Virgin Earth (34 page)

John snatched off his hat and threw it in the air like a boy. “Thank God for it! Thank God!” he exclaimed. “I have been sick with worry these ten days. I thank God that they have seen sense. They threw out the charges, did they? Dismissed them? Who can stand against him, eh? Mr. Ward? Who could think wrong of him when they see him and hear him speak?”

Mr. Ward shook his head. “They did not dismiss the charges.”

“How so? They must have done! You said…”

“I said he would not face his accusers…”

“So?”

“They had him impeached on eight counts,” the steward said, his voice low and shocked. “They charged him with everything from the ruination of the Navy, to stealing from the king. They even accused him… they said he was implicated… they called him to account for the murder of King James.”

John went pale. “Murder?”

The steward nodded, his face as horrified as John’s. “They named it. They called it murder. And they named him as the regicide.”

“My God,” John said softly. “What did he answer?”

“He gave no answer. The king had his accusers arrested and dissolved the parliament. He sent the members back to their homes. He will not hear them.”

For a moment John was relieved. “The king stands his friends, then. And his enemies are the king’s enemies.”

William Ward nodded. Then John saw the disadvantage. “And since the accusers were imprisoned, are the accusations withdrawn?”

Slowly, the steward shook his head. “No. That’s the rub. His accusers are imprisoned without trial in the Tower, but they do not retract.”

“Who are they? The damned liars. Who?”

“Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot.”

Tradescant went white to his collar. “But Sir John is my lord’s closest friend,” he said quietly. “They have been like brothers together since they were children.”

William Ward nodded.

“And I sailed to Russia with Sir Dudley; he’s not a man for false accusations, he’s a man of most careful honor! Why, I’d trust his judgment as I’d trust my own. We were shipmates on a long hazardous voyage and when he was sick I nursed him. I’d have gone with him overland to Moscow if I could have done. He’s a fine man, a fair man. He’d not bear false witness against anyone. He would not do it.”

The steward looked bleakly at him. “It is his word against the duke’s.”

“I would have wagered my life on his honesty,” Tradescant said uncertainly.

The steward shook his head. “It was those two who spoke against our lord, and are imprisoned for it. And now the king has them in the Tower and they’re not to be released.”

“But what are the charges?”

“None. There are no charges — except that they spoke against the duke.”

John took a swift stride to the window and looked out at the terraces below: the golden terrace with the goldfish, the silver beneath, and the dappled trout ponds at the lowest level.

“They are men you could trust with anything,” he said softly. “If it was any other cause I would be with them.”

The steward said nothing.

When Tradescant turned back his face was very grave. “This is a bad business. No one can call Sir Dudley a liar. But no one can say that my duke did — all these things that they say he did.”

The steward looked at him closely. “You were there. At the king’s death. You must have seen.”

“I saw nothing,” John answered swiftly. “I saw nothing but my lord watching and waking with his master. The prince was there; do they say he killed his own father? The Bishop of Lincoln was there. Do they say he did it too?”

“The Villiers mother was there,” William Ward remarked. “And the doctors were dismissed.”

John looked at him, baffled. “We have to trust him,” he said stoutly, but it sounded more like an appeal. “He’s our master. We are sworn to be his men. We have to trust him until we have absolute evidence that he has gone against the king or against the word of God itself. We can’t give ourselves as his men and then take ourselves back again when his star is coming down. I am his man through good and bad times. I have eaten his bread.”

William Ward nodded. “At least the duke is to come home for a few days. He writes me that he will stay and then go on to the New Forest for hunting with the king.”

Tradescant nodded. “They’re going hunting? But what about the parliament? The king only just called it.”

“Dissolved,” Mr. Ward said shortly. “It’s only the king’s second parliament and it’s broken up with no agreement at all. No money voted, no policy decided. The king will rule with the duke alone, but without Parliament. But how is he to raise money to pay for anything? What will the country think of him?”

“What will they do?” Tradescant wondered. “How will they manage? They are both such young men — and they have such enemies ranged against them abroad and…”

The steward shrugged slightly. “It is a dangerous road that they tread,” he said. “God save them both.”

That summer there was a meteor clearly seen for night after night, which burned very low and bright in the sky. You could see it most easily after sunset when the sky was still pearly before the stars shone out. It stood alone then, and its hair burned yellow with fire. Everyone knew that it was a sign, and most thought it was a warning. The plague had not eased, the new French queen was proving barren, and besides there were whispers that she could not tolerate the king. There had been fierce quarrels and shouting behind closed doors. The duke had been everywhere in the marriage, intervening, advising, even reprimanding Her Majesty. Now, it was said, she could not bear the sight of him, and she was never admitted to see her husband without the duke present.

The meteor was visible from New Hall, and in the village of Chorley they thought it was a sign of sins seeking the sinner out. The golden trail behind the meteor was said to be a certain sign of poison, poison somewhere in the land. John Tradescant, who had a hatred of superstition, snapped at J, and said that the meteor was a star fallen out of its place and that it meant nothing — it meant nothing to men of any sense. But he never saw it without crossing his fingers in his pocket, and whispering to himself: “God save the king! God save the duke!”

In July matters came to a head in the royal marriage. The king ordered the queen’s French attendants out of his house and out of the country, and forcibly installed Buckingham’s wife and sister in her household to take their place as the first ladies of the English court. John, watching the massive new fountains being installed at New Hall, found J by his side.

“Father, why can the king not live happily with his wife?” he asked him. “In the kitchen they are saying that he attacked her and that she screamed from the window for her priests and her ladies, and that the duke, our duke, threatened her that she could be beheaded for treason.”

John took J firmly by the shoulder and marched him away from the workmen. “That’s tittle tattle,” he said sharply. “Women’s gossip. D’you want to be an old beldame at the fireside?”

“I just want to understand,” J said quickly. His father’s face was dark with anger; he saw that he had gone too far.

“Understand what?”

J hesitated. “I want to know why you follow the duke above all else,” he said in a sudden rush. “Why you leave me, and leave Mother, and sometimes we don’t see you for months. I want to know what hold he has over you. What hold he has over the king?”

John was thoughtful for a moment; then he turned his son and walked beside him, his arm laid heavily on the young slim shoulders. “I love him as a master,” he said. “Set above me by God to guide me and command me. I am his vassal, d’you see? He asked me to be his man and I consented. That means that I am bound to him till death, or until he releases me. I didn’t go down on my knees and swear vassalship as I would have done in the old days but the thing is still the same. I am his man and he is my lord. That’s the bond between us.”

J nodded unwillingly.

“And I love him because of his beauty,” John said simply. “Whether he’s in white silk and showered with diamonds, or whether he’s dressed in brown for hunting, he is as lithe as a willow and as lovely” — he looked around the garden — “as one of my chestnut trees in blossom. He’s a rare rare thing, J. I have never seen his equal. He is as lovely as a woman and as brave as a knight in a story. He moves like a dancer and he rides like a devil, and he makes me laugh when we are together, and he grieves me every day we are apart. He is my lord. There is none like him.”

“D’you love him more than us?” J asked, going to the heart of the question.

“I love him differently.” John avoided the truth. “I love you and your mother as my own dear kin. I love my lord as I love the angels above him and my God above them.”

“Do you never wonder,” J asked spitefully from the depths of his hurt, “do you never wonder that your love might be misplaced? That your lord, just below the angels, might be what they call him in the marketplace? A false friend, a thief, a spy, a papist, a murderer… a sodomite?”

John whirled and smacked his son, a ringing blow which sent the youth sprawling, and then stood over him with his fists clenched, ready to hit him again should he come up fighting. “How dare you!”

J struggled backward, away from his furious father. “I…”

“How dare you insult the man whose bread you eat? Who has put food on our table? How dare you repeat the dirt of the streets in his very garden? I should whip you for this, John. You are a graceless, dirty boy. Your learning was wasted on you if it has taught you wicked thoughts.”

J struggled to his feet and faced his father, his cheek blazing with John’s handprint. “I want to think for myself!” he cried out. “I don’t want a lord to follow, I don’t want to have to shut my ears to the things that everyone is saying. I want to find my own way.”

“You will find your own way to hell,” John said bitterly. And he turned on his heel and left his son without another word.

Summer 1627

Buckingham, at New Hall for the summer, frightened back to Essex by the enmity of the parliament, found John in the fruit garden, tying back peach trees against the red brick wall. John turned when he heard the duke’s quick step on the brick-chip path and Buckingham, seeing the leap of joy in Tradescant’s face, put a hand on his shoulder. “I wish I was a hero to all the world as I am to you, John,” he said.

“Is there trouble?”

Buckingham threw back his head and laughed his reckless gambler’s laugh. John smiled in reply but felt a chill sense of unease. He had learned to be wary when his lord was in joyful mood. “There is always trouble,” Buckingham said. “I snap my fingers at it. And what of you, John? What are you doing here?”

“I am trying a little experiment; I don’t know if it will work. It is a fancy of mine to see if I can give the peach trees a little extra heat, where they grow, here in the garden.”

“Will you set fire to their trunks?”

“I shall burn charcoal,” Tradescant said seriously. “Here.” He showed the duke the high wall and three small fireplaces placed one above the other. “The flues from the fireplaces run along the length of the wall and the hot smoke travels behind the bricks where the trees are tied. I am hoping it will keep the frost off them so that you can have early peaches and apricots. Weeks, perhaps even months, early. I think it must be something in the nature of the tree which makes it bear fruit; but then I am sure it is the heat of the sunshine which makes it ripen. The first year I scorched them and last year I was too cautious and the frost got them. But this year I think I may have done it right and you shall have sweet ripe fruit in June.”

“I shall be eating no English peaches in June this year, and nor will you,” the duke remarked.

Alerted, John turned away from his heated wall. “Not this year?”

“Unless you wish to eat peaches while I go to war!”

“You, my lord!”

Buckingham threw back his head and laughed once more. John thought for a moment that he might have crowed like a cock on the farmyard wall. “Listen to this, my John. We are to take on the French! Won’t that be a game? While they trouble us in the Lowlands and threaten the fair Queen Elizabeth, driven off her rightful throne in Bohemia, we will sail around and attack their soft underbelly.”

“In the Mediterranean?”

“La Rochelle,” Buckingham said triumphantly. “We will sail in to a hero’s welcome from the Protestants. They have been besieged by their own countrymen, martyrs for their faith, for long enough. Our arrival will turn the tables. I doubt we will need to fire a shot! And what a snap of fingers in the face of Richelieu!”

“But only last year you sent a fleet to fight for Richelieu, you were his ally against them—”

“Policy! Policy!” Buckingham dismissed the idea. “We should have supported our brothers in religion as soon as the siege was raised. The country was wild to go to war against the Catholics; I was wild for it. But with a French queen new-come to the English throne and the Spanish such a threat — what could I do? It’s different now. It will be better now.”

“The people may have longer memories,” John warned. “They may remember that you hired our Navy out to Richelieu and English guns were trained on the Protestants at La Rochelle.”

Buckingham shook his head and laughed. “What is wrong with you today, Tradescant? Don’t you want to come with me?”

“You are never sailing yourself?”

Buckingham smiled his heart-stopping smile. “I? But of course! Who else is Lord High Admiral?”

“I didn’t think…” John broke off. “Are you not needed at home, by the king? And your enemies in the country, will they not mass against you if you are gone on an expedition for months at a time? The gossip is loud against you, I’ve heard even here that they are making accusations — my lord, surely you cannot risk being away?”

“How better to silence them than with a victory? When I come home with a victory against France, a triumph against the papists and a new English port on the west coast of France, don’t you think my enemies will disappear in a moment? They will be my dearest friends again. Sir John and Sir Dudley will love me like brothers again, come rushing out of the Tower to kiss my hand. Don’t you see? It will turn everything around for me.”