March 1625
John was working late. The duke had ordered a watercourse to flow from one terrace to another and it was his fancy that in each terrace there should be a different breed of fish, in descending orders of colours, so that the gold – the king of fish – should only swim in the topmost pool near the house. The garden around it was to be all gold too, and it was to face the royal rooms that King James used on his visits. Tradescant had sent out messages to every ship in the Royal Navy commanding them to bring him the seeds or roots of any yellow or gold flowers they saw anywhere in the world. The Duke of Buckingham ordered the highest admirals in the Navy to go ashore and look at flowers that John Tradescant might have his pick of yellow flower seeds.
It was a pretty idea and it would have been a delightful compliment to His Majesty, except Tradescant’s goldfish were as elusive as swallows in winter. Whatever he did to the watercourse they slipped away downstream and mingled with the others: silver fish on one level, rainbow trout at the next, and dappled carp on the fourth level, who ate them.
Tradescant had tried nets, but they got tangled up and drowned themselves, he had tried building little dams of stones, but the water became sluggish and did not pitter-patter from one level to another as it should. Worse, when the water was still or slow it turned green and murky, and he could not see the fish at all.
His next idea was to build a little fence of small pieces of windowglass through which the water could flow and the fish could not swim. It was a prodigally expensive solution – to use precious glass for such a fancy. Tradescant scowled and placed the small panes – each one carefully rounded at the corners so as not to cut the fish – in a line, with only a small gap for the water to flow between each. When he finished he stood up.
His feet ached with standing in the cold water, and his back was stiff with stooping. His fingers were numb with cold – it was still only March and there were frosts at night. He rubbed his hands briskly on the homespun of his breeches. His fingertips were blue. He could hardly see his work in the failing light but he could hear the musical splashing of the water flowing down to the next pool on the next terrace. As he watched a goldfish approached the fence of glass, nosed at it, and turned back and swam towards the centre of the pond.
‘Got you!’ Tradescant grunted. ‘Got you, you little bastard.’
He chuckled at himself and clapped his hat on his head, picked up his tools, and set off for his shed to clean and hang them before he went home for his dinner. Then he stopped, listening: a horse, galloping at high speed, up the long spectacular winding drive and at full pelt to the front door of the house.
The messenger saw Tradescant. ‘Is His Grace at home?’ he shouted.
John glanced towards the brightly lit windows of the house. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He should be dining soon.’
‘Take me to him!’ the man ordered. He flung himself from his horse and dropped the reins, as if the high-bred animal hardly mattered.
John, wrenching his mind from yellow flowers, snatched at the reins and called for a groom. When one came running he handed him the horse and led the messenger into the house.
‘Where’s the duke?’ he asked a serving man.
‘At his prayers, in his library.’ The man nodded towards the door.
John tapped on the door and went in.
Buckingham was sprawled on his chair behind his grand desk listening to his chaplain reading prayers, playing idly with a gold chain, his dark eyes veiled. When he saw John his face lit up. ‘It’s my wizard, John!’ he called. ‘Come in, my John! Have you made the water flow backwards up the hill for me?’
‘There’s a man here come in haste from the king,’ John said shortly, and pushed the messenger into the room.
‘You’re to go to Theobalds,’ the man blurted. ‘The king is sick with ague and asking for you. He says you’re to come to him at once.’
There was a sudden alertness about Buckingham, like the sudden freezing when a cat sees its prey, and then he moved.
‘Get me a horse.’ Buckingham started from his desk. ‘John, get one too. Come with me. You know the way better than any. And a man to ride with us. How bad is he?’ he threw over his shoulder to the messenger.
‘They said more sorry than sick.’ The man trotted after him. ‘But commanding your presence. The prince is already there.’
Buckingham ran up the stairs and looked down at John. His face was alight with kindled ambition. ‘Perhaps now!’ he said, and turned into his room to change his clothes.
John sent orders for horses to be made ready and sent a man running to the kitchen for a knapsack of food and a flask of drink. He sent no message for Elizabeth. The urgency of the young duke, the call of the adventure and the sense of living in great times was too much for him to remember his domestic ties.
When the duke came clattering down the front steps, handsome in his riding boots and a long cape, John was mounted on one good horse, and holding another. The servant who was to ride with them was coming from the stable yard.
The duke glanced at John. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and meant it.
John grinned. The great fault of these large households was their slowness. Meat was always eaten half-cold, hunting expeditions had to be planned days ahead and always started hours after the time named. Nothing could be done on impulse, everything had to be prepared. John’s ability to get a horse from the stables, groomed and ready to ride in minutes was one of his greatest talents.
‘Will you be all right to ride?’ Buckingham asked, glancing at John’s borrowed breeches and boots.
‘I’ll get you there,’ John said. ‘Never fear.’
He led the way at a steady trot out of the courtyard, put the cold sliver of the rising moon on his right and rode due west to Waltham Cross.
They changed horses not once but twice in the twenty-four-hour journey, once knocking at the door of an inn until a reluctant landlord lent them his own horses when he caught sight of the gold which Tradescant carried. The second time when there were no horses to be hired, they simply stole a pair from the stable. John left a note to tell the owner in the morning that he had obliged the great duke and might call on him for repayment.
Buckingham laughed at Tradescant’s enterprise. ‘By God, John, you are wasted in the gardens,’ he said. ‘You should be a general at least.’
John smiled at the praise. ‘I said I would get you there, and I will,’ he said simply.
Buckingham nodded. ‘I’ll not travel without you again.’
It was near dawn when they came wearily up the drive to the sweep before the great door of Theobalds. The dark windows of the palace looked down on them. John glanced up to where the great breast of the bay window jutted outwards like the poop deck on a sailing ship. He could see the light from many candles spilling out through the cracks of the shutters.
‘They are awake in the king’s chamber,’ he said. ‘Shall I go first?’
‘Go and see,’ Buckingham commanded. ‘If the king is asleep I shall wash and rest myself. It may be a great day for me tomorrow.’
John got stiffly down from his horse. His borrowed breeches were stuck to the skin of his thighs by sweat and blood from saddle sores. He scowled at the pain and went bow-legged into the house, up the stairs, and to the royal rooms. A soldier extended his pike to bar the door.
‘John Tradescant,’ growled John. ‘I’ve brought the duke. Let me pass.’
The sentry stood to attention and John went into the room. There were half a dozen doctors and innumerable midwives and wise women, called in for their knowledge of herbs. There was a desperate gaiety about the room. There were courtiers, some dozing in corners, some playing cards and drinking. Everyone turned as John came in, travel-stained and weary.
‘Is the king awake?’ John asked. ‘I have brought the duke.’
For a moment it seemed that no-one knew. They were so absorbed in their own tasks of arguing about his health and waiting for his recovery that no-one wa
s actually caring for him. One doctor broke from the others and scuttled to the door of the bedroom and peeped in.
‘Awake,’ he said. ‘And restless.’
John nodded and went back down to the hall. Behind him he could hear the flurry of movement as the courtiers prepared themselves for the greatest courtier of all – George Villiers.
He was seated in a chair in the hall, a glass of mulled wine in his hand, a lad kneeling before him, brushing the mud off his boots.
‘He’s awake,’ John said shortly.
‘I’ll go up,’ Buckingham declared. ‘Many with him?’
‘A score,’ John said. ‘No-one of importance.’
Buckingham went wearily up the stairs. ‘Make sure they make up a bed for me,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘And get a bed for yourself in my chamber. I want to have you close, John, I may be busy these next days.’
John poured himself a glass from the duke’s own flagon and went to do as he had been told.
The household was starting to wake, although many had not slept at all. The word was that the king had been hunting and had fallen sick. At first it was a light fever and expected to pass, but it had taken hold, and the king was rambling. He feared for his life, sometimes he dreamed he was back in Scotland with buckram wadding beneath all his clothes to ward off an assassin’s knife, sometimes he called out for forgiveness from the enemies he had tried on a pretext and then hanged and drawn and quartered. Sometimes he dreamed of the witches that he thought had haunted his life, the innocent old women he had ordered drowned or strangled. Sometimes, and most pitifully of all, he called out to his mother, poor Mary of Scotland, and begged her forgiveness for letting her go to the executioner’s block at Fotheringay without a word of comfort from him, though she sent letter after letter addressed to her beloved son and never forgot the baby he had been.
‘But he will recover?’ John asked one of the maids.
‘It is only the ague,’ she said. ‘Why should he not recover?’
John nodded and went to the duke’s bedroom. The cold March dawn was turning the sky from black to grey, the frost was white on the terraces. John leaned his elbows on the windowsill and watched the familiar landmarks of Theobalds, his first great garden, swim upward from the mist. In the distance he could see the woods, bare-branched now, and cold; and underneath them deep in the frozen earth would be the bulbs of the daffodils that he had planted for the king who was now old, and to please the master who was long dead.
He wondered what Cecil would have thought of his new master, if he would have despised or admired the duke. He wondered where Cecil was now; in a garden, he thought, the blessed last garden where flowers were always in bloom. John felt great tenderness for the master he had lost and this garden they had loved together.
Then the door behind him opened and Buckingham came into the room.
‘Shut the window for the love of God, John!’ he snapped. ‘It’s freezing!’
John obeyed and waited.
‘Get some sleep,’ the duke said. ‘And when you wake I want you to go to London, and fetch my mother.’
‘I could go now,’ John volunteered.
‘Rest,’ the duke said. ‘Go as soon as you wake and are fit to ride. Take her this message, I shan’t write it down.’ He crossed the room to John and spoke very low. ‘Tell her that the king is sick but not yet dying, and I need her help. Badly. D’you understand?’
John hesitated. ‘I understand the words, and I can repeat them. But I dare not think of your meaning.’
Buckingham nodded. ‘John, my John,’ he said softly, ‘that is what I wish. Just remember the words and leave the rest to me.’ He met John’s worried look with an open face. ‘I loved the king like my own father,’ he said persuasively. ‘I want him cared for with love and respect. That crowd in there will not leave him alone, they torture him with remedies, they bleed him, they turn him, they blister him, they sweat him, and chill him. I want my mother to come and nurse him gently. She’s a woman of much experience. She will know how to ease his pain.’
‘I’ll fetch her at once,’ John said.
‘Rest now, but go as soon as you wake,’ the duke said and went quietly from the room.
John peeled the borrowed breeches off his sore buttocks, tumbled into the pallet bed and slept for six solid hours.
When he woke it was past noon. Someone had placed a jug and ewer on the dark wooden chest at the head of his bed, and he washed. In the chest was a change of clothes, and John slipped on a clean shirt and breeches. He did not trouble to shave. The duke’s mother could take him as he was. He went quietly down the stairs and out to the stable yard.
‘I need a good horse,’ he said to the chief groom. ‘The duke’s business.’
‘He said you would be riding,’ the man replied. ‘There’s a horse saddled and ready for you, and a lad to ride part of the way with you to bring back the horse when you need to change. In which direction are you going?’
‘London,’ John said briefly.
‘Then this horse will take you all the way. He’s as strong as an ox.’ The groom took in John’s stiff walk. ‘Though I imagine you’ll not be galloping.’
John grimaced and reached for the saddle to haul himself up.
‘Where in London?’ the groom asked.
‘To the docks,’ John lied instantly. ‘The duke has some curious playthings come from the Indies which he thought might amuse the king and divert him in his illness. I am to fetch them.’
‘The king is better then?’ the groom asked. ‘They said this morning he was on the mend, but I did not know. He has ordered his horses to move to Hampton Court so I thought he must be better.’
‘Better, yes,’ John said.
The groom released the reins and the horse took three steps back. With his bruised muscles aching, John leaned forward against the pain and sent his horse at the gentlest canter he could command, back down the road to London.
The countess was at her son’s grand London house. John went to the stables first and ordered them to harness the carriage for her, and then went into the house. She was a powerful old woman, dark-eyed like her son, but completely lacking his charm. She had been a famous beauty when she was a girl, married for her looks and jumped from servitude into the gentry in one lucky leap. But her struggle for respect had left its mark, her face was always determined; in repose she looked bitter. John recited his message in a whisper, and she nodded in silence.
‘Wait for me downstairs,’ she said shortly.
John went back down to the hall and sent a maidservant racing for some wine, bread and cheese. Within a few moments Lady Villiers was sweeping down the stairs, wrapped in a travelling cape, a pomander held to her nose against the infections of the London streets, a small box in her hand.
‘You will ride in front to guide my driver.’
‘If you wish, my lady.’ John got stiffly to his feet.
She walked past him but as she got into the carriage she made a quick gesture with her hand. ‘Get up on the box, your horse can be tied behind.’
‘I can ride,’ John offered.
‘You are half-crippled with saddle sores,’ she observed. ‘Sit where you will be comfortable. You are of no use to my son or to me if you are bleeding from a dozen bruises.’
John climbed up to sit beside the driver. ‘Perceptive woman,’ he remarked.
The driver nodded and waited for the carriage door to shut. John saw that he was holding the reins awkwardly with each thumb between the first and second finger: the old sign against witchcraft.
The roads were bad, thick with mud from the winter. In the heart of London, beggars held out beseeching hands as the rich carriage went by them. Some of them were pocked with rosy scars where they had recovered from the plague. The driver kept to the line of the track at a steady pace, and left it to them to leap clear.
‘Hard times,’ John remarked, thinking with gratitude to his lord of the little house at New Hall and his son and wi
fe safely distant from these dangerous streets.
‘Eight years of bad harvests and a king on the throne who has forgotten his duty,’ the driver said angrily. ‘What would you expect?’
‘I don’t expect to hear treason from the duke’s own household,’ John said shortly. ‘And I won’t hear it!’
‘I’ll say only this,’ the driver said. ‘There’s a Christian prince and princess, his own daughter, driven from her throne by the armies of the Pope. There’s a Spanish match that he would still make if he could. The Spanish ambassador is to return to him – by his own request! And year after year the country gets poorer while the court gets richer. You can’t expect people to dance in the streets. The death cart goes past them too often.’
John shook his head and looked away.
‘There’s those that think the land should be shared,’ the driver said under his breath. ‘There’s those that think that no good will come to England while people starve every winter and others are sick of surfeit.’
‘It is as God wills,’ John insisted. ‘And I won’t say more. To speak against the king is treason, to speak against the way things are and must be is heresy. If your mistress heard you, you’d be on the street yourself. And me too, for listening to you.’
‘You’re a good servant,’ the man sneered. ‘For you even think in obedience to your lord.’
John shot him a hard dark look. ‘I am a good servant,’ he repeated. ‘And proud of it. And of course I think in obedience to my lord. I think and live and pray in obedience to my lord. How else could it be? How else should it be?’
‘There are other ways,’ the driver argued. ‘You could think and live and pray for yourself.’
John shook his head. ‘I’ve given my allegiance,’ he said. ‘I don’t withdraw it, and I don’t pay three farthings to the penny. My lord is my master, heart and soul. And you’ll forgive me saying, but you might be a happier man if you could say the same thing.’
The driver shook his head and sulkily fell silent. John wrapped himself in his borrowed cloak and nodded off to sleep, only waking when they were driving towards Theobalds under the great double avenue of ash and elm, with the daffodils flooding around the trunks.