Earthly Joys Read online

  Cecil leaned back and tossed a small note across the table. It was addressed to Lord Monteagle, but the hand was not Robert Cecil’s nor that of any of his secretaries.

  ‘Get it to him tonight,’ Robert Cecil said. ‘Without fail. There’s a boat waiting for you at the jetty. Make sure you are not seen. Not in the streets, not at his house, and not, not, with the letter. If you are captured, destroy it. If you are questioned, deny it.’

  John nodded and rose to his feet.

  ‘John –’ his master called as he reached the door. John stopped and turned around. His lord sat behind his desk, his face, his whole stance alive with joy at plotting and trickery and the game of politics which he played so consummately well. ‘I would trust no other man to do this for me,’ Cecil said.

  John met his master’s bright gaze and knew the pleasure of being the favourite. He bowed and went out.

  He went first to the knot garden and gathered up his tools. The plants which were not yet bedded in he took back to his nursery plots and heeled them into the earth. Not even an act of high treason could make John Tradescant forget his plants. He glanced around the walled nursery garden. There was no-one there. He rose to his feet and brushed the earth from his hands and then he went to the potting shed where he had left his winter cloak. He carried it over his arm, as if he were headed for the hall for a bite to eat, but turned instead towards the river.

  There was a wherry boat waiting at the lord’s private jetty but it was otherwise deserted.

  ‘For London?’ the man asked without much interest. ‘In a hurry?’

  ‘Yes,’ John said shortly.

  He stepped into the little boat and he thought the lurch it made at his weight was what caused the sudden pounding of his heart. He sat in the prow of the boat so the man might not have the chance to look in his face, and he wrapped himself warm in his cape and pulled down his hat over his face. He was sure that the sunlight along the river was pointing a rippling finger towards him so that every fisherman and riverside walker, pedlar and beggar took particular note of him as the boat went swiftly downstream.

  The river flowed fast down to London, and the tide was on the ebb. They did the journey quicker than John had hoped and when the boat nudged against the Whitehall steps and John leaped ashore it was only dusk. He blamed his sense of sickness on the movement of the boat. He did not want to recognise his fear.

  No-one paid any attention to the working man with his hat pulled down over his eyes and his cape up to his ears. There were hundreds, thousands of men like him, making their way across London for their suppers. John knew the way to Lord Monteagle’s house and slipped from shadow to shadow, making little sound on the dirt and mud of the streets.

  Lord Monteagle’s house was lit by double burning torches in the sconces outside. The front door stood wide open and his men, hangers-on, friends, and beggars passed in and out without challenge. His lordship was dining at the top table at the head of the hall, there was a continual press of people all around him, friends of his household, servants, retainers and, towards the back of the hall, supplicants and common people who had come in for the amusement of watching the lord at his dinner. John hung back and surveyed the scene.

  As he waited and watched, a man touched his shoulder and went to hurry past him. John recognised one of Lord Monteagle’s servants, a man called Thomas, hurrying to dinner.

  The note was in John’s hand, the direction clear. ‘A moment,’ he said, and pressed it into the man’s hand. ‘For your master. For the love of Mary.’

  He knew what a potent spell that name would weave. The man took it and glanced at him, but John was already turning away and diving into an alley out of sight. He took a moment and then peered cautiously out.

  Thomas Ward had entered the big double doors and was making his way to the head of the table. John saw him lean to whisper in his master’s ear and hand him the note. The job was done. John stepped out into the street again and strolled onward, careful not to hurry, resisting the temptation to run. He strolled as if he were a working man on his way to an inn, hungry for his supper. As he turned the corner and there was no shout of alarm, and no running footsteps behind him, he allowed his pace to quicken – as fast as a man who knows that he should be home by a certain time. One more corner and John allowed himself to run, a gentle jogging run, as a man might do when he was late for an appointment and hoping to make up for the delay. He kept a sharp watch out among the dirt and cobblestones so that he did not slip and fall, and he kept a brisk pace until he was ten, fifteen minutes away from Lord Monteagle’s, out of breath, but safe.

  He took his dinner at an inn by the river and then found he was too weary to face the journey back to Theobalds. He headed instead for his lord’s house near Whitehall, where Tradescant might always command a bed. He shared an attic room with two other men, saying that he had been sent to the docks for some rarity promised by an East India trader but which had proved to be nothing.

  When all the clocks in London struck eight, John went down to the great hall and found his master, as if by magic, also resident in London calmly seated to break his fast at the big chair at the head of the big table at the top of the hall. Robert Cecil raised an eyebrow at him, John returned the smallest nod, and master and man, at either end of the hall, fell on their bread and cheese and small ale and ate with relish.

  Cecil summoned him with a crook of his long finger. ‘I have a small task for you today and then you can go back to Theobalds,’ he said.

  John waited.

  ‘There is a little room in Whitehall where some kindling is stored. I should like it damped down to prevent the danger of a fire.’

  John frowned, his eyes on his master’s impish face. ‘My lord?’

  ‘I’ve got a lad who will show you where to go,’ Cecil continued smoothly. ‘Take a couple of buckets and make sure the whole thing is soaked through. And come away without being observed, my John.’

  ‘If there is a danger of fire I should clear it all out,’ John offered. He had the sense of swimming in deep and dangerous water and knew that this was his master’s preferred element.

  ‘I’ll clear it out when I know who laid the fire in the first place,’ Cecil said, very low. ‘Just damp it down for me now.’

  ‘Then I’ll get back to my garden,’ Tradescant said.

  Cecil grinned at the firmness of the statement. ‘Then your job is finished here, go and plant something. My work is coming into its flowering time.’

  It was only after 5 November that John learned that the whole Gunpowder Plot had been discovered by Lord Monteagle who had received a letter warning him not to go near Parliament. He had, quite rightly, taken the letter to Secretary Robert Cecil who, unable to understand its meaning, had laid the whole thing before the king. The king, quicker-witted than them all – how they praised him for the speed of his understanding! – had ordered the Houses of Parliament to be searched and found Guido Fawkes crouched amid kindling, and nearby, barrels of gunpowder. On the wave of anti-Catholic sentiment Cecil enforced laws to control Papists, and mopped up the remaining opposition to the English Protestant succession. The handful of desperate, dangerous families were identified as one confession led to another, and as the young men who had staked everything on a barrel of wet gunpowder were captured, tortured and executed. The one bungled plot forced everyone from the king to the poorest beggar to turn against the Catholics in a great wave of revulsion. The one dreadful threat – to the king, to his wife, to the two little princes – was such that no monarch in Europe, Catholic or Protestant, would ever plot again with English Catholics. The Spanish and French kings were monarchs before they were Catholics. And as monarchs they would never tolerate regicide.

  Even more importantly for Cecil, the horror at the thought of what might have happened if Monteagle had not proved faithful, if the king had not proved astute, persuaded Parliament to grant the king some extraordinary revenue for the year and pushed back for another twelve months t
he impending financial crisis.

  ‘Thank you, John,’ Cecil said when he returned to Theobalds in early December. ‘I won’t forget.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ John said.

  Cecil grinned at him, his schoolboyish conspiratorial grin. ‘Much better not to,’ he replied engagingly.

  May 1607

  After the king’s first successful visit to Theobalds it was as if he could not keep away. Every summer brought the court hungry as locusts out of London and into the country, to stay at Theobalds and then to move on in a constant circle of all the wealthy houses. The courtiers braced themselves for the unimaginable expense of entertaining the king, and sighed with relief when he moved on. He might shower the host with honours or with favours, or with some of the new farmed-out taxes, so that a favourite might grow rich collecting a newly invented duty from some struggling industry; or the king might merely smile and pass on. Whether he paid for his board in privileges or took it with nothing more than a word of thanks, his courtiers had to provide him with the best of food, the best of drink, the best hunting they could manage, and the best entertainment.

  They had learned their skills with Queen Elizabeth; no-one could teach them anything about lavish hospitality, extravagant gifts, and outright sycophancy. But King James demanded all this and more. His favourites too must be honoured, and his days filled with unending sport, hunting hunting hunting, until gamekeepers were at a premium and no man dared cut down a tree in a forest which the king knew and loved. His evenings must be filled with a parade of pretty men and pretty women. No-one refused him. No-one even thought to refuse him. Anything the new king wanted he must have.

  Even when he wanted Theobalds Palace itself.

  ‘I shall have to give it to him.’ Sir Robert had left his palace as he often did to find Tradescant. The gardener was directing the garden lads at the entrance to the maze. A team of boys was being supplied with blunt knives and sent into the maze on their hands and knees to root up weeds in the gravel. A team of older men would go with them with little hatchets and knives to trim the yew hedging; they had already been lectured with passion and energy by John as to the care they must take to keep the top of the hedge even, and on no account, on pain of instant dismissal, were they to cut an unruly bough in such a way that it might leave a hole which would make a peephole from one path to another and spoil the game.

  John took one look at his master’s dark expression, abandoned the pruning gang and came to him.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘He wants it. My house, and the gardens too. He wants it, and he’s promised me Hatfield House in return. I’ll have to give it to him, I suppose. I can’t refuse the king, can I?’

  John gave a little gasp of horror at the thought of losing Theobalds Palace. ‘The king wants this house? Our house?’

  Robert Cecil gave an unhappy shrug, beckoned to Tradescant and leaned on his shoulder as they walked. ‘Aye, I knew that you would feel it almost as much as me. I came to tell you before I told anyone else. I don’t know how I can bear to lose it. Built for me by my own father – the little islands and the rivers, and the fountains, and the bathing house … all this to be given away in exchange for that drab little place at Hatfield! A hard taskmaster, the new king, don’t you think, Tradescant?’

  John paused. ‘I don’t doubt you will get a better price than you might have had from any other monarch,’ he said cautiously.

  The earl’s cunning courtier face crinkled into laughter. ‘Better than from the old queen, you mean? Good God! I should think so! There never was a woman like her for taking half your wealth and giving you nothing but a smile in return. King James has a freer hand for his favourites …’ He broke off and turned back towards the house. ‘With all the favourites,’ he muttered. ‘Especially if they’re Scots. Especially if they’re handsome young men.’

  They walked side by side together, the earl leaning heavily on John’s shoulder.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ John asked.

  ‘I’m always in pain,’ his master snapped. ‘I don’t think about it if I can help it.’

  John felt a sympathetic twinge in his own knees at the thought of his master’s twisted bones. ‘Doesn’t seem right,’ he said with gruff sympathy. ‘That with all the striving and worry you have to suffer pain as well.’

  ‘I don’t look for justice,’ said England’s foremost law maker. ‘Not in this world.’

  John nodded and kept his sympathy to himself. ‘When do we have to leave?’

  ‘When I have made Hatfield ready for us. You’ll come with me, won’t you, John? You’ll leave our maze and the fountain court and the great garden for me?’

  ‘Your Grace … of course …’

  The earl heard at once the hesitation in his voice. ‘The king would keep you on here if I told him you would stay and mind the gardens,’ he said a little coldly. ‘If you don’t wish to come with me to Hatfield.’

  John turned and looked down into his master’s wretched face. ‘Of course I come with you,’ he said tenderly. ‘Wherever you are sent. I would garden for you in Scotland, if I had to. I would garden for you in Virginia, if I had to. I am your man. Whether you rise or fall, I am your man.’

  The earl turned and gripped John’s arms above the elbows in a brief half-embrace. ‘I know it,’ he said gruffly. ‘Forgive my ill humour. I am sick to my belly with the loss of my house.’

  ‘And the garden.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I have spent my life on this garden,’ John said thoughtfully. ‘I learned my trade here. There’s not a corner of it that I don’t know. There’s not a change that it makes from season to season that I cannot predict. And there are times, especially in early summer, like now, when I think it is perfect. That we have made it perfect here.’

  ‘An Eden,’ the earl agreed. ‘An Eden before the Fall. Is that what gardeners do all the time, John? Try to make Eden again?’

  ‘Gardeners and earls and kings too,’ John said astutely. ‘We all want to make paradise on earth. But a gardener can try afresh every spring.’

  ‘Come and try at Hatfield,’ the earl urged him. ‘You shall be head gardener in a garden which shall be all your own, you will follow in no man’s footsteps. You can make the garden at Hatfield, my John, not just maintain and amend, like here. You shall order the planting and buy the plants. You shall choose every one. And I will pay you more, and give you a cottage of your own. You need not live in hall.’ He looked at his gardener. ‘You could marry,’ he suggested. ‘Breed us little babes for Eden.’

  John nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘You are betrothed, aren’t you?’

  ‘I have been promised these past six years, but my father made me swear on his deathbed never to marry until I could support a wife and family. But if I can have a cottage at Hatfield, I will marry.’

  The earl laughed shortly and slapped him on the back. ‘From great men do great favours flow like the water in my fountains,’ he said. ‘King James wants Theobalds for a royal palace and so Tradescant can marry. Go and tie the knot, Tradescant! I will pay you forty pounds a year.’

  He hesitated for a moment. ‘But you should marry for love, you know,’ he said. He swallowed down his grief, his continual grief for the wife he had married for love, who had taken him despite his hunched body and loved him for himself. He had given her two healthy children and one as crooked as himself, and it was the birth of that baby which had killed her. They had been together only eight years. ‘To have a wife you can love is a precious thing, John. You’re not gentry, or noble, you don’t have to make dynasties and fortunes, you can marry where your heart takes you.’

  John hesitated. ‘I’m not gentry, my lord, but my heart cannot take me to a maid without a portion.’ Irresistibly the thought of the kitchen maid from the first dinner for King James came into his head. ‘My father left me with a debt to a man which is cleared by this betrothal to his daughter, and she is a steady woman with a good dowry. I have
been waiting until I could earn enough for us to marry, until I had savings which might take us through difficult years, savings to buy a house and a little garden for her to tend. I have plans, my lord – oh, never to leave your service, but I have plans to take my fortune upwards.’

  The earl nodded. ‘Buy land,’ he advised.

  ‘To farm?’

  ‘To sell.’

  John blinked; it was unusual advice. Most men thought of buying land and keeping it, nothing was more secure than a smallholding.

  The earl shook his head. ‘The way to make money, my John, is to move fast, even recklessly. You see an opportunity, you take it quickly, you move before other men have seen it too. Then when they see it, you pass it on to them and they crow at having spotted their chance, when you have already skimmed the cream of the profit. And move fast,’ he advised. ‘When you see an opening, when a place comes open, when you see a chance, when a master dies, take what you’re owed and move on.’

  He glanced up into John’s frowning face. ‘Practice,’ he reminded him. ‘Not principles. When Walsingham died, who was the best man to take his place? Who had the correspondence at his fingertips, who knew almost as much as Walsingham himself?’

  ‘You, my lord,’ Tradescant stammered.

  ‘And who had Walsingham’s papers which told everything a man who wanted to be Secretary of State would need to know?’

  John shrugged. ‘I don’t know, my lord. They were stolen, and the thief never found.’

  ‘Me,’ Cecil admitted cheerfully. ‘The moment I knew he would not recover, I broke into his cabinet and took everything he had written and received over the previous two years. So when they were casting around for who could do the work there was no-one but me. No-one could read the papers and learn what needed doing, for the papers were missing. No-one could know Walsingham’s mind, nor what he had agreed, because the papers were missing. Only one man in England of the dozen who had worked for Walsingham was ready to take his place. And that was me.’