Earthly Joys Read online

  The earl smiled. ‘Sometimes I think the greatest thing that I ever did for England was to set you to work, my John. Nothing in my life gives me more joy.’

  Tradescant waited. Often these days, the earl was disinclined to talk and would walk in silence with his gardener through the slowly emerging shapes of the garden and park. His work was daily growing more arduous; the power of the favourites around the king was undiminished, the problems of the court profligacy greater than ever. The fashion for masques now dominated at court and every occasion was marked with a catastrophically expensive play: written, composed, designed and produced in one night, and completely forgotten the next. Every court favourite, the women as well as the men, had to have a costume blazing with jewels, every important role had to arrive in a chariot or depart with fireworks.

  King James had inherited a fortune with the throne of England. The legendary meanness of the old queen had served the country extraordinarily well. Her father had left her a throne with two sources of revenue: the steady flow of money from the sale of places at court, favours, and civic jobs, and the rare bounties voted in taxes by an agreeable Parliament. The balance was a delicate one. Tax the wealth of the industries too sharply and the merchants, traders, and bankers would complain. Go cap in hand to Parliament too often and the country squires who sat there would buy control of royal policy. Only by scrimping on every expenditure, by borrowing, by insisting on constant gifts and by downright out-and-out corruption, had the Tudor King Henry and his daughter Elizabeth amassed a fortune for themselves, and a steady reliable prosperity for their kingdoms. The almighty theft of the Roman Catholic church possessions had started the process, but Tudor charm and Tudor guile had continued it.

  King James was new to this process but he had Cecil and half a hundred others to advise him. The earl had thought that the new king, who had previously managed hand-to-mouth in cold castles in a poor kingdom, would show all of the family’s legendary parsimony and have no experience of their love of show.

  But it was a habit quickly learned. James, new-come to one of the richest thrones in Europe, could see no reason why he should not have everything he desired. The money from the royal treasury poured out in fountains over the new favourites, over the new luxurious court, for every beautiful woman, for every pretty man. Not even Cecil’s constant struggle with the farming out of taxes, the sale of honours, the exploitation of orphans left in trust to the king, could keep the throne in profit; soon the king would have to call another parliament, and they would speak against him, and against the favourites at court, and the whole question of the king and the people would be thrown open, and who knew where such a debate might lead?

  The earl limped forward. His arthritic hip pained him to walk, and it had grown worse in the last few months. John, without offering sympathy, moved a little closer and his master leaned on his shoulder.

  ‘All I have ever done is juggle with the forces which drive us,’ the earl said. ‘All I ever have to do is to fend off consequences. He’s running through the old queen’s fortune as if there were no bottom to the well. And nothing to show for it. No roads, no Navy, no protection for shipping, no new colonies to mention … and not even a bit of show for the people.’

  It was growing darker, the cool early summer twilight hid the bare places of the garden, masked the awkward corners. The earl’s favourite pinks, which John had planted in great ornamental urns on the terrace, scented the air as their cloaks brushed by. John bent to pick a spray and handed it to him.

  ‘You brought the new king to his throne, and to his country,’ John observed. ‘You’ve served him well. And he came to his country without trouble. You’ve kept the country at peace.’

  The earl nodded. ‘I don’t forget it. But that little chestnut tree of yours, John, that little tree in the pot, may bring more joy to more Englishmen than any of my schemes, in the long run.’

  ‘Most men’s tastes are not political,’ John said apologetically. ‘I prefer the tree, myself.’

  The earl laughed. ‘I have something to show you. I think you may be surprised.’

  He turned and John followed him back towards the house. The wide double door stood open, two serving men at either side. The earl walked past them as if they were invisible, John nodded pleasantly to them.

  The earl led John into the shady hall. The wood floor and panelling smelled sweet and new, there was sawdust still in the corners, and the linenfold shapes on the panelling were sharp-cut and bright. The wood had not even had its first polish yet, it was still light and shining. Even in the twilight it gleamed as if it were bathed in sunshine.

  At the foot of the stairs there was a great newel post, left swathed in a cloth by the woodcarver when he went home for the night. The earl took hold of the sheet and pulled it to one side.

  ‘What d’you see?’

  John stepped forwards to look. The post was square and grand, a fitting size and solidity for the big hall, the ornaments carved on top with acanthus leaves and swags and ribbons. One face of the square pillar was ornate with half-finished carvings but the other was already complete. It showed a man, in the act of stepping down from the plinth, stepping out of the frame of the carving as if he would take his place in the outside world, as if he would take his work to the farthest corners of the world.

  In one hand the figure had a long-handled rake, and in the other a grand fanciful flower springing from a huge pot, which was spilling over with fruit and seeds: a cornucopia of goodness. He was wearing comfortable baggy breeches and a stout overcoat, and on his head, at a rakish joyful angle, was his hat. With an awe-struck gasp John recognised himself, carved in wood on the earl’s newel post.

  ‘Good God! Is it me?’ John asked in a whisper.

  Robert Cecil’s hand was gentle on his shoulder. ‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘And a very good likeness, I think.’

  ‘Why have you put me on your stair post, my lord?’ John asked. ‘Of all the things that you could have had carved?’

  The earl smiled. ‘Of all my great choices: the Three Graces, or Zeus, or Apollo, or something from the Bible or the king himself? Yet I chose to have my gardener carved in the centre post of my house.’

  John looked at the jaunty confidence of the set of the hat and the brandished rake. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said simply. ‘It’s too much for me. You have taken my breath away.’

  ‘Fame comes in many guises, Tradescant,’ Robert Cecil remarked. ‘But I think people will remember you when they sit beneath their chestnut trees and when your plants bloom in their gardens. And here you are, and here you will be, as long as my house stands, recorded forever, striding out with a plant in one hand, and your rake in the other.’

  Autumn 1611

  Elizabeth and Baby J were at last to move to Hatfield House. Gertrude, suddenly seized with maternal tenderness, came to weep over their departure and to see them off, all their goods loaded into one wagon, and Elizabeth sitting beside John on the driver’s seat with Baby J wedged between them.

  ‘Where’s the chestnut tree?’ John asked.

  ‘That tree!’ Gertrude exclaimed, but she lacked her old spite.

  ‘Safe in the back,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Beside the kitchen things.’

  John handed her the reins of the steady horse and went round to the back of the wagon to find the barrel with the tree. It was leaning at an angle against the rail. The movement could have rubbed the bark off the tender trunk. John compressed his lips over hard words. Elizabeth had much work to do: moving house, and a young child, active as a puppy under her feet all day. He should not blame her for being careless with something which had only meant much to her as a token of his love. She never cared for it as he did. It was unfair to expect that she should.

  He unloaded a couple of stools and repacked the corner of the wagon so that the tree was fully supported. Then he came round to the driver’s seat.

  ‘Your baby safely settled?’ Elizabeth asked sharply.

  Joh