Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

He nodded and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Why did you not name the plants for yourself?” she asked softly. “There are so many. You could have had your name remembered with thanks a dozen times a day in every garden in the country.”

Tradescant smiled. “Because they are not mine to name. I did not make them, like a carpenter makes a newel post. God made them. All I did was find them and bring them into the gardens. They belong to everyone. To everyone who loves to grow them.”

He dozed for a few moments.

In the silence Hester could hear the household going about its business, the noise of the lad sweeping the yard and the continual murmur from the rarities room where visitors came and stayed to study and to marvel. The bright yellow spring sun poured into the room.

“Shall I close the shutters?” Hester asked. “Is it too bright?”

John was looking at the Semper Augustus, with its radiant white petals and the glossy red dappled stripe. “It’s never too bright,” he said.

He lay very still for a while and Hester thought he had gone to sleep. Quietly, she rose from her chair and tiptoed to the door. She looked back at the bed embedded in flowers. Above Tradescant’s sleeping head his chestnut tree was bursting into leaf.

The creak of the wooden door disturbed his sleep. He was awake, looking toward the door; but he did not see Hester. His gaze went a little higher than her head, and his entranced look of delight was that of a man who has seen the love of his life coming, smiling, toward him. He raised himself up, as if he would move lightly forward, like a young man greeting his love. His smile of recognition was unmistakable, his face was filled with joy.

“Ah! You at last!” he said softly.

Hester went quickly to the bed, her skirts brushing the banks of flowers, pollen and perfume swirling like ground mist as she ran to him, but by the time she touched his hand the pulse had stopped and John Tradescant had died in a bed of his flowers, greeting the person he loved most in all the world.