Virgin Earth (6 page)

He hesitated for a moment. “But you should marry for love, you know,” he said. He swallowed down his grief, his continual grief for the wife he had married for love, who had taken him despite his hunched body and loved him for himself. He had given her two healthy children and one as crooked as himself, and it was the birth of that baby which had killed her. They had been together only eight years. “To have a wife you can love is a precious thing, John. You’re not gentry, or noble; you don’t have to make dynasties and fortunes; you can marry where your heart takes you.”

John hesitated. “I’m not gentry, my lord, but my heart cannot take me to a maid without a portion.” Irresistibly the thought of the kitchen maid from the first dinner for King James came into his head. “My father left me with a debt to a man which is cleared by this betrothal to his daughter, and she is a steady woman with a good dowry. I have been waiting until I could earn enough for us to marry, until I had savings which might take us through difficult years, savings to buy a house and a little garden for her to tend. I have plans, my lord — oh, never to leave your service, but I have plans to take my fortune upward.”

The earl nodded. “Buy land,” he advised.

“To farm?”

“To sell.”

John blinked; it was unusual advice. Most men thought of buying land and keeping it; nothing was more secure than a smallholding.

The earl shook his head. “The way to make money, my John, is to move fast, even recklessly. You see an opportunity, you take it quickly; you move before other men have seen it too.
Then
when they see it, you pass it on to them and they crow at having spotted their chance, when you have already skimmed the cream of the profit. And move fast,” he advised. “When you see an opening, when a place comes open, when you see a chance, when a master dies, take what you’re owed and move on.”

He glanced up into John’s frowning face. “Practice,” he reminded him. “Not principles. When Walsingham died, who was the best man to take his place? Who had the correspondence at his fingertips, who knew almost as much as Walsingham himself?”

“You, my lord,” Tradescant stammered.

“And who had Walsingham’s papers which told everything a man who wanted to be Secretary of State would need to know?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know, my lord. They were stolen, and the thief never found.”

“Me,” Cecil admitted cheerfully. “The moment I knew he would not recover, I broke into his cabinet and took everything he had written and received over the previous two years. So when they were casting around for who could do the work there was no one but me. No one could read the papers and learn what needed doing, for the papers were missing. No one could know Walsingham’s mind, nor what he had agreed, because the papers were missing. Only one man in England of the dozen who had worked for Walsingham was ready to take his place. And that was me.”

“Theft?” John asked.

“That’s principle,” Cecil said swiftly. “I’m advising you to look to practice. Think what you want, my John, and make sure that you get it, for be very certain that no one will give it to you.”

John could not help but glance up at the great palace of Theobalds, a place so grand that a king could envy it and insist on owning it, knowing that he could never build better.

“Aye,” said the earl, following his gaze. “And if a more powerful man can do it, he will take it from you. He will be guided by practice and not principles too. Buy land and take risks is my advice. Steal if you need to and if you will not be detected. When your master dies — even if it is me — have your next place secure. And also — marry your woman with a dowry; she sounds the very one for a rising man like you. And bid her be careful with her housekeeping.”

John Tradescant rode down the Kentish lanes to his old village of Meopham, where he had been expected every day for the last six years. The hedges were white with hawthorn and May blossoms, the air warm and sweet-scented. The rich green pastureland of Kent glowed lush where cattle were knee-deep in water meadows. These were prosperous times and rich fields. John rode in a daze of pleasure, the lushness of the fields and the greening of the trees and the hedges acting on him as strong wine might turn another man’s head. In the hedgerows were the white floss of gypsy lace and the little white stars of meadowsweet. Through gaps in the hedge where trees had been coppiced was a sea of blue where bluebells had sprung up to carpet the floor of the forest. Ahead of him the road was drifted with the tiny petals of the hawthorn flower like spring snow, and at every verge the lemon-yellow flowers of primroses were stuffed into roots and nooks like nosegays in a belt. When the road wound through meadowlands, John could see the light yellow of cowslips nodding as the breeze ran across the grasses; they put a veil of gold over the green as a woman might toss a shawl of gold net over a green silk gown.

The oak trees were clench-fisted with flowers, the small delicate catkins which looked like lumpy little buds at the end of the tough contorted branches. The silver birches shivered with new pale leaves amid the dancing catkins, and the beeches on the uplands were wet with spring leaves, vibrant with growth.

John was not deliberately plant-collecting but his awareness of every small budding orchid, every flowering nettle, every thick clump of violets in purple, white, and even pale blue, was not something that he could ever ignore. By the time he had ridden into Kent his hatband and his pockets were stuffed with shoots and soft damp trailing roots, and he felt himself wealthier than his own lord because he had ridden for days through a treasure chest of color and freshness and life, and come home with his pockets stuffed with booty.

Meopham High Street wound up the little hill to the gray-stoned church set like a cherry on the top of a bun. To the right of it was the small farmhouse of the Day family, built near the church where Elizabeth’s father had been vicar. There were fat hens in the yard, and the pleasing smell of roasted hops which always hung around the storeyards and the little oast house.

Elizabeth Day came out of the front door. “I thought I heard a horse,” she said. She was dressed in sober gray and white, and had a plain cap on her head. “Mr. Tradescant, you are very welcome.”

John dismounted and led his horse to a stall.

“William will take his tack off if you wish,” she offered calmly.

It was a loaded question. “If I may, I’ll stay the night,” John said. “William can take his saddle and bridle and turn him out to graze.”

She looked away to hide her pleasure. “I’ll tell William,” she said simply. “Will you take a glass of ale? Were the roads bad?”

She led the way into the house. The wainscoted parlor was dark and cool after the bright sunshine. She left him for a moment while she fetched a tankard from the brew house. John looked out of the tiny thickly leaded window at the orchard.

The pink and white blossoms of the apple trees were bobbing above the white and pink daisies starring the cropped grass of the orchard. The family had neither the time nor the inclination to make a good garden before the house, though Elizabeth had the care of the kitchen and herb garden in the walled area outside the back door. Six years ago, when John had visited and confirmed his engagement, he had planted a little square of lavender with a bush of rue at each corner in the area before the window; but this was a working farm and no one had the time to plan or weed an elaborate knot garden. He saw that the rue had gone straggly as if remembrance itself was wearing thin; but the lavender was looking well.

The door behind him opened and George Lance, her stepfather, came in.

“Good to see you, Tradescant,” he said.

Elizabeth brought them two mugs of ale and went quietly out of the room.

“I’m come to ask for the marriage to take place,” John announced abruptly. “I’ve delayed too long.”

“You’ve not delayed too long for her,” George said defensively. “She’s a virgin still.”

“Too long for me,” John said. “I’m impatient to start a family. I’ve waited long enough.”

“Still working for Sir Robert?”

John nodded. “He’s an earl now.”

“Still in favor?”

John nodded again. “Never better.”

“Have you seen the new king?” George demanded. “Is he a great man? I had heard that he is a fine man — a huntsman and a man of God, an educated man and a father of fine children. Just what the kingdom needs!”

John thought for a moment of the slack-mouthed lecher and the parade of pretty men who had come to Theobalds Palace a dozen times, the loud tempestuous Scots followers and the wanton drunken lechery of the new court.

“He is all kingly virtues, thank God,” he said carefully. “And now the earl is secure in his place, and I in mine. There’s a chance that the earl will have a new house, and I will have the ordering of the garden. I will be paid more, and I will be head gardener in a new garden to make all my own. At last I can offer Elizabeth a proper home.”

“Your pay?” George asked directly.

“Forty pounds a year, and a cottage to live in.”

“Well, she’s been ready and waiting for six years,” George said. “And she’ll have what her father promised. A dowry of fifty pounds, and her clothes and some household goods. She’ll be glad to go, I don’t doubt. She and her mother don’t always agree.”

“They quarrel?”

“Oh, no! Nothing to disturb a man’s quiet,” George replied hastily. “She’ll make an obedient wife, I don’t doubt. But two grown women and only one kitchen to order…” He broke off. “It’s sometimes hard to keep the peace. Shall you call the banns at the church here?”

John nodded. “And I’ll take a cottage for us in the village. I shall be between Theobalds and my lord’s new house for some time. Elizabeth will like to be near her family when I am away. I shall have to travel abroad to seek trees and plants, as soon as Hatfield is ready. I am to go to the Low Countries and buy their bulbs; I am to go to France and buy their trees. I am planning an orangery where the tender trees can be reared in winter.”

“Yes, yes. Well, Elizabeth will want to know all about it.”

John was reminded that his new kindred had little interest in gardening. “And I shall be paid a good wage,” he repeated.

George hesitated for a moment, looking at his future son-inlaw. “By God, you’re a cool fish, Tradescant,” he said critically. “Or have you been banging the ladies of the court all this time and only now thought of Elizabeth?”

John found himself flushing. “No. You misunderstand me. I have always been intending to come for Elizabeth. It was always agreed that when I had enough money to buy a house, and a little land, then we would marry; and not before. I was not able to offer her a house before now.”

“Didn’t you think you might chance it?” George asked curiously.

“And you and your wife?” John demanded, stung. “How much of a chance did you take?”

It was a shrewd blow. The whole of Kent knew that his wife had come to him with a farm and a handsome fortune from her husband, Elizabeth’s father, and a widow’s jointure from the husband before that. George nodded abruptly and went to the door.

“Elizabeth!” George shouted into the hall, and then turned back to John. “Shall you want to be on your own with her?”

John found himself suddenly embarrassed. “I think so… perhaps… or you could stay?”

“Speak for yourself, man,” George said. “It’ll hardly come as a surprise!”

They heard her quick footsteps coming across the wooden floor of the hall. George went to meet her.

“Never fear!” he whispered. “He has come for you at last. He has a good wage, and his future is secured. He’s to buy a cottage here, in the village. He’ll tell you himself. But you’re to be a wife, Elizabeth.”

The color rushed into her face and then drained away again. She nodded gravely, and stood for a moment in thought, her eyes downcast. She was saying a silent prayer of thanksgiving. There had been times in the long years of waiting that she had thought he had broken faith with her, and would not come. Then her head went up and she went with her quick steady steps to the parlor.

John was at the window again, looking at the apple trees. When she came in he turned. For a moment he saw not the grave Elizabeth in her sober Puritan dress, but little Cathy the serving maid in her mob cap with her gown cut low over her plump breasts, and her inviting smile. Then he put his hands out to Elizabeth, drew her to him and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“I can marry you,” he said, as if it were the conclusion to a business arrangement which had been tediously delayed.

“Thank you,” she said coolly. She wanted to tell him that she had been waiting for this moment ever since her father had come to her and folded her in his arms and said quietly: “I have got you the gardener, my dear. You will be John Tradescant’s wife as soon as he has saved enough to marry.” She wanted to tell him that in the nightmare summer when her little sister and then her father sickened of plague and then died, she had prayed every night for John Tradescant to come for her, like a hero in a romance, to take her away from the fear of sickness and from the depths of mourning. She wanted to tell him that she had waited and waited, while her mother put off her grief and gleefully remarried. That she waited while the newlyweds kissed before their fireside. That she waited though she thought he might never come, and that, with her father dead and a hard-hearted mother who used her labor and never paid her, there would be no one to hold John Tradescant to his binding promise to marry.

She waited, in the end, because she was in the habit of waiting, because there was no escape from waiting, because there was nothing else she could do. Elizabeth was twenty-seven years old, no longer a girl in her first looks. She had been waiting for John for six long years.

“I hope you are glad?” John retreated to his place at the window.

“Yes,” she said carefully from her place at the door.

Three weeks later they were married at the parish church. They walked up the narrow path to the church door hand in hand; John could not stop himself noticing the yew trees, which were extraordinarily fine. One was growing like a castle with pretty pinnacle towers; the branches of the other fell like layers of cloth in a deep green dress. Elizabeth saw the direction of his gaze and smiled and patted his arm.