Earthly Joys

‘Take these, and show them to him,’ he said.

She hesitated. Flowers in the house were for strewing on the floor, or for a posy to wear at the belt or hatband. ‘What would he want with them?’ she demanded. ‘What would a dying man want with bluebells?’

‘He’d like to see them,’ John urged her. ‘I know he would. He likes bluebells.’

‘I’ll have to give them to Thomas,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed in, anyway.’

‘Then give them to Thomas,’ John pressed her. ‘What harm can it do? And I know it would please him.’ She was stubborn. ‘I don’t see why.’

John gestured helplessly. ‘Because when a man is going into darkness it helps him to know that he leaves some light behind!’ he exclaimed. ‘Because when a man is facing his own winter it is good to know that there will still be springs and summers. Because he is dying … and when he sees the bluebells he will know that I am still here, outside, and that I picked him some flowers. He will know that I am still here, just outside, digging in his garden. He will know that I am here, still digging for him.’

The look she turned on him was pure incomprehension. ‘But Mr Tradescant! Why should that help him?’

John grabbed her in his frustration and pushed her towards the anteroom. ‘A man would understand,’ he growled. ‘Women are too flighty. A man would understand that he will be comforted to know that I am still out there. That even when he is gone, his garden will still be there. That his mulberry tree will flower this year, that his chestnut saplings are growing straight, that the new velvet double anemone is thriving, that his bluebells are blowing under the trees of his woods. Go! And get those bluebells into his hands, or I shall have words to say to you!’

He thrust her with such force that she went at a little run to Thomas, who was standing outside the bedroom door, waiting for the orders from his master that never came.

‘Mr Tradescant wants these taken in to his lordship,’ she said, thrusting her armful of blossoms at him. Their slim whippy green stems oozed sap like the very juice of life. She wiped her hand on her apron. ‘He says they’re important.’

Thomas hesitated at the eccentric request.

‘D’you know what he said? He said that women are too flighty to understand,’ she sniffed resentfully. ‘Impertinence!’

Thomas’s sense of male importance was immediately stimulated. He took the flowers from her, turned at once to open the door and crept inside.

A doctor was at the foot of the bed, another at the window, and an old woman, part nurse, part layer-out, was at the fireside where a small fire of scented pine cones was crackling, pouring heat into the stuffy room.

Thomas came quietly forward. ‘Beg pardon,’ he said hoarsely. ‘But his lordship’s gardener insisted he had these.’

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 favourite. 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 towards the manservant. Thomas thrust the bluebells into the slack hands. They spilled on to 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 colour 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 bed chamber, 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.

October 1612 (#ulink_ad873250-d8a4-57ab-8c61-87e1fda286b2)

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 allee. 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 favourite 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.’