Virgin Earth (44 page)

John heard in the kitchen of New Hall that the duke’s homecoming had been sweeter than his own. The whole royal court had ridden out of London to meet him in a great cavalcade of riders with seventy coaches carrying the ladies to throw rose petals and rosewater and greet the returning hero. The queen alone had avoided his triumphal return, but only her immediate household had stayed away and sulked. The king had thrown a great dinner to celebrate the triumphal return, and after dinner he had drawn Buckingham away from the crowds and into his private bedchamber and the two men had spent the night together, alone.

“The evening together, you mean,” John suggested. “The duke will have gone to his wife, the Duchess Kate, at night, when the dinner was over.”

The messenger from London shook his head. “He lay that night with the king,” he said firmly. “In the king’s own bed in the king’s own bedchamber.”

John nodded briefly and turned away. He did not want to hear more.

“And he sent a letter for you,” the man went on, digging into his pocket.

Tradescant wheeled around. “A letter! You damned fool, why did you not say so at once?”

“I did not think it was urgent—”

“Of course it’s urgent. He may want me at a moment’s notice; you may have delayed me with your kitchen gossip and your nonsense about beds and nights and rose petals—”

John dragged the letter from the man’s hand and took two stumbling strides to be away from him, so no one could see the words on the page. He glanced at the seal, the duke’s own familiar seal, broke it and unfurled the page. He had written in his own hand. John tightened his grip on the paper. It was in his own idiosyncratic spiky handwriting, and it was headed “John—”

The relief was almost too much. He could hardly see the words as the paper shook in his hand. The duke had summoned him; the sharp word on the quayside meant nothing. Buckingham wanted him at his side and now their life would begin together as they had planned.

“Grave news?” the messenger enquired from behind John.

John flattened the letter to his body. “Private,” he said shortly and took the letter out into the garden like a stolen sweetmeat to devour on his own. He found the knot garden deserted and he walked down one of his own neat paths and sat on a small stone seat at the end of a miniature avenue. Then, and only then, he opened the letter for his lord’s commands.

John —
A ship, the
Good Fortune
, is in the Pool of London with a dozen boxes of curiosities for my rarities room. They are goods from India, carved ivory and worked rugs and the like, some gold and some silver cabinets. Also there is a small box of seeds which will be of interest to you. Do fetch them to New Hall for me, or send someone you can trust. I shall be at Whitehall for Christmas with my king. — Villiers.

That was all. There was no message bidding him to Whitehall, no summons. There was no word of love or even remembrance. He was not cast off, he was not a spurned lover. He did not stand high enough for rejection. Buckingham had simply forgotten the promises, forgotten the nights and moved on to other things.

John sat on the stone seat for a long time with the letter in his hand, the high skies of Essex arched cold and gray above his head. Only when the cold of the stone seat and the cold of the winter winds had chilled him to the very bone did he stir and realize that the coldness was from the world around him, and not seeping icily into his veins from his heart.

“I have to go to London,” Tradescant remarked to J. They were working side by side in the duke’s rose garden, pruning the year’s growth down to sharp sticks cut carefully on the slant.

“Can I go for you?” J asked.

“What for?”

“I could help you.”

“I’m not in my dotage,” John said. “I think I can get to London and back with a wagon on my own.”

“If you are carrying valuables…”

“Then I’ll hire a man with a musket.”

“You might like my company…”

“Or I might prefer to travel alone. What’s the secret, J? You never liked London before?”

J straightened up and pushed his plain hat back on his head. “I would like to visit a young woman,” he announced. “You could come and see her too. Her parents would make us both very welcome.”

John stood up, one hand on his aching back. “A young woman? What young woman?”

“Her name is Jane. Jane Hurte. Her father has a mercer’s shop near to the docks. While you were away, a package came for his lordship and they sent me down to London to fetch it. Mother wanted some buttons and I stepped into the Hurtes’ shop. Jane Hurte took my money and we had a few words of conversation.”

John waited, taking care not to smile. There was something deeply endearing about this stilted account of courtship.

“Then I took a lift with the sheep fleeces down to the market, and visited her again.”

“In June?” John asked, thinking of shearing time.

“Yes. And then the duchess wanted something fetched from the London house, so I went down on the cart with her maid and spent the day with the Hurtes.”

“How many times have you been there?”

“Six times,” J said reverently.

“Is she a pretty lass?”

“She’s not a lass, she’s a young lady. She’s twenty-three.”

“I beg her pardon! Is she fair or dark?”

“Sort of dark; well, she’s not golden-haired, but not altogether dark.”

“Pretty?”

“She’s not painted and curled and half-naked, like the women of the court. She’s modest and…”

“Is she pretty?”

“I
think so.”

“If you are the only one that thinks so then she must be plain,” John teased.

“She’s not plain,” J replied seriously. “She’s… she’s… she looks like herself.”

John abandoned hope of getting much sense from his son about Jane Hurte’s looks. “Does she share your beliefs?”

“Of course. Her father is a preacher.”

“A traveling preacher?”

“No, he has his own chapel and a congregation. He’s a most respected man.”

“You are serious about her?”

“I wish to marry her,” J said. He looked at his father as if measuring how far he could trust him with a confidence. “I wish to marry her soon. I have been disturbed recently.”

“Disturbed?”

“Yes. Sometimes I find it hard to think of her only as a spiritual partner and companion.”

John bit the inside of his cheeks to suppress a smile. “You can love her body as well as her soul, I suppose.”

“Only if we are married.”

“Does she want to marry?”

J flushed a deep brick red and bent over the roses. “I think she might,” he said. “But I could not ask her while you were away. I needed you to meet her father and discuss her dowry and all the arrangements.”

John nodded. “We’ll stay overnight in London,” he decided. J’s apprentice lovemaking seemed very sweet and young compared to the complexity of his own pain. “Send them word that we can come at dinnertime and perhaps they will ask us to dine.”

“I’m sure they will. Only, Father…”

“Yes?”

“They’re very devout people, and they think badly of the king. We will have a better time if we do not talk about the king or the court, or the archbishop.”

“Or Ireland, or the enclosures, or the Ile de Rhé, or my lord Buckingham, or my lord Stafford, or ship money, or the court of wards, or anything,” John said impatiently. “I am not a fool, J. I will not embarrass you before your sweetheart.”

“She’s not my sweetheart,” J said quickly. “She’s my… my…”

“Intended helpmeet,” John suggested, without a glimmer of a smile.

“Yes,” J said, pleased. “Yes. She’s my intended helpmeet.”

John had expected an austere shop with an unsmiling proprietor and a whey-faced daughter, and was amazed by the well-stocked counter and the plump round-faced woman who sat outside the shop and invited customers to come in.

“I’m Mistress Hurte,” she said. “My daughter’s inside. My husband is visiting a sick friend and will be home in time for dinner. Step inside, Mr. Tradescant.”

Jane Hurte was on her knees behind the counter, tidying the immaculate shelves. She rose up as they came in and John had to blink his eyes to prepare them for the dark interior of the shop. He saw at once that J had been baffled in his description of her because she had a complex intelligent face full of character, neither simply pretty nor plain. Her forehead was broad and smooth and her brown hair was swept back under a plain cap. Her gown was gray but well-cut and flowing, and her white collar was trimmed with lace. She looked at John with a keen intelligence, and a twinkle of humor.

“Good day, Mr. Tradescant,” she said. “And welcome to our home. Will you step upstairs to wait? Father will be back in a moment.”

“I’ll wait down here with you if I may,” John said. He looked around the shop, which was lined with small drawers, none of them marked. “It’s like a treasure chest.”

“John told me that the Duke of Buckingham has a room like this, but he stores curiosities,” she said. With a shock John realized that she did not call his son J, but John.

“Yes,” he said. “My lord has some very beautiful and curious things.”

“And you arrange them and collect them for him?”

“Yes.”

“You must have seen many marvels,” she said seriously.

John smiled at her. “And many falsehoods. Foolish forgeries cobbled together to try to catch the unwary.”

“All treasure is a trap for the unwary,” she observed.

“Indeed,” John said, disliking the tone of piety. “I shall buy something from you to take home to my wife. Do you have some pretty ribbons or lace for her to trim a collar?”

Jane bent below the counter and slid out a tray. She spread a little black velvet cloth so the lace was shown to its best advantage and laid out one piece, and then another, for him to see.

“And ribbons,” she said. They came from a dozen little drawers, arranged by color. She spread them before him, the cheap scratchy thin ones, and the lustrous silkier lengths.

“Are they not a trap to catch the unwary?” John asked, watching her absorbed face as she smoothed the lengths of ribbon before him, and folded them so that he could admire their shine.

She met his smile without embarrassment. “They are the hard work of good women,” she said. “They work to put bread in their mouths and we pay them a fair price and sell at a good profit. It is not just what you earn, but how you spend your money, that is judged on the great day. In this house we buy and sell fairly and nothing is wasted.”

“I’ll take that lace,” John decided. “Enough to make a collar.”

She nodded and cut him the measure he needed. “A shilling,” she said. “But you may have it for tenpence.”

“I’ll pay the full shilling,” he said. “For the good women.”

She gave a sudden, delicious gurgle of laughter, her whole face lighting up and her eyes dancing. “I’ll see that they get it,” she said.

She took his coin and put it away in a strongbox under the desk, entered the purchase in a ledger, and then wrapped the scrap of lace very carefully and tied it with a piece of wool. John stowed it in the deep pocket of his coat.

“Here’s Father,” Jane said.

John turned to greet the man. He looked incongruously more like a farmer than a seller of cloth and haberdashery. He was broad-shouldered and red-faced, well-dressed in sober black and gray and with a small lace collar. He held his hat in his hand and put out his other hand to John for a firm handshake.

“I am glad to meet you at last,” he said. “We have heard nothing from John but about his father’s travels since he first came here, and we prayed for you while you were in such peril off France.”

“I thank you,” John said, surprised.

“Daily, and by name,” Josiah Hurte went on. “He is a mighty all-wise, all-powerful God; but there is no harm in reminding him.”

John had to suppress a smile. “I suppose not.”

Josiah Hurte looked at his daughter. “Any sales?”

“Just a piece of lace to Mr. Tradescant, here.”

His tradesman’s instinct warred with his desire to be generous to John’s father. The desire for a small profit won. “Times are very hard for us,” he said simply.

John looked around the well-stocked shop.

“It doesn’t show yet,” Josiah said, following his gaze, “but every month things are getting tighter. We have a constant stream of requisitions from the king, fines for this, new taxes for that. And goods which were free to buy and sell suddenly become farmed out to courtiers as monopolies and we have to pay a fee to the monopoly holder. The king demands a free gift from his subjects and the vicar or the churchwardens come round to my shop, look at the outside, decide on their own what I can afford, and I face prison if I refuse.”

“The king has great expenses,” John said pacifically.

“My
wife and
my
friends would spend all my money too if I let them,” the Puritan said shortly. “So I don’t let them.”

John said nothing.

“Forgive me,” the man said suddenly. “My daughter swore me to silence on this matter and I broach it the moment I am in the door!”

John could not resist a laugh. “My son too!”

“They feared we would quarrel but I would never come to blows over politics.”

“I have seen enough of warfare this year,” John agreed.

“It is a criminal shame, though,” Josiah continued, leading the way up the stairs from the shop. “My guild can no longer control the trade because the court favorites now run the market in thread and lace and silk, and so my apprentices are no longer guaranteed their work or their wages; other men come into the trade and force prices and wages down and up at their whim. I wish you would tell the duke that if the poor are to be fed and the widows and children safeguarded, we need a powerful guild and a steady trade. We cannot have changes every time a courtier needs a new place.”

“He does not take my advice,” John replied. “Indeed, I think he leaves the business of the city and trade to others.”

“Then he should not have taken the monopoly for gold and silver thread into his keeping,” the mercer said triumphantly. “If he cares nothing for trade then he should not engross it. He will ruin the trade and ruin himself, and ruin me.”