Earthly Joys Read online

  ‘What flowers?’ John asked. The nut was warm and smooth and comforting in his hand. He thought he could almost feel the life enfolded inside it, like a new-laid egg.

  ‘Rare beauties, like lilies,’ the merchant said.

  Tradescant looked doubtful. Lilies grew from corms, not little seeds. He suddenly doubted the merchant, and his fingers closed tightly. At least the beauty and promise of the nut could not lie.

  ‘How much?’ Cecil asked. ‘For the roots, the seeds and the chestnuts?’

  The merchant looked quickly from the gardener to the master, and read, correctly, the speechless desire in Tradescant’s face. ‘Fifty pounds.’

  Cecil choked. ‘For a handful of wood?’

  The merchant smiled and nodded at Tradescant. Cecil followed his gaze and was forced to laugh. John was turning the chestnut over and over in his hand, unaware of the two men. He looked besotted.

  ‘It is a treasure beyond price to a gardener,’ the merchant said. ‘A new tree. A completely new tree, which blooms like a rose and stands as broad as an oak.’

  ‘Eight pounds now, and eight pounds if the tree grows,’ the earl said gruffly. ‘You may come to me next spring and if it has rooted I shall pay you the remainder. If it is a fine tree in five years with flowers like apple blossoms and broad as an oak I shall pay another eight then.’

  ‘Perhaps nine,’ the merchant said thoughtfully.

  ‘No more than nine,’ the earl said, and got to his feet. ‘Nine now, and nine if it roots, and nine in five years if it is good.’

  ‘I shall take these to Theobalds at once,’ John said, emerging from his trance. He still had hold of the chestnut. The merchant put the roots and seeds back in the box and handed them to him.

  ‘I thought you were newly wed?’ Cecil commented.

  ‘A wife can wait,’ John said firmly. ‘But I should like to see these well-planted and well-nursed. And the chestnut tree nuts should be in warm damp soil at once, unless –’ He broke off and looked at the merchant. ‘Is it cold there, in winter?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I have only been in the spring.’

  Cecil laughed shortly and led the way down the gangplank to the quayside.

  John followed him, and then called back up to the ship as the thought struck him. ‘Do the leaves turn colour in autumn? Or does it keep fresh and green all the year round?’

  ‘How should I know?’ the merchant called back. ‘I’ve never been there in autumn. Why does it matter to you? You’ll see soon enough when it grows.’

  ‘So that I know when to plant, of course!’ John shouted irritably. ‘If it grows all the year around then I can plant any time, best in the summer. But if it loses its leaves and its seeds in winter then it should be planted into cold ground!’

  The merchant shrugged his shoulders and laughed. ‘I will ask when I go back! And if they do not take then I will get you some more! At double the price next time!’

  Cecil had walked away limping on the cobbles. Tradescant ran to catch up with him.

  ‘You really must learn a little cunning, Tradescant,’ Cecil complained. ‘If you are to travel and to buy for me you must learn to barter and hide your desire. Your face is as open as a book of receipts.’

  ‘I am sorry, my lord. But I couldn’t be indifferent.’

  ‘They will cheat you from Flushing to Dresden.’

  ‘I will learn world-weariness,’ John promised. ‘I shall cultivate it. I shall be as weary as a Scotsman with a small bribe.’

  Cecil laughed shortly. ‘Do you come in my boat across the river? I’m going to Whitehall.’

  John looked down the quayside to where the earl’s boat was gently rocking, the oars upright in salute, the bright colours of the liveried boatman reflected in the clean water of the Thames.

  ‘I’ll take a horse to Theobalds,’ he said. ‘And get these planted up at once.’

  ‘And then go back to your wife,’ Cecil called up to the quayside as he went down the steps to his waiting boat. ‘Take a few days to spend with her, Tradescant. You must dig your own garden too, you know.’

  At Meopham, Elizabeth was waiting for John again.

  ‘Married only a day and left already,’ her mother said sharply. ‘I hope you did not do something to give him a distaste for you, Elizabeth?’

  Elizabeth smoothed a loose strand of hair under her cap. ‘Of course not,’ she said levelly. ‘He was summoned by the earl himself, he could hardly send a message back and say he would not go!’

  ‘And was the bedding properly done?’ Gertrude asked in an undertone. ‘You will not hold him to the marriage if he can argue that the work was not undertaken or carried through.’

  ‘Of course. And he does not wish to withdraw from the marriage. He was summoned away to his lord. He sent me a message from London. I expect him back every day.’

  ‘The sheets were hardly marked at all,’ Gertrude pointed out.

  Elizabeth flushed. She had resorted to strawberry jam on the bed linen. It was the tradition that the newlyweds’ sheets be put to air over their windowsill so that the neighbours and the community might be assured that a marriage had been made and consummated and was now indissoluble. Not even people of the class of Elizabeth and John could escape public scrutiny.

  ‘They were marked enough,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Oh, well!’ Gertrude sat back in the hard chair and looked around the little parlour. ‘He has left you comfortably, at least. As long as he provides for you I daresay you will not miss him, having been a spinster so long.’

  ‘He will provide for me, and he will return to me,’ Elizabeth replied calmly. ‘He had to go to Theobalds with some new plants for the earl. But I expect his return any day.’

  ‘You’d have done better to marry a farmer!’ Gertrude gave a malicious little laugh. ‘Better a little mud on your parlour floor than a husband who leaves you the very morning after you are wed.’

  ‘Better to be married to a man high in the favour of the Earl Cecil himself than to be a woman who knows nothing beyond the hills of her home!’ Elizabeth flared up.

  ‘Do you mean me, you saucy miss!’ Gertrude exclaimed, leaping to her feet. ‘For I shall not be insulted by you. Your stepfather shall hear of it! And he will make you sorry for your impertinence! I shall send him down here after he’s had his dinner and he will tell you what we think of impertinent spinsters, married a night and abandoned the next day! You’ll be lucky if your husband ever comes home at all! I shall see you at my back door wanting your own bed back, I don’t doubt it!’

  Elizabeth strode to the door and flung it open. ‘I am not a miss, saucy or otherwise,’ she declared. ‘And my stepfather has no rights over me any more and neither do you. I do not have to listen to you, and I certainly don’t have to obey him. My father would not have used me so!’

  ‘Easy to say!’ Gertrude retorted. ‘Since he is not here to contradict you!’

  ‘He would not contradict me,’ Elizabeth rejoined. ‘He was like me. The faithful kind: we love and stay loyal. We don’t flit from one to another like a drunk bee.’

  The reference to her mother’s four marriages could not be borne. Gertrude flounced to the door. ‘Well, I thank you, Mrs Tradescant!’ she spat. ‘I shall go home to my husband at my fireside, and enjoy company and good cheer. We will drink and be merry. And I shall sleep in a warm bed with the man who loves me! And I daresay you wish you could say the same!’

  Elizabeth waited until Gertrude was on her way and then she flung the door shut with a crack which sounded down the length of the street to mark her defiance. But when she was quite sure that Gertrude was gone, and not returning for a final retort, she dropped to her knees on the hearthrug, put her face on the empty seat of the master chair and cried for John.

  August 1607

  He did not come until late in the summer, nor did he send for her to go to Theobalds. He did not send her so much as a note to tell her that he was delayed – absorbed in the work of replanting and ma