John bowed slightly. ‘Any preference as to colours?’ he asked. ‘I can get some very handsome red and white roses, Rosamund roses. I have them growing at my garden in Lambeth.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, falling over the words in her haste. Even after five years in the country she still spoke English as if it was a strange and ugly foreign language. ‘And in the centre bed I want a knot with our initials entwined. C and H M. Can you do that?’
John nodded. ‘Of course …’
She suddenly stiffened. ‘Of course, Your Highness,’ she corrected him abruptly.
‘I beg your pardon,’ John said smoothly. ‘I was so interested in what Your Highness was saying that I forgot my manners. Of course, Your Highness.’
At once she smiled at him and gave him her hand to kiss. John bowed low and pressed his lips gently to the little fingers. His sense that he had served steadier, more intelligent and more noble masters did not show on his face.
‘It is to be a garden which expresses Love,’ she said. ‘The highest love there can be below the heavens. The love that there is between a man and his wife, and higher than that: between a king and a queen.’
‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ John said. ‘I could plant you some symbolic flowers around the roses. White violets for innocence, and periwinkle for constancy, and daisies.’
She nodded enthusiastically. ‘And one corner in blue as a tribute to Our Lady.’ She turned her dark eyes on him. ‘Are you of the true faith, Tradescant?’
John thought briefly of Elizabeth in her modest grey gown, the staunch Baptist faith of his daughter-in-law, and his promise to J that his conscience would not be offended by this work. He kept his face perfectly steady. ‘I attend the church of my fathers, Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘I’m a simple gardener, I don’t think much of things other than plants and rarities.’
‘You should think of your immortal soul,’ she commanded. ‘And the church of your fathers is the church of Rome. I am always telling the king this!’
Tradescant bowed, thinking that she had just said enough to get both of them hanged if the king applied the laws of the land – which he manifestly only did when it suited him.
‘And I shall want flowers for my chapel, for my private chapel,’ she said. ‘Blue and white for Our Lady.’
‘Of course, Your Majesty.’
‘And for my private rooms, and strewing herbs, and the king wishes you to maintain and replant the physic garden and look at the herb garden.’
Tradescant bowed again.
‘I want the house to be like a palace in a fairytale,’ she said, changing at once from the evangelical Roman Catholic into the flirtatious queen. ‘Like a bower for a fairytale Princess. I want people all over the country, all over Europe, to hear of it as a fairytale garden, a perfect garden. Have you heard of the Platonic ideal?’
John felt a sense of weariness he had never before known while talking about a garden. He had a sudden sympathy for the king who had lost the easy male companionship of Buckingham and had no-one to turn to but this vain woman.
The queen was laughing. ‘I suppose not!’ she cried. ‘It does not matter, Gardener Tradescant. It is an idea which we make much of at court, in our masques and poetry and plays. I will just tell you that it is an idea that there is a perfect form of everything – of a woman, of a man, of a marriage, of a garden, of a rose, and the king and I want to attain that ideal.’
John glanced at her to see if she was speaking seriously. He thought of how the duke would have roared with laughter at the pedantry, at the pretentiousness. He would have slapped John on the back and called him Gardener Tradescant for ever after.
‘Think of it,’ she said, her voice as sweet as syrup. ‘A perfect garden as a shell for a perfect palace for a perfect king and queen.’
‘In a perfect country?’ John asked incautiously.
She smiled. She had no sense that there might be anything behind his question but spellbound admiration. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘How could it be otherwise when it is ruled by my husband, and by me?’
Summer 1631
John had thought he would enjoy some time away from his home – never in his life before had he been so settled and he feared that the domestic life of Lambeth would be too narrow for him. But he found that he missed the daily changing business of the Ark, the midsummer flowering of the garden, and, more than anything else, the rapid changing of Frances who grew, in the summer of 1631, from a rosebud-mouthed, lisping toddler, to a little girl of rare determination.
He went home to Lambeth at every opportunity he could, to choose his stock from his own garden, and so that he could see his granddaughter. Each time he set off back to the palace, J would loiter in the stable yard, helping to pack the wagon with the heavy earthenware pots of plants.
‘D’you need me at the palace?’ he would ask, and John would drop his hand on his son’s shoulder.
‘I can manage without you another week,’ he would say. ‘I’ll tell you when I need you there.’
‘I’ll come then,’ J would promise. ‘As I agreed to.’
He would watch his father swing into the seat and go, and John would chuckle to himself at the seriousness of his beloved son who had bound himself in so many contradictory ways: to his conscience, to his promise, to his father, to his wife.
By the end of the summer John had completed the designs for the work in the king’s court, had shown them to the queen, and was ready to start the labour of digging over the garden and replanting it. He had a team of men ready to start but he needed J to supervise the work while he went on to the queen’s court, so that it should be designed in time for autumn planting.
‘Will you come back to the palace with me this time, J?’ he asked as the family were seated on the terrace one evening. J was drinking a glass of small ale, John had a small tot of rum. ‘There’s the physic garden which needs replanting, and now the queen has asked for a flowery mead.’
Jane looked up from her sewing, affronted. ‘A what?’
John smiled. ‘A flowery mead,’ he said. ‘Modelled on an old tapestry, those you see with the unicorn surrounded by hunters. It’s supposed to be like a meadow, a perfect meadow, with all the flowers of the field but no stinging nettles. You plant it with wild and garden flowers and then you cut a little path around it for the pleasure of walking with wild flowers.’
‘Why not walk by a meadow, then?’ Jane asked.
John took another sip of rum. ‘This is not a woman of sense, this is the queen. She would rather that everything was fashioned to perfection. Even a wildflower meadow. It’s an old fashion in gardening, I did not think to plant one again. And although it is supposed to look wild and untouched, it takes unending work to keep it in flower and keep the weeds checked.’
‘I can do it,’ J said. ‘I’ve never worked on one before. I’d like to do it.’
John raised his glass to his son. ‘And you’ll have little or nothing to do with Her Majesty,’ he said. ‘Since she first showed me the garden and told me what she wanted I have hardly seen her. She is with the king most of the day or with the courtiers. She wants the garden as the backcloth to her theatre of being queen. She has no interest in planting.’
‘Well enough,’ J said. ‘For I have no interest in her.’
John had intended that J would miss the king and queen altogether, and timed the arrival of his son to the date when the court was due to have moved on. But there was the usual delay and confusion, and they were a week late in going. J, cutting the full-blown roses in the rose court and carefully shaking the petals into a broad flat basket for drying, looked up and saw that a short dark-haired woman was watching him.
He took in the wealth of jewels, the rich silk and lace of her gown, and the straggle of courtiers behind her, and pulled off his hat and bowed, as low as he should go for courtesy, but no lower.
‘Who are you?’ she asked abruptly.
‘I am John Tradescant, the younger John Tradescant, Your
Highness,’ J said.
‘I want the white petals separated from the pink,’ she told him.
‘I am keeping them apart, Your Majesty,’ J said.
‘You may take them to the still room when they are dry,’ she said.
J bowed. They were to be dried in the silk house and the woman who ran the still room did not need them. These were for the masquing, and the Master of Revels and the Wardrobe Mistress would receive them, but there was little point in arguing when a queen wished to pretend that she understood the running of her palace.
‘I want a tree planted in the middle of this court,’ she announced suddenly. ‘A large tree, and roses growing up to the roots. It is to symbolise my husband’s care of his people. An oak tree, to symbolise his power and strength, and white roses to symbolise the innocent good people, clustered all around him.’
‘Roses don’t like shade, Your Majesty,’ J ventured cautiously. ‘Unfortunately I don’t think they will thrive under an oak tree.’
‘Surely you can plant some!’
‘They need the sunshine, and they like the air through their branches,’ J said. ‘They will wither and die if they are planted beneath an oak tree.’
She pouted at him, as if he were being deliberately obtuse. ‘But it is symbolic!’
‘I see that,’ J said. ‘But the roses won’t thrive.’
‘Then you must plant and re-plant every time they die.’
J nodded. ‘I could do that, Your Majesty, if it is your wish. But it would be very wasteful.’
‘I don’t care what it costs,’ she said simply.
‘And you would never have a large rose bush, because it would never have the time to be established, Your Majesty.’
She nodded, and paused in thought, tapping her little foot on the perfectly raked gravel. J thought that it must be rare that anyone refused to do her bidding. The courtiers, who had been lagging behind, had caught her up and were staring at him, and eyeing the queen as if they feared that his intransigence might cause them all to suffer the explosion of royal temper.
Instead she smiled. ‘The oak tree is to symbolise the benevolence of my husband’s rule,’ she said, speaking slowly and clearly as if J were an idiot. ‘Underneath the protection of the oak you must plant something which symbolises the people of his kingdoms, sheltering beneath his power. And around the outside, a border of roses and lilies which symbolise me.’
J had a sweet sense of the power of symbolism which his years at grammar school had quite failed to teach him. ‘I understand, Your Majesty,’ he said courteously, ‘but unfortunately the shade of an oak tree is very injurious to all plants. Nothing grows beneath it except perhaps moss and grasses. The oak tree smothers and strangles the plants which try to grow beneath it. Strong and handsome plants need their own space and sunshine.’
Her brows snapped together and she turned away from him. ‘I hope you are not trying to be clever beyond your position in life!’ she said sharply.
J kept his face perfectly straight. ‘I’m just a humble gardener, Your Majesty. I only know what will grow in your gardens. I know of nothing more than planting and weeding.’
She hesitated for a moment and then she decided to smile. ‘Well, plant something pretty in the centre of the court,’ she said, avoiding the discomfort of having her plans defeated. ‘I don’t care what.’
J bowed low and saw the courtiers exchange one swift glance of relief. The queen moved on, a man went forward and took her hand and whispered in her ear and she laughed and tossed her little head. One courtier delayed and watched J as he bent once more to snipping the rose-heads and shaking the petals.
‘What were you saying, gardener? That the power of a king who is forever extending his power strangles growth and health in the kingdom?’
J turned an innocent gaze on the man. ‘I, sir? No. I was talking of oak trees.’
The man met his gaze. ‘There are many who would think that it is as true of royal power as it is of plants,’ he said. ‘There are many who would think that the power of the monarch needs to be pruned and snipped to fit well in the garden and to look well alongside the other grand plants of Parliament and church.’
J was about to agree, his face relaxing from the mask of discretion which he had worn since his arrival; but he remembered his father’s warnings. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said stolidly. ‘I’m just cutting the roses.’
The courtier nodded and moved away. J did not straighten up until the man was gone. Then he looked after him. ‘The Levellers are in good company then,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If they’re in the very palace itself.’
J was right. Not everyone who danced in the masques and admired the growing collection of portraits which showed Charles as the fount of wisdom and Henrietta Maria as the greatest beauty believed the images they saw or the words they repeated. To some of them it was a game, to while away the leisure of a kingdom where governing was now done by default; local landlords enforced local laws, and national issues were only intermittently remembered. The young sons of nobility came to court and pretended to be in love with Henrietta Maria, writing sonnets to her dark curls, praising the whiteness of her skin. They hunted with Charles, they entertained him with singing, with dramas, with tableaux. It was an easy life, if inconsequential. Only the more intelligent or the more ambitious wanted more. Only the very few patriots thought that it was no way to run a kingdom which had once been thought of as a world power.
Henrietta Maria would have no talk of change. To assert English power abroad would need an effective army or navy and neither of these could be created without money. There was never any money in the royal coffers, and the only way to raise money was the invention of new and ingenious taxes which could create new revenue without recalling Parliament. The last thing either king or queen wanted was to recall Parliament and suffer the critical commentary of the House of Commons on their plans, on their expenditure, on their religious practices, on their household.
‘Or we could borrow,’ Henrietta Maria suggested at a meeting of the king’s council.
The men bowed. No-one liked to tell the king and queen that England’s credit was at rock bottom.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ Charles said, pleased. ‘See to it, my lord,’ and he smiled and went from the council meeting with the air of a man who has completed his work.
No-one had the authority to call him back. Charles only listened to the queen and she listened to her confessor, to the French ambassador, to the favourites of her little court, to her servants, and to anyone who took her fancy. She was beyond bribery and beyond corruption because her tastes were so fickle. Not even the French ambassador – representing her own country – could be sure of her full attention. She would look out of the window while he was speaking to her, or wander about the room, turning over pretty ornaments with her fingers, always distracted, always seeking distraction. Only in the king’s presence were her thoughts focused. Her one genuine interest was ensuring that he attended to her, and to her alone.
‘Well, she shared him for so long with your lord Buckingham,’ Elizabeth said to John as they got into bed one night. ‘She must always be wary that he might find another favourite.’
John shook his head. ‘He’s faithful,’ he said. ‘She’s a plain ordinary little woman but she holds his heart now. You see no passion between them, and no liveliness, but he cleaves to her as if he were a little dog.’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘The king a dog? You sound like J!’
‘His eyes follow her around the room.’ John pulled on his nightcap. ‘And when he is watching her she is never still. She is always acting the part of a delightful woman.’ He pulled the blankets higher up the bed with a grunt of pleasure. ‘She would drive me mad,’ he said frankly.
Elizabeth sat up in bed and folded the sheet back over the blankets around his shoulders. ‘Nights are drawing in. Are you warm enough in your house at Oatlands?’
‘Of course,’ John said. ‘The maggots and I liv
e like lords. They have eight charcoal burners set around their house and I have all the benefit. You’re a chilly companion compared to my maggots.’
Elizabeth chuckled, not taking offence.
‘He was a sad little boy,’ John continued, returning to the king. ‘I used to see him at Hatfield sometimes. King James never cared for him, and his mother never saw him. Nobody thought he’d ever be king with such a stronger older brother before him, so no-one bothered with him. Some of them said he’d never survive. He doted on his older brother and sister, and the one died and the other was sent far away. It was only when my lord duke befriended him that he found someone to love.’
‘And then he died too,’ Elizabeth said.
John bowed his head. ‘God rest his soul. Now, all he has left is the queen, and the only real friend in the world she can be sure of is the king. Everyone else wants something from her or hopes to gain something from him through her. They must be lonely.’
‘Then why not live less rich?’ Elizabeth suggested, practical as ever. ‘If they are surrounded by hangers-on and flatterers who do them no good, why not be rid of them? Why not spend time with their children? Why not seek out the men who care for their own consciences and would not hang on them and flatter them? God knows there were enough men of principle in the last Parliament, the king must have seen them often enough.’
‘The price a king must pay is the loss of his common sense,’ John said dryly. ‘I’ve seen it over and over, with kings and great men. They are lied to so sweetly and so often that they lose the taste of truth. They have sugar and honey dripped on their tongue until they are sick of the taste of it, but they still cannot call for bread and cheese.’
‘Poor them,’ Elizabeth said with cheerful irony.