Earthly Joys

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘I think he just loves to travel,’ J said resentfully. ‘And he doesn’t care that he leaves me behind.’

  Elizabeth put her arm around her son’s unyielding shoulders. ‘When you are older you shall travel too. He will take you with him. Perhaps you will grow to be a great man like your father and be sent by lords on travels overseas.’

  Baby J – her baby no longer – disengaged himself from her arm. ‘I shall go on my own account,’ he said stiffly. ‘I shall not wait for someone to send me.’

  The ship was in mid-river now, the sails which had been slack when sheltered in the dock flapped like sheets on washing day. Elizabeth gripped her son’s arm.

  ‘He is old to go venturing,’ she said anxiously. ‘So far, and into such regions. What if he is taken ill? What if they get lost?’

  ‘Not he,’ J said with scorn. ‘But when I travel I shall go to the Americas. A boy at school has an uncle there and he has killed hundreds of savages and is planting a crop of tobacco. He says that a man who wants land can just cut it from the forests. And we have our land there. Father is going in the wrong direction, he should be going to our lands.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes were still on the ship which was picking up speed and moving smoothly downriver. ‘It’s never been owning land for him,’ she said. ‘Never building a house or putting up a fence. It has always been discovering new things and making them grow. It has always been serving his lord.’

  J pulled at her arm. ‘Can we have some dinner before I have to go back?’

  Elizabeth patted his hand absently. ‘When he’s gone,’ she said. ‘I want to see the ship out of port.’

  J pulled away and went to the waterside. The river was sucking gently at the green stones. In the middle of the water, unseen by the boy, a beggar’s corpse rolled and turned over. The harvest had failed again and there was starvation in the streets of London.

  In a moment Elizabeth joined him. Her eyelids were red but her smile was cheerful.

  ‘There!’ she said. ‘And now your father gave me half a crown to buy you an enormous dinner before we take the wagon home.’

  John watched from the deck of the ship as his wife and son grew smaller and smaller, and then he could no longer pick them out at all. The sense of loss he felt as the land fell away was mingled with a leaping sense of freedom and excitement as the ship moved easily and faster and the waves grew greater. The voyage was to take them northwards, hugging the coast of England, and then eastwards, across the North Sea to the high ice-bound coast of Norway, and then onwards to Russia.

  Tradescant was as much on deck as any of the ship’s watch, and it was he who first spotted a great fleet of Dutch fishing ships taking cod and summer herring just south of Newcastle.

  They weighed anchor at Newcastle and Tradescant went ashore to buy provisions for the journey. ‘Take my purse,’ Sir Dudley offered. ‘And see if you can get some meat and some fish, John. My belly is as empty as a Jew’s charity box. I’ve been as sick every day since we left London.’

  John nodded and went ashore and marketed as carefully as Elizabeth might do. He bought fresh salmon and fresh and salted meats, and by noising Sir Dudley’s name and mission much around Newcastle he was able to lead the Lord Mayor himself on a visit to the ship. And the Lord Mayor brought a barrel of salted salmon as a timely present for his lordship. When the ship was provisioned again they set out to cross the North Sea but the wind veered to the north west and started to rise before they were more than a day out of port, skimming the white tops off the grey waves which grew steeper and more frequent.

  Sir Dudley Digges was sick as a dog from the moment the wind veered, and many of his companions stayed below too, groaning and vomiting and calling on the captain to return to shore before they died of seasickness. John, rocking easily to the movement of the boat, stood in the prow and watched the waves come rolling from the horizon and the ship rise up and then fall down, rise up and fall down, again and again. One night, when Sir Dudley’s own manservant was ill, John sat at his bedside, and held his head as he vomited helplessly into the bowl.

  ‘There,’ said John gently.

  ‘Good God,’ Sir Dudley groaned. ‘I feel sick unto death. I have never felt worse in all my life.’

  ‘You’ll survive,’ John said with rough kindliness. ‘It never lasts longer than a few days.’

  ‘Hold me,’ Sir Dudley commanded. ‘I could weep like a girl for misery.’

  Gently John raised the nobleman off the narrow bunk and let his head rest on John’s shoulder. Sir Dudley turned his face to John’s neck and drew in his warmth and strength. John tightened his grip and felt the racked body in his arms relax and slide into sleep. For an hour and more he knelt beside the bunk holding the man in his arms, trying to cushion him from the ceaseless rolling and crashing of the ship. Only when Sir Dudley was deeply, fast asleep, did John draw his numbed arm away and lay the man back down on his bed. For a moment he hesitated, looking down into that pale face, then he bent low and kissed him gently on the forehead, as if he were kissing Baby J and blessing his sleep, and then he went out.

  As they drew further north the wind wheeled around and became more steady but Sir Dudley could keep down no food. The little ship was halfway between Scotland and Norway when the captain came to Sir Dudley, who was wrapped in a thick cloak and seated on the deck for the air.

  ‘We can go back or forward as you wish,’ the captain said. ‘I don’t want your death on my conscience, my lord. You’re no seafarer. Perhaps we’d best head for home.’

  Sir Dudley glanced at Tradescant, one arm slung casually around the bowsprit, looking out to sea.

  ‘What d’you think, John?’ he asked. His voice was still faint.

  Tradescant glanced back and then drew closer.

  ‘Shall we go back or press on?’

  John hesitated. ‘You can hardly be sicker than you were,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I fear!’ the captain interrupted.

  John smiled. ‘You must be seasoned now, my lord. And the weather is fair. I say we should press on.’

  ‘Tradescant says press on,’ Sir Dudley remarked to the captain.

  ‘But what d’you say, my lord?’ the captain asked. ‘It was you who was begging me to turn back at the height of the storm.’

  Sir Dudley laughed, a thin thread of sound. ‘Don’t remind me! I say press on, too. Tradescant is right. We have our sea legs now, we might as well go forward as back.’

  The captain shook his head but went back to the wheel and held the ship’s course.

  Their luck was in. The weather turned surprisingly fair, the men became accustomed to the motion of the ship and even Sir Dudley came out of his cabin and strode about the deck, his pace rocking. They had been nearly three weeks at sea and slowly, the skies around them changed. It was like entering another world, where the laws of day and night had been destroyed. John could read a page of writing at midnight, and the sun never sank down but only rested on the horizon in a perpetual sunset which never led to dusk. A school of grampus whales came alongside and a flock of tiny birds rested in the rigging, exhausted by their long flight over the icy waters. John walked up and down the length of the boat all day and most of the bright night, feeling oddly unemployed with hours of daylight and nothing to grow.

  Then a thick fog came rolling over the sea, and the daylight counted for nothing. The sun disappeared behind it and there was neither night nor day but a perpetual pale greyness. Sir Dudley took to his chamber again and summoned one man after another to play at dice with him. John found himself curiously lost in the half-light. He could sleep or wake as he wished, but he never knew when he woke whether it was day or night.

  Despite Tradescant’s watching, it was a sailor who first called ‘land ahoy!’, spotting through the rolling fog the dark outline of the coast of the North Cape of Lapland.

  Sir Dudley came up on deck, huddled in his thick cape. ‘What can you see, John?’

  John pointed to t
he dark mass of land which was growing whiter as they grew closer. ‘More like a snowdrift than land,’ he said. ‘Bitterly cold.’

  The two Englishmen stood side by side as their ship drew closer to the strange land. A man of war detached itself from the shadow of some cliffs and sailed towards them.

  ‘Trouble?’ Sir Dudley asked quietly.

  ‘I’ll ask the captain,’ John said. ‘You go below, my lord. I’ll bring you news the moment I have it. Get your pistols primed, just in case.’

  Sir Dudley nodded and went back to his cabin as John made his way the few steps to the captain’s cabin and knocked on the door.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A man of war, coming this way, flying the Denmark flag.’

  The captain nodded, pulled on his cape and came out of his tiny cabin. ‘They’ll only want passes,’ he said. ‘Sir Dudley’s name is permission enough for them.’

  He went briskly to the side of the boat, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed. ‘Ahoy there! This is Captain Gilbert, an English sea captain on a voyage of embassy, carrying Sir Dudley Digges and the Russian ambassador. What do you want with us?’

  There was a silence. ‘Perhaps they don’t speak English?’ John suggested.

  ‘Then they damned well should do so,’ Gilbert snapped. ‘Before trying to delay honest Englishmen going about their business.’

  ‘Ahoy, Captain Gilbert,’ the reply came slowly, muffled by the fog. ‘We require your passes and permits for sailing in our waters.’

  ‘Ahoy!’ Gilbert shouted irritably. ‘Our passes and permits are packed away for the voyage and besides, we need none. On board is Sir Dudley Digges and travelling with him is the Russian ambassador, homeward bound. You won’t want to trouble the noblemen, I suppose?’

  There was a longer silence as the Danish captain decided whether or not the troubling of the gentlemen was worth the possible embarrassment, and then decided it was not.

  ‘You can pass freely,’ he bellowed back.

  ‘Thank you for nothing,’ Gilbert muttered. ‘I thank you,’ he shouted. ‘Do you have any provision we can buy?’

  ‘I’ll send a boat over,’ came the reply, half-muffled by the fog.

  Tradescant stepped swiftly down the companionway and tapped on the door to Sir Dudley’s cabin.

  ‘It’s me, all’s well,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Shall I come out?’

  ‘If you wish,’ John said and went back to the rail and watched with Captain Gilbert as a rowing boat, like a Dutch scuts, came out of the mist.

  ‘Anything worth having?’ Sir Dudley asked, from behind Tradescant.

  The men waited. The little boat came alongside and threw up a rope. ‘What’ve you got?’ Captain Gilbert shouted.

  The two men on board simply shook their heads. They understood no English but they held up a basket of salted salmon. Sir Dudley groaned, ‘Not salmon again!’, but he held up two silver shillings for them to see.

  They shook their heads and held up a spread hand.

  ‘They mean five,’ Tradescant remarked.

  ‘They can add then, even if they can’t speak a civilised language,’ the captain noted.

  Sir Dudley reached into his purse and held out four silver shillings.

  The men spoke briefly one to another and then nodded. Sir Dudley tossed the coins down into the boat and Tradescant caught the rope the sailors threw to him. He hauled in the basket of salmon and presented it to Sir Dudley.

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ Sir Dudley said ungratefully. ‘I know, let’s have it with dry biscuit for a change.’

  Tradescant grinned.

  The rest of the voyage they hugged the coastline and watched the landscape change from the steady unyielding white of snow to a russet dry brown, and then slowly to a green.

  ‘Almost like England in a hard winter,’ Tradescant remarked to Captain Gilbert.

  ‘Nothing like,’ Gilbert said crossly. ‘Because half the year it’s under snow and half the year it’s under fog.’

  Tradescant nodded and retreated to his vantage point at the bowsprit. Now there was more and more for him to see as the coastline unrolled before the rocking prow. On land John could see the people of the country, who startled him at first with their appearance of having no necks, but heads which grew directly from their shoulders.

  ‘It can’t be,’ he said stoutly to himself, and shaded his eyes from the sun to see better. As the people ran down to the beach, shouting and waving to the passing ship, and the ship drew a little closer to shore to avoid a mid-river sandbank, John could see that they were wearing thick cloaks of skins over their heads and shoulders, giving them the illusion of a hooded misshapen head.

  ‘God be praised,’ John said devoutly. ‘For a moment I thought we were among strange countries indeed, and that all the travellers’ tales I had heard were coming true.’

  The people on the shore held up their bows and arrows and spread a deerskin for John to see. John waved back; the ship was too far out to make any bargaining a possibility, though he would dearly have loved to examine the bows and arrows.

  The ship anchored at sunset, Captain Gilbert declaring that he was more afraid of sandbars in an unknown river than all the sailing he ever did across the North Sea.

  ‘Can I have the boat take me on shore?’ Tradescant asked.

  The captain scowled. ‘Mr Tradescant, surely you can see all you need from here?’

  John smiled engagingly at him. ‘I need to gather plants and rarities for my Lord Wootton,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back before dusk.’

  ‘Don’t come to me with an arrow up your arse,’ the captain said coarsely.

  John bowed and slipped away before he could change his mind.

  A young sailor rowed him to the shore. ‘Can I wait by the boat?’ he asked, his eyes round in his pale face. ‘They say there are terrible people on this shore. They call them the Sammoyets.’

  ‘Don’t go without me,’ John said. ‘The captain is far more of a terror than the Sammoyets, I promise you. And he will kill you for sure if you maroon me here.’

  The lad managed a weak smile. ‘I’ll wait,’ he promised. ‘Don’t be too long.’

  John slung a satchel over his shoulder and took a little trowel. In the pockets of his breeches he carried a sharp knife for taking cuttings. He had decided against carrying a musket. He did not want the trouble of keeping the fuse alight, and he thought he was as likely to shoot his own foot off in a moment of abstraction, as confront an enemy.

  ‘You won’t be too long, will you?’ the lad asked again.

  John patted his shoulder. ‘As soon as I have found something worth bringing home I will come straight back,’ he promised. ‘Ten minutes at the most.’

  He walked up from the shelving beach and at once plunged into the deep forest. Huge trees, a new fir tree that he had never seen before, interlaced their boughs above his head and made a twilight world which was shadowy green and sharply cold. Underfoot there were thick cushions, as big as bolsters, of fresh damp moss. John knelt before them, like a knight before the Holy Grail, and patted them with loving hands before he could bring himself to dig in his trowel and take a clump to stuff in his satchel.

  There were shrubs he had never seen before, many in flower, white star-shaped flowers, and some tinged with pink. He walked on and came to a bush of whorts, with an unusual red flower. John brought out his little knife and took cuttings, wrapped them in more of the damp moss and laid them carefully in his satchel. A few steps more and he was in a clearing. Where the sunlight poured in there were bushes forming fruit like an English hedge mercury except that they were a brighter red and with three sharply-shaped leaves at the head of the twig, and every leaf bearing a berry inside it. In the darker places, beneath the trees, John saw the gleaming blossom of hellebores, thickly growing and carpeting the forest floor.

  There was an explosion of noise from the trees above his head and John instinctively ducked, fearing attack. It was half a
dozen birds, a new species to John, big pheasant-sized birds in white with green bodies and slate-blue tails. John clasped his hands together in frustration, longing for a musket so he could have shot one for the skin, but they were gone with a clatter of wings and there was no-one there for John to compare notes with, and wonder if he could possibly have seen aright.

  He dug and snipped like a squirrel preparing for winter until, from the distance, he heard a faint voice calling his name and looked up, realising that it was growing dark and that he had promised the lad that he would be little more than ten minutes – and that was more than an hour ago.

  John trotted down the path back to the boat and the shivering lad.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Cold or terror?’

  ‘Neither!’ the lad said stoutly, but as soon as he had the boat pushed off and rowed back to the ship he scampered up the ladder at the side and swore that he would never take Mr Tradescant anywhere again, whatever the captain said.

  He did not need to risk a charge of mutiny. The next day the captain waited for the fullness of the tide to save them from the dangers of being grounded on sandbanks, and the ship landed at Archangel. The ship’s company were able to go ashore to eat the oat bread and cheese and drink the Russian beer. And the gentlemen travelling with Sir Dudley unloaded their goods and moved into houses on the quayside. The company were particularly scathing about the houses – which were wooden cabins – and about the bread, which was made in different shapes, some rolls no bigger than a single mouthful.

  John waylaid the Russian ambassador and was given permission to hire a local boat and set sail around the islands in the river channel. He took a purse of gold with him and bought every rarity he could find for his lord’s collection, and took cuttings and roots and seeds from every strange plant he saw. At every island John went ashore, his eyes on his boots and his little trowel in his hand. And at every place he came back to the boat with his satchel bulging with cuttings and plants which had never before been seen in England.