Earthly Joys Read online

  ‘You are a conquistador,’ Sir Dudley remarked when Tradescant arrived back at the Archangel quay and had his barrels of plants set in damp earth unloaded on the quayside. ‘This is a treasure for those who love to make a garden.’

  John, filthy and smelling strongly of fish which was all he had eaten for many days, grinned and came stiffly up the quayside steps.

  ‘What have you seen?’ Sir Dudley asked. ‘I have spent all my time getting my goods unloaded and preparing for the journey to Moscow.’

  ‘It is mostly waste ground,’ Tradescant explained softly to him. ‘But when they clear a piece of land for farming, they are good farmers, they can lay their crops down into soil which is only just warm and get a harvest off it inside six weeks.’

  Sir Dudley nodded.

  ‘But a poor country?’ he suggested.

  ‘Different,’ John judged. ‘Terrible ale, the worst taste I have ever had. But they have a drink called mead made with honey which is very good. They have no plane to work their wood, but what they can do with an axe and a knife is better than many an English carpenter. But the trees!’ He broke off.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Sir Dudley said with a smile. ‘Tell me about the trees.’

  ‘I have found four new sorts of fir trees that I have never seen before, the buds of the boughs growing so fresh and so bright that they are spotted like a dappled pony, the bright green against the dark.’

  Sir Dudley nodded.

  ‘And a birch tree, a very big birch tree which they tell me they can tap for liquor and they make a drink from it. And they have a little tree for making hoops for barrels that they say is a cherry, but it was between the blossom and the fruit so I can’t be sure. I can’t believe there could be a cherry tree which could make hoops. But I have a cutting and a sapling which I will set to grow at home and see what it is. Its leaf is like a cherry. If you so much as bend a twig down to the ground it will grow where it is set, like a willow. That would be a wood worth growing in England, don’t you think?’

  Sir Dudley had lost his indulgent smile and was looking thoughtful. ‘Indeed. And it must be strong to survive this climate. It would grow in England, wouldn’t it, John?’

  Tradescant nodded. ‘And white, red and black currants, much bigger than our fruit, and roses – in one place I saw more than five acres of wild roses like a cinnamon rose. Hellebores, angelica, geranium, saxifrage, sorrel as tall as my son John at home – and a new sort of pink –’ John broke off for a moment, thinking how pleased his lord would have been to hear that he had found a new sort of pink. ‘A new pink,’ he said quietly. ‘With very fair jagged leaves.’

  ‘These are treasures,’ Sir Dudley said.

  ‘And there are plants which could yield medicines,’ Tradescant told him. ‘A fruit like an amber strawberry which prevents scurvy, and I was told of a tree which grows at the Volga River which they call God’s tree. It sounds like fennel but they say it will cure many sicknesses. You might see it, my lord. You might take a cutting if you see it.’

  ‘Come with me, John,’ Sir Dudley replied. ‘Come and take your own cuttings. You’ve been here such a little time and found such novelties. Come with me to Moscow and you can collect your plants all the way.’

  For a moment he thought the man would say yes. John’s face lit up at the prospect of the adventure and the thought of the riches he would see.

  Then he shook his head and laughed at his own eagerness. ‘I’m like a girl running after a fair,’ he said. ‘I can think of nothing I would like more. But I have to go home. Lord Wootton expects me, and my wife and son.’

  ‘His lordship comes first?’

  John was recalled to his duty. ‘My lord must come before everything. Even my own desires.’

  Sir Dudley dropped an arm carelessly around John’s shoulders, and they strolled together to his waiting horses. ‘I am sorry for it,’ he said. ‘There’s no man I would rather have beside me, all the way to China.’

  John nodded to hide his emotion. ‘I wish I could, my lord.’ He looked down the wagon train of the strong Tartar horses, tacked up with deep travelling saddles.

  ‘All the way to China, you say?’

  ‘Think what you would find –’ Sir Dudley whispered temptingly.

  John shook his head but his hand was on the stirrup leather. ‘I cannot,’ he said.

  Sir Dudley smiled at him. ‘Then safe homeward journey,’ he said. ‘And if I find anything very rare or strange I will cut it and send it to you, and I will make a note of where I found it so that you can make the journey yourself one day. For you are a traveller, John, not a stay-at-home. I can see it in your eyes.’

  John grinned, shaking his head, and made himself release his grip on the stirrup, and made himself step back from Sir Dudley’s horse. He forced himself to watch, and not run after, as the whole cavalcade of them turned from the quayside to set off on the track towards Moscow and the East.

  ‘God speed,’ John called. ‘And good fortune at the court of the Russian king.’

  ‘God send you safe home,’ Sir Dudley replied. ‘And when I get home you can name me as your friend, Tradescant. I shall not forget your care of me when I was sick.’

  John watched them till the dust from the last of the train was gone, till the dust had blown across the grey sky, until the sound of the harness bells and the beat of the hooves was silent.

  That night they rocked at anchor, and on the next tide they loaded the last of their goods and cast off with Tradescant’s cuttings in boxes on the deck and his trees loosely lashed to the mast, and his heart in his seaboots.

  Elizabeth was watering the chestnut tree in its great box on the morning that John returned. The earth in the rest of the garden was dry and parched. It had been a bad year for the harvest, wet in the early months and scorching in July. The wheat crop had failed and the barley was little better. There would be hunger in the cities and in the poorer villages the price of flour would rise beyond the pockets of the poor. But through sun or rain the little chestnut sapling had thrived. Elizabeth had made it a little shelter of thatched straw to keep off the strongest sun, and watered it without fail on the dry days.

  ‘Now there’s a pretty sight!’ John said, coming up behind her.

  Elizabeth jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to see him. ‘Praise God,’ she said steadily, and paused for a moment, her eyes closed, to give thanks.

  John, impatient with her piety, pulled her close to him and held her tight.

  ‘Are you safe?’ she asked. ‘Was it a good voyage? Are you well?’

  ‘Safe and well and with boxes full of treasures.’

  Elizabeth knew her husband too well to imagine that he was talking of Russian gold. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘A Muscovy rose – bigger and sweeter than any I have seen before. A cherry tree with wood you can weave like a willow, which roots by bending its twigs into the ground, like a willow. Some new pinks with jagged leaves. I could have loaded the whole boat with white hellebores which grew so thick on one island that you could see nothing else, a new purple cranesbill, a great sorrel plant –’ He broke off. ‘A cart is following me. And I bought some rarities too for Lord Wootton’s collection: Russian boots and strange shoes for walking on the snow and rare stockings.’

  ‘And you are safe, and you were well?’

  John sat down on the garden bench and drew Elizabeth on to his lap. ‘Safe as a summer garden, and I was well all the time, not even seasick. And now tell me your news,’ he said. ‘Is J well?’

  ‘Praise the Lord, yes.’

  ‘And all your family? No plague in Kent?’

  Elizabeth dipped her head in that familiar gesture which meant that she was swiftly praying. ‘None, thank God. Is there sickness in London?’

  ‘I passed swiftly through to avoid the risk.’

  ‘And are you home now, John? Home for good?’

  She saw his roguish smile but she did not respond to it. ‘John?’ she repeated gravely.