‘Catherine,’ he said. ‘You are too pretty for my peace of mind, I cannot go courting with you. And I dare not venture more …’
She hesitated. ‘We might venture together …’
He shook his head. ‘I have nothing but my wages, and you have no portion. We should do poorly, my little miss.’
Someone shouted for her from the kitchen table. She glanced behind her, chose to ignore them and stepped closer to him.
‘You’re paid a vast sum!’ she protested. ‘And Sir Robert trusts you. He gives you gold to buy his trees, and he is high in favour with the king. They say he is certain to take you to London to make his garden there …’
John hid his surprise. He had thought that she had been watching him and desiring him, as he, despite his caution, had been watching and wanting her. But this careful planning was not the voice of a besotted eighteen-year-old. ‘Who says this?’ he asked, carefully keeping his voice neutral. ‘Your uncle?’
She nodded. ‘He says you are set fair to be a great man, although you are only a gardener. He says that gardens are the fashion and that Mr Gerard and you are the very men. He says you could go as far as London. Perhaps even into the king’s service!’ She broke off, excited by the prospect.
John had disappointment like a sour taste in his mouth. ‘I might.’ He could not resist testing her liking for him. ‘Or I might prefer to stay in the country and try my hand at breeding flowers and trees. Would you come with me, to a little cottage, if I become a gardener in a small way, and husband a little plot?’
Involuntarily she stepped back. ‘Oh, no! I couldn’t bear anything mean! But surely, Mr Tradescant, that is not your wish?’
John shook his head. ‘I cannot say.’ He felt himself fumbling for a dignified retreat, conscious of the desire in his face, the heat in his blood, and the contradictory, sobering awareness that she had seen him as an opportunity for her ambition, and never looked at him with desire at all. ‘I could not promise to take you to London. I could not promise to take you anywhere. I could not promise wealth or success.’
She pouted her lower lip, like a child who has been disappointed. Tradescant put both his hands in the deep pockets of his coat so that he would not be able to put them around her yielding waist, and pull her to him for consolation and kisses.
‘Then you may fetch your own dinner!’ she cried shrilly and turned abruptly away from him. ‘And I’ll find a handsome young man to dine with. A Scots man with a place at court! There are many who would be glad to have me!’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ John said. ‘And I would too, but …’ She did not wait to hear his excuses, she flounced around and was gone.
A serving man pushed past him with a huge platter of fine white bread, another ran behind with flagons of wine clutched four in each hand. John turned from the noise of the kitchen area and went towards the great hall.
The king was seated, drinking red wine at the enormous hearthside. He was already vastly, deeply drunk. He was still filthy from the day’s hunting and the travel along the muddy roads and he had not washed. Indeed, they said that he never washed, but merely wiped his sore and blotchy hands gently on silk. The dirt beneath his fingernails had certainly been there since his triumphant arrival in England, and probably since childhood. Sitting beside him was a handsome young man dressed as richly as any prince but who was neither Prince Henry the older son and heir, nor Prince Charles the younger brother. As John waited at the back of the hall and watched, the king pulled the youth towards him and kissed him behind his ear, leaving a dribble of red wine along the pleats of his white ruff.
There was a roar of laughter at some joke and the king plunged his hand into the favourite’s lap and squeezed his padded codpiece. The man snatched up the hand and kissed it. There was high ribald laughter, from women as well as men, sharing the joke. No-one paused for a moment at the sight of the King of England and Scotland with his dirty hand thrust into the lap of a man.
John watched them as if they were curiosities from another country. The women were painted white from their large horsehair wigs to their half-naked breasts, their eyebrows plucked and shaped so their eyes seemed unnaturally wide, their lips coloured pink. Their gowns were cut low and square over their bulging breasts and their waists were nipped in tight by embroidered and jewel-encrusted stomachers. The colours of the silks and satins and velvet gowns glowed in the candlelight as if they were luminous.
The king was sprawled in his seat with half a dozen intimates around him, most of them already drunk. Behind them all the court drank flagon after flagon of rich wine, and flirted, and schemed and caroused, some inarticulate with drink, some incomprehensible with their broad Scots accents. One or two, with an eye to the English scrutiny, spoke quietly to each other in Scots.
There was to be a masque later representing Wisdom meeting Justice, and some of the court were already in their masquing clothes. Justice was dead drunk, slumped over the table, and one of the handmaidens of Wisdom was at the back of the hall, backed up against the wall, with one of the Scots nobles investigating the layers of her petticoats.
John, conscious of the great disadvantage of watching this scene stone-cold sober, took a cup from a passing servant and downed a great gulp of the very best wine. He thought briefly of the old queen’s court where there had been vanity and wealth indeed, but also the rigid discipline of the autocratic old woman who ruled that since she had denied herself pleasure, the rest of the court should be chaste. There had been parties everywhere she had gone, masques and balls and picnics, but all behaviour that fell under the scrutiny of that fierce gaze had been strictly constrained. John realised that the long carnival-like journey from Scotland to England must have been a revelation to the English courtiers and what he was seeing was the consequence of a rapid recognition that anything was now permitted.
The king emerged from a slobbering kiss. ‘We must have more music!’ he shouted.
In the gallery, the musicians who had been fighting to make themselves heard above the hubbub of the hall started another air.
‘Dance!’ the king exclaimed.
Half a dozen of the court formed two lines and started to dance, the king pulled the young man down to sit between his knees and caressed the dark ringlets of his hair. He bent down and kissed him full on the mouth. ‘My lovely boy,’ he said.
John felt the wine in his veins and in his head but feared that no wine would be strong enough to persuade him that this scene was joyful, or this king was gracious. Such thoughts were treason, and John was too loyal to think treason. He turned around and left the hall.
‘What do we have that is the most impressive?’ Sir Robert came upon John in the scented garden, a square internal court where John had grown jasmine, honeysuckle, and roses against the walls to soften their grim greyness. John was balanced on the top of a ladder, pruning the honeysuckle which had just finished flowering.
John turned to look at his master and took in at once the new lines of strain on his face. The first year of the new king’s reign had been no sinecure for his Secretary of State. Wealth and honour had been showered on Cecil and on his family and adherents; but wealth and honour had equally been poured on hundreds of others. The new king, born into a kingdom of bleak poverty, thought the coffers of England were bottomless. Only Cecil knew and appreciated that the wealth that Queen Elizabeth had hoarded so jealously was flowing out of the treasure room of the Tower quicker than he could hope to gather it back in.
‘Impressive?’