John considered for a moment. ‘I never think of plants as impressive. D’you mean rare, my lord? Or beautiful?’
‘Rare, strange, beautiful. It is for a gift. A gift which will make men stare. A gift which will make men wonder.’
John nodded, slid down the ladder like a boy, and turned from the garden at a brisk walk. At once he remembered who he was leading and slowed his pace.
‘Don’t humour me,’ his lord snapped from a few paces behind. ‘I can keep up.’
‘I was slowing to think, my lord,’ John said swiftly. ‘My trouble is that the main flowering season is over now we are in midsummer. If you had wanted something very grand a couple of months ago I could have given you some priceless tulips, or the great rose daffodils which were better this year than any other. But now …’
‘Nothing?’ the earl demanded, scandalised. ‘Acres of garden and nothing to show me?’
‘Not nothing,’ Tradescant protested, stung. ‘I have some roses in their second bloom which are as good as anything in the kingdom.’
‘Show me.’
Tradescant led the way to the mount. It was as high as two houses, and the lane which led the way to the top was broad enough for a pony and a carriage. At the summit was a banqueting hall with a little table and chairs. Sometimes it would amuse the three Cecil children to dine at the top of the hill and look down on all that they owned; but Robert Cecil only rarely came here. The climb was too steep for him and he did not like to be seen riding while his children walked.
The hedges of the lane which wound to the summit were planted with all the varieties of English roses that Tradescant could find in the neighbouring counties: cream, peach, pink, white. Every year he grafted and re-grafted new stock on to old stems to try to make a new colour, a new shape or a new scent.
‘They tell me this is sweet,’ he said, proffering a rose striped white and scarlet. ‘A Rosamund rose, but with a perfume.’
His lord bent and sniffed. ‘How can you breed for scent when you cannot smell them yourself?’ he asked.
John shrugged. ‘I ask people if they smell good or better than other roses. But it is hard to judge. They always tell me the scent in terms of another scent. And since I have never had a nose which could smell then it’s no help to me. They say “lemony” as if I would know what a lemon smells like. They say “honey” and that is no help either, for I think of one as sour and one as sweet.’
Robert Cecil nodded. He was not the man to pity a disability. ‘Well, it smells good to me,’ he said. ‘Could I have great boughs of it by August?’
John Tradescant hesitated. A less faithful servant would have said ‘yes’ and then disappointed his master at the final moment. A better courtier would have guided him away to something else. John simply shook his head. ‘I thought you wanted it for today or tomorrow. I cannot give you roses in August, my lord. Nobody can.’
Cecil turned away and started to limp back to the house. ‘Come with me,’ he said shortly over his sloped shoulder. Tradescant fell in beside him and Cecil leaned on his arm. Tradescant took the burden of that light weight and felt himself soften with pity for the man who had all the responsibility for running three, no, four kingdoms with the new addition of Scotland, and yet none of the real power.
‘It’s for the Spanish,’ Cecil told him in an undertone. ‘This gift that I need. What do people in the country think of the peace with Spain?’
‘They mistrust it, I think,’ John said. ‘We have been at war with Spain for so long, and avoided defeat so narrowly. It’s impossible to think of them as friends the very next day.’
‘I cannot let us stay at war in Europe. We will be ruined if we go on pouring men and gold into the United Provinces, into France. And Spain is no threat any more. I must have a peace.’
‘As long as they don’t come here,’ John said hesitantly. ‘No-one cares what happens in Europe, my lord. Ordinary people care only for their own homes, for their own county. Half the people here at Cheshunt or Waltham Cross care only that there are no Spaniards in Surrey.’
‘No Jesuits,’ Cecil said, naming the greatest fear.
John nodded. ‘God preserve us. We none of us want to see burnings in the market place again.’
Cecil looked into the face of his gardener. ‘You’re a good man,’ he said shortly. ‘I learn more from you in a walk from my mount to my orangery than I do from a nation full of spies.’
The two men paused. The orangery at Theobalds was open at every doorway, the double white-painted doors allowing the warm summer sunshine to flood into the rooms. Tender saplings and whips of oranges, lemons, and vines were still kept inside – Tradescant was a notoriously cautious man. But the mature fruit trees were out in the fine weather, housed in great barrels with carrying loops at four points so they could adorn the three central courts of Theobalds in the summer, and bring a touch of the exotic to this most English of palaces. Long before the first hint of frost Tradescant would have them carried back into the orangery and the fires lit in the grates to keep them safe through the English winter.
‘I suppose oranges are not impressive,’ he said. ‘Not to Spaniards who live in orange groves.’
Cecil was about to agree but he hesitated. ‘How many oranges could we muster?’
John thought of the three mature trees, one placed at the centre of each court. ‘Would you strip the trees of all their fruit?’ he asked.
Cecil nodded.
John swallowed at the thought of the sacrifice. ‘A barrel of fruit. By August, perhaps two barrels.’
Cecil slapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s it!’ he cried. ‘The whole point is that we show them that they have nothing which we need. We give them great boughs of oranges and that shows them that anything they have, we can have too. That we are not the supplicants in this business but the men of power. That we have all of England and orange orchards too.’
‘Boughs?’ John asked, going to the central point. ‘You don’t mean to pick the fruit?’
Cecil shook his head. ‘It is a gift for the king to give to the Spanish ambassador. It has to look wonderful. A barrel of oranges could have been bought on the quayside, but a great branch of a tree with the fruit on it – they will see that it has been fresh-cut by the quality of the leaves. It has to be boughs laden with fruit.’
John, thinking of the savage hacking of his beautiful trees, suppressed an exclamation of pain. ‘Certainly, my lord,’ he said.
Cecil, understanding at once, hugged Tradescant around the shoulders and planted a hearty kiss on his cheek. ‘John, I have had men lay down their lives for me with an easier heart. Forgive me, but I need a grand gesture for the king. And your oranges are the sacrificial lamb.’
John reluctantly chuckled. ‘I’ll wait till I hear then, my lord. And I’ll cut the fruit and send it up to London as soon as you order.’
‘Bring it yourself,’ Cecil directed him. ‘I want no mistake, and you of all men will guard it as if it were your firstborn son.’
John’s oranges were the centre of the feast to celebrate the peace. King James and Prince Henry held bibles and swore before the nobles and the Spanish ambassadors that the Treaty of London would install a solemn and lasting peace. In a glorious ceremony de Velasco toasted the king from an agate cup set with diamonds