‘And what is the flower like?’ John asked.
‘Like a geranium,’ the merchant said. ‘And the leaves are sweet, like geranium leaves. But much finer, a quite extraordinary blossom.’
Cecil raised an eyebrow at John. John made a small shrug of his shoulders. They looked like the roots of a geranium but with neither leaf nor flower no-one could tell. They would have to be bought on trust. ‘Anything else?’ Cecil asked.
‘These.’ The merchant pulled a little hessian purse from the bottom of the box and opened it. Inside were fat green globes as large as a bantam’s egg with hard little spines all over.
‘A new chestnut,’ the merchant promised. Gently he prised open one of the shells, and spilled, into John’s cupped palm, a bold round handsome nut, dappled like a brown roan horse in light and dark brown, with a paler grey and brown circle at the top. John caressed the moist inside casing of the shell, turned the nut in the light to see the sheen on it. Bigger than a walnut, shinier than mahogany, it was a delightful nut, a great jewel of a nut, a brown warm pearl.
‘Where did you get these?’ John could not keep the quiver of excitement from his voice.
‘Turkey,’ the merchant said. ‘And I saw the tree that gave this fruit.’
‘Can you eat them?’ Cecil asked.
The man hesitated for that single half-moment which reveals a lie. ‘Surely,’ he said. ‘They are chestnuts, after all. And they are a powerful medicine. The man that sold them to me says they use them for curing broken-winded horses. They mend the lungs of horses, perhaps of men too.’
‘Is the leaf the same as our chestnut?’ John asked.
‘Bigger,’ the merchant replied. ‘And spreading. And the trees are massive round trees, better-shaped than ours, like a great ball on a stick. And when they are in flower they are covered all over with huge white cones of flowers, as big as both your hands. White blossoms and the tongues of the flowers are speckled with pink.’ He thought for a moment. The price would depend on his description. ‘Like apple blossom,’ he said at once. ‘White and pink together like apple blossom, but in a great shape like a cone.’
John fought to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘Great trees? What height?’
The man waved his hand. ‘As big as a full-grown oak. Not tall like a fir but broad and tall, like a big oak tree.’
‘And the wood?’ Cecil interrupted, thinking of the nation’s insatiable demand for timber for shipbuilding.
‘Fine wood,’ the merchant said quickly. Too quickly for truth, Cecil thought. ‘Though I did not see it myself, they tell me the wood is very fine.’
‘How many?’ John asked, his eyes on the box, but he kept the chestnut in his hand. ‘How many do you have?’
‘Only half a dozen,’ the merchant said seductively. ‘Just six. And that’s the only six in the whole of the kingdom, the only six outside Turkey. The only six in Christendom. For you to own, Your Grace; for you to grow, Mr Tradescant.’
‘Anything else?’ Cecil asked nonchalantly.
‘These seeds,’ the merchant said, and showed a little purse filled with hard black seeds. ‘Of rare flowers.’
‘What flowers?’ John asked. The nut was warm and smooth and comforting in his hand. He thought he could almost feel the life enfolded inside it, like a new-laid egg.
‘Rare beauties, like lilies,’ the merchant said.
Tradescant looked doubtful. Lilies grew from corms, not little seeds. He suddenly doubted the merchant, and his fingers closed tightly. At least the beauty and promise of the nut could not lie.
‘How much?’ Cecil asked. ‘For the roots, the seeds and the chestnuts?’
The merchant looked quickly from the gardener to the master, and read, correctly, the speechless desire in Tradescant’s face. ‘Fifty pounds.’ Cecil choked. ‘For a handful of wood?’
The merchant smiled and nodded at Tradescant. Cecil followed his gaze and was forced to laugh. John was turning the chestnut over and over in his hand, unaware of the two men. He looked besotted.
‘It is a treasure beyond price to a gardener,’ the merchant said. ‘A new tree. A completely new tree, which blooms like a rose and stands as broad as an oak.’
‘Eight pounds now, and eight pounds if the tree grows,’ the earl said gruffly. ‘You may come to me next spring and if it has rooted I shall pay you the remainder. If it is a fine tree in five years with flowers like apple blossoms and broad as an oak I shall pay another eight then.’
‘Perhaps nine,’ the merchant said thoughtfully.
‘No more than nine,’ the earl said, and got to his feet. ‘Nine now, and nine if it roots, and nine in five years if it is good.’
‘I shall take these to Theobalds at once,’ John said, emerging from his trance. He still had hold of the chestnut. The merchant put the roots and seeds back in the box and handed them to him.
‘I thought you were newly wed?’ Cecil commented.
‘A wife can wait,’ John said firmly. ‘But I should like to see these well-planted and well-nursed. And the chestnut tree nuts should be in warm damp soil at once, unless –’ He broke off and looked at the merchant. ‘Is it cold there, in winter?’
The man shrugged. ‘I have only been in the spring.’
Cecil laughed shortly and led the way down the gangplank to the quayside.
John followed him, and then called back up to the ship as the thought struck him. ‘Do the leaves turn colour in autumn? Or does it keep fresh and green all the year round?’
‘How should I know?’ the merchant called back. ‘I’ve never been there in autumn. Why does it matter to you? You’ll see soon enough when it grows.’
‘So that I know when to plant, of course!’ John shouted irritably. ‘If it grows all the year around then I can plant any time, best in the summer. But if it loses its leaves and its seeds in winter then it should be planted into cold ground!’
The merchant shrugged his shoulders and laughed. ‘I will ask when I go back! And if they do not take then I will get you some more! At double the price next time!’
Cecil had walked away limping on the cobbles. Tradescant ran to catch up with him.
‘You really must learn a little cunning, Tradescant,’ Cecil complained. ‘If you are to travel and to buy for me you must learn to barter and hide your desire. Your face is as open as a book of receipts.’
‘I am sorry, my lord. But I couldn’t be indifferent.’
‘They will cheat you from Flushing to Dresden.’
‘I will learn world-weariness,’ John promised. ‘I shall cultivate it. I shall be as weary as a Scotsman with a small bribe.’
Cecil laughed shortly. ‘Do you come in my boat across the river? I’m going to Whitehall.’
John looked down the quayside to where the earl’s boat was gently rocking, the oars upright in salute, the bright colours of the liveried boatman reflected in the clean water of the Thames.
‘I’ll take a horse to Theobalds,’ he said. ‘And get these planted up at once.’
‘And then go back to your wife,’ Cecil called up to the quayside as he went down the steps to his waiting boat. ‘Take a few days to spend with her, Tradescant. You must dig your own garden too, you know.’
At Meopham, Elizabeth