulness. Even now, with a mob hammering on the doors of the palace, the two of them were playing out their parts in a masque. Even now they did not seem to be completely real. John looked around, the servants were like an audience at a great play. No-one urged a course of action, no-one spoke. The king and queen were the only actors; and their script was a great romance of danger and heroism and lost causes and sudden flights. John felt his heart pounding at the noise of the crowd outside and knew the deep visceral fear of a mob. He had a sudden vision of them breaking down the gates and tumbling into the stable yard. If they found the queen beside her travelling coach with her jewel box beside her, anything could happen. The whole power of the royal family which the old Queen Elizabeth had so powerfully cultivated depended on the creation and maintenance of distance and magic and glamour. Let the people once see the queen swearing at their king like a French lace-seller, and the game would be up.
‘I will see you s … safe at Hampton Court and then I will return and crush these traitors,’ Charles swore.
‘You shall crush them now!’ she shrieked. ‘Now, before they gain their strength. You shall face them and defy them and destroy them or I swear I shall leave this kingdom and never see it again! They know how to respect a princess of the blood in France!’
At once the mood of the scene shifted. The king took her hand and bowed over it, his silky hair falling to shield his face. ‘N … never say it,’ he said. ‘You are q … queen of this country, queen of all the h … hearts. This is a faithful country, they I … love you, I love you. Never even th … think of leaving me.’
There was renewed shouting at the door. John, forgetting that he should stay silent, could not bear to see them taken like a pair of runaway servants in the stable yard. ‘Your Majesty!’ he urged. ‘You must either prepare for a siege or get the coach out! The crowd will be upon you in a moment!’
The queen looked to him. ‘My faithful Gardener Tradescant!’ she exclaimed. ‘Stay with us.’
‘G … Get up at the back,’ the king ordered. ‘Y … You shall escort us t … to safety.’ John gaped at him. The only thing he had thought to do was to bring the two of them to a sense of urgency.
‘Your Majesty?’ he asked.
The king handed the queen into the coach where the two little princes, Charles and James, white-faced and silent, were waiting, their eyes like saucers with terror. Then the nursemaids and the babies bundled in and the king climbed in himself. John slammed the door on them. He wanted to tell them that he could not possibly go with them but he heard the rising volume of the crowd at the gates and he was afraid that they might argue with him, command his service, question his loyalty, delay again.
John stepped back from the coach, waiting for it to draw away; but it did not move. Nobody would do anything without a specific order and the king and queen were arguing again inside.
‘Oh! Damnation! Drive on!’ John shouted, taking command in the absence of any authority, and swung himself up beside the footmen clinging on the back. ‘Westward, to Hampton Court. And drive steadily. Don’t for God’s sake run anyone down. But don’t stop!’
Even then the footmen hesitated at the stable doors.
‘Open the doors!’ John shouted at them, his temper at breaking point.
They leaped to obey the first clear order they had heard all day and the great wooden doors swung open.
At once the men and women in the very front of the crowd fell back, as the doors opened up and the coach pulled out. John saw they were taken aback at the sudden movement of the doors, at the progress of the fine horses, and the wealth and richness of the gilding on the royal coach. The king’s ornate carriage with the plumes of feathers on each roof corner, and the huge high-stepping Arab horses harnessed with tack of red leather and gold studs, still had the mystique of power, divine power, even with a traitorous Papist queen inside. But those in the front could not get back very far; they were held steady by the weight of the crowd behind them, still pushing forward.
The crowd had pikes but they were using them as banners, not yet as weapons. On each one was tied a white flag scrawled with the word ‘Liberty!’ and they jogged them up and down at the windows of the coach. John prayed that the queen kept her face turned down and for once in her life kept quiet. The prestige of the king might get them safely through the mob if she did not antagonise them.
John heard a frightened child crying from inside the coach. ‘Drive on!’ he ordered the coachman above the noise of the crowd. ‘Go steady!’, and he shouted as loud as he could: ‘Make way for the king! For the rightful king!’
‘Liberty!’ someone yelled, jabbing a pike dangerously close to his face.
‘Liberty and the king!’ John replied, and heard another voice at once echo the new slogan. The footman beside him flinched as someone spat. ‘Stay still, you fool, or they will drag you down,’ John muttered.
At any moment the mood of the crowd could change from boisterous protest to murder. John looked over the roof of the carriage to where the streets narrowed for the way out of town.
‘Make way for the rightful king!’ John shouted.
The crowd grew denser at the crossroads. ‘Keep going!’ John yelled at the coachman. He had an absolute certainty that if they stopped, even for a moment, the doors would be pulled open and the royal family dragged from the coach and torn apart on the very street. Once the mob learned that they could stop the king in his carriage, then they would know they could do whatever they wished. All that was holding them back was the old superstitious belief in the king’s power, the divinity of kingship that King James had preached and that Charles so passionately believed. The crowd kept reaching towards the coach as it crawled slowly past them but their hands would drop back as if they feared a burning from the gold paintwork. If they touched and snatched just once, then they would all know that the king was not a god,