Earthly Joys Read online

  ‘Get up! and get washed! There is a royal herald for you in the parlour!’ she exclaimed.

  John got slowly to his feet. ‘A royal herald?’

  ‘Trouble?’ J asked. ‘Not the coat of arms?’

  ‘Surely not,’ John said comfortably. ‘Give him a glass of wine, Jane, and tell him I am coming at once.’

  ‘You will change your coat,’ she reminded him. ‘He is in full livery and with a powdered wig.’

  ‘It’s only a herald,’ John said mildly. ‘Not Queen Henrietta Maria herself.’

  Jane picked up her skirts and fled back to the house to order the kitchenmaid to pour a cool glass of wine and put it on the best silver tray.

  She found the herald looking out from the window to the garden. ‘How many men does Mr Tradescant employ here?’ he asked, trying to engage her in conversation to make amends for his earlier mistake.

  She glanced out. To her embarrassment it was not the garden lads but her husband and her father-in-law, strolling up from the orchard with a hoe and a bucket apiece. ‘Half a dozen in midsummer,’ she said. ‘Fewer in winter.’

  ‘And do you have many visitors?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Both to the garden and to the cabinet of rarities. The garden is rich with both rare fruit and flowers, you are welcome to walk in it, if you wish.’

  ‘Later perhaps,’ the herald said loftily. ‘I must speak with Mr Tradescant now.’

  ‘He will come shortly,’ Jane said. ‘I could show you some of the rarities in the cabinets while you wait.’

  To her relief, the door behind her opened. ‘Here I am,’ John said. ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  At least he had washed his hands, but he still wore his old gardening coat. The herald, whose face revealed nothing, realised that the working man he had seen from the window was in fact the gentleman he had come to visit.

  ‘Mr Tradescant,’ he began. ‘I am carrying a letter from the king, and I am to await your reply.’

  He held out a scroll of paper with a thick red seal at the bottom. John took it and went to the window where the August sunshine poured in.

  Jane had to prevent herself from moving behind him and reading over his shoulder.

  ‘Hmmm hmmm hmmm,’ John said, skimming the customary compliments and addresses at the start of the letter. ‘Why! His Majesty is commanding me to be his gardener at Oatlands Palace! I am honoured.’

  ‘His Majesty has just given the palace to Her Majesty the Queen,’ the herald informed them. ‘And she wants a garden like Hatfield or New Hall.’

  John raised his head. ‘It’s a long time since I planted a garden for a palace. And I am sixty years old this year. There are other gardeners Their Majesties could employ, and I would have thought the queen would have preferred a garden in the French style.’

  The herald raised his neat plucked eyebrows. ‘Perhaps. But I am not in a position to advise His Majesty or Her Majesty as to their course of action. I merely obey their royal decree.’ The inference was clear.

  ‘Oh,’ John said, corrected. ‘I see.’

  ‘His Majesty ordered me to take back a reply to him,’ the herald continued loftily. ‘Is it your wish that I tell him you are sixty years of age and that it is your opinion that he didn’t want you in the first place?’

  John grimaced. An invitation from the king was tantamount to a royal command. He was not able to refuse. ‘Tell His Majesty that I am honoured for the invitation and that I accept, I gratefully accept, and that it will always be my pleasure to serve Their Majesties in any way I can.’

  The herald unbent slightly. ‘I will deliver your message. His Majesty will expect you at Oatlands Palace within the week.’

  John nodded. ‘I shall be delighted to attend.’

  The herald bowed. ‘An honour to meet you, Mr Tradescant.’

  ‘The honour is all mine,’ John said grandly.

  The herald bowed himself from the room and left John and his daughter-in-law alone.

  ‘Royal service,’ she said grimly. ‘J won’t like it.’

  John grimaced. ‘He will have to bear it. You can’t refuse the king. You heard him. My acceptance was just a matter of form, he knew what day I had to start work.’

  ‘We said we would never work for another master,’ Jane reminded him.

  John nodded. ‘We never thought of this. But perhaps it won’t be so bad.’ He turned and looked out of the window at his little farm. ‘I’ve heard they have a great orangery,’ he said. ‘But they’ve never had much luck with getting the trees to flower. There’s a garden just for the king’s use and another for the queen. There’s a massive fountain in the great garden. The whole place is like a village set about with gardens, built all ramshackle with one court running into another, overlooking the Thames. The trick of it will be to make sure that every corner has a pretty plant, that the gardens pull the whole site together so that every corner has a view.’

  Jane heard her father-in-law casting aside the principle of independence for the offer of a fine garden to make. She stalked to the door. ‘Shall I tell J or will you?’ she asked coldly. ‘For he will not care for making pretty views for such a king.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ John said absently. ‘I wonder if we have enough chestnut saplings to use one at the centre of each court?’

  John told J the news at dinner but he knew from the moment his son entered the dining room that Jane had forewarned him, and that J was forearmed.

  ‘I swore I’d never work for another master,’ he said.

  ‘This would be for me,’ John corrected him, mildly. ‘Working for us all. For the good of us all.’

  J glanced at his wife.

  ‘It would be for the queen,’ she said bluntly. ‘A woman of vanity and a heretic.’

  ‘She may be both of those,’ John agreed without hesitation. ‘But she’s only the paymaster. She will not supervise us at all. J need never speak to her.’

  ‘There’s something about them, though, that sticks in my throat like dry bread,’ J said thoughtfully. ‘There’s something about a man calling himself nearer to God than me. Something about a man thinking himself a better man than me – almost an angel. Even if I never saw him and never served him, there’s something about it which goes against the grain for me.’

  ‘Because it’s heresy,’ Jane said flatly.

  J shook his head. ‘Not just because of that,’ he said. ‘Because it denies me – it denies that I think, just as he thinks. That I have an immortal journey, just as he does. That I too want, think, and pray for better days, for the coming of the Great Day, the Last Day. If he is as far above me as an angel then I need not think and hope and pray, for God would hardly listen to me when the king is on his knees. It’s as if his importance makes me more little.’ He glanced around at their surprised faces. ‘I daresay I’m not making any sense,’ he said defensively. ‘I’m not good at arguing these things. It’s just what I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘But what you’re saying would deny any king,’ John said. ‘This one or any other. A good one or a bad one.’

  J nodded reluctantly. ‘I just can’t see that any man should set himself up to be above another. I can’t see that any man needs more than one house. I can’t see that any man needs dozens of houses and hundreds of servants. I can’t see that he can be closer to God with these things – I would have thought he would be further and further away.’

  John shifted uncomfortably on his wooden seat. ‘This is Leveller talk, my son. Next thing you will be denying any king but King Jesus and taking off for the common and waste lands.’

  ‘I don’t care what it’s called,’ J said steadily. ‘I wouldn’t be frightened from speaking my mind because others think the same thoughts but express them wildly. I know that I must think that England would be better without a man at its head who claims to speak for us, and know us, and yet clearly knows nothing at all of what it is like to be a man such as me.’

  ‘He has advisers.’