Earthly Joys Read online

  ‘You have your life’s task then!’ the vicar said lightly, hoping to end the conversation. But John did not smile in return.

  ‘I have indeed,’ he said seriously.

  At the end of the dinner Gertrude rose from the table and the ladies followed her lead. The serving girls stayed behind with the poorer neighbours and drank themselves into a satisfying stupor. Elizabeth completed the last of the tasks in her old family home and waited for John in his turn to leave the dinner. At dusk he came away from the hall and the trestle tables and found her sitting at the kitchen table with the other women, waiting for him. He took his bride by the hand and they went down the hill a little way to their new cottage followed by a shouting, singing train of family and villagers.

  In the cottage the women went upstairs first, and Elizabeth’s cousins and half-sisters helped her out of her new white dress and into a nightdress of fine lawn. They brushed her dark hair and combed it into a fat plait. They pinned her cap on her head, and sprayed her with a little water of roses behind each ear. Then they waited with her in the little low-ceilinged bedroom until the shouts and snatches of song from the stair told them that the bridegroom had been made ready too and was come to his bride.

  The door burst open and John was half-flung into the room by the joyous enthusiasm of the wedding party. He turned on them at once and pushed them out over the threshold. The women around Elizabeth’s bed made false little cries of alarm and excitement.

  ‘We’ll warm the bed! We’ll kiss the bride!’ the men shouted as John barred their way at the door.

  ‘I’ll warm your backsides!’ he threatened and turned to the women. ‘Ladies?’

  They fluttered like hens in a coop around Elizabeth, straightening her cap and kissing her cheek, but she brushed them off and they pattered to the door, ducking under John’s arm as he held the door firmly. More than one woman shot a quick look at the gardener and the strength of his outstretched arm and thought that Elizabeth had done better than she could possibly have hoped for. John closed the door and shot the bolt on them all. The rowdiest hammered on the door in reply. ‘Let us in! We want to drink your healths! We want to see Elizabeth to bed!’

  ‘Go away! We’ll drink our own healths!’ he shouted back. ‘And I shall bed my own wife!’ He turned, laughing, from the door but the smile died from his face.

  Elizabeth had risen from her bed and was kneeling at the foot, her head in her hands, praying.

  Someone hammered on the door again. ‘What are you going to plant, Gardener John?’ they shouted. ‘What seeds do you have in your sacks?’

  John swore under his breath at their bawdy humour, and wondered that Elizabeth could stay so still and so quiet.

  ‘Go away!’ he shouted again. ‘Your sport is over! Go and get drunk and leave us in peace!’

  With relief he heard the clatter of their feet going downstairs.

  ‘We’ll be back in the morning to see the sheets!’ he heard a voice shout. ‘We expect stains, glorious red and white stains!’

  ‘Roses and lilies!’ shouted one wit. ‘Red roses and white lilies in John Tradescant’s flower bed!’ There was a great guffaw at this sally, and then the front door of the cottage banged, and they were in the streets.

  ‘Dig deep, Gardener John!’ came the shout from the darkness outside. ‘Plant well!’

  John waited until he could hear the staggering footsteps go up the lane to the village’s only ale house. Still Elizabeth kneeled at the foot of the bed, her eyes closed, her face serene.

  Hesitantly John kneeled down beside her, closed his eyes and composed himself for prayer. He thought first of the king – not the man he saw and knew, but the man he thought of when he said the word ‘king’ – a being halfway between earth and heaven, the fount of law, the source of justice, the father to his people. A man like the Lord Jesus, sent from God, directly from God, for the guidance and good ruling of his people. A man whose touch could heal, who could perform miracles, whose mantle covered the nation. ‘God save the king,’ Tradescant whispered devoutly.

  Then he thought of his master, another man half-touched with divinity, a step lower than the king but so high in power that he must be, surely, especially favoured by God, and was in any case John’s lord, a role of unique potency. John thought of the word ‘lord’ and had a sense of the holiness of it – Lord Jesus, Lord Cecil, both lords. But Cecil with his special trust in John, Cecil with his engaging child-size body and his cunning wise mind, was easy for John to bless in his prayers. John’s lord, John’s great love. Then his mind slipped at once to the old royal palace of Hatfield. Cecil would build a new house there, undoubtedly it would be a great house, and he would want a beautiful garden set around it. Perhaps an avenue … John had never planted an avenue. He lost the thread of his prayers altogether at the thought of the work of planting an avenue, and his great desire to see a double row of fine trees, limes, he thought longingly. They must be limes, there was nothing like lime for an avenue. ‘God give me the skill to do it,’ John whispered. ‘And grant me, in Your mercy, enough saplings.’

  Elizabeth was very close, kneeling beside him, he could feel the warmth of her body, he could hear the soft rhythm of her indrawn and exhaled breath. ‘God bless us both,’ John thought. ‘And let us live in friendship and kindliness together.’

  He did not expect more than friendship from Elizabeth, friendship and a lifelong partnership of indissoluble shared interest. Unbidden, the picture of Catherine with her dark eyes and low-cut bodice rose behind his eyelids. A man newly wedded to a girl like Catherine would not spend his bridal night on his knees praying.

  John opened his eyes and got into bed. Still Elizabeth kneeled at the bedside, her head bowed, her lips moving. In sudden irritation, John leaned over and blew out his bedside candle. Darkness invaded the room. In the darkness and the quietness he felt, rather than saw, Elizabeth rise from her knees, pull her nightdress over her head, lift the sheets and slip in beside him, naked.

  For a moment he was stunned at the frank sensuality of the gesture. That a woman could arise from prayer and strip herself naked confounded his simple division of women into good or bad, saintly or sexual. But she was his newly married wife and she had a right to lie beside him. John’s desire rose at the glimpse of the moonlit body and he was sorry he had no light for the candle that he had blown out in a moment of temper and left himself in the dark.

  They lay side by side on their backs.

  ‘Like effigies on a tomb,’ John thought, awkwardly.

  It was for him to make the first move, but anxiety locked him into place. After years of avoiding sin and living in mortal terror of sexual temptation which would lead to pregnancy and disgrace, John was unprepared for the free embrace of a willing partner.

  His hand strayed towards her side of the bed and encountered the unmistakable solidity of her thigh. The skin was as smooth as the fruit of an apple, but yielding, like a ripe plum. Elizabeth said nothing. John stroked her thigh with the back of his hand like a man brushing the soft foliage of a scented plant. He rather feared she might be praying again.

  Cautiously he moved his hand up her thigh to the round warm mound of her belly, the navel set in the flesh like a little duckpond in a hill. Up these new mysterious byways John’s hand slowly went, one breast – and he heard her little indrawn breath as his hand moved across the soft rolling crest of her breast and took into its keeping the tender warm nipple which immediately hardened under his touch. He moved towards her, and heard that little gasp once more which was not quite alarm, and yet not quite welcoming. He raised himself up so that he was above her. In the moonlight he could see her face, her eyes resolutely shut, her mouth expressionless, as she had looked when she was praying. He bent his head and kissed her on the lips. She was warm and soft; but she lay completely still, as if she were asleep.

  John stroked gently down her belly and beyond and found the downy softness of the hair between her legs. As he touched her she turned her hea
d to one side, but still she did not open her eyes or stir. Gently he pressed his knee against her thigh and slowly, she opened her legs to him. Feeling like a king coming in to his kingdom, John moved across in the bed and lay between the legs of his wife, started to ease forward, started to know the power of his desire.

  There was a sudden rush and a clatter of mud and stones against the window.

  ‘God’s wounds! What’s that?’ John exclaimed in alarm. ‘Fire?’

  In one swift sinuous movement Elizabeth was out of bed, her gown clutched to her heavy swinging breasts, peering out of the window into the darkness of the village street.

  ‘Are you done, John?’ came a jovial beery yell. ‘Sowed your seeds, have you?’

  ‘God’s blood, I shall murder them!’ John exclaimed, dashing his nightcap to the floor.

  Slowly Elizabeth put her nightgown to one side and came back to bed beside him. At last she spoke to him, the first words she spoke in their bedroom, the first words she said naked before him: ‘Never take the Lord’s name in vain, husband. It is His own commandment. I want our house to walk in His ways.’

  John flung himself back on the bed, deserted by desire, as soft as a gelding. ‘I shall sleep,’ he declared sulkily. ‘And then I shall avoid offending you.’ He humped all the bedclothes around him, turned his back on her and closed his eyes. ‘You can pray again if you like,’ he added spitefully.

  Elizabeth, robbed of the blankets, lay in silence on the cool sheet, humiliatingly naked, her new nightgown spread across her breasts and belly. Only when she heard his breathing deepen and she was certain that he was asleep did she move close to his broad back and wind her arms around his sleeping body, pressing her cold nakedness against him. She wept a little before she finally fell asleep. But she did not wish her words unsaid.

  June 1607

  Next day, before Elizabeth had done more than stir the fire in the new grate and set the morning porridge on to heat, there was a knock on the door and a messenger from the earl.

  ‘His Grace wants you in London,’ the man said shortly.

  Elizabeth glanced at her new husband, half-expecting him to refuse, but John was already seated in his chair at the fireside pulling on his riding boots.

  The man doffed his hat to her but looked beyond her to John. ‘At the docks,’ he said. ‘You’re to meet him at Gravesend.’

  Another swift bow and he was gone. Cecil’s servants were not encouraged to linger and gossip. The common belief was that Cecil had ears everywhere and an indiscreet servant would not last long.

  Elizabeth took John’s travelling cloak from the press where she had laid it in lavender. She had thought then that it was worth protecting it against moths for months of storage.

  ‘When will you be back?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I can’t say,’ John replied briskly.

  Elizabeth flinched at the coldness of his tone. ‘Am I to join you at Hatfield?’ she asked. ‘Or come to Theobalds?’

  He looked at her and saw the coat she was holding for him. ‘I thank you,’ he said courteously. ‘I’ll send you word. I don’t know what is happening, I don’t know what he wants me for. These are dangerous times for him. I must go at once.’

  Elizabeth felt her village-based view of the world shudder under the weight of great events which would now impinge on her life. ‘I didn’t think these were dangerous times. How are they dangerous?’

  He glanced at her quickly, as if her ignorance surprised him. ‘All times are dangerous to men with great power,’ he explained. ‘My lord is the greatest in the land. Every day he faces one danger or another. If he sends for me I go without question and I make no plans other than his will.’

  Elizabeth nodded. There was no arguing with a man’s duty to follow his lord.

  ‘I’ll wait till I hear from you then,’ she said.

  John kissed her forehead in that passionless meaningless gesture which seemed to have started with their betrothal and hung over them still. Elizabeth curbed her impulse to turn up her face and kiss him on the lips. If he did not want to kiss her, if he did not want to lie with her, then it was not the part of a good wife to complain. She would have to wait. She would have to do her duty by him, as he did his by his lord.

  ‘Thank you,’ John said, as if she had obliged him in some little courtesy, and went out to saddle his horse, mounted the animal and rode him from the back of the cottage to the village street. Elizabeth was at the doorway, her head high; none of the village gossips would know that her husband was leaving her as virginal as she had been on her wedding day.

  John doffed his hat to her, conscious also of the dozens of watching windows. He did not lean down to kiss her, nor did he offer one word of assurance or comfort. Seated high on his horse he looked down on the pale face of the wife he was leaving without bedding and knew himself to be behaving badly, with his duty as an excuse as well as an obligation. ‘Farewell,’ he said shortly, and turned his horse and rode briskly out at a trot. The knowledge of his unkindness to a woman who, wedding night or no, mother-naked or clothed, had said no more than she had every right to say, and who, before that accursed interruption, had laid warm and pleasant to his touch, galled him all the way along the lanes going north to Gravesend.

  He met his master at the quayside, at the docks of the East India Company, the air rich with the smell of cinnamon and spices and loud with the curses of the dockers.

  A merchant welcomed them on board his ship at the gangplank. ‘Follow me,’ he said and led them between the sailmakers and the rope chandlers to the captain’s cabin. ‘A glass of wine?’ he offered.

  The earl and his gardener nodded.

  ‘I have some curious roots,’ he said when they had a glass each. ‘I bought them for their weight in gold because I knew that a man such as yourself, Your Grace, would pay much more for them.’

  ‘And what are they?’ the earl asked.

  The merchant opened a wooden box. ‘I have kept them dry and sweet, and hidden from the light as Mr Tradescant advised me.’

  He held out a handful of woody twisted roots, brown, with a dusty earth still clinging to them. The earl took them gingerly and handed them to John.

  ‘They are the roots of flowers of exceeding fineness,’ the merchant said rapidly, his eyes on Cecil’s impartial face. ‘Roots of course, Your Grace, never look well. But in the hands of your gardener you could bring these on to flower in great profusion …’

  ‘And what is the flower like?’ John asked.

  ‘Like a geranium,’ the merchant said. ‘And the leaves are sweet, like geranium leaves. But much finer, a quite extraordinary blossom.’

  Cecil raised an eyebrow at John. John made a small shrug of his shoulders. They looked like the roots of a geranium but with neither leaf nor flower no-one could tell. They would have to be bought on trust. ‘Anything else?’ Cecil asked.

  ‘These.’ The merchant pulled a little hessian purse from the bottom of the box and opened it. Inside were fat green globes as large as a bantam’s egg with hard little spines all over.

  ‘A new chestnut,’ the merchant promised. Gently he prised open one of the shells, and spilled, into John’s cupped palm, a bold round handsome nut, dappled like a brown roan horse in light and dark brown, with a paler grey and brown circle at the top. John caressed the moist inside casing of the shell, turned the nut in the light to see the sheen on it. Bigger than a walnut, shinier than mahogany, it was a delightful nut, a great jewel of a nut, a brown warm pearl.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ John could not keep the quiver of excitement from his voice.

  ‘Turkey,’ the merchant said. ‘And I saw the tree that gave this fruit.’

  ‘Can you eat them?’ Cecil asked.

  The man hesitated for that single half-moment which reveals a lie. ‘Surely,’ he said. ‘They are chestnuts, after all. And they are a powerful medicine. The man that sold them to me says they use them for curing broken-winded horses. They mend the lungs of horses, p
erhaps of men too.’

  ‘Is the leaf the same as our chestnut?’ John asked.

  ‘Bigger,’ the merchant replied. ‘And spreading. And the trees are massive round trees, better-shaped than ours, like a great ball on a stick. And when they are in flower they are covered all over with huge white cones of flowers, as big as both your hands. White blossoms and the tongues of the flowers are speckled with pink.’ He thought for a moment. The price would depend on his description. ‘Like apple blossom,’ he said at once. ‘White and pink together like apple blossom, but in a great shape like a cone.’

  John fought to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘Great trees? What height?’

  The man waved his hand. ‘As big as a full-grown oak. Not tall like a fir but broad and tall, like a big oak tree.’

  ‘And the wood?’ Cecil interrupted, thinking of the nation’s insatiable demand for timber for shipbuilding.

  ‘Fine wood,’ the merchant said quickly. Too quickly for truth, Cecil thought. ‘Though I did not see it myself, they tell me the wood is very fine.’

  ‘How many?’ John asked, his eyes on the box, but he kept the chestnut in his hand. ‘How many do you have?’

  ‘Only half a dozen,’ the merchant said seductively. ‘Just six. And that’s the only six in the whole of the kingdom, the only six outside Turkey. The only six in Christendom. For you to own, Your Grace; for you to grow, Mr Tradescant.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Cecil asked nonchalantly.

  ‘These seeds,’ the merchant said, and showed a little purse filled with hard black seeds. ‘Of rare flowers.’