Earthly Joys Read online

  ‘What are they?’ J asked reverently, holding a wicker basket of sieved warm weed-free earth, watching his father’s meticulous care. ‘Are they the Semper Augustus?’

  His father shook his head. ‘I had a king’s ransom to spend and yet I could not afford it,’ he said. ‘No-one bought the Semper. I was at the Bourse every day and the price was so high that no-one would buy, and the merchant kept his nerve and would not drop the price. Next season he will offer them again at double the price, and all the year he will be praying that no-one has grown a new tulip which supplants the Semper and leaves him with a pair of fine flowers which are out of fashion.’

  ‘Could that happen?’ J was horrified.

  John nodded. ‘It is not gardening, it is speculation,’ he said with distaste. ‘There are people dealing in tulips who have never so much as pulled a weed. And making fortunes from their work.’

  J extended a respectful finger and stroked the dry firm surface of the nearest bulb. ‘The skin is solid, and the shape is good. They are even lovely in the bulb, aren’t they?’ He bent and sniffed the firm warm skin.

  ‘Is it clean?’ John asked anxiously. ‘No hint of taint?’

  J shook his head. ‘None. What sort is it?’

  ‘This is the Duck tulip – yellow with crimson blush at the base of the petals.’ John pointed to the next bulb. ‘This is a Lack tulip, white and thin-petalled with thin red stripes through white, and this is a Tulipa australis, very strong-stemmed and scarlet petals with a white border. Pray God they grow for us, I have spent nearly a thousand pounds on the six of them.’

  J’s hand holding the trowel trembled. ‘A thousand pounds? A thousand? But father – what if they rot?’ he asked, his voice a whisper. ‘What if they grow blind and fail to flower at all?’

  John smiled grimly. ‘Then we seek another line of work. But what if they grow and split into new bulbs, J? Then our master has doubled his wealth in one season.’

  ‘But we stay on the same wages,’ J observed.

  John nodded and put the six pots in a cool cupboard in the corner of the room. ‘That is how it works,’ he said simply. ‘But there could be no objection to us taking a bulb for every two we grow for him. My master Cecil taught me that himself.’

  John was popular in the great dining room of New Hall on his return. He was able to tell a rapt audience of the prettiness of the little French princess: only fifteen and tiny, dark-haired and dark-eyed. He told them of her dancing and her singing, of her complete refusal to learn English. He told them that the news in London was that when the young King Charles met her at Dover Castle, he had covered her little face with kisses, laughed at her prepared speech, and spent the night in her bed.

  The ladies wanted to know what she was wearing and John struggled through a description of her clothes. He assured them that the king and queen entered London by the river in a grand barge, both dressed in green, with the guns of the Tower roaring out a salute, and that was a vivid enough picture to be told and retold by a dozen hearthsides. He did not tell them that there had been a nasty quarrel between the king and his bride of only a day when she had wanted her French companions in the carriage from Dover to London, and the king had insisted that she travel with Buckingham’s wife and his mother.

  The king had said that the French attendant was not of high enough station to ride with the Queen of England; and the young queen incautiously retorted that she knew well enough that the Buckinghams had been nobodies just ten years ago. She did not yet know enough to mind her sharp tongue, she had not yet learned of the extent of the duke’s influence. As it was, she rode in her carriage with the duke’s wife and the duke’s mother for the long journey into her capital and it might be safely assumed that no promises of friendship were made on the drive.

  ‘So did she look happy?’ asked Mrs Giddings, who worked in the New Hall laundry but had her own little farm and would kill another sheep for the Tradescants if John’s story was good enough.

  John thought of the fifteen-year-old girl and her un-English formality, her court which spoke only French, and her brace of confessors who spoke Latin grace over her dinner, and warned her not to eat meat even though her new husband had just carved her a slice, since she must observe a fast day.

  ‘As happy as a maid can be,’ he said. ‘Laughing and chattering and singing.’

  ‘And the duke, does he like her?’

  Only Elizabeth saw the swift shadow cross her husband’s face. There had been a scandal in France, several scandals. Buckingham had told him the worst of it as they paced the deck of a little fishing boat, sailing from Rotterdam to Tilbury. The Queen of France had encouraged Buckingham further than a married woman, and one so carefully watched, should have done. He had climbed the wall into her private garden to meet her there. What took place Buckingham would not say, but everyone else in Europe was talking about it. The pair had been caught by her personal guard. Swords had been drawn and threats made. Some said that the queen had been assaulted by Buckingham, some said the queen had been seduced, and caught half-naked in his arms. The queen’s ladies said that she had been elegantly flirting or – no such thing – somewhere else all the time. There had been a whirlwind of rumour and innuendo and through it all Buckingham had sailed smiling, the handsomest man at court, the wickedest look, the most roguish smile, the irresistible charm. John had frowned when Buckingham had confessed to losing his heart to the Queen of France and thought that he should have stayed by his master and kept him from secret assignations with the most carefully guarded woman in Europe.

  ‘What could have prevented it?’ Buckingham sighed, but with a glint in his eye which always meant mischief. ‘It’s love, John. I shall run away with her and take her from her dreary husband to live with her in Virginia.’

  John had shaken his head at his master. ‘What does her husband think?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, he hates me,’ Buckingham said joyfully.

  ‘And the Princess Henrietta Maria?’

  ‘My sworn enemy now.’

  ‘She’s your queen,’ John reminded him.

  ‘She is only the wife of my dearest friend,’ Buckingham had replied. ‘And she’d better remember who he loves.’

  ‘So what does she think of him?’ the questioner repeated. ‘What does the new queen think of our duke?’

  ‘He is her greatest friend at court,’ John answered carefully. ‘The duke admires and respects her.’

  ‘Will he come home soon?’ someone asked from the back of the crowd, packed into John’s kitchen.

  ‘Not for a while,’ John answered. ‘There are parties and masquings and balls at court to greet the new queen, and then there will be the coronation. We’ll not see him here for a few weeks.’

  There was a general murmur of disappointment at that. New Hall was merrier when the duke was at home, and there was always the chance of a glimpse of the king.

  ‘But you’ll go to him,’ Elizabeth said, rightly reading her husband’s contented serenity.

  ‘I am to meet him in London. And then I have to go down to the New Forest, looking for trees. He wants a maze,’ Tradescant said with ill-hidden delight. ‘Where I am to get enough yew from I don’t know.’

  John only ever told half the story to the curious, and he always emphasised the things that they should hear. He was ready to tell that the young King Charles had already dismissed dozens of his father’s idle wastrel favourites, that the court now ran to a strict rhythm of prayer, work, and exercise. The king seldom drank wine, and never to excess. He read all the papers set before him and signed each one personally with his own name. Sometimes his advisers would find small-handed notes written in the margin, and he would ask them later to ensure they were obeyed. He wanted to be a king with an eye to detail, to the meticulous observance both of ceremony and the minutiae of government.

  John did not tell them that he had no eye to the grander picture, he was incapable of visualising consequences on a long-term or big scale. He was faultl