Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

The doctor turned irritably. “What? What? Oh, nonsense! Nonsense!”

“Nothing but folly and superstition,” said the doctor from the window. “And likely to spread noxious fumes.”

Thomas stood his ground. “It was Mr. Tradescant, sir. His Grace’s favorite. And he insisted, the maid said.”

Cecil turned his head a little. The dispute was instantly silenced. Cecil crooked a finger at Thomas.

The doctor waved him forward. “Quick. He wants them. But it won’t make a groat of difference.”

Awkwardly, Thomas stepped up to the bed. The aquiline face of the most powerful man in England was etched in sandstone and grooved by pain. He turned his dark eyes sightlessly toward the manservant. Thomas thrust the bluebells into the slack hands. They spilled onto the rich coverlet of the bed, blotting out the scarlet embroidery and the gold thread with blue, blue, nothing but sky blue.

“From John Tradescant,” Thomas said.

The light sweet scent of the bluebells poured like fresh water into the room, drowning the smell of fear and sickness. Their color shone like a blue flame in the dark chamber. The great lord looked down on the scattered flowers and inhaled their cold fresh perfume. They seemed to come from a world a hundred miles away from the overheated bedchamber, a clean spring world outside. He turned his head to the little window and his crumpled face stretched into a small smile. Though the casement was opened only the smallest crack, he could hear the thud of a spade into the flower bed beneath his window, loud as a faithful heartbeat, as John Tradescant and his master set about their different tasks: digging and dying.

When they buried the earl, after dragging him to Bath for the cure and then back home again, there was still a place for John Tradescant at Hatfield House. But the heart had gone out of the garden for John. He kept looking around for Cecil, wanting to show him one of the grand new sights of the garden, expected to see him picking mulberries in summer and limping down the dark shade of the newly growing pleached allée. He kept wanting to consult him, he kept wanting to exchange that swift conspiratorial smile of triumph: that a plant had grown, that a rarity had taken root, that seeds had struck.

When he took a mug of small ale and a loaf of bread to his potting shed he kept expecting to see his lord there before him, lounging against the bench, be-ringed fingers dabbling in the soft sifted earth, taking a rest from letter writing, from plotting, from the sleight of hand of foreign policy, seeking John to share a bit of dinner together, a companion who needed no lies, no courting, seated on a barrel of bulbs to watch John transplanting seedlings.

“I am sorry, my lord,” John said to the new earl, Cecil’s son, finding his old master’s title sluggish on his lips. “I cannot settle here without your father. I was in his service too long to make a change.”

“You will miss the garden, I expect,” the new Lord Cecil remarked. But he did not know, as his father had known, the intense joy of making a garden where before there had been nothing but meadow.

“I will,” John said. Robert Cecil’s favorite flowers, the pinks, were in full bloom. The chestnut saplings which they had bought as glossy nuts a full five years ago were leggy and strong and putting out green palmate leaves like beggars’ hands. The cherry-tree walk was a maze of ordered blossom and the tulips were ablaze in the new flower beds.

“I can’t garden here without him,” he said simply to Elizabeth that night.

“Why not?” she asked. “It’s the same garden.”

“It’s not.” He shook his head. “It was his garden. I chose things that would delight his eyes. I thought of his tastes when I planned the walks. When I had something new and rare I considered where it would flourish, but also where would he be certain to see it? Every time I planted a seedling I had two thoughts – the angle of the sun shining on it, and my lord’s gaze.”

She frowned at the sound of blasphemy. “He was only a man.”

“I know, and I loved him as a man. I loved him because he was a man and more mortal and frail than many others. He would lean on me when his back pained him-” Tradescant broke off. “I liked him leaning on me,” he said, conscious that he could not explain the mixture of elation and pity that he felt all at once when the greatest man in England after the king would confide his pain and take help.

Elizabeth pressed her lips together on hasty words and kept her jealousy to herself. She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and reminded herself that the lord he had loved was dead and buried and a good wife should show some sympathy. “You sound as if you have lost a brother, not a lord.”

He nodded. “A lord is like a brother, like a father, even like a wife. I think of his needs all the time, I guard his interests. And I cannot be happy here without him.”

Elizabeth did not want to understand. “But you have me, and Baby J.”

John gave her a sad little smile. “And I will never love another woman or another child more than I love the two of you… but a man’s love for his lord is another thing. It comes from the head as well as the heart. Loving a woman keeps you at home; it is a private pleasure. Loving a great lord takes you into the wider world; it is a matter of pride.”

“You make it sound as if we are not enough,” she said resentfully.

He shook his head, despairing of ever making her understand. “No, no, Elizabeth. It doesn’t matter. You are enough.”

She was not convinced. “Will you seek another lord? Another master?”

The expression that passed swiftly across his face was deeper than mourning; it was desolation. “I will never see his like again.”

That silenced her for a moment, as she saw the depth of his loss.

“But what about us?” she asked. “I don’t want to lose this house, John, and J is happy here. We have put down roots here just as the plants in the garden have done. You said you would plant the chestnut here this spring and that we would sit under its branches when we are an old married couple.”

He nodded. “I know. I’m forsworn. That’s what I promised you. But I can’t bear it here without him, Elizabeth. I have tried and I cannot. Can you release me from my promise that we should stay here, and let us make another home? Back in Kent?”

“Kent? What d’you mean? Where?”

“Lord Wootton wants a gardener at Canterbury and asked me if I would go. He has the secret of growing melons which I should be glad to learn; his gardener has always teased me that only Lord Wootton in all of England can grow melons.”

Elizabeth tutted with irritation. “Forget the melons for a moment if you please. What about a house? What about your wages?”

“He’ll pay me well,” John said. “Sixty pounds where my lord paid me fifty. And we will have a house, the head gardener’s house. J can go to the King’s School in Canterbury. That’ll be a fine thing for him.”

“Canterbury,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “I’ve never lived in a market town. There’d be much society.”

“We could start there at once. He asked me on the death of my lord and I said I would tell him within the quarter.”

“And will you not love Lord Wootton as you loved the earl?” Elizabeth asked, thinking it would be an advantage.

John shook his head. “There will never be another lord for me like that one.”

“Let’s go, then,” she said with her typical sudden decisiveness. “And we can plant the chestnut sapling in Canterbury instead of Hatfield.”

John was working in Lord Wootton’s garden, hands among cold clods of earth, when he heard the bell tolling. On and on it went, a funeral bell. Then he heard the rumble of cannon fire. He stood up, brushed the mud on his breeches, and reached for his coat where it was hooked over his spade.

“Something’s happened,” he said shortly to the garden lad who was working beside him.

“Shall I run into town and bring you the news?” the boy asked eagerly.

“No,” John said firmly. “You shall stay and work here while I run into town and find out the news. And if you are not here when I get back it will be the worst for you.”

“Yes, Mr. Tradescant,” the boy said sulkily.

The bell was ever more insistent.

“What does it mean?”

“I’ll find out,” John said and strode out of the garden toward the cathedral.

People were gathered in gossiping circles all the way down the road but John went on until he reached the cathedral steps and saw a face he recognized – the headmaster of the school.

“Doctor Phillips,” he exclaimed. “What are they ringing for?”

The man turned at the sound of his name and John saw, with a shock, that the man’s face was wet with tears.

“Good God! What is it? It’s not an invasion? Not Spain?”

“It’s Prince Henry,” the man said simply. “Our blessed prince. We have lost him.”

For a moment John could not take in the words. “Prince Henry?”

“Dead.”

John shook his head. “But he’s so strong, he’s always so well-”

“Dead of fever.”

John’s hand went to his forehead to cross himself, in the old superstitious forbidden sign. He caught his hand back and said instead, “Poor boy, God save us, poor boy.”

“I forgot, you would have seen him often.”

“Not often,” John said, his habitual caution asserting itself.

“He was a blessed prince, was he not? Handsome and learned and godly?”

John thought of Prince Henry’s handsome tyrannical disposition, of his casual cruelty to his dark little brother, of his easy love of his sister Elizabeth, of his royal confidence, some would say arrogance. “He was a boy born to rule,” John said cleverly.