Virgin Earth (53 page)

“Mr. Tradescant,” he began. “I am carrying a letter from the king, and I am to await your reply.”

He held out a scroll of paper with a thick red seal at the bottom. John took it and went to the window, where the August sunshine poured in.

Jane had to prevent herself from moving behind him and reading over his shoulder.

“Hmmm hmmm hmmm,” John said, skimming the customary compliments and addresses at the start of the letter. “Why! His Majesty is commanding me to be his gardener at Oatlands Palace! I am honored.”

“His Majesty has just given the palace to Her Majesty the Queen,” the herald informed them. “And she wants a garden like Hatfield or New Hall.”

John raised his head. “It’s a long time since I planted a garden for a palace. And I am sixty years old this year. There are other gardeners Their Majesties could employ, and I would have thought the queen would have preferred a garden in the French style.”

The herald raised his neat plucked eyebrows. “Perhaps. But I am not in a position to advise His Majesty or Her Majesty as to their course of action.
I
merely obey their royal decree.” The inference was clear.

“Oh,” John said, corrected. “I see.”

“His Majesty ordered me to take back a reply to him,” the herald continued loftily. “Is it your wish that I tell him you are sixty years of age and that it is your opinion that he didn’t want you in the first place?”

John grimaced. An invitation from the king was tantamount to a royal command. He was not able to refuse. “Tell His Majesty that I am honored for the invitation and that I accept, I gratefully accept, and that it will always be my pleasure to serve Their Majesties in any way I can.”

The herald unbent slightly. “I will deliver your message. His Majesty will expect you at Oatlands Palace within the week.”

John nodded. “I shall be delighted to attend.”

The herald bowed. “An honor to meet you, Mr. Tradescant.”

“The honor is all mine,” John said grandly.

The herald bowed himself from the room and left John and his daughter-in-law alone.

“Royal service,” she said grimly. “J won’t like it.”

John grimaced. “He will have to bear it. You can’t refuse the king. You heard him. My acceptance was just a matter of form; he knew what day I had to start work.”

“We said we would never work for another master,” Jane reminded him.

John nodded. “We never thought of this. But perhaps it won’t be so bad.” He turned and looked out of the window at his little farm. “I’ve heard they have a great orangery,” he said. “But they’ve never had much luck with getting the trees to flower. There’s a garden just for the king’s use and another for the queen. There’s a massive fountain in the great garden. The whole place is like a village set about with gardens, built all ramshackle with one court running into another, overlooking the Thames. The trick of it will be to make sure that every corner has a pretty plant, that the gardens pull the whole site together so that every corner has a view.”

Jane heard her father-in-law casting aside the principle of independence for the offer of a fine garden to make. She stalked to the door. “Shall I tell J or will you?” she asked coldly. “For he will not care for making pretty views for such a king.”

“I’ll tell him,” John said absently. “I wonder if we have enough chestnut saplings to use one at the center of each court?”

John told J the news at dinner but he knew from the moment his son entered the dining room that Jane had forewarned him, and that J was forearmed.

“I swore I’d never work for another master,” he said.

“This would be for me,” John corrected him, mildly. “Working for us all. For the good of us all.”

J glanced at his wife.

“It would be for the queen,” she said bluntly. “A woman of vanity and a heretic.”

“She may be both of those,” John agreed without hesitation. “But she’s only the paymaster. She will not supervise us at all. J need never speak to her.”

“There’s something about them, though, that sticks in my throat like dry bread,” J said thoughtfully. “There’s something about a man calling himself nearer to God than me. Something about a man thinking himself a better man than me — almost an angel. Even if I never saw him and never served him, there’s something about it which goes against the grain for me.”

“Because it’s heresy,” Jane said flatly.

J shook his head. “Not just because of that,” he said. “Because it denies me — it denies that I think, just as he thinks. That I have ideals, just as he has ideals. That I too want, think and pray for better days, for the coming of the Great Day, the Last Day. If he is as far above me as an angel then I need not think and hope and pray, for God would hardly listen to me when the king is on his knees. It’s as if his importance makes me more little.” He glanced around at their surprised faces. “I daresay I’m not making any sense,” he said defensively. “I’m not good at arguing these things. It’s just what I’ve been thinking.”

“But what you’re saying would deny any king,” John said. “This one or any other. A good one or a bad one.”

J nodded reluctantly. “I just can’t see that any man should set himself up to be above another. I can’t see that any man needs more than one house. I can’t see that any man needs dozens of houses and hundreds of servants. I can’t see that he can be closer to God with these things — I would have thought he would be farther and farther away.”

John shifted uncomfortably on his wooden seat. “This is Leveller talk, my son. Next thing you will be denying any king but King Jesus and taking off for the common and waste lands.”

“I don’t care what it’s called,” J said steadily. “I wouldn’t be frightened from speaking my mind because others think the same thoughts but express them wildly. I know that I must think that England would be better without a man at its head who claims to speak for us, and know us, and yet clearly knows nothing at all of what it is like to be a man such as me.”

“He has advisers.”

J shrugged. “He is surrounded by courtiers and flatterers. He hears what they tell him and they only tell him what he wants to hear. He can have no judgment, he can have no wisdom. He is trapped in his vanity and ignorance like a fish in a fishpond and since it knows nothing else it thinks it is something divinely special. If it could breathe air and see the sky it would know it is nothing more than a large fish.”

John snorted with laughter at the thought of the long mournful face of his monarch and the juxtaposition of the face of a carp.

“But who will you employ if J will not go?” Elizabeth asked practically.

“I’ll have to find someone,” John said. “There are dozens of men who would be glad of the place. But I would rather work with you, J. And it seems to me you are bound to work for me if I ask it.”

J shifted on his seat. “You would not drive me to rebellion,” he said. “You would respect my conscience, Father. I am a full-grown man.”

“You’re twenty-two,” John said bluntly. “Barely into your majority. You make your own choices; you are a man with a wife and child of your own. But I am still your father and it will be my work which will put the bread on your table, if you refuse to work.”

“I work here!” J exclaimed, stung. “I work hard enough!”

“In winter we earn almost no money,” John pointed out. “We live off our savings. There is no stock to sell, and the visitors tail off in the bad weather. Last year we were down to the bottom of our savings by the spring. The work at the palace would be money paid to us all the year round.”

“Papist gold,” Jane muttered to her plate.

“Honestly earned by us,” John countered. “I am an old man. I did not think to go out to work to keep you, J. I did not think your conscience would be more precious than your duty to me.”

J shot a furious look at his father. “It’s always the same!” he burst out. “You are always the one who is free to come and go. I am always the one who has to obey. And now that we have a home where I
want
to stay, and now you are free to stay yourself, you are still going away. And now I have to go too!”

“I am not free,” John said sternly. “The king commands me.”

“Defy the king!” J shouted. “For once in your life don’t go at some great man’s bidding. For once in your life speak for yourself! Think for yourself! Defy the king!”

There was a long shocked silence.

John rose from the table and walked to the window and looked out over the garden rinsed of color and lovely in the gray light of dusk. A star was shining over the chestnut tree and somewhere in the orchard a nightingale started to sing.

“I will never defy the king,” he said. “I will not even hear such talk in my house.”

The pause stretched till breaking point and then J spoke low and earnestly. “Father, this is not Queen Elizabeth and you are not still working for Robert Cecil. This is not a king as she was a queen. This is not a country as it was then. This is a country that has been run into debt and torn apart by heresy. It is ruled by a vain fool who is ruled in turn by a papist wife, in the pay of her brother, the King of France. I cannot bear to go and work for such a king nor for her. I cannot bear to be under their command. If you force me to this I would rather leave the country altogether.”

John nodded, taking in J’s words. The two women, Elizabeth and Jane, sat silent, hardly breathing, waiting to hear what John would reply.

“Do you mean this?”

J, breathing heavily, merely nodded.

John sighed. “Then you must follow your conscience and go,” he said simply. “For the king is my master before God, and he has ordered me. And I am your father and should command your duty and I have ordered you. If you choose to defy me then you should go, J. Just as Adam and Eve had to leave
their
garden. There are laws in heaven and earth. I cannot pretend to you that it is otherwise. I have tolerated loose thoughts and wild talk from you all your life, even in my lord’s garden. But if you will not serve the king then you should not garden in his garden. You should not garden in his country.”

J rose from the table. His hands were trembling and he swiftly snatched them out of sight, behind his back.

“Wait—” Elizabeth said softly. Neither man paid any attention to her.

“I shall go, then,” J said as if he were testing his father’s resolve. John turned his back on the room and looked out to his garden.

“If you do not accept your obedience to me, and to the king above me, and to God above him, then you are no longer my son,” John said simply. “I would to God that you do not take this path, J.”

J turned and walked jerkily to the door. Jane rose too, hesitant, looking from her husband to her father-in-law. J went out without another word.

“Go to him,” Elizabeth said swiftly to Jane. “Soothe him. He can’t mean it. Keep him here tonight at least — we’ll talk more in the morning.” A swift nod toward John at the window showed Jane that meanwhile Elizabeth would work on her husband.

Jane hesitated. “But I think he is right,” she whispered, too low for John to hear.

“What does it matter?” Elizabeth hissed. “What do the words matter? Nothing matters more than Frances and you and J living here now, and living here when we are gone. The gardens and the Tradescant name. Go quick and stop him packing at least.”

Jane prevented J from leaving home that night by presenting the folly of taking a sleeping baby out of her cradle into the night air, into a city filled with plague. The two men, father and son, met at breakfast and went out to the garden together in stiff silence.

“What can we do?” Jane asked her mother-in-law.

Elizabeth shook her head. “Pray that the two of them will see that the interests of this family are more important than whose gold pays the bills.”

“Father should not force J to work for the king against his conscience,” Jane said.

Elizabeth shook her head. “Ah, my dear, it was so different for us when we were your age. There was no other way to work but for a lord. There were no other gardens but those belonging to great lords. At J’s age his father would never have dreamed of owning a house, or fields. At J’s age he was an under-gardener in the Cecil household and living in hall; he didn’t even choose his own meat for breakfast — everything came from the lord’s kitchen. Things have changed so fast, you two must understand. The world is so different now. And J is still a very young man. Things could change again.”

“Things are changing,” Jane agreed. “But not in favor of lords and the court. Perhaps this family should not be linked with the king. Perhaps we would do better to be like my family, independent traders who do not fear the king’s favor. Who are not dependent on any master.”

“Yes, if we were mercers,” Elizabeth answered gently. “And could trade from a little shop, and every man and woman in the country would need our goods and could afford them. But we are gardeners and keepers of a rarities collection. Only the wealthy men will buy what we have to sell and show. And we cannot get our stock without owning land to grow it in. It is not a trade that can be done on a small scale. This is a business that puts us in the hands of the great men of the country. We sell to the great houses, we sell to the courtiers. Of course, sooner or later, we would come to the mind of the king.”

“And he wants us, as he wants everything that is beautiful and rare,” Jane said bitterly. “And he thinks he can buy us too.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Just so.”

The men came into dinner in silence. Jane and Elizabeth exchanged a few remarks about the weather and the progress of the work in the garden but gave up when neither man responded with more than a word or a nod.

As soon as they had eaten the men went back outside and Jane, looking from the window of the rarities room, saw J heading down for the orchard, as far away from the house as he could go, while John was weeding the seed beds in the cool shadow of the house. The day was hot. Even the wood pigeons that usually cooed in the Tradescant trees were silent. Jane took Frances to feed the ducks in the pond at the side of the orchard and saw her husband scything nettles in a distant corner. When he saw her he carefully sheathed the blade and came over.