their roots to grow down. Two he had kept in a net hung high out of the way of rats in his shed, planning that they should feel the heat of the summer on their glossy backs before he planted them in autumn, when the weeds died back and before the first frosts came, hoping to mimic the trees’ natural time for growth. Two he carried in the safe darkness of his pocket, planning to plant them in spring in case they needed to be hidden from frost and to feel the warmth of a new season and the damp richness of the spring earth to make them flourish. He thought he should have left them in a stone box in the darkness and coldness of the floor of the marble bath house but he could not resist their smooth round shapes, tucked in his waistcoat. A dozen times a day his fingers found their way into the little pocket to caress them like a broody hen turning over two precious eggs.
He buttoned down the flaps with care when he mounted his horse.
‘I shall stay some weeks with my wife,’ he said to the gardener’s lad who held the horse. ‘You can send for me, if I am needed. Otherwise I shall come home at the end of September.’ He did not notice he had called Theobalds ‘home’. ‘And have a care that you keep the gates shut,’ he reminded the boy, ‘and weed the grass every day. But do not touch the roses, I shall be back in time to see to them myself. You may take the heads off when they are finished flowering, and take the petals to the still room, but that is all.’
It was a two-day journey to Meopham. John enjoyed travelling through the Surrey countryside where the hayfields were showing green again after the rain, and where the wheat stooks stood high in the field. Horsemen cantered past him, covering him in blinding clouds of dust; he sometimes rode alongside great wagons and could hitch his horse behind, taking a seat with the driver for a rest from the saddle and a sup of the driver’s ale. There were many people walking the roads: artisans on the tramp looking for work, harvesting gangs at the end of their season, apple-pickers making their way to Kent like John, gypsies, a travelling fair, a wandering preacher ready to set up at any crossroads and preach a gospel which needed neither church nor bishops, pedlars waddling beneath the weight of their packs, goose girls driving their flocks to the London markets, beggars, paupers, and sturdy vagrants forced away from parish to parish, bullocks being driven to Smithfield by swearing, anxious cattle drovers.
In the inn at night John ate at an ‘ordinary’, the daily dinner with a set price which humble travelling men preferred, but he paid extra to sleep alone. He did not want to appear before Elizabeth scratching with another man’s fleas.
At the long dining table in the inn’s front room the talk was of the new king, who could not agree with Parliament although he had been in the kingdom only four years. The men dining at table were mostly on the side of the king. He had the charm of novelty and the glamour of royalty. So what if Parliament complained of the Scots nobles who hung around the court, and so what if the king was extravagant? The king of England could afford a little luxury, surely to God! And besides, the man had a family to support, a brace of princes and princesses, how else should he live but well? One man at the table had suffered at the hands of the Court of Wards and claimed that no man’s fortune was safe from a king who would take orphans into his keeping and farm out their fortunes among his friends, but he gained little sympathy. The complaint was an old one, and the king was new and novelty was a pleasure.
John kept his head down over his mutton and kept his own counsel. When someone shouted for a toast to His Majesty, John rose to his feet as swiftly as any man. He was not disposed to gossip about the painted women and painted boys of court, and besides, no man who had worked for Robert Cecil would ever voice a dangerous political opinion in a public place.
‘I care nothing if we have no parliament!’ a man exclaimed. ‘What have they ever done for me? If King James, God bless him, can do without a parliament – why! then so can I!’
John thought of his master, who believed that a monarch could only rule by a combination of bluff and seduction to gain the consent of the people, and whose watchword was practice not principle, kept silent, touched the chestnuts in his waistcoat pocket for luck, took up his hat and went from the room to his solitary bed.
He arrived at Meopham at noon and nearly turned into the courtyard of the Days’ family farmhouse, before he recalled that he should find Elizabeth in her new cottage – in their new cottage. He rode back down the mud track of the village street and then skirted around to the back of the little house where there was a lean-to shed and a patch of ground for his horse. He took off its saddle and bridle and turned the animal into the field. It raised its head and whinnied at the strangeness of the place and he saw Elizabeth’s face at an upstairs window, looking out at the noise.
As he walked towards the little cottage’s back gate he heard her running down the wooden stairs and then the back door burst open and she was racing towards him. As she suddenly recollected her dignity, she skidded to an abrupt halt. ‘Oh! Mr Tradescant!’ she said. ‘I should have killed a chicken if I had known you were coming today.’
John stepped forward and took her hands and kissed her, formal as ever, on her forehead. ‘I did not know what time I should arrive,’ he said. ‘The roads were better than I thought they would be.’
‘Have you come from Theobalds?’
‘I left the day before yesterday’
‘And is everything well?’
‘It is.’ He glanced down at her and saw that her usually pale face was rosy and smiling. ‘You look very well … wife.’
She peeped up at him from under her severe white cap. ‘I am well,’ she said. ‘And very happy to see you. The days are rather long here.’
‘Why?’ John asked. ‘I should have thought you would have much to do in a house of your own at last?’
‘Because I am used to running a farmhouse,’ she said. ‘With care for the still room, and the laundry, and the mending, and the feeding of the family and all the farm workers, and the health of the staff, the herb garden and the kitchen garden too! Here all I have to look after is two bedrooms and a kitchen and parlour. I have not enough to do.’
‘Oh.’ John was genuinely surprised. ‘I had not thought.’ ‘But I have started on a garden,’ she said shyly. ‘I thought you might like it.’
She pointed to a level area of ground outside the back door. The ground was marked out with pegs and twines into a square shape containing the serpentine twists of a maze. ‘I was going to make it with chalk stones and flints in patterns of black and white,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anything tender will thrive because of the chickens.’
‘You can’t have chickens in a knot garden,’ John said decidedly.
She chuckled and John looked down and saw with surprise that rosy happy face again. ‘Well, we have to have chickens for their eggs and for your dinner,’ she said. ‘So you must think of a way that chickens can be kept out.’
John laughed. ‘At Theobalds I am plagued with deer!’ he said. ‘It seems very hard that in my own garden I shall still have pests to come and spoil my plants.’
‘Perhaps we could get another plot of land for the chickens,’ she suggested. ‘And fence this off so that you might grow whatever you wish.’
John glanced down at the overworked light brown soil and the nearby midden. ‘It is hardly the ideal place,’ he said.
At once he saw the colour and the happiness drain from her face. She looked weary. ‘Not after Theobalds Palace, I suppose.’
‘Elizabeth!’
