Virgin Earth (22 page)

The cottage was some compensation. It had been built as a farmhouse and taken into the demesne of New Hall by the ever-widening wall and ambition of each successive owner. It was as good as Elizabeth’s girlhood home at Meopham, a two-storied, four-bedroomed house with an orchard at the back and a stable yard with room for a dozen horses at the side.

Elizabeth might put up with the disruption of the move for the benefit of the house, John thought, and held that hope in his mind until they had unpacked their goods and penned up the cat so that she should not stray, when a liveried manservant from the house tapped on the open front door and ordered John to wait on His Grace in the garden.

John pulled on his jacket and followed the man back up the drive toward the house.

“He’s in the yew-tree allée,” the man said, gesturing to the right of the house. “He said you were to go and find him.”

“How shall I know him?” John asked, hanging back.

The man looked at him with open surprise. “You’ll recognize him the moment you see him. Without error.”

“How?”

“Because he’s the most beautiful man in the kingdom,” the man said frankly. “Go toward the yew-tree allée and when you see a man as lovely as an angel, that’s my lord Buckingham. You can’t miss him, and when you’ve seen him, you’ll never forget him.”

John puffed a little at the courtier hyperbole and turned toward the colonnade of yew. He had time to note that the allée was overgrown and needed pruning at the head of the trees to make them thicken out at the bottom, before he stepped into the shade. He blinked against the sudden darkness of the thickly interleaved boughs. It was as dark as nighttime beneath the arching branches. The ground beneath his feet was soft with years of fallen brown yew needles. It was eerie and silent in the darkness; no birds sang in the still boughs of the trees, no sun shone into their shade. Then John’s eyes adjusted to the dimness after the dazzle of the sun and he saw George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

At first he could see only a silhouette of a slim solitary man, of about thirty. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed like a prince, laden with diamonds. He had a bright mobile face above the wide lace-trimmed ruff with eyes that were smiling and wicked, and a mouth as changeable and as provocative as any pretty woman’s. The pallor of his skin gleamed in the darkness as if he were lit from within, like a paper lantern, and his smile, when he saw John coming toward him, was as engaging as a child’s, with the confidence and innocence of a child who has never known anything but love. He wore a doublet and cape of dark green, as green as the yew, and for a moment John, looking from trees to man, thought he was in the presence of a dryad — some wild beautiful spirit of the wood — and that some miracle had been granted him, to see a tree dancing toward him and smiling.

“Ah! my John Tradescant!” exclaimed Buckingham, and at that moment John suffered a strange falling feeling which made him think that he had taken the sun, riding all day on the open wagon. The man smiled at him as if he were a brother, as if he were a living angel come to give him tidings of great joy. John did not smile in greeting — years later he would remember that he had not felt any sense of meeting a new master but rather a grave sense of deep familiarity. He did not feel that they were well-met, new-met. He felt as if they had been together for all their lives and just accidentally parted until now. If he had spoken the words in his heart he would have said: “Oh, it is you — at last.”

“Are you my John Tradescant?” the man asked.

John bowed low and when he looked up the sheer beauty of the young man made him catch his breath again. Even standing still, he was as graceful as a dancer.

“I am,” John said simply. “You sent for me and I have come to serve you.”

“Forgive me!” the duke said swiftly. “I don’t doubt you were snatched away from your work. But I need you, Mr. Tradescant. I need you very badly.”

John found he was smiling into the quick bright face of the young man. “I’ll do what I can.”

“It is here, at these gardens,” the young duke said. He led the way down the allée, talking as he went, throwing a smile over his shoulder as John followed. “The house is a thing of rare beauty, King Henry’s summer house. But the gardens have been sorely neglected. I love my gardens, Mr. Tradescant. I want you to make these rich and lovely with your rare trees and flowers. I have seen Hatfield and I envy you the planting of such a place! Can you work the same magic for me here?”

“Hatfield was many years in the making,” John said slowly. “And the earl spent a fortune on buying in new plants.”

“I shall spend a fortune!” the young man said carelessly. “Or rather, you shall spend my fortune for me. Will you do that for me, John Tradescant? Shall I earn a fortune and you spend it? Is that a fair agreement?”

Despite his sense of caution, John chuckled. “Very fair on me, my lord. But perhaps you had better take a care. A garden can gobble up wealth as it can gobble up manure.”

“There’s always plenty of both,” Buckingham said quickly. “You just have to go to the right place.”

John was tempted to laugh, but then thought better of it.

“So will you do it?” Buckingham paused at the end of the allée and looked back toward his house. It looked like a fairy-tale palace in the afternoon sunshine, a crenellated turreted palace set in the simple loveliness of the fertile green countryside of England. “Will you make me a fine garden here, and another at my other house in Rutland?”

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.

“His Grace has ordered me to buy trees and plants from his tenants, and command them to take the cost from their rent,” Tradescant began.

The steward looked up from the household books, which were spread before him. “What?”

“He has ordered me to buy from the tenants,” John began again.

“I heard you,” the man said angrily. “But how am I to know what is bought or sold? And how am I to run this house if the rents are discounted before they are collected?”

John hesitated. “I was coming to you only to ask you how it should be done, if you have a list of tenants—”

“I have a list of tenants, I have a list of rents, I have a list of expenditure. What no one will tell me is how to make the one agree with the other.”

John paused for a moment to take stock of the man. “I am new in this post,” he said cautiously. “I don’t seek to make your task any harder. I do need to buy his lordship trees and plants to stock his gardens and he ordered me to buy from his tenants and see that they deduct the cost from their rents.”