Earthly Joys Read online

  John, accustomed to Jane’s high morality, was torn between shock at her frankness and a sense of freedom at her honesty. ‘Nothing more than that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t think there is anything more than that.’

  ‘And she can certainly draw.’ Her uncle moved the conversation into safer areas. ‘I thought I would use her sketches of your flowery mead as a background in some of the pictures for the queen’s walls.’

  The young woman flushed with pleasure. ‘I will block them out for you,’ she promised.

  ‘Can you draw and colour tulips?’ John asked. ‘There are some in the queen’s apartment which are just coming into flower and I should like to have a picture to show my son. He chose them, bought them, and planted them. He will want to know how they have done. We have had our disappointments with tulips –’

  ‘Money?’ she guessed acutely. ‘Were you caught when the tulip market fell?’

  John nodded. ‘But I should like him to know that they are still beautiful, even if they are not profitable.’

  ‘I would be pleased to try,’ she said. ‘I have not had the chance of seeing many tulips in flower. I know the Dutch tulip paintings, of course.’

  ‘Come to my house this evening,’ John suggested. ‘I live adjoining the silkworm house. I’ll bring a little bowl of them.’

  Hester did not curtsey as she left them but dipped her head, like a boy, and went away. Her stride was like a boy’s as well, firm and matter-of-fact.

  ‘It is all right that she comes?’ John asked, suddenly remembering his manners. ‘I had thought I was speaking to a young draughtsman. I forgot she was a young woman.’

  ‘If she were a boy I would have had her as my apprentice,’ her uncle said, watching her go. ‘She can come to your house, Mr Tradescant, but I have to guard her around the court. It is a nuisance. Some of these gentlemen write sonnets to the queen all day and then go wenching like lechers at night.’

  ‘I have a lass like her at home,’ John said, thinking of Frances and her desire to be gardener to the king. ‘She’s been told that she will have to marry a gardener, that is the closest she can get to the work; but she wants to be one herself.’

  ‘What does her mother say?’

  ‘She has none now. Plague.’

  The man nodded in sympathy. ‘It’s hard for a maid to grow up without a mother. Who cares for her?’

  ‘We have a cook who has been with us for many years,’ John said. ‘And housemaids. But when my son comes home from Virginia he will have to re-marry. There’s my grandson as well. They cannot be left in the care of servants.’

  De Critz slid a thoughtful sideways glance at him. ‘Hester has a good dowry,’ he said casually. ‘Her parents left her with two hundred pounds.’

  ‘Oh,’ said John, thinking of that straightforward nod of the head and the confident walk. ‘Did they, indeed?’

  Hester Pooks sat at the table in John’s little sitting room and drew the queen’s bowl of tulips, squinting against the candlelight and the last rays of the evening sunshine.

  ‘I’ve seen the tulip books,’ she said. ‘My uncle borrowed one to copy once. They show the bulb, don’t they? And the roots?’

  ‘You can’t show these bulbs,’ John said hastily. ‘They must be left undisturbed. Please God they are spawning underneath the soil and I will soon have two or three tulips everywhere I once had one.’

  ‘And what do you do with the extra tulips?’ she asked, never taking her eyes from the flower except to look down at her page. John watched her; he liked her direct, searching gaze.

  ‘Some I replant in new pots here and keep them for the king and queen next year, and some I take home and plant in my own garden and keep them as stock for my nursery.’

  ‘So who owns them?’ she persisted.

  ‘The king and queen own the parent plants,’ John said. ‘For they commissioned my son to buy them, and paid for them. And the little bulblets we share. My son and I take half and the king and queen take half.’

  She nodded. ‘You double your stock every year? That’s a good business,’ she observed.

  John thought that she was surprisingly astute for the niece of an artist. ‘But it does not show the profits any more,’ he said ruefully. ‘The market smashed in February. The best of the tulip bulbs were going for prices that would buy you a house. Passed from trader to trader as a paper bond, getting more expensive each time.’

  ‘So what happened? What stopped the market?’

  John spread his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I saw it happen; but I still don’t understand it. It was like magic. One moment they were bulbs, rare and rather precious, but priced within the reach of a gardener who might grow them. Next moment they were priced like pearls and everyone wanted them. All of a sudden it’s as if the Bourse woke up to the fact that they were going mad over flowers, and they were priced like bulbs again. In truth, less than bulbs, because nobody wanted to be a tulip trader any more, to be a tulip gardener was like standing up in public and saying you were a greedy fool.’

  ‘Did you lose much money?’

  ‘Enough.’ John was not going to tell her that all of their savings had been in tulip bulbs. That their wealth had blown away just as the windhandel market had blown away and that he and J had sworn a solemn oath, a peasant’s oath, never to trust anything but the value of land ever again.

  Hester nodded and drew a smooth swift line on the page, the tulip’s curving veil-like leaf. ‘It is an awful thing to lose your money. My father used to have a shop of artists’ supplies, he lost his money when he fell sick. When he died there was nothing left for us at all. The only money we had was on a ship coming from the West Indies. It did not arrive for a year. In that year, as I sold first the carpet and the curtains, and then every stick of furniture we had, and then my dresses too, I swore that I would never be poor again.’

  She gave him a quick sideways glance. ‘I learned that nothing matters as much as holding on to what you have.’

  ‘There is God’s guidance and your faith,’ John suggested.

  She nodded. ‘I don’t deny it. But when you have sold your chair and are sitting on a small chest which holds every single thing you own, you gain a good deal of interest in the life here, and less in the life hereafter.’

  Jane would have been appalled at such free speech, but John was not. ‘A hard lesson for a young woman,’ he commented.

  ‘It’s a hard world for a young woman, for anyone without a secure place,’ she said. Her eyes followed the tulip’s neck and her charcoal drew a swift line on the page. John watched her at work. She made it look absurdly easy. She was a plain girl, he thought, plain-featured and plain-spoken, and he thought that his wife Elizabeth would have liked her enormously. A straightforward girl who could be relied on to run a small business, a sensible girl who would look for reliability and dependability in a husband and not necessarily expect more. A girl who knew the value of money, not a spendthrift woman from court. A good girl who would care for children who needed a mother.

  ‘D’you like children?’ he asked abruptly.

  She drew another smooth line for the tulip’s sensuous wavy stem. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I hope to have children of my own one day.’

  ‘You might marry a man who has children already,’ John said.

  She shot him an acute glance over the top of her drawing block. ‘I’d have no objection.’

  ‘Even if they were up and running around?’ John asked incautiously, thinking of Frances and her determined nature. ‘Another woman’s children, brought up in her ways and not yours?’

  ‘You are thinking of your grandchildren,’ she said, cutting through his hedging with one swift slice. ‘My uncle has told you that I have a good dowry and you are wondering if I would care for your grandchildren.’

  John choked slightly on his pipe. ‘You are a frank speaker,’ he exclaimed.

  She turned her attention to her drawing. ‘Something has to happen,’ she s