Earthly Joys Read online

  The rarities room and the parlour had been swept and polished ever since the gentleman usher had left the house. Jane laid the table in the parlour and set the fire against the cold of the January day, while J and his father prowled around the rarities room for the hundredth time, ensuring that every case stood open and that every rarity – even the smallest carved hazelnut shell – was laid out to its best advantage.

  When everything was polished and prepared, there was nothing to do but wait.

  Frances went to sit on the front garden wall at half past ten. At eleven, John sent the garden lad down the road to keep watch and give them warning when he saw the royal carriage roof rocking down the bumpy road towards them. At midday Frances came in, her fingertips blue with cold, saying that there was no sign of them, and that the king was a liar and a fool.

  Jane shushed her and rushed her to the kitchen to get warm before the fire.

  At two o’clock John said that he was too starved to wait, and went to the kitchen for a bowl of soup. Frances, perched on her stool and with her face inside a large bowl of broth, emerged only to say that the king shouldn’t say he was coming if he did not mean it, as it caused a lot of people, especially those who had to wait in the cold, a great deal of discomfort.

  ‘If he’s the king, he should do what he promises.’

  ‘You’re not the first to think that,’ John remarked.

  At three o’clock, after tempers had frayed and the fires in the parlour and the rarities room had burned down and been renewed, there was a thunderous knocking at the garden door and the lad poked his frozen face into the room, his nose blue with cold, and said: ‘They’re coming at last!’

  Frances screamed and ran for her cloak, all complaints forgotten, and rushed to her station on the front wall. J leaped from his seat at the kitchen table, wiped his mouth, and rubbed his hands on the cloth.

  John pulled on his best coat, which he had laid aside in the heat of the kitchen, and rolled, with his limping gait, to the front door to hold it open as the king and queen visited the Ark.

  Their Majesties did not see Frances as the coach drew up, though she stood up on the wall and did her best curtsey, perched on top. When they walked past her without even a glance in her direction, Frances, who had hoped to be appointed as the king’s gardener on that very day, scrambled down from the wall, tore round to the back door, and stationed herself by the door of the rarities room where they could not possibly miss her as they entered.

  ‘Your Majesties.’ John bowed low as the queen stepped over the threshold. J, behind him, matched his bow.

  ‘Ah, Tradescant!’ the queen said. ‘Here we are to see your rarities, and the king has brought you some things for your collection.’

  The king waved at an usher, who unfolded a bolt of cloth. Inside was a handsome pair of light suede gloves.

  ‘King Henry’s hunting gloves,’ the king said. ‘And some other goods you can see at your leisure. Now show me your treasures.’

  John led the way around the room. The king wanted to see everything: the carved ivories, the monstrous egg, the beautifully carved cup of rhinoceros horn, the Benin drum, the worked Senego leather, the letter case a woman on the Ile de Rhé had tried to smuggle out of the fort by swallowing it, the curious crystals and stones, the body of the mermaid from Hull, the skull of the unicorn and the animal and bird skins, including that of a strange and ugly flightless bird.

  ‘This is remarkable,’ the king said. ‘And what is in these drawers?’

  ‘Small and large eggs, Your Majesty,’ John said. ‘I had the drawers especially made to house them.’

  The king drew open one drawer and then another. John had arranged the eggs in size from the smallest in shallow drawers at the top, to the largest in deep wide drawers at the bottom. The eggs, all colours from speckled black to purest shining white, sat on their little beds of sheep’s wool like precious jewels.

  ‘What a flock of birds you would have if they hatched!’ the king exclaimed.

  ‘They are all blown, and light as air, Your Majesty,’ Tradescant explained, giving him a tiny blue eggshell, no larger than his fingertip.

  ‘And what is this?’ the king said, returning the egg and moving on.

  ‘These are dried flower blossoms of many rarities from my garden,’ John said, pulling out tray after tray of flower heads. ‘My wife used to dry them in sugar for me, so that men might come and see the blossoms at any time of year. Often an artist will come and draw them.’

  ‘Pretty,’ the queen said approvingly, looking at the tray with the flowers laid out.

  ‘This is from the Lack tulip, which I bought for my lord Buckingham in the Low Countries,’ John said, touching one perfect petal with the tip of his finger.

  ‘Does it grow still?’ the king asked, looking at the petal as if it might hold some memory of its lord.

  ‘Yes,’ John said gently. ‘It grows still.’

  ‘I should like to have it,’ the king said. ‘In memory of him.’

  John bowed as he gave away a tulip worth a year’s income. ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’

  ‘And many mechanical things? Do you have mechanical toys?’ the king asked. ‘When I was a boy I had a small army made of lead with cannons which actually fired shot. I planned my campaigns with them, I had part of Richmond laid out as a battlefield and drew my men up in the proper way for an attack.’

  ‘I have a little model windmill, as they use in the Low Countries for pumping out their ditches,’ John said, crossing to the other side of the room. He moved the sails with his hand and the king could see the pump inside going up and down.

  ‘And I have a miniature clock, and a model cannon.’ John directed the king to another corner. ‘And a miniature spinning wheel carved in amber.’

  ‘And what do you have from my lord Buckingham’s collection?’ the king asked.

  J, suddenly wary, glanced at his father.

  ‘Something very dear to me and worth all the rest put together,’ John said. He drew the king to a cabinet under the window and opened one of the drawers.

  ‘What’s this?’ the king asked.

  ‘The last letter he ever wrote to me,’ John said. ‘Ordering me to Portsmouth, to meet him for the expedition to Rhé.’

  The queen glanced over at them with impatience; even now she did not like to hear Buckingham’s name on the king’s lips. ‘What’s the largest rarity you have?’ she asked J loudly.

  ‘We have the whole head of an elephant, with its great double teeth,’ J said, pointing up to where they had hung the skull from the roof beams. ‘And a rhinoceros horn and jaw bone.’

  The king did not even turn his head, but unfolded the letter. ‘His own hand!’ he cried as soon as he saw the dashed careless style. He read it. ‘And he commands you to go at once,’ he said. ‘Oh, Tradescant, if only everything had been ready at once!’

  ‘I was there,’ John said. ‘Just as he wished.’

  ‘But he was late, weeks late,’ the king said, smiling ruefully. ‘Wasn’t that just like him?’

  ‘And what is your favourite?’ the queen demanded loudly.

  ‘I think I like the Chinese fan the best,’ J said. ‘It is so delicate and so fine-painted.’

  He opened a drawer, took it out and laid it in her hand. ‘Oh! I must have one just like it!’ she exclaimed. ‘Charles! Look!’

  Reluctantly he looked up from the letter. ‘Very pretty,’ he said.

  ‘Come and see,’ she commanded. ‘You can’t see the painting from there!’

  He handed back the page of paper to John and went towards her. With a sense of relief, J saw that the question of how many of the exhibits had been the property of Lord Buckingham had completely slipped away.

  ‘I must have one just like this!’ she cried. ‘I shall borrow this and have it copied.’

  J was not courtier enough to assent. John stepped quickly forward. ‘Your Majesty, we would be honoured if you would have it as a gift,’ he said.