Buckingham put his arm around John’s shoulders and hugged him tightly. ‘When you are ready, my John. Go and spend some money, and enjoy yourself. I have never been happier, you be happy too. Go and joyfully spend some of my easily earned money and we will meet again at New Hall when you come home.’
‘I shall not fail you,’ John promised, thinking that if he were not an honest man he could disappear into Europe with the heavy purses of gold and never be seen again.
‘I know. You never fail me,’ Buckingham said affectionately. ‘And that is why I want you to go and pleasure yourself with tulips. It is a reward for fidelity. If I cannot tempt you with easy French women and drink, then let me give you what is your greatest joy. Go and run riot in the bulbfields, my John. Lust after petals and slake your lust!’
He waved and turned inside the house. Tradescant waited, his hat in his hand, until the great double doors had closed behind his master, and then he mounted his horse, clicked encouragingly and turned its head eastwards, out of Paris to the Low Countries and the tulip fields.
John found Amsterdam buzzing with infectious, continual excitement. All the taverns he had known where the tulip growers had met and sold tulips to each other were now expanded into double and treble the size and they opened for business in the morning in an atmosphere of teeth-gritting excitement. He looked in vain for the men he had known, the quiet steady gardeners who had told him how to cut the bulbs and plant them. They had been replaced by men with soft white hands who carried not bulbs but great books in which there were illustrations of tulips drawn with the beauty and care of fine portraits. The bidding for the bulbs was done on promissory notes; no money changed hands. John with his purses of French gold was an exception, he felt like a fool trying to pay men with money when everyone else was trading in credit.
And he felt even more of a fool when he tried to buy tulip bulbs to take away with him, when he wanted to exchange a sackful of gold – real money – for a sackful of bulbs – real bulbs. Everyone else was trading without ever holding a bulb in their hand. They bought and sold the promise of the tulip crop when it was lifted, or they bought and sold the name of a tulip. Some flowers were so rare that there were only ten or a dozen in the whole country. Such bulbs would never come to market, John was assured. He would have to buy the slip of paper with the name of the tulip written on the top of it, and have it attested at the Bourse. If he had any sense he would sell the slip of paper the very next day as the price jumped and leapfrogged. He should make his profit in the rising market and not hang around the dealers and ask them for real tulips to take home with him. The market was not for a bulb in a pot, it was for an idea of a tulip, the promise of a tulip. The market had gone light, the market had gone airy. It was the windhandel market.
‘What’s that?’ John asked.
‘A wind market,’ a man translated for him. ‘You are no longer buying the goods, you are buying the promise of the goods. And you are paying with a promise to pay. You don’t actually have to give your gold and receive your tulip until – oh – next year. But if you have any sense by then you will have sold it at a profit and you will have made a fortune merely by letting the wind blow through your fingers.’
‘But I want tulips!’ John exclaimed in frustration. ‘I don’t want a piece of paper with a tulip name written on it to sell to someone else. I want a bulb that I can take home and grow.’
The man shrugged, losing interest at once. ‘It’s not how we do business,’ he said. ‘But if you go down the canal towards Rotterdam you will find men and women who will sell you bulbs that you can take away. They will call you a fool for paying money on the nail.’
‘I’ve been called a fool before,’ John said grimly. ‘I can bear it’
He was dining in a tavern at the end of this expedition, drinking deep of the thick ale which the Dutch loved and eating well of their rich food, when the door darkened and a well-loved voice shouted into the gloom. ‘Is my John in here?’
John choked on his ale and leaped to his feet, overturning his stool. ‘Your Grace?’
It was Buckingham, modestly dressed in a suit of smooth brown wool, chuckling like a madman at the sight of John’s astounded face.
‘Caught you,’ he said easily. ‘Drinking away my fortune.’
‘My lord! I never –’
He laughed again. ‘How have you done, my John? Are you rich in tulip notes?’
John shook his head. ‘I am rich in tulips, in real bulbs, my lord. The men in this town seem to have forgotten what they are buying and selling, they want only a piece of paper with a name written on it and the Bourse seal at the bottom. I had to go far inland to find growers who would sell me the real thing.’
Buckingham came into the ale house and sat at John’s table. ‘Finish your dinner, I have dined already,’ he remarked. ‘So where are they? These tulips?’
‘They are packed away and ready to sail tonight,’ John said, reluctantly picking up a crust of bread smeared with creamy Dutch butter. ‘I was on my way home to New Hall with them.’
‘Can they sail alone?’
John thought quickly. ‘I’d send a man I could trust to go with them. It’s too precious a cargo to leave to the captain. And I’d like someone to see them all the way to New Hall.’
‘Do it,’ the duke said idly.
John swallowed his question with his bread, rose from the table, bowed swiftly to the duke and went out of the tavern. He ran like a deer for his inn, engaged the landlord’s son to go to England and to see the barrels of tulips safely delivered to New Hall, pressed money and a note of introduction to J into the young man’s hand, and then ran back to the tavern as the duke was downing his second pint of ale.
‘All done, Your Grace,’ he reported breathlessly.
‘I thank you,’ the duke said.
There was a tantalising silence. John stood before his master.
‘Oh, you can sit down,’ the duke said. ‘And have an ale. You must be thirsty.’
John slid into the seat opposite his master and watched him as the girl brought his drink. The duke was pale, a little tired from the festivities of the French court, but his dark eyes were sparkling. John felt a stir of his venturing spirit.
‘Are you not attended, Your Grace?’
The duke shook his head. ‘I am travelling unknown.’
John waited but his master volunteered nothing.
‘Anywhere to stay?’
‘I thought I’d bed with you.’
‘What if you had not found me?’ John grimaced at the thought of the greatest man in England wandering around the Low Countries in search of his gardener.
‘I knew I only had to wait somewhere near the tulip exchange and you would turn up,’ Buckingham said easily. ‘And besides, I do not crumple without a dozen servants to support me, you know, John. I can fend for myself.’
‘Of course,’ John agreed quickly. ‘I just wondered what you are doing here?’
‘Oh, that,’ Buckingham said as if recalled to his mission. ‘Why, I have a job to do for my master and I thought you might help me.’
‘Of course,’ John said instantly.
‘We’ll drink a little more and then roister a little, and then in the morning we shall do some business,’ Buckingham suggested engagingly.
‘Are we to go far?’ John asked, thinking wildly of the ships which left for the Dutch Indies and for the spreading Dutch empire. ‘It may be that I should prepare while you make merry.’
The duke shook his head. ‘My business is in town, with the gold and diamond merchants. But I want you with me. My amulet. I shall need all my luck tomorrow.’
They slept in the same bed. When John woke in the morning the younger man had thrown an arm out in his sleep and John woke to a touch on his face like a caress. He lay still for a little while, under that casual blessing, and then slid out of bed and looked out of the little window down at the street below.
The cobbled quayside was crowded with seller
s of bread and cheese and milk, up from the country by barge at dawn and spreading their stalls for all to see. Among them, and starting to lay out their wares, were the cobblers and sellers of household goods: brushes and soaps, kindling, and brassware. Artists were setting up easels and offering to sketch portraits. Sailors up from the deep-water docks were moving among the crowd and offering rarities and foreign goods – silk shawls, flasks of rare drink, little toys. The low barges plied constantly up and down the canal; and ducks, in continual flurry away from the prows, quacked and complained. The sunlight glinted on the water of the canal and threw back the reflection of the market stalls and the dark shadows of the criss-crossing bridges.
Tradescant heard Buckingham stir in the bed behind him and turned at once.
‘Good morning, my lord, is there anything I can get you?’
‘You can get me a hundred thousand pounds in gold or I am a ruined man,’ Buckingham said, his face buried in the pillow. ‘That’s what we’re doing today, my John. We’re going to pawn the Crown Jewels.’
Cecil’s long training stood John in good stead through that day. Buckingham was trying to raise the money to equip a mighty Protestant army to attack Spain and to free Charles’s sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and her husband and restore them to their rightful throne. There was no money in the royal treasury. The English parliament would vote no more to a king who had done so little to bring in the reforms they had demanded. It was left to Buckingham to raise the funds. And he had nothing to offer as security but the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland and any related valuables that the moneylenders might require.
John stood with his back to the door, watching his master charming the powerful money men of Amsterdam. The scene looked like one of the new oil paintings that King Charles kept buying. The room was in half-darkness, windows shrouded with thick embroidered curtains. The table was lit only by a couple of candles behind an engraved shade which threw strange cabalistic patterns on the walls. There were three men on one side of the table and Buckingham on the other. One man was a solid burgher, a father of the city and a cautious man. To him Buckingham deferred with a charming youthful respect, and as the meeting went on John watched the big man slowly unbend, like a horse on the tow path bending its neck to be patted. Next to him was a Jewish financier, his eyes as dark as Buckingham’s own, his hair as black and lustrous as the duke’s. He wore a little cap on the back of his head and a long dark suit in plain material. The Low Countries was a place that prided itself on its tolerance; John thought that Buckingham would not have sat on equal terms with a Jew at any other table in Europe.
The duke was uneasy with the financier. He could not find the right tone to tempt him. The man was guarded, his long face giving away nothing. He spoke little and when he did, it was in French with an accent which John could not identify. He treated Buckingham with deference, but it seemed as if there was a secret inner judgement that he was keeping hidden. John was as superstitious and fearful of the Jews as any Englishman. He feared this man in particular.
The third man was from some strand of nobility who would have access to a vast fortune if these other two approved. He was slim and young and richly dressed, and he had no aptitude for the carefully written calculations of profit and interest on the small pieces of paper which the other two men were exchanging. He leaned back in his chair and gazed idly around him. Every now and then he and Buckingham would exchange a smile as if to agree that they two were men of the world and these vulgar details were beneath them.
‘We have to consider the issue of the security of the jewels,’ the burgher said. ‘They will be lodged here.’
Buckingham shook his head. ‘They cannot be taken from London,’ he said. ‘But you shall have your own man in London to guard them, if you wish. And a sealed letter from King Charles himself to acknowledge your right.’
The burgher looked uneasy. ‘But if we should need to collect them?’
‘If His Majesty cannot repay the loan?’ Buckingham smiled. ‘Ah, forgive me, the king will repay. He will not fail. When Prince Frederick and Princess Elizabeth are back on their thrones then the wealth of Bohemia will repay all the debts incurred in the campaign to restore them.’
‘And if the campaign fails?’ the Jew asked quietly.
Buckingham checked for a moment. ‘It will not,’ he replied.
There was a brief silence. The Jew waited for his answer.
‘If it should fail then his Majesty will repay according to the schedule of repayments as you propose,’ Buckingham said smoothly. ‘We are speaking of the King of England, my lords. He is hardly likely to run off to the Americas.’
The nobleman laughed at the joke and Buckingham shot him a swift smile. The Jew did not laugh.
‘But how should we collect if, by some error, His Majesty were to default?’ the burgher asked politely.
Buckingham shrugged as if such a thing were beyond the stretch of any imagination. ‘Oh. I can hardly think – well – we will follow the line of fairytales. If the campaign fails and the Prince and Princess of Bohemia do not repay you themselves, and then if the King of England does not repay you then I, the Duke of Buckingham, will myself deliver to you the Crown Jewels of England. Will that satisfy you, gentlemen?’
John looked from one face to another. It satisfied the nobleman who could not imagine that Buckingham could say one thing and do another. He was no obstacle. The burgher was havering, half-convinced, half-fearful. The Jew was inscrutable. His dark serious face could not be read. He might be inwardly approving, he might have damned this project from the first moment. John could not tell.
‘And you would put that in writing?’
‘Signed in blood if you wish,’ Buckingham said carelessly, the glancing reference to the popular play a half-insult to all Jewish moneylenders. ‘I have promised my master the King of England that he shall have the funds to raise an army to restore his sister to her throne. It is a task which we should all do as good Protestants and good Christians. It is a task which most becomes me as His Majesty’s most faithful servant.’
The three men nodded.
‘Shall I leave you to consult for a while?’ Buckingham offered. ‘I must warn you, out of courtesy, that my time is a little limited. There are other gentlemen who would extend this loan to the king and think it an honour to so do. But I promised you I would see you first.’
‘Of course,’ the burgher said awkwardly. ‘And we thank you. Perhaps you would like a glass of wine?’
He drew back one of the thick hangings and showed a small door beyond. It opened into a walled courtyard. In a giant pot against the wall grew an apricot tree, at its feet the folded leaves of some tulips now past their prime. John saw at once that they had been Lack tulips, beautifully white and veined with scarlet. There were a couple of chairs and a table in the shade of the tree, and a flagon of wine with a small plate of biscuits.
‘Please,’ the burgher said. ‘Enjoy this. And ring for anything further you need. We will delay you only a moment.’
He bowed and went back into the room. Buckingham threw himself into the chair and watched John pour the wine and hand him a glass.
‘What d’you think?’ he asked quietly.
‘It’s possible,’ John said in the same undertone. ‘Do you have other men to borrow from?’
‘No,’ Buckingham said. ‘D’you think they know that?’
‘No,’ John said. ‘There is so much wealth flying around this city that they cannot be sure of it. The nobleman is in your pocket but I doubt the other two.’
Buckingham nodded and sipped his wine. ‘That’s good,’ he said with approval. ‘Alicante.’
‘What do we do if they say no?’
Buckingham tipped his beautiful face up to the sun and closed his eyes as if he did not have a care in the world. ‘Go home with the whole of the king’s foreign policy in ruins,’ he said. ‘Tell the king that his sister is thrown out of her kingdom and insulted and that he can do nothing
. Tell the king that unless he agrees with Parliament he will be a pauper on his own throne, and that his chief minister was a better Master of Horse than he is a diplomat.’
‘You got him the French princess,’ John observed.
Buckingham half-opened his eyes and John saw the glint of his look under the thick eyelashes. ‘Let’s hope to God she pleases him. I don’t guarantee it.’
The door behind John opened and he whirled around. It was the Jew in the doorway, his head held low. ‘I am sorry, masters,’ he said quietly. ‘We cannot oblige you. The capital is more than we can afford without holding the security ourselves.’
Buckingham jumped to his feet in one of his sudden rages, about to shout at the man. John threw himself forward and got both hands on his master’s shoulders as if he was re-arranging his cape.
‘Steady,’ he whispered.
He felt the shoulders straighten under his grip. Buckingham lifted his head. ‘I am sorry you could not oblige me,’ he said. ‘I will tell the king of your reluctance and my disappointment.’
The Jew’s head bowed lower.
Buckingham turned on his heel and John dived before him to open the door so his smooth disdainful stride from the courtyard was not checked. They arrived out in the street by a side door and hesitated.
‘What now?’ Tradescant asked.
‘We try another,’ Buckingham said. ‘And then another. And then we go and buy some bulbs, for I think that is all we’re going to get out of this damned damned city.’
Buckingham was right. John was back at New Hall by the end of May, preceded by wagon-loads of plants, sacks of tulip bulbs and with six of the most precious bulbs – each costing a purse of gold – hidden deep inside his waistcoat.
His first act was to go to the rarities room of New Hall and to summon J to meet him there with six large porcelain pots and a basket of soil.
J came into the room and found the six bulbs laid out on a table. His father was, with infinite care, cutting slightly into the base of each bulb in the hope that it would encourage them to divide, and make new bulbs.