Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

“We’re the only ones likely to be grateful for it then,” she said with something of her old sharpness. “Mrs. Hurte was telling me that in the city they are saying that we might as well never have had a parliament if the king is going to run the country like a tyrant and never hear the will of the people. There are new taxes every day. We had a demand for a salt tax only yesterday.”

“Peace,” John said quietly, and Elizabeth bent her head to her work.

They were both right. The country was enjoying a sort of peace bought at the price of never addressing the difficulties between Parliament and king. King Charles was ruling as he fondly imagined his great aunt Elizabeth had ruled, with little regard for Parliament, with little advice and on the smooth oil of his subjects’ love. He and the queen went from great house to great house, hunting, dancing, playing in masques, watching theater, assured everywhere that they went, in a dozen pageants of loyal verse, that the people loved them next only to their God.

Henrietta Maria had learned a little wisdom in her hard years as an apprentice queen. When she heard that Buckingham, her worst enemy, was dead, she did not allow one word of delight to escape her. She went straight to the king and when he emerged from his lonely vigil of mourning she was there, dressed in black and looking as grief-stricken as she could manage. In a moment he transferred to her the passionate need which he carried with him always, like a sickness in his blood: the sickness of the less favored son, the sickness of the plain son of a man who liked handsome men. Henrietta Maria staggered under the weight of his embrace but kept her footing. There was nothing in the world she wanted more than his adoration. It made her complete as a woman; it made her complete as a queen.

Nothing contradicted his newfound happiness; nothing was ever allowed to distress or trouble His Majesty. The plague in London meant merely that they moved early to Oatlands Palace near Weybridge, or Windsor, or Beaulieu in Hampshire. Poverty in Cornwall, Presbyterianism in Scotland, the papers from local lords or JPs warning the king that all was not completely well in his kingdom, pursued him from hunting lodge to palace, and waited for a rainy day for him to give them his fleeting attention. His early appetite for work had deserted him once he had found how little rewarded he was for duty. Parliament had never thanked him for the memoranda in his tiny handwriting, and in any case there was no Parliament now. The holders of the great offices of state, incompetent and corrupt, worked as well without supervision as they did under the king’s erratic gaze. It was easier, and pleasanter, for him to turn the business of kingship into a country-wide masque with people demonstrating their devotion in dances and songs, and the king play-acting at ruling with a crown of gold wire on his head.

The king’s first son and heir was born in May 1630, and three months later a messenger from the court, currently at Windsor, knocked peremptorily on the door of the Lambeth house and glanced upward, but did not comment, at the coat of arms fixed proudly on the wall.

“A message for John Tradescant,” he announced as Jane opened the door.

She stepped back to show him into the parlor and he went ahead of her as he would have preceded a Quaker serving woman. Jane, who knew that she should despise the vanity of worldly show, gestured rather grandly to the chair at the fireside. “You may be seated,” she said with the dignity of a duchess. “Mr. Tradescant, my father-in-law, will join you shortly.” She turned on her heel and stalked from the room, and then fled to the garden where John was transplanting seedlings.

“Get up! and get washed! There is a royal herald for you in the parlor!” she exclaimed.

John got slowly to his feet. “A royal herald?”

“Trouble?” J asked. “Not the coat of arms?”

“Surely not,” John said comfortably. “Give him a glass of wine, Jane, and tell him I am coming at once.”

“You will change your coat,” she reminded him. “He is in full livery and with a powdered wig.”

“It’s only a herald,” John said mildly. “Not Queen Henrietta Maria herself.”

Jane picked up her skirts and fled back to the house to order the kitchenmaid to pour a cool glass of wine and put it on the best silver tray.

She found the herald looking out from the window to the garden. “How many men does Mr. Tradescant employ here?” he asked, trying to engage her in conversation to make amends for his earlier mistake.

She glanced out. To her embarrassment it was not the garden lads but her husband and her father-in-law, strolling up from the orchard with a hoe and a bucket apiece. “Half a dozen in midsummer,” she said. “Fewer in winter.”

“And do you have many visitors?”

“Yes,” she said. “Both to the garden and to the cabinet of rarities. The garden is rich with both rare fruit and flowers; you are welcome to walk in it, if you wish.”

“Later perhaps,” the herald said loftily. “I must speak with Mr. Tradescant now.”

“He will come shortly,” Jane said. “I could show you some of the rarities in the cabinets while you wait.”

To her relief, the door behind her opened. “Here I am,” John said. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”

At least he had washed his hands, but he still wore his old gardening coat. The herald, whose face revealed nothing, realized that the workingman he had seen from the window was in fact the gentleman he had come to visit.

“Mr. Tradescant,” he began. “I am carrying a letter from the king, and I am to await your reply.”

He held out a scroll of paper with a thick red seal at the bottom. John took it and went to the window, where the August sunshine poured in.

Jane had to prevent herself from moving behind him and reading over his shoulder.

“Hmmm hmmm hmmm,” John said, skimming the customary compliments and addresses at the start of the letter. “Why! His Majesty is commanding me to be his gardener at Oatlands Palace! I am honored.”

“His Majesty has just given the palace to Her Majesty the Queen,” the herald informed them. “And she wants a garden like Hatfield or New Hall.”

John raised his head. “It’s a long time since I planted a garden for a palace. And I am sixty years old this year. There are other gardeners Their Majesties could employ, and I would have thought the queen would have preferred a garden in the French style.”

The herald raised his neat plucked eyebrows. “Perhaps. But I am not in a position to advise His Majesty or Her Majesty as to their course of action. I merely obey their royal decree.” The inference was clear.

“Oh,” John said, corrected. “I see.”

“His Majesty ordered me to take back a reply to him,” the herald continued loftily. “Is it your wish that I tell him you are sixty years of age and that it is your opinion that he didn’t want you in the first place?”

John grimaced. An invitation from the king was tantamount to a royal command. He was not able to refuse. “Tell His Majesty that I am honored for the invitation and that I accept, I gratefully accept, and that it will always be my pleasure to serve Their Majesties in any way I can.”

The herald unbent slightly. “I will deliver your message. His Majesty will expect you at Oatlands Palace within the week.”

John nodded. “I shall be delighted to attend.”

The herald bowed. “An honor to meet you, Mr. Tradescant.”

“The honor is all mine,” John said grandly.

The herald bowed himself from the room and left John and his daughter-in-law alone.

“Royal service,” she said grimly. “J won’t like it.”

John grimaced. “He will have to bear it. You can’t refuse the king. You heard him. My acceptance was just a matter of form; he knew what day I had to start work.”