Earthly Joys

by Philippa Gregory

  The rarities room and the parlour had been swept and polished ever since the gentleman usher had left the house. Jane laid the table in the parlour and set the fire against the cold of the January day, while J and his father prowled around the rarities room for the hundredth time, ensuring that every case stood open and that every rarity – even the smallest carved hazelnut shell – was laid out to its best advantage.

  When everything was polished and prepared, there was nothing to do but wait.

  Frances went to sit on the front garden wall at half past ten. At eleven, John sent the garden lad down the road to keep watch and give them warning when he saw the royal carriage roof rocking down the bumpy road towards them. At midday Frances came in, her fingertips blue with cold, saying that there was no sign of them, and that the king was a liar and a fool.

  Jane shushed her and rushed her to the kitchen to get warm before the fire.

  At two o’clock John said that he was too starved to wait, and went to the kitchen for a bowl of soup. Frances, perched on her stool and with her face inside a large bowl of broth, emerged only to say that the king shouldn’t say he was coming if he did not mean it, as it caused a lot of people, especially those who had to wait in the cold, a great deal of discomfort.

  ‘If he’s the king, he should do what he promises.’

  ‘You’re not the first to think that,’ John remarked.

  At three o’clock, after tempers had frayed and the fires in the parlour and the rarities room had burned down and been renewed, there was a thunderous knocking at the garden door and the lad poked his frozen face into the room, his nose blue with cold, and said: ‘They’re coming at last!’

  Frances screamed and ran for her cloak, all complaints forgotten, and rushed to her station on the front wall. J leaped from his seat at the kitchen table, wiped his mouth, and rubbed his hands on the cloth.

  John pulled on his best coat, which he had laid aside in the heat of the kitchen, and rolled, with his limping gait, to the front door to hold it open as the king and queen visited the Ark.

  Their Majesties did not see Frances as the coach drew up, though she stood up on the wall and did her best curtsey, perched on top. When they walked past her without even a glance in her direction, Frances, who had hoped to be appointed as the king’s gardener on that very day, scrambled down from the wall, tore round to the back door, and stationed herself by the door of the rarities room where they could not possibly miss her as they entered.

  ‘Your Majesties.’ John bowed low as the queen stepped over the threshold. J, behind him, matched his bow.

  ‘Ah, Tradescant!’ the queen said. ‘Here we are to see your rarities, and the king has brought you some things for your collection.’

  The king waved at an usher, who unfolded a bolt of cloth. Inside was a handsome pair of light suede gloves.

  ‘King Henry’s hunting gloves,’ the king said. ‘And some other goods you can see at your leisure. Now show me your treasures.’

  John led the way around the room. The king wanted to see everything: the carved ivories, the monstrous egg, the beautifully carved cup of rhinoceros horn, the Benin drum, the worked Senego leather, the letter case a woman on the Ile de Rhé had tried to smuggle out of the fort by swallowing it, the curious crystals and stones, the body of the mermaid from Hull, the skull of the unicorn and the animal and bird skins, including that of a strange and ugly flightless bird.

  ‘This is remarkable,’ the king said. ‘And what is in these drawers?’

  ‘Small and large eggs, Your Majesty,’ John said. ‘I had the drawers especially made to house them.’

  The king drew open one drawer and then another. John had arranged the eggs in size from the smallest in shallow drawers at the top, to the largest in deep wide drawers at the bottom. The eggs, all colours from speckled black to purest shining white, sat on their little beds of sheep’s wool like precious jewels.

  ‘What a flock of birds you would have if they hatched!’ the king exclaimed.

  ‘They are all blown, and light as air, Your Majesty,’ Tradescant explained, giving him a tiny blue eggshell, no larger than his fingertip.

  ‘And what is this?’ the king said, returning the egg and moving on.

  ‘These are dried flower blossoms of many rarities from my garden,’ John said, pulling out tray after tray of flower heads. ‘My wife used to dry them in sugar for me, so that men might come and see the blossoms at any time of year. Often an artist will come and draw them.’

  ‘Pretty,’ the queen said approvingly, looking at the tray with the flowers laid out.

  ‘This is from the Lack tulip, which I bought for my lord Buckingham in the Low Countries,’ John said, touching one perfect petal with the tip of his finger.

  ‘Does it grow still?’ the king asked, looking at the petal as if it might hold some memory of its lord.

  ‘Yes,’ John said gently. ‘It grows still.’

  ‘I should like to have it,’ the king said. ‘In memory of him.’

  John bowed as he gave away a tulip worth a year’s income. ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’

  ‘And many mechanical things? Do you have mechanical toys?’ the king asked. ‘When I was a boy I had a small army made of lead with cannons which actually fired shot. I planned my campaigns with them, I had part of Richmond laid out as a battlefield and drew my men up in the proper way for an attack.’

  ‘I have a little model windmill, as they use in the Low Countries for pumping out their ditches,’ John said, crossing to the other side of the room. He moved the sails with his hand and the king could see the pump inside going up and down.

  ‘And I have a miniature clock, and a model cannon.’ John directed the king to another corner. ‘And a miniature spinning wheel carved in amber.’

  ‘And what do you have from my lord Buckingham’s collection?’ the king asked.

  J, suddenly wary, glanced at his father.

  ‘Something very dear to me and worth all the rest put together,’ John said. He drew the king to a cabinet under the window and opened one of the drawers.

  ‘What’s this?’ the king asked.

  ‘The last letter he ever wrote to me,’ John said. ‘Ordering me to Portsmouth, to meet him for the expedition to Rhé.’

  The queen glanced over at them with impatience; even now she did not like to hear Buckingham’s name on the king’s lips. ‘What’s the largest rarity you have?’ she asked J loudly.

  ‘We have the whole head of an elephant, with its great double teeth,’ J said, pointing up to where they had hung the skull from the roof beams. ‘And a rhinoceros horn and jaw bone.’

  The king did not even turn his head, but unfolded the letter. ‘His own hand!’ he cried as soon as he saw the dashed careless style. He read it. ‘And he commands you to go at once,’ he said. ‘Oh, Tradescant, if only everything had been ready at once!’

  ‘I was there,’ John said. ‘Just as he wished.’

  ‘But he was late, weeks late,’ the king said, smiling ruefully. ‘Wasn’t that just like him?’

  ‘And what is your favourite?’ the queen demanded loudly.

  ‘I think I like the Chinese fan the best,’ J said. ‘It is so delicate and so fine-painted.’

  He opened a drawer, took it out and laid it in her hand. ‘Oh! I must have one just like it!’ she exclaimed. ‘Charles! Look!’

  Reluctantly he looked up from the letter. ‘Very pretty,’ he said.

  ‘Come and see,’ she commanded. ‘You can’t see the painting from there!’

  He handed back the page of paper to John and went towards her. With a sense of relief, J saw that the question of how many of the exhibits had been the property of Lord Buckingham had completely slipped away.

  ‘I must have one just like this!’ she cried. ‘I shall borrow this and have it copied.’

  J was not courtier enough to assent. John stepped quickly forward. ‘Your Majesty, we would be honoured if you would have it as a gift,’ he said.

/>   ‘Do you not need it in your collection, to show to people?’ she asked, opening her eyes wide.

  John bowed. ‘The collection, the Ark itself, is all yours, Your Majesty, as everything lovely and rare must be yours. You shall decide what you leave here, and what you take.’

  She laughed delightedly and for a moment J was afraid that her greed would outrun her desire to seem charming. ‘I shall leave everything here, of course!’ she said. ‘But whenever you have something new and rare and pretty I shall come and see it.’

  ‘We will be honoured,’ J said, with a sense of a danger narrowly avoided. ‘Will Your Majesty take a glass of wine?’

  The queen turned for the door. ‘But who is this?’ she asked as Frances leaped forward and opened the door for her. ‘A little footman?’

  ‘I’m Frances,’ the little girl said. She had forgotten all about the curtsey which Jane had reluctantly taught her. ‘I was waiting for you for ages.’

  For a moment J thought that the queen would take offence. But then she laughed her girlish laugh. ‘I am sorry to keep you waiting!’ she exclaimed. ‘But am I what you thought a queen would be?’

  Both John and J moved forward, J smoothly standing beside Frances and giving her thin shoulder blade a swift admonitory pinch, while John filled the pause. ‘She was expecting Queen Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘We have a miniature of Her Majesty, painted on ivory. She did not know that a Queen could be so young and beautiful.’

  Henrietta Maria laughed. ‘And a wife, and the mother of a son and heir,’ she reminded him. ‘Unlike the poor heretic queen.’ Frances gasped in horror and was about to argue but to J’s enormous relief the queen went past the little girl without another glance. Jane threw open the parlour door and curtseyed.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting Queen Elizabeth, and anyway she wasn’t a heret–’ Frances started to argue. J leaned heavily on her shoulder as the king went past.

  ‘She is my first granddaughter and has been much indulged,’ John explained.

  The king down looked at her. ‘You must repay favour with duty,’ he said firmly.

  ‘I will,’ Frances said easily. ‘But may I come and work for you and be your gardener, as my grandfather and father do? I am very good with seeds and I can take cuttings and some of them do grow.’

  It would have cost the king nothing to smile and say yes; but he was always a man who could be ambushed by shyness, and by his own desire to be seen to do the right thing. With only one person had he been free of his need to set an example, to be kingly and wise in all things; and that man was long dead.

  ‘M … maids and wives must stay at home,’ he decreed, ignoring Frances’s shocked little face. ‘Everyone in their r … right place is what I wish for my kingdom now. You must obey your father and then your husband.’ Then he passed on towards the parlour.

  J threw a quick harassed glance at Frances’s appalled face, and followed him.

  Frances looked up at her grandfather, and saw that his face was warm with sympathy. She turned and pitched into his arms.

  ‘I think the king is a pig,’ she wailed passionately into his coat. John, a lifelong royalist, could not disagree.

  Mrs Hurte went home that evening, pleasantly shocked and appalled by the queen’s jewels, the richness of her perfume, the king’s lustrous hair, his cane, his lace. As the wife of a mercer she had taken particular note of their cloth and she was anxious to hurry home with news of French silk and Spanish lace, while English weavers and spinners went hungry. The king had a diamond on his finger the size of Frances’s fist, and the queen had pearls in her ears the size of pigeon’s eggs, and she had worn a cross, a crucifix, a most ungodly and unrighteous symbol. She had worn it like a piece of jewellery – heresy and vanity in one. She had worn it on her throat, an invitation to carnal thoughts as well. She was a heretical wicked woman and Mrs Hurte could not wait to get home to her husband and confirm his worst fears.

  ‘Come and see me next month,’ she said, pressing Jane to her heart before she left. ‘Your father wants to see you, and bring Baby John.’

  ‘I have to be here to guard the rarities when Father Tradescant and John are away,’ Jane reminded her.

  ‘When they are both here then,’ her mother said. ‘Do come. Your father will want to know about Oatlands too. Did you see the quality of the lace she wore on her head? It would buy you a house inside the city walls, I swear it.’

  Jane packed her mother into the wagon and handed her the basket with the empty jars and the crumpled tablecloths.

  ‘No wonder the country is in the state it is,’ Mrs Hurte said, deliciously shocked.

  Jane nodded, and stood back from the wagon as the man flipped the reins on the horses’ backs.

  ‘God bless you,’ Mrs Hurte called lovingly. ‘Wasn’t she a scandal!’

  ‘A scandal,’ Jane agreed and stood at the back gate and waved until the wagon was out of sight.

  Spring 1635

  Jane did not visit her mother all through the spring. Both John and J were either at Oatlands Palace or busy in the orchards and garden of Lambeth. There was always someone knocking at the garden door with a little plant in a pot, or some precious thing in a knotted handkerchief, and Jane would judge its value and buy it with the authority of a good housewife and a partner in the business. Then, there were the tulips to be watched into leaf and into flower. John had ordered an orangery to be built for them to raise up the tender plants and the builders needed to be watched as they knocked a doorway through into the main house. It was not until May that Jane felt she had enough leisure to leave the Ark and go to see her mother in the city. But then she went and stayed for a week.

  The house was oddly empty without her. Frances did not miss her much; she was always her grandfather’s shadow, and when he was away she was always out in the garden with her father. But Baby John, nearly two, toddled round the house and demanded all day: ‘Where’s Mama? Where’s Mama?’

  They expected her to come home rested and happy after a week’s cosseting in her old home, but when she finally returned she was tired and pale. The city had been unbearably hot, she said. There were more beggars on the streets than ever, she had seen a man dying in the gutter and had feared to touch him in case he was carrying the plague.

  ‘What sort of country is this, that the act of a Good Samaritan is too dangerous to do?’ she demanded, genuinely grieved at the struggle between her conscience and her safety.

  Her father and all the merchants were complaining that they were taxed for trading, and then taxed for selling, and then taxed for storing goods. They too were ordered to pay ship money, which was set by an assessor who would come around and guess how much you were worth by the appearance of your house and business, and there was no appeal against him.

  Josiah Hurte had to stand the charge of paying for his own lecturer in his own chapel, and also had to pay his parish dues to a church he never entered, and tithes to a vicar he despised for Roman practices. Meanwhile the price of goods soared, there were pirates openly operating up and down the English Channel, there were rumours of a rebellion in Ireland, and the king was said to spend more on his collection of pictures than he did on the Navy.

  Jane, as the wife and daughter-in-law of a man in the employ of the court, had been pestered for scandalous details and had suffered from association. ‘Nothing good will come from this king,’ her father had said. ‘You may think your husband is high in his favour but nothing good can come from him because he is a king halfway to damnation already. And if you do not beware, he will drag you all down with him. Now that your father-in-law and husband have a fair house in Lambeth, why can they not bide there?’

  Useless to try to explain to Josiah that if this king issued a command you could be hanged for treason if you said ‘no’. ‘The king himself ordered it,’ Jane said. ‘How could we refuse?’

  ‘By simply refusing,’ her father said stoutly.

  ‘And do you refuse to pay your taxes? Do you refuse to pay shi
p money? Other men do.’

  ‘And they lie in prison,’ Josiah said. ‘And shame the rest of us who are less staunch. No, I do as I am ordered.’

  ‘And so does my husband,’ Jane insisted, defending the Tradescants despite herself. ‘The king and court take our skills and service just as they take your money. This king takes whatever he desires and nothing can stop him.’

  ‘You must be glad to be home,’ J said in bed that night. He put his arm around her and she rested her head against his shoulder.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ she said fretfully.

  ‘Then rest,’ he said. He turned her face towards him and kissed her lips but she moved away.

  ‘The room stinks of honeysuckle,’ she cried suddenly. ‘You’ve brought cuttings into the bedroom again, John! I won’t have it.’

  ‘No,’ he said. He could feel a small niggle of fear, as small as a seedling, in his heart. ‘There’s nothing in the room. Does the air smell sweet to you, Jane?’

  She suddenly realised what she had said, and what he was thinking, and she clapped her hand over her mouth as if she would hide her words, and stop her breath from reaching him. ‘Oh God, no,’ she said. ‘Not that.’

  ‘Was it in the city?’ John asked urgently.

  ‘It’s always in the city,’ she said bitterly. ‘But I spoke to no-one knowingly.’

  ‘Not the servants, not the apprentice boys?’

  ‘Would I take the risk? Would I have come home if I had thought I was carrying it?’

  She was half out of bed, throwing back the covers and throwing open the window, her hand still cupped over her mouth as if she did not want the smallest breath to escape. John reached out for her but did not pull her to him. His fear of the illness was as great as his love for her. ‘Jane! Where are you going?’

  ‘I’ll get them to make me up a bed in the new orangery,’ she said. ‘And you must put my food and water at the door, and not come near me. The children are to be kept away. And my bedding is to be burned when it is dirty. And burn candles around the door.’