Earthly Joys Read online

  The carriage drew up outside the door and the duke himself came out to greet his mother.

  ‘Thank you, John,’ he threw over his shoulder and drew her into the house and up to the king’s chamber.

  ‘Is the king better?’ John asked a manservant as the countess’s box was carried up the stairs.

  ‘On the mend,’ the man said. ‘He took some soup this midday.’

  ‘Then I think I’ll take a turn around the garden.’ John nodded towards the door and the enticing view. ‘If my lord wants me you will find me at the bath house, or on the mount. I have not been here for many years.’

  He stepped through the front door and towards the first of the beautiful knot gardens. They wanted weeding, he thought, and then smiled at himself. These were not his weeds any more, they were the king’s.

  He saw Buckingham before dinner that night. ‘If you do not need me, I shall go home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I did not warn my wife that I was going with you, and there is much to do in the garden at New Hall.’

  Buckingham nodded. ‘When you go through London you can see if my ship has come from the Indies,’ he said. ‘And supervise the unloading of the goods. They were ordered to bring me much ivory and silk. You can fetch them safely down to New Hall and see them installed in my rooms. I am making a collection of rare and precious things. Prince Charles has his toy soldiers, have you seen them? They fire cannon and you can draw them up in battle lines. They are very diverting. I should like some pretty things too.’

  ‘Am I to wait in London for the Indies goods to arrive?’

  ‘If you will,’ Buckingham said sweetly. ‘If Mrs Tradescant can spare you so long.’

  ‘She knows your service comes first,’ John said. ‘How does the king today? Still better?’

  Buckingham looked grave. ‘He is worse,’ he said. ‘The ague has hold of him, and he is not a young man, and was never strong. He saw the prince privately today and put him in mind of his duties. He is preparing himself … I really think he is preparing himself. It is my duty to make sure he can be at peace, that he can rest.’

  ‘I heard he was getting better,’ John ventured cautiously.

  ‘We give out the best reports we can, but the truth is that he is an old man who is ready to meet his death.’

  John bowed and left the room, and went down to the hall for his dinner.

  The place was in uproar. Half a dozen of the physicians that John had first seen in the king’s chamber were calling for their horses and their menservants. The courtiers were shouting for their carriages and for food to take on their journeys.

  ‘What’s this?’ John asked.

  ‘It’s all the fault of your master,’ a woman replied shortly. ‘He has flung the physicians from the king’s presence, and half the court too. He said they were troubling him too much with their noise and their playing, and he said the physicians were fools.’

  John grinned and stepped back to watch the confusion of their departure.

  ‘He will regret it!’ one doctor shouted to another. ‘I warned him myself, if His Majesty suffers and we are not at hand, he will regret this insult to us!’

  ‘He is beyond counsel! I warned him but he pushed me from the room!’

  ‘He snatched my very pipe out of my mouth and broke it!’ one of the courtiers interrupted. ‘I know that the king hates smoke, but it is a sure prevention of infection, and how should His Majesty smell it in another room? I shall write to the duke and complain of my treatment. Twenty years I have been at court, and he pushed me out of the door as if I were his serf!’

  ‘He has cleared the room of everyone but a nurse, his mother and himself,’ a man declared. ‘And he swears that the king shall have peace and quiet and no more meddling. As if a king should not be surrounded by his people all the time!’

  John left them and strolled into dinner. Buckingham and his mother were at the high table; the place for the king was left respectfully empty. Prince Charles was seated next to the empty place, his head very close to the duke’s.

  ‘Aye, they’ll have much to consider,’ a man said in an undertone and took his seat next to John.

  John took some fine white manchet bread and a large joint of pheasant from the plate in the centre of the table. He snapped his fingers for a girl and she came to pour him wine.

  ‘What’s the countess doing here?’ one man asked. ‘The king can’t abide her.’

  ‘Caring for the king, apparently. The physicians have been sent away and she is to nurse him.’

  ‘An odd choice,’ another man said shortly. ‘Since he hates the sight of her.’

  ‘The king is on the mend,’ yet another man said, pulling out his stool. ‘The duke was right to send those fools away. His Majesty had the fever – why! – we’ve all had a fever. And if the countess knows a remedy which cured the duke, why should she not offer it to the king?’

  The men glanced at John. ‘Was it you fetched her?’ one asked.

  John savoured the taste of roast pheasant, the rich juices flowing in his mouth. ‘I can hardly remember,’ he said, muffled. ‘D’you know this is the first decent meal I’ve had in a day and a half? I was damming up a fishpond in Essex not long ago. And now here I am back at Theobalds. And very good fare to be had too.’

  One of the men shrugged and laughed shortly. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘We’ll get no secrets from you. We all know who is your master, and you serve him well, John Tradescant. I hope you never come to regret it!’

  John looked up the hall to the top table where the duke was leaning forward to call to one of the officers. The candlelight made a reddish halo around his black curls, his face was as bright and delighted as a child’s.

  ‘No,’ John said with affection. ‘I’ll never regret it.’

  John stayed late in the hall, drinking with the men at his table. At midnight he headed unsteadily to the duke’s chamber.

  ‘Where d’you sleep?’ one of his drinking companions asked him.

  ‘With my lord.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the man said pointedly. ‘I heard you were a favourite.’

  John wheeled around and stared at him, and the man held his gaze, half a question on his face which was an insult. John spoke a hasty word and was about to strike the man when a serving maid ran between the two of them, a basin in her hand, blinded with hurry.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ John asked.

  ‘It’s the king!’ she exclaimed. ‘His fever has risen, and his piss is blue as ink. He is as sick as a dog. He is asking for his physician but he has only Lady Villiers to attend him.’

  ‘Asking for his physicians?’ the man demanded. ‘Then the duke must send for them, to bring them back.’

  ‘He will do,’ John said uncertainly. ‘He is bound to do so.’

  He went to Buckingham’s chamber, and found the duke seated by the window gazing at his own reflection in the darkened glass, as if it would answer a question.

  ‘Shall I ride out and fetch the physicians?’ John asked him quietly.

  The duke shook his head.

  ‘I heard the king was asking for them.’

  ‘He is well nursed,’ Buckingham said. ‘If anyone should ask you, John, you may tell them that he is well cared for. He needs rest; not a dozen men harrying him to death.’

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ John said. ‘But they tell me that he is asking for his physicians and your mother is not a favourite.’

  The duke hesitated. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ John warned him. ‘More than enough.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ the duke said gently. ‘I am going to bed myself in a minute.’

  John shucked off his breeches and shoes, lay down in his shirt and was asleep in moments.

  There was a hammering on the bedroom door in the early hours of the morning. John started out of sleep, leaped from his bed and ran, not to the door, but to the duke’s bed, to stand between him and whoever might be outside battering the door down. In that first moment, as