Earthly Joys

May 1612

Cecil was dying in the great curtained bed in the master chamber of his new fine house. Outside his door, the household staff pretended to go about their work in a hushed silence, hoping to hear the muttered colloquy of the doctors. Some wanted to send him to Bath to take the waters – his last chance of health. Some were for leaving him in his bed to rest. Sometimes, when his door opened, the servants could hear the harsh laboring of his breath and see him propped up on the rich embroidered pillows, the brightness of their spring colors a mockery of his yellowing skin.

John Tradescant, weeping like a woman, was deep digging in the vegetable garden, digging without much purpose, in a frenzy of activity as if his energy and effort could put heart in the earth, could put the heart back into his master.

At midday he abruptly left his vegetable bed and marched determinedly through the three courts on the west of the house, up the allée, past the mount where the paths were rimmed with yellow primroses, out into the woodland side of the garden. The ground was a sea of blue as if the whole wood was deep in flood. John kneeled and picked bluebells with steady concentration and did not stop until he had an armful. Then he went to the house, careless of the mud dropping off his boots, up the stairs where his likeness in wood still stepped blithely out of the newel post, up to the master bedroom. A housemaid stopped him at the door to the anteroom. He would not be allowed further in.

“Take these, and show them to him,” he said.

She hesitated. Flowers in the house were for strewing on the floor, or for a posy to wear at the belt ot hatband. “What would he want with them?” she demanded. “What would a dying man want with bluebells?”

“He’d like to see them,” John urged her. “I know he would. He likes bluebells.”

“I’ll have to give them to Thomas,” she said. “I’m not allowed in, anyway.”

“Then give them to Thomas,” John pressed her. “What harm can it do? And I know it would please him.”

She was stubborn. “I don’t see why.”

John gestured helplessly. “Because when a man is going into darkness it helps him to know that he leaves some light behind!” he exclaimed. “Because when a man is facing his own winter it is good to know that there will still be springs and summers. Because he is dying… and when he sees the bluebells he will know that I am still here, outside, and that I picked him some flowers. He will know that I am still here, just outside, digging in his garden. He will know that I am here, still digging for him.”

The look she turned on him was pure incomprehension. “But Mr. Tradescant! Why should that help him?”

John grabbed her in his frustration and pushed her toward the anteroom. “A man would understand,” he growled. “Women are too flighty. A man would understand that he will be comforted to know that I am still out there. That even when he is gone, his garden will still be there. That his mulberry tree will flower this year, that his chestnut saplings are growing straight, that the new velvet double anemone is thriving, that his bluebells are blowing under the trees of his woods. Go! And get those bluebells into his hands, or I shall have words to say to you!”

He thrust her with such force that she went at a little run to Thomas, who was standing outside the bedroom door, waiting for the orders from his master that never came.

“Mr. Tradescant wants these taken in to his lordship,” she said, thrusting her armful of blossoms at him. Their slim whippy green stems oozed sap like the very juice of life. She wiped her hand on her apron. “He says they’re important.”

Thomas hesitated at the eccentric request.

“D’you know what he said? He said that women are too flighty to understand,” she sniffed resentfully. “Impertinence!”

Thomas’s sense of male importance was immediately stimulated. He took the flowers from her, turned at once to open the door and crept inside.

A doctor was at the foot of the bed, another at the window, and an old woman, part nurse, part layer-out, was at the fireside where a small fire of scented pine cones was crackling, pouring heat into the stuffy room.

Thomas came quietly forward. “Beg pardon,” he said hoarsely. “But his lordship’s gardener insisted he had these.”

The doctor turned irritably. “What? What? Oh, nonsense! Nonsense!”

“Nothing but folly and superstition,” said the doctor from the window. “And likely to spread noxious fumes.”

Thomas stood his ground. “It was Mr. Tradescant, sir. His Grace’s favorite. And he insisted, the maid said.”

Cecil turned his head a little. The dispute was instantly silenced. Cecil crooked a finger at Thomas.

The doctor waved him forward. “Quick. He wants them. But it won’t make a groat of difference.”

Awkwardly, Thomas stepped up to the bed. The aquiline face of the most powerful man in England was etched in sandstone and grooved by pain. He turned his dark eyes sightlessly toward the manservant. Thomas thrust the bluebells into the slack hands. They spilled onto the rich coverlet of the bed, blotting out the scarlet embroidery and the gold thread with blue, blue, nothing but sky blue.

“From John Tradescant,” Thomas said.

The light sweet scent of the bluebells poured like fresh water into the room, drowning the smell of fear and sickness. Their color shone like a blue flame in the dark chamber. The great lord looked down on the scattered flowers and inhaled their cold fresh perfume. They seemed to come from a world a hundred miles away from the overheated bedchamber, a clean spring world outside. He turned his head to the little window and his crumpled face stretched into a small smile. Though the casement was opened only the smallest crack, he could hear the thud of a spade into the flower bed beneath his window, loud as a faithful heartbeat, as John Tradescant and his master set about their different tasks: digging and dying.