J gazed around Lord Wootton’s graceful garden, at the grey walls and the high tower of Canterbury Cathedral behind. ‘Why not? It would look well enough.’
John shook his head. ‘Because it’s your mother’s,’ he said gently. ‘Given from me to her the first time I loved her. She rarely comes in here, she’d never see it. It’s her keepsake. We must buy her a bigger house with a bigger garden so she can sit underneath it and rock your babies on her knee.’
J flushed with the quick embarrassment of a young man still too innocent for bawdy talk. ‘There won’t be babies from me for a while,’ he said gruffly. ‘So don’t count on it.’
‘You put your roots down first,’ John advised. ‘Like your mother’s chestnut sapling. Shall we take a break for our dinner now?’
‘I’ll go on,’ J said. ‘I want to take a look at those Spanish onions of yours. They should be fit to taste soon.’
‘They’ll be very sweet if they’ve grown as well as they do at their home,’ John said. ‘They eat them like fruit in Gibraltar. And take a look at the melon glasses when you’re in the kitchen garden. They should be ripening. Bank up some straw around and under them to keep the slugs off.’
J nodded and trudged off to the kitchen garden. John spread a napkin on the grass and opened his little knapsack. Elizabeth had given him a new-baked loaf, a slice of cheese, and a flask of small ale. The crust was grey, the flour was poor this year, and the cheese was watery. Not even good money could buy good provisions. The country was feeling the pinch of bad finances and bad harvests. John made a small grimace and bit into his bread.
‘John Tradescant?’ John looked up but did not rise to his feet though the man standing above him was splendidly dressed in the livery of the Duke of Buckingham.
‘Who wants him?’
‘The Duke of Buckingham himself.’
John put his loaf of grey bread to one side and stood up, brushing off crumbs.
‘I am John Tradescant,’ he said. ‘What does His Grace want?’
‘You’re to go and see him,’ the man said abruptly. ‘You’re summoned. He’s at New Hall at Chelmsford. You’re to go at once.’
‘My master is Lord Wootton …’ John started.
The man laughed abruptly. ‘Your master can be Lord Jesus Christ for all that my master cares,’ he said softly.
John recoiled. ‘No need for blasphemy.’
‘Every need,’ the man insisted. ‘For you do not seem to understand who commands you. Above my master there is only the king. If my master wants something he has only to ask for it. And if he asks for it, he gets it. D’you understand?’
John thought of the painted youth at Theobalds who sat in King James’s lap, and the jewels around the young man’s neck and the purse at his waist.
‘I understand well enough,’ he said dryly. ‘Though I’ve been away from court for some years.’
‘Then know this,’ the man said. ‘There is only one person in the world for King James, and that is my master – the beautiful duke.’ He stepped forward and lowered his voice. ‘The duke’s friends can do anything they wish – poison, treachery, divorce! All this they have done and escaped scot-free! Had you not heard?’
John carefully shook his head. ‘Not a thing.’
‘Lord Rochester took the wife of another man, no less than the Earl of Essex’s wife. They declared him impotent! How would you like that?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then Rochester and his new wife poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury who would have betrayed them. She is a declared witch and poisoner. How d’you like that?’
‘No better.’
‘Found guilty, imprisoned in the tower, and then what d’you think?’
John shook his head, maintaining his ignorance.
‘Forgiven overnight!’ the manservant said with satisfaction. ‘If you have the king’s ear you can do no wrong.’
‘The king knows best,’ John said staunchly, thinking of his lost lord and his advice to be blind and deaf when other men are talking treason.
‘And Rochester was as nothing to my lord.’ The man lowered his voice still further. ‘Rochester is the old favourite, but my lord is the new. Rochester may have had the king’s ear, but my lord has all his parts. D’you understand me? He has all his parts!’
John kept his face very still, he did not smile at the bawdy humour.
‘My master is supreme under the king,’ the man declared. ‘There is no-one in England more beloved than my master, George Villiers. And he has decided that you are to serve him.’ The man looked down at John’s plain dinner. ‘Chosen you from every other man in the kingdom!’
‘I am honoured. But I do not think I can be released from my work here.’
The man flapped a letter in John’s face. ‘Villiers’s orders,’ he said. ‘And the king’s seal. You’re to do as you are told.’
John resigned himself to the inevitable, and rolled up his half-eaten dinner in his napkin.
‘And remember this,’ the man continued in the same boastful tone. ‘That what the duke thinks today, the king thinks tomorrow, and the prince thinks the next. When the king goes, the duke and the prince succeed. When you hitch your cart to the star of my master you have a long brilliant future.’
John smiled. ‘I have worked for a great man before,’ he said gently. ‘And in great gardens.’
‘You have never worked for one like this,’ the servant declared. ‘You have never even seen a man such as this.’
John thought that Elizabeth would dislike the move to His Grace’s house at New Hall, Chelmsford, and he was right. She was passionately opposed to leaving Lord Wootton’s service and going near to the hazardous glamour of the royal court. But the little family had no choice. J took his mother’s worries to his father and gained no satisfaction. ‘Mother does not want to move house, and she doesn’t want you to work for a great lord again,’ he said in his halting shy way. ‘Mother wants us to live quietly, she likes it here.’
‘Won’t she speak to me herself?’
‘She didn’t ask me to tell you,’ J said, embarrassed. ‘I thought perhaps you didn’t know. I was trying to help.’
John dropped a gentle hand on his son’s narrow shoulder. ‘I know what she fears, but I am no more free to choose where to live than your mother is free,’ he explained. ‘She is bound by God to follow me, and I am bound by God to go where I am commanded by my lord and by the king above him. And lord and king and therefore God say we must go to the Duke of Buckingham in Essex.’ He shrugged. ‘So we go.’
‘I don’t believe that God wants us to go near to vanity and idleness,’ J protested.
John turned a stern gaze on him. ‘What God wants or does not want no man can say, only a priest or the king,’ he said firmly. ‘If the king tells the duke who tells my Lord Wootton that I am wanted in Essex, then that is enough for me; as if God had leaned down from heaven and told me himself.’ He paused. ‘And it should be enough for you too, J.’
J, avoiding the challenge his father’s gaze, looked away. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
The little family had been expecting something impressive of New Hall. The duke had bought it as a palace near to London where he could entertain the king in a style befitting the royal favourite. It had been a summer palace for Henry VIII and had passed around the courtiers as a prize plum of patronage. Buckingham was said to have paid a fortune for it, and was now pulling the place apart to enrich it still further, under the direction of Inigo Jones, who was laying a great sweeping staircase of marble and noble stone gateways.
The Tradescants arrived, as the king himself would arrive on his frequent visits, up the great drive which turned in a full circle before the house. The house fronted the drive full-square, with great turrets on either side and a huge wooden doorway, wide and high enough for two coaches to be driven abreast into the inner courtyard. It was built of handsome stone, every inch carved and crenellated like marchpane on a cake, with three storeys of bay win
dows bulging from the encrusted walls. At each corner stood great towers with bulbous cupolas and flags flying from the poles at the top. In the inner courtyard was a huge cobbled area, as big as a tiltyard, with the great hall on the east side and a handsome oriel window looking out over the quadrangle. On the west side was the chapel for the house, and a bell tolling at the tower end.
Elizabeth looked askance at the stained glass in the huge chapel windows as the wagon halted in the yard. A maidservant came out with a tray of drinks for the travellers, and a groom from the stables emerged and said he would direct the wagon on to the Tradescants’ own cottage.
‘His Grace said that you should live in the great house if you please, but he thought you might prefer your own cottage so that you can nurse up plants in your own garden.’
‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said before John could reply. ‘We don’t want to live in the hall.’
John shot her a reproving look. ‘The duke is gracious,’ he said carefully. ‘I will need a garden under my eye. A cottage sounds a very good solution. Please show us the way.’
He drained his mug of small ale, set it back on the tray with a smile at the girl. J, still seated in the back, one arm around the precious chestnut tree, one hand on the tailgate of the wagon, did not even glance at the pretty serving maid but kept his eyes on his boots.
John sighed. He had not imagined the move would be easy but with Elizabeth suspecting Papistry and luxury around every corner and with J sinking into the manners of a country bumpkin, he thought that returning to court life would be hard indeed, and that no master, however graceful or powerful, would make up for the differences in the little Tradescant family.
The cottage was some compensation. It had been built as a farmhouse and taken into the demesne of New Hall by the ever-widening wall and ambition of each successive owner. It was as good as Elizabeth’s girlhood home at Meopham, a two-storeyed, four-bedroomed house with an orchard at the back and a stable yard with room for a dozen horses at the side.
Elizabeth might put up with the disruption of the move for the benefit of the house, John thought, and held that hope in his mind until they had unpacked their goods and penned up the cat so that she should not stray, when a liveried manservant from the house tapped on the open front door and ordered John to wait on His Grace in the garden.
John pulled on his jacket and followed the man back up the drive towards the house.
‘He’s in the yew-tree allee,’ the man said, gesturing to the right of the house. ‘He said you were to go and find him.’
‘How shall I know him?’ John asked, hanging back.
The man looked at him with open surprise. ‘You’ll recognise him the moment you see him. Without error.’
‘How?’
‘Because he’s the most beautiful man in the kingdom,’ the man said frankly. ‘Go towards the yew-tree allee and when you see a man as lovely as an angel, that’s my lord Buckingham. You can’t miss him, and when you’ve seen him, you’ll never forget him.’
John puffed a little at the courtier hyperbole and turned towards the colonnade of yew. He had time to note that the allee was overgrown and needed pruning at the head of the trees to make them thicken out at the bottom, before he stepped into the shade. He blinked against the sudden darkness of the thickly interleaved boughs. It was as dark as nighttime beneath the arching branches. The ground beneath his feet was soft with years of fallen brown yew needles. It was eerie and silent in the darkness; no birds sang in the still boughs of the trees, no sun shone into their shade. Then John’s eyes adjusted to the dimness after the dazzle of the sun and he saw George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
At first he could see only a silhouette of a slim solitary man, of about thirty. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed like a prince, laden with diamonds. He had a bright mobile face above the wide lace-trimmed ruff with eyes that were smiling and wicked, and a mouth as changeable and as provocative as any pretty woman’s. The pallor of his skin gleamed in the darkness as if he were lit from within, like a paper lantern, and his smile, when he saw John coming towards him, was as engaging as a child’s, with the confidence and innocence of a child who has never known anything but love. He wore a doublet and cape of dark green, as green as the yew, and for a moment John, looking from trees to man, thought he was in the presence of a dryad – some wild beautiful spirit of the wood – and that some miracle had been granted him, to see a tree dancing towards him and smiling.
‘Ah! my John Tradescant!’ exclaimed Buckingham, and at that moment John suffered a strange falling feeling which made him think that he had taken the sun, riding all day on the open wagon. The man smiled at him as if he were a brother, as if he were a living angel come to give him tidings of great joy. John did not smile in greeting – years later he would remember that he had not felt any sense of meeting a new master but rather a grave sense of deep familiarity. He did not feel that they were well-met, new-met. He felt as if they had been together for all their lives and just accidentally parted until now. If he had spoken the words in his heart he would have said: ‘Oh, it is you – at last.’
‘Are you my John Tradescant?’ the man asked.
John bowed low and when he looked up the sheer beauty of the young man made him catch his breath again. Even standing still, he was as graceful as a dancer.
‘I am,’ John said simply. ‘You sent for me and I have come to serve you.’
‘Forgive me!’ the duke said swiftly. ‘I don’t doubt you were snatched away from your work. But I need you, Mr Tradescant. I need you very badly.’
John found he was smiling into the quick bright face of the young man. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘It is here, at these gardens,’ the young duke said. He led the way down the allee, talking as he went, throwing a smile over his shoulder as John followed. ‘The house is a thing of rare beauty, King Henry’s summer house. But the gardens have been sorely neglected. I love my gardens, Mr Tradescant. I want you to make these rich and lovely with your rare trees and flowers. I have seen Hatfield and I envy you the planting of such a place! Can you work the same magic for me here?’
‘Hatfield was many years in the making,’ John said slowly. ‘And the earl spent a fortune on buying in new plants.’
‘I shall spend a fortune!’ the young man said carelessly. ‘Or rather, you shall spend my fortune for me. Will you do that for me, John Tradescant? Shall I earn a fortune and you spend it? Is that a fair agreement?’
Despite his sense of caution, John chuckled. ‘Very fair on me, my lord. But perhaps you had better take a care. A garden can gobble up wealth as it can gobble up manure.’
‘There’s always plenty of both,’ Buckingham said quickly. ‘You just have to go to the right place.’
John was tempted to laugh, but then thought better of it.
‘So will you do it?’ Buckingham paused at the end of the allee and looked back towards his house. It looked like a fairy-tale palace in the afternoon sunshine, a crenellated turreted palace set in the simple loveliness of the fertile green countryside of England. ‘Will you make me a fine garden here, and another at my other house in Rutland?’
John looked around. The ground was fine, the aspect of the house was open and facing south. The ground had been terraced in wide beautiful steps down the hillside; at the bottom was a marshy pond that he could do all sorts of things with: a lake with an island, or a fountain feature, or a man-made river for boating.
‘I can make you a fine garden,’ he said slowly. ‘There will be no difficulty in growing what you will.’
Buckingham slipped his hand in John’s arm. ‘Dream with me,’ he urged him persuasively. ‘Walk with me and tell me what you would grow here.’
John looked back at the long allee. ‘There’s little that will grow under yew,’ he said. ‘But I have had some success with a plant that came from Turkey to France: lily of the valley. A small white flower, the daintiest thing you have ever seen. Like a snowdrop only smaller, a fril
led bell, like a little model of a flower made in porcelain. It is scented, they tell me, as sweet as a rose, only sharp like lemons. A true lily scent. It will grow in great thick clumps and the white flowers are like stars against broad green leaves.’
‘What d’you mean, they tell you it is scented? Can’t you smell them?’ Buckingham asked.
‘I have no nose for smell,’ John admitted. ‘It is a great disadvantage for a gardener. My son tells me when the earth smells sour or when we have some putrid rot. Without him I have to go by my eyes and touch.’
Buckingham stopped and looked at his gardener. ‘What a tragedy,’ he said simply. ‘One of the greatest pleasures for me is the scent of flowers, what a tragedy that you cannot sense this! Oh! And so many other things! Good cheeses, and wine, and smell of a clean stable of straw! Oh! and perfume when it is warm on a woman’s skin, or the smell of her sweat when she’s hot! And tobacco smoke! Oh, John! What a loss!’
John smiled a little at his enthusiasm. ‘Having never known it I do not feel the lack,’ he said. ‘But I should like to smell a rose.’
Buckingham shook his head. ‘I should like you to smell a rose, John. I feel for you.’
They walked on a few steps more. ‘Now,’ Buckingham said. ‘What would you do here?’
The ground below them fell away to the marshy dip at the bottom of the field. As they watched, a herd of cows trudged through the mud and water, churning it up.
‘Get rid of the cows,’ John said definitely.
Buckingham laughed. ‘I could have thought of that on my own! Do I need to hire you to tell me to mend the fences?’
‘First get rid of the cows,’ John amended. ‘And then perhaps use that water to make a lake? Perhaps a water-lily lake? And at one side you would have a wet garden with plants that love moisture. Some reeds and rushes, irises and buttercups. And on the other a large fountain. At Hatfield we had a grand statue mounted on a boulder. That was handsome. Or perhaps some playful water feature? A fountain which throws an arc of water for boats to sail underneath? Or an arc of water thrown over the path? Or even from one side of the lake to another with a bridge passing beneath it.’