Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

Buckingham dropped to one knee and John followed his example.

“God bless Your Majesty!” Buckingham said swiftly.

“Amen,” Tradescant said.

Charles was silenced; whatever he might have said would never be spoken.

Three hours later Prince Charles was proclaimed king at the gate of Theobalds Palace, and stepped into the royal coach to ride in state to London. Buckingham, the Master of Horse, did not follow tradition by taking the place of honor, heading the train that rode behind the royal coach. Buckingham walked into the royal coach a mere half-pace behind His Majesty and rode like a prince himself at the new king’s side. Tradescant followed in the long train of the household, closing his ears to the general gasp of horror at his master’s presumption.

They drew up at St. James’s Palace in the afternoon and John waited for his orders. At first he could not find Buckingham’s chamber and waited in the hall. The palace was in complete confusion. King James had been expected to stay hunting at Theobalds for many days, and go afterward to Hampton Court. In his absence his palace had closed down for cleaning and refurbishing. There was no food in the kitchens and no fire in the chambers. The few housekeeping staff who did not travel with the king had been spring cleaning and had swept up the strewing herbs from the floor, and taken down the curtains from the windows and the tapestries off the walls. Serving men and maids ran everywhere, trying to prepare the palace for the new king and his train and do in moments what usually took days to accomplish, delayed all the time by the storm of gossip that was running around the royal courts, explaining how the king had fallen sick, how the Villiers mother and son had nursed him and excluded all others and how the king had died under their care.

A feast had to be prepared and the comptroller of the royal household had to use all his cash and all of the new king’s credit to buy in food, and set everyone in the kitchen – from the scullions laboring over the bellows to get the kitchen fires alight to the great master cooks – preparing and cooking food so that a king newcome to his kingdom might sit down to his dinner.

A great press of people invaded the palace to see the new king and the first man in the land: the Duke of Buckingham. The poorer people came just to see him, they liked to watch their betters eat, even when their own bellies were empty; and hundreds of others had complaints about taxes, about land ownership, about injustices, which they were eager to place before the new king. When King Charles and his duke came pushing through the hall Tradescant was forced to the back behind dozens of shouting demanding people. But even there, as he was fighting for a space in the crowd, his master looked over the bobbing heads and called to him.

“John! You still here? What did you stay for?”

“For your orders.”

Men craned around to see who had taken the duke’s attention and Tradescant fought his way forward.

“Oh – forgive me, John. I have been so busy. You can go to New Hall now. Call at the docks on the way and get my India goods. Then go home.”

“Your Grace, you have no chamber prepared for you here,” John said. “I asked, and there is none. Where shall you sleep? Shall I go to your London house and bid the lady, your mother, make ready for you? Or shall I wait and we will go to New Hall together?”

The duke looked across to where the young king was moving slowly through the crowd, his hand extended for people to kiss, acknowledging their bows with a small gesture of his head. When he saw Buckingham watching him he gave him a private, conspiratorial smile.

“Tonight I sleep in His Majesty’s chamber,” the duke remarked silkily. “He needs me at his side.”

“But there is only one bed-” John started, then he bit back the words. Of course a truckle bed could be found. Or the two men could sleep in comfort in the big expanse of the royal bed. King James had never slept alone; why should his son do so if he wanted company?

“Of course, my lord,” John said, careful to ensure that none of his thoughts appeared in his face. “I shall leave you, if you’re well served.”

Buckingham gave John his sweet satisfied smile. “Never better.”

John bowed, and pushed his way to the back of the hall and out into the dusk. He wrapped his borrowed cloak around his shoulders and went outside to the stables. The horses were tired after the day’s journey but he had no intention of riding hard. He chose a steady-looking beast and mounted.

“When are you back with us, Mr. Tradescant?” a groom asked.

John shook his head. “I’m going to my garden,” he said.

“You look sick,” the man remarked. “Not taken the king’s ague, have you?”

John thought for a moment of the old king’s long heartsickness for Buckingham, and the net of half-truths and deceptions which were the very heart of court life. “Maybe I have a touch of it,” he said.

He turned the horse’s head eastward, and rode down to the docks. There was only one cartload of goods waiting to be unloaded. He saw it packed on a wagon and ordered it to follow him down the lanes to New Hall, irritated all the way at the noise and the lumbering slowness of the cart in the muddy lanes. His hat pulled low over his eyes, his coat collar turned up against the light cold spring rain, John sat heavily in the saddle, and kept his thoughts on the seasonal tasks of planting and weeding. He did not want to think about the new king, about his great friend the duke, or the old king who had died, a healthy man aged only fifty-nine years, from a slight fever, under their nursing, after his doctors had been sent away. If evil had been done there were men whose duty it was to make accusations. It was not John’s duty to accuse his master or his king, not even privately in his anxious conscience.

Besides, John was not a man who could live with a divided loyalty in his heart. If evil had been done Tradescant had to be blind to it, and deaf to it. He could not love and follow a master and set himself up as judge of that master. He had to give his love and his trust and follow blindly – as he had followed Cecil, as it had been possible to follow Cecil – a master who might bend all the rules but whom you could trust to act only for his country’s gain.

John reached his home in the cool light of the early evening and found Elizabeth in the kitchen, preparing supper for J. “Forgive me,” John said shortly, coming into the house and taking and kissing her hand. “I was called away in haste and I had no time to send you word. Afterward there were great deeds going on, and I was rushed.”

She looked curiously at him but the usual warmth was missing. “J was told that you had gone with the duke to Theobalds at a moment’s notice,” she said. “So I knew you were on another errand for him.”

Tradescant noted the slight emphasis she placed on “him” and found himself longing for a quarrel. “He’s my master,” he said abruptly. “Where else should I be?”

She shrugged slightly and turned back to the fire. The pot hanging over the flames was simmering with pieces of meat bobbing in a rich gravy. Elizabeth held it steady with one hand shielded by a cloth and stirred with a long spoon.

“I have said I am sorry for not sending you word,” Tradescant insisted. “What more could I have done?”

“Nothing more,” she said steadily. “Since you chose to ride with him and you went far away in the night.”

“I did not choose…”

“You did not refuse-”

“He is my master…”

“I am sure I am aware of it!”

“You are jealous of him!” Tradescant exclaimed. “You think I am too devoted! You think that he treats me like a servant and takes me and uses me when he needs me and then sends me back to the garden when he has had his fill of my service!”

Elizabeth straightened up and one cheek was flushed on the side near the fire, but the other was pale and cold. “I did not say any of that,” she pointed out. “Nor, as it happens, do I think it.”

“You think he involves me in his plotting and his darker deeds,” Tradescant persisted. “I know you suspect him.”

She took up the hook and drew the hanging chain away from the flames of the fire, unhooked the pot and placed it carefully on the stone of the hearth. She worked with an absorbed quietness as if she would not let him disturb her tranquillity.

“You do!” Tradescant insisted. “You suspect him and you suspect me with him!”

Still in silence she fetched three bowls and one trencher. She sliced her home-baked loaf into three equal pieces, bowing her head for a moment over the breaking of the bread. Then she took the long-handled spoon and served broth and meat into each bowl and carried them to the table.

“I have seen things these days which he would trust to no other,” John said urgently. “Things which I would tell no one, not even you. I have seen things which, if he were a lesser man, would give me grave pause. I have seen things which he trusts only to me. He trusts me. He trusts no one but me. And if – when he needs me no more – he sends me back to his garden, why, that is part of our understanding. I am at his side when he needs a man he can trust like no other. When he is in safe harbor, any man can serve him.”

Elizabeth put out three knives and three spoons on the table, and pulled up her little stool and bowed her head. Then she waited for him to sit.

John threw himself on to the stool, unwashed and without saying his grace, and moodily stirred his broth.

“You are thinking that he is guilty,” he said suddenly.

The face that she raised to him was completely serene and clear. “Husband, I am thinking nothing. I begged you once that we should leave this place, and when you would not, I took my sorrow to my God, in prayer. I have left it to Him. I am thinking nothing.”