‘Why d’you ask? Is there gossip that he does not?’
John shook his head. ‘I’ve heard none,’ he said. ‘But he’s not a lad who has sprung up from nowhere. He must have his own way of doing things. He’s a man grown; and he has his own kingdom. I was wondering if he would take your teaching, especially now that he will have his pick of advice. And it matters …’
He broke off and his master waited for him to finish.
‘When you have a lord or a king,’ John went on, choosing his words with caution, ‘you have to be sure that he knows what he’s doing. Because he’s going to be the one who decides what you do.’ He stopped, bent and whisked out the little yellow head of a groundsel plant. ‘Once you’re his man, you’re stuck with him,’ he said frankly. ‘He has to be a man of judgement, because if he gets it wrong then he is ruined; and you with him.’
Cecil waited in case there was more but John looked shyly down into his face. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to suggest that the king did not know what he has to do. I was thinking of us subjects.’
Sir Robert waved away the apology with one gesture of his long-fingered hand. They strolled together up the great avenue through the large formal knot garden towards the front terrace of the palace. It was done in the old style, and John had changed nothing here since his arrival as gardener. It had been laid out by Sir Robert’s father in the bleak elegance of the period. Sharply defined geometric patterns of box hedging enclosed different coloured gravels and stones. The beauty of the garden was best seen if you looked down on it, from the house. Then you could see that it was as complex and lovely as a series of neat diagrams of cropped hedging and stone. John had a private ambition to change the garden after the new fashion – to break up the regular square and rectangular beds and make all the separate beds one long whole, like an embroidered hem or scarf – a twisting pattern that went on and on, serpentined in and about itself. When his master was less absorbed with statecraft John was going to suggest melding the beds one into another.
Once he had persuaded Sir Robert to follow the new fashion for the knot garden he had an ambition to go yet further. He longed to take out the gravel from the enclosed shapes and plant the patterns with herbs, flowers and shrubs. He wanted to see the whole disciplined shape softened and changing every day with foliage and flowers which would bloom and wilt, grow freshly green, and then pale. He had a belief, as yet unexpressed, almost unformed, that there was something dead and hard about a garden of stone paths edged with box enclosing beds of gravel. Tradescant had a picture in his mind’s eye of plants spilling over the hedges, of the thick green of the box containing wildness, fertility, even colour. It was an image that drew on the hedgerow and roadside of the wild country of England and brought that richness into the garden and imposed order upon it.
‘I miss her,’ Sir Robert admitted.
John was recalled to his real duty – to be his master’s man heart and soul, to love what he loved, to think what he thought, to follow him to death without question if need be. The image of the creamy tossing heads of gypsy lace and moon daisies encased by hawthorn hedging in its first haze of spring green vanished at once.
‘She was a great queen,’ John volunteered.
Sir Robert’s face lightened. ‘She was,’ he said. ‘Everything I learned about statecraft, I learned from her. There never was a more cunning player. And she named him at the very end. So she did her duty, in her own way.’
‘You named him,’ John said dryly. ‘I heard that it was you that read the proclamation which named him as king while the others were still hopping between him and the other heirs like fleas between sleeping dogs.’
Cecil shot John his swift sly smile. ‘I have some small influence,’ he agreed. The two men reached the steps which led to the first terrace. Sir Robert leaned on John’s sturdy shoulder and John braced himself to take the slight weight.
‘He’ll not go wrong while I have the guiding of him,’ Sir Robert said thoughtfully. ‘And neither I, nor you, will be the losers. It takes a good deal of skill to survive from one reign to the next, Tradescant.’
John smiled. ‘Please God this king will see me out,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen a queen, the greatest queen that ever was; and now a new king. I don’t expect to see more.’
They reached the terrace and Sir Robert dropped his hand from John’s shoulder and shrugged. ‘Oh! You’re a young man still! You’ll see King James and then his son Prince Henry on the throne! I don’t doubt it!’
‘Amen to their safe succession,’ John Tradescant replied loyally. ‘Whether I see it or not.’
‘You’re a faithful man,’ Sir Robert remarked. ‘D’you never have any doubts, Tradescant?’
John looked quickly at his master to see if he was jesting; but Sir Robert was serious.
‘I made my choice of master when I came to you,’ John said baldly. ‘I promised then that you would have no more faithful servant than me. And I promise my loyalty to the queen, and now to her heir, twice every Sunday in church before God. I’m not a man who questions these things. I take my oath and that’s the end of it for me.’
Sir Robert nodded, reassured as always by Tradescant’s faith, as straight as an arrow to the target. ‘It’s the old way,’ he said, half to himself. ‘A chain of master and man leading to the very head of the kingdom. A chain from the lowest beggar to the highest lord and the king above him and God above him. Keeps the country tied up tight.’
‘I like men in their places,’ Tradescant agreed. ‘It’s like a garden. Things ordered in their right places, pruned into shape.’
‘No wild disorder? No tumbling vines?’ Sir Robert asked with a smile.
‘That’s not a garden, that’s outside,’ John said firmly. He looked down at the knot garden, the straight lines of the low clipped hedges, and behind them the sharply defined coloured stones, each part of the pattern in its right place, each shape building up the design which could not even be seen clearly by the workers on the ground who weeded the gravel. To understand the symmetry of the garden you had to be gentry – looking down from the windows of the house.
‘My job is to make order for the master’s pleasure,’ Tradescant said.
Sir Robert touched his shoulder. ‘Mine too.’
They walked together along the terrace to the next great flight of steps. ‘All ready for His Majesty?’ Sir Robert asked, knowing what the answer would be.
‘All prepared.’
Tradescant waited to see if his master would speak more and then he bowed, and fell back, and watched Sir Robert limp onward, towards the grand house, to supervise the preparation for the visit of the Lord’s Anointed, England’s new, glorious king.
They had news of the arrival long before the first outriders clattered in through the great gates. Half the country had turned out to see what sort of man the new king might be. The whole royal court moved with the king – the baggage trains behind his carriages carried everything from silver and gold cutlery to pictures for his walls. One hundred and fifty English noblemen had attached themselves
