Earthly Joys Read online

  She turned her face away for a moment, and then quietly put her spindle down. ‘You will need your travelling cape, and your riding breeches,’ she said and went to climb the little stair to their bed chamber.

  ‘He wants me!’ Tradescant repeated exultantly. ‘He sent for me! All the way from France!’

  Elizabeth turned back to look at him and for a moment he could not understand her expression. She was looking at him with regret, with a strange inexplicable pity.

  ‘This is what I have been waiting for!’ he said. But at once the words sounded lame. ‘At last!’

  ‘I know you have been waiting for him to whistle and for you to run,’ she said gently. ‘And I will pray that he does not lead you down dark pathways.’

  ‘He is leading me to the court of France!’ John exclaimed. ‘To the heart of Paris itself to bring home the new Queen of England!’

  ‘To a Papist court and a Papist queen,’ Elizabeth said steadily. ‘I will pray for your deliverance night and day, husband. Last time you went to court you came home sickened to your soul.’

  John swore under his breath and flung himself out of the cottage to wait on the road for his wife to pack his bag. So when they said farewell he did not take her in his arms but merely nodded his head to her. ‘I bid you farewell,’ he said. ‘I cannot say when I shall return.’

  ‘When he has finished with you,’ she said simply.

  John flinched at the words. ‘I am his servant, as he is the king’s,’ he said. ‘Duty to him is an honour as well as my task.’

  ‘Indeed, I hope his service always is an honour,’ she said. ‘And that he never asks anything of you that you should not perform.’

  John took her hand and kissed her lightly, coldly, on the forehead. ‘Of course not,’ he said irritably. The cart, packed with the duke’s goods and drawn by two good horses, with his lordship’s two best hunters tossing their heads at being tied on behind, clattered down the lane. John hailed it and swung up on the seat beside the driver. When he looked down on her he thought his wife seemed very small, but as indomitable as she had been the day of their engagement twenty-four years ago.

  ‘God bless you,’ he said gruffly. ‘I shall come home as soon as I have done my duty.’

  She nodded, still grave. ‘J and I will be waiting for you,’ she said. The cart rolled forward, she turned and watched it go. ‘As we always are.’

  When J came in for his supper she sent him back out to the pump to wash his hands again. He came in wiping his palms on his smock, leaving muddy stains.

  ‘Look at you!’ Elizabeth exclaimed without heat.

  ‘It’s clean earth,’ he defended himself. ‘And I’ve never seen my father’s hands without grimy calluses.’

  Elizabeth brought bread and meat broth to the table.

  ‘Chicken broth again?’ J asked without resentment.

  ‘Mutton,’ she said. ‘Mrs Giddings killed a sheep and sold me the lights and a leg. We’ll have a roast tomorrow.’

  ‘Where’s father?’

  She let him break bread and take a spoonful of soup before she answered. ‘Gone to France after my lord Buckingham.’

  He dropped his spoon back in his bowl. ‘Gone where?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘I’d have thought you’d have heard.’

  He shook his head. ‘I was over at the far side of the estate all day, with the game birds. I heard nothing.’

  ‘The duke sent for him, wanted him to take some clothes, and some playthings for the French princess.’

  ‘And he went?’

  She met his angry glare. ‘Of course, J my boy. Of course he went.’

  ‘He runs after the duke as if he were a dog!’ J burst out.

  Elizabeth shot a fierce look at him. ‘You remember your duty!’ she hissed.

  J dropped his gaze to the table, and fought for control. ‘I miss him,’ he said quietly. ‘When he is not there then people look to me to tell them what to do. Because I am his son they assume that I know things, and I don’t know them. And the lads in the stable tease me when he is not there. They mock me behind my back and call me names. They say things about him and the duke which are not fit to be repeated.’

  ‘He won’t be long,’ Elizabeth said without conviction.

  ‘You cannot know that.’

  ‘I know he will come as soon as he can.’

  ‘You know he will come when the duke has finished with him, and not a moment sooner. Besides, he loves travelling, if he gets the chance he will be off around Europe again. Did he leave you with an address where we can reach him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or money?’

  ‘No.’

  J sighed heavily and spooned broth. When his bowl was empty he took the last piece of bread and wiped it carefully around, mopping up the gravy. ‘So at the end of the month I shall have to go to the almoner for his wages and he will swear they will be paid to him in Paris, and we will have to make do on my money until he returns.’

  ‘We can manage,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I have some put by, and he will make it up when he gets back.’

  J knew how to bait his mother. ‘And he will be drinking and dining and living at a Papist court. I doubt that there will be any church where he can say his prayers. He will come home crossing himself and needing a priest to pray for him.’

  She went white at that. ‘He will not,’ she said faintly.

  ‘They say Buckingham himself is inclining that way,’ J went on. ‘His mother is turned Papist, or witch, or something.’

  Elizabeth dropped her head and was silent for a moment. ‘Our Lord will keep him safe,’ she said. ‘And he is a godly man. He will come home safe, to his home, to his faith.’

  J tired of the sport of teasing his mother’s piety. ‘When I am a man I shall call no man master,’ he asserted.

  She smiled at him. ‘Then you will have to earn more money than your father has ever done! Every man has his better, every dog a master.’

  ‘I shall never follow a man as my father follows the duke,’ J said boldly. ‘Not the King of England himself. I shall work for my own good, I shall go on my own travels. I shall not be ordered to one place and then summoned away.’

  Elizabeth put out her hand in a rare gesture of tenderness and touched his cheek. ‘I hope you will live in a country where great men do not exercise their power in such a way,’ she said. It was the closest he had ever heard her come to any sort of radical thought. ‘I hope you will live in a country where great men remember their duty to the poor, and to their servants. But we do not live in such a world yet, my J. You have to choose a master and become his man and do his bidding. There is no-one who does not serve another, whether you’re the lowest ploughboy or the greatest squire. There is always another above you.’

  Instinctively he lowered his voice. ‘England will have to change,’ he said softly. ‘The lowest ploughboy is questioning if his master has a God-given right to rule over him. The lowest ploughboy has a soul which is as welcome in heaven as the greatest squire. The Bible says that the first shall become last. That’s not the promise that nothing can ever change.’

  ‘Hush,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Time enough to speak like that when things have changed, if they ever do.’

  ‘Things are changing now,’ J insisted. ‘This king will have to deal with the people of the country. He will have to listen to Parliament. He cannot cheat on honest, good men, as his father did. We are tired of paying for a court which shows us nothing but luxury and sin. We will not be allied to Papists, we will not be brothers to heretics!’

  She shook her head, but she did not stop him.

  ‘At New Hall there is a man who knows another man who says that there should be a petition against the king that should tell him his duties. That he cannot levy taxes without calling a parliament. That he must listen to his advisers in Parliament. That the duke should not rule over everything and scrape all the wealth into his own pocket. That orphans and widows should have the protection