Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

John looked around. The ground was fine, the aspect of the house was open and facing south. The ground had been terraced in wide beautiful steps down the hillside; at the bottom was a marshy pond that he could do all sorts of things with: a lake with an island, or a fountain feature, or a man-made river for boating.

“I can make you a fine garden,” he said slowly. “There will be no difficulty in growing what you will.”

Buckingham slipped his hand in John’s arm. “Dream with me,” he urged him persuasively. “Walk with me and tell me what you would grow here.”

John looked back at the long allée. “There’s little that will grow under yew,” he said. “But I have had some success with a plant that came from Turkey to France: lily of the valley. A small white flower, the daintiest thing you have ever seen. Like a snowdrop only smaller, a frilled bell, like a little model of a flower made in porcelain. It is scented, they tell me, as sweet as a rose, only sharp like lemons. A true lily scent. It will grow in great thick clumps and the white flowers are like stars against broad green leaves.”

“What d’you mean, they tell you it is scented? Can’t you smell them?” Buckingham asked.

“I have no nose for smell,” John admitted. “It is a great disadvantage for a gardener. My son tells me when the earth smells sour or when we have some putrid rot. Without him I have to go by my eyes and touch.”

Buckingham stopped and looked at his gardener. “What a tragedy,” he said simply. “One of the greatest pleasures for me is the scent of flowers, what a tragedy that you cannot sense this! Oh! And so many other things! Good cheeses, and wine, and smell of a clean stable of straw! Oh! and perfume when it is warm on a woman’s skin, or the smell of her sweat when she’s hot! And tobacco smoke! Oh, John! What a loss!”

John smiled a little at his enthusiasm. “Having never known it I do not feel the lack,” he said. “But I should like to smell a rose.”

Buckingham shook his head. “I should like you to smell a rose, John. I feel for you.”

They walked on a few steps more. “Now,” Buckingham said. “What would you do here?”

The ground below them fell away to the marshy dip at the bottom of the field. As they watched, a herd of cows trudged through the mud and water, churning it up.

“Get rid of the cows,” John said definitely.

Buckingham laughed. “I could have thought of that on my own! Do I need to hire you to tell me to mend the fences?”

“First get rid of the cows,” John amended. “And then perhaps use that water to make a lake? Perhaps a water-lily lake? And at one side you would have a wet garden with plants that love moisture. Some reeds and rushes, irises and buttercups. And on the other a large fountain. At Hatfield we had a grand statue mounted on a boulder. That was handsome. Or perhaps some playful water feature? A fountain which throws an arc of water for boats to sail underneath? Or an arc of water thrown over the path? Or even from one side of the lake to another with a bridge passing beneath it.”

Buckingham gleamed. “And one of those toys which sprinkle people when they approach!” he exclaimed. “And I should like a little mount as well, perhaps in the middle of the lake!”

“A grand mount,” John suggested. “Planted thickly with a winding allée to the summit. Perhaps cherry trees, espaliered into a hedge to make them thick and shady. I have some wonderful new cherry trees. Or even apple trees and pears. They take time to establish but you have a pretty effect with blossom in spring, and at the end of summer it is very rich to walk under boughs heavy with fruit. We could thread them through with roses and eglantine, which would climb and hang their blooms down through the leaves. You could row out to your island and wander among roses and fruit.”

“And where would you put the knot gardens?” Buckingham demanded. “Beyond the lake?”

John shook his head. “Near to the house,” he said firmly. “But you could show me your favorite window-seat and I could plant a garden which leads the eyes outward, into the garden, a little maze for your eye to follow, in stone and with small pale-leafed plants, and herbs to aid your meditations.”

“And an orchard with a covered walk all around it, and turf benches in every corner. I must have an orchard! Great fruiting trees which bow low to the ground. Where can we get quick-growing fruit trees?”

“We can buy saplings. But it will take time,” John warned him.

“But I want it now,” Buckingham insisted. “There must surely be trees which will grow swiftly, or trees we can buy full-grown? I want it at once!”

John shook his head. “You may command every man in England,” he said gently. “But you cannot make a garden grow at once, my lord. You will have to learn patience.”

A shadow crossed Buckingham’s face, a dark flicker of frustration. “For God’s sake!” he exclaimed. “This is as bad as the Spanish! Is everything I desire to go so slow that by the time it comes to me I am sick of waiting? Am I to grow old and tired before my desires can be met? Do I have to die before my plans come to fruit?”

John said nothing, only stood still, like a little oak tree, while the storm of Buckingham’s temper blew itself out. Buckingham paused as he took the measure of John Tradescant, and he threw back his curly dark head and laughed.

“You will be my conscience, John!” he exclaimed. “You will be the keeper of my soul. You gardened for Cecil, didn’t you? And they all say that when you wanted Cecil, you had to go out into the garden and find him; and half the time he would be sitting on a bench in his knot garden and talking to his man.”

John nodded gravely.

“They say he was the greatest Secretary of State that the country has ever had, and that your gardens were his greatest solace and his joy.”

Tradescant bowed and looked away, so that his new mercurial master should not see that he was moved.

“When I am tempted to overreach myself in my garden or in the great wild forests which are the courts of Europe, you can remind me that I cannot always have my own way. I cannot command a garden to grow,” Buckingham said humbly. “You can remind me that even the great Cecil had to wait for what he wanted, whether it was a plant or policy.”

John shook his head in quiet dissent. “I can only plant your garden, my lord,” he said softly. “That’s all I did for the earl. I can’t do more than that.”

For a moment he thought that Buckingham would argue, demand that there must be more. But then the young man smiled at him and dropped an arm around his shoulders and set them both walking back to the house. “Do that for me now, and when you trust me more, and know me better, you shall be my friend and adviser as you were Cecil’s,” he said. “You will make it grow for me, won’t you, John? You will do your best for me, even if I am impatient and ignorant?”

Tradescant found that he was smiling back. “I can undertake to do that. And it will grow as fast as it is able. And it will be all that you want.”

John started work that afternoon, walking to Chelmsford to find laborers to start the work of fencing the cows out, digging the lake and building the walls for the kitchen garden. He took a horse from the stables and rode a wide circle around the great estate to neighboring farms to see what trees they had in their orchards and what wooded copses he could buy and transplant at once.

Buckingham was careless about cost. “Just order it, John,” he said. “And if they are tenants of mine just tell them to give you whatever you wish and they can take it off their rent at quarter day.”

John bowed but made a point of visiting the steward of the household, at his desk in an imposing room at the very center of the grand house.