Earthly Joys

Summer 1618

Elizabeth had prevented John from uprooting the whole family and setting off for Virginia, but when he had an invitation to go venturing to Russia – of all places – and it came with the blessing of his master and a recommendation that he should go, there was little she could do to stop him. It was the king’s business at the top of it, so no man in the country could refuse. The king wanted a new trade route to China and thought that Sir Dudley Digges might find one by making an agreement with the Russians. A loan of English gold coaxed from the coffers of the Muscovy and East India Companies was supposed to help.

Sir Dudley was a firm friend of Lord Wootton who wanted new plants for his garden. Sir Dudley said he needed a useful man and a seasoned traveler, not a gentleman who would be too proud to work, and not some dolt of a workingman who would be of no use in an emergency. Lord Wootton said he could have Tradescant, and Tradescant was as ready to leave as a bagged hare when the hounds are giving tongue.

All she could do was to help him pack his traveling bag, see that his traveling cloak was free of moth holes and tears and go down to the dockside at Gravesend with J – now a tall boy of ten years, and a King’s Scholar at Canterbury – at her side to wave farewell.

“And beware of the cold!” Elizabeth cautioned again.

“It may be Russia, but it is midsummer,” John replied. “Do you keep yourselves well, and J, mind your studies and care for your mother.”

The dockers scurried about, pushing past Elizabeth and her son. With a moment’s regret John saw that there were tears in her eyes. “I shall be back within three months,” he called over the widening gulf of water. “Perhaps earlier. Elizabeth! Please don’t fret!”

“Take care!” she called again but he could hardly hear her as the rowing barges took hold of the lines and the sailors cursed as they caught the ropes flung from the shore. Elizabeth and her son watched the boat move slowly downriver.

“I still don’t understand why he has to go,” J said, with the discontent of the schoolboy.

Elizabeth looked down at him. “Because he does his duty,” she said, with her natural loyalty to her husband. “Lord Wootton ordered him to go. It is unknown country; your father might find all sorts of treasures.”

“I think he just loves to travel,” J said resentfully. “And he doesn’t care that he leaves me behind.”

Elizabeth put her arm around her son’s unyielding shoulders. “When you are older you shall travel too. He will take you with him. Perhaps you will grow to be a great man like your father and be sent by lords on travels overseas.”

Baby J – her baby no longer – disengaged himself from her arm. “I shall go on my own account,” he said stiffly. “I shall not wait for someone to send me.”

The ship was in midriver now; the sails which had been slack when sheltered in the dock flapped like sheets on washing day. Elizabeth gripped her son’s arm.

“He is old to go venturing,” she said anxiously. “So far, and into such regions. What if he is taken ill? What if they get lost?”

“Not he,” J said with scorn. “But when I travel I shall go to the Americas. A boy at school has an uncle there and he has killed hundreds of savages and is planting a crop of tobacco. He says that a man who wants land can just cut it from the forests. And we have our land there. Father is going in the wrong direction; he should be going to our lands.”

Elizabeth’s eyes were still on the ship, which was picking up speed and moving smoothly downriver. “It’s never been owning land for him,” she said. “Never building a house or putting up a fence. It has always been discovering new things and making them grow. It has always been serving his lord.”

J pulled at her arm. “Can we have some dinner before I have to go back?”

Elizabeth patted his hand absently. “When he’s gone,” she said. “I want to see the ship out of port.”

J pulled away and went to the waterside. The river was sucking gently at the green stones. In the middle of the water, unseen by the boy, a beggar’s corpse rolled and turned over. The harvest had failed again and there was starvation in the streets of London.

In a moment Elizabeth joined him. Her eyelids were red but her smile was cheerful.

“There!” she said. “And now your father gave me half a crown to buy you an enormous dinner before we take the wagon home.”

John watched from the deck of the ship as his wife and son grew smaller and smaller, and then he could no longer pick them out at all. The sense of loss he felt as the land fell away was mingled with a leaping sense of freedom and excitement as the ship moved easily and faster and the waves grew greater. The voyage was to take them northward, hugging the coast of England, and then eastward, across the North Sea to the high ice-bound coast of Norway, and then onward to Russia.

Tradescant was as much on deck as any of the ship’s watch, and it was he who first spotted a great fleet of Dutch fishing ships taking cod and summer herring just south of Newcastle.

They weighed anchor at Newcastle and Tradescant went ashore to buy provisions for the journey. “Take my purse,” Sir Dudley offered. “And see if you can get some meat and some fish, John. My belly is as empty as a Jew’s charity box. I’ve been sick every day since we left London.”

John nodded and went ashore and marketed as carefully as Elizabeth might. He bought fresh salmon and fresh and salted meats, and by noising Sir Dudley’s name and mission much around Newcastle he was able to lead the Lord Mayor himself on a visit to the ship. And the Lord Mayor brought a barrel of salted salmon as a timely present for his lordship. When the ship was provisioned again they set out to cross the North Sea but the wind veered to the northwest and started to rise before they were more than a day out of port, skimming the white tops off the gray waves which grew steeper and more frequent.

Sir Dudley Digges was sick as a dog from the moment the wind veered, and many of his companions stayed below too, groaning and vomiting and calling on the captain to return to shore before they died of seasickness. John, rocking easily to the movement of the boat, stood in the prow and watched the waves come rolling from the horizon and the ship rise up and then fall down, rise up and fall down, again and again. One night, when Sir Dudley’s own manservant was ill, John sat at his bedside, and held his head as he vomited helplessly into the bowl.

“There,” said John gently.

“Good God,” Sir Dudley groaned. “I feel sick unto death. I have never felt worse in all my life.”

“You’ll survive,” John said with rough kindliness. “It never lasts longer than a few days.”

“Hold me,” Sir Dudley commanded. “I could weep like a girl for misery.”

Gently John raised the nobleman off the narrow bunk and let his head rest on John’s shoulder. Sir Dudley turned his face to John’s neck and drew in his warmth and strength. John tightened his grip and felt the racked body in his arms relax and slide into sleep. For an hour and more he knelt beside the bunk holding the man in his arms, trying to cushion him from the ceaseless rolling and crashing of the ship. Only when Sir Dudley was deeply, fast asleep, did John draw his numbed arm away and lay the man back down on his bed. For a moment he hesitated, looking down into that pale face, then he bent low and kissed him gently on the forehead, as if he were kissing Baby J and blessing his sleep, and then he went out.

As they drew farther north the wind wheeled around and became more steady but Sir Dudley could keep down no food. The little ship was halfway between Scotland and Norway when the captain came to Sir Dudley, who was wrapped in a thick cloak and seated on the deck for the air.

“We can go back or forward as you wish,” the captain said. “I don’t want your death on my conscience, my lord. You’re no seafarer. Perhaps we’d best head for home.”

Sir Dudley glanced at Tradescant, one arm slung casually around the bowsprit, looking out to sea.

“What d’you think, John?” he asked. His voice was still faint.

Tradescant glanced back and then drew closer.

“Shall we go back or press on?”

John hesitated. “You can hardly be sicker than you were,” he said.

“That’s what I fear!” the captain interrupted.

John smiled. “You must be seasoned now, my lord. And the weather is fair. I say we should press on.”

“Tradescant says press on,” Sir Dudley remarked to the captain.

“But what d’you say, my lord?” the captain asked. “It was you who was begging me to turn back at the height of the storm.”

Sir Dudley laughed, a thin thread of sound. “Don’t remind me! I say press on, too. Tradescant is right. We have our sea legs now, we might as well go forward as back.”

The captain shook his head but went back to the wheel and held the ship’s course.

Their luck was in. The weather turned surprisingly fair, the men became accustomed to the motion of the ship and even Sir Dudley came out of his cabin and strode about the deck, his pace rocking. They had been nearly three weeks at sea and slowly, the skies around them changed. It was like entering another world, where the laws of day and night had been destroyed. John could read a page of writing at midnight, and the sun never sank down but only rested on the horizon in a perpetual sunset which never led to dusk. A school of grampus whales came alongside and a flock of tiny birds rested in the rigging, exhausted by their long flight over the icy waters. John walked up and down the length of the ship all day and most of the bright night, feeling oddly unemployed with hours of daylight and nothing to grow.

Then a thick fog came rolling over the sea, and the daylight counted for nothing. The sun disappeared behind it and there was neither night nor day but a perpetual pale grayness. Sir Dudley took to his chamber again and summoned one man after another to play at dice with him. John found himself curiously lost in the half-light. He could sleep or wake as he wished, but he never knew when he woke whether it was day or night.

Despite Tradescant’s watching, it was a sailor who first called “land ahoy!,” spotting through the rolling fog the dark outline of the coast of the North Cape of Lapland.

Sir Dudley came up on deck, huddled in his thick cape. “What can you see, John?”

John pointed to the dark mass of land which was growing whiter as they grew closer. “More like a snowdrift than land,” he said. “Bitterly cold.”

The two Englishmen stood side by side as their ship drew closer to the strange land. A man-of-war detached itself from the shadow of some cliffs and sailed toward them.

“Trouble?” Sir Dudley asked quietly.

“I’ll ask the captain,” John said. “You go below, my lord. I’ll bring you news the moment I have it. Get your pistols primed, just in case.”

Sir Dudley nodded and went back to his cabin as John made his way the few steps to the captain’s cabin and knocked on the door.

“What is it?”

“A man-of-war, coming this way, flying the Denmark flag.”

The captain nodded, pulled on his cape, and came out of his tiny cabin. “They’ll only want passes,” he said. “Sir Dudley’s name is permission enough for them.”

He went briskly to the side of the boat, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed. “Ahoy there! This is Captain Gilbert, an English sea captain on a voyage of embassy, carrying Sir Dudley Digges and the Russian ambassador. What do you want with us?”

There was a silence. “Perhaps they don’t speak English?” John suggested.

“Then they damned well should do so,” Gilbert snapped. “Before trying to delay honest Englishmen going about their business.”

“Ahoy, Captain Gilbert,” the reply came slowly, muffled by the fog. “We require your passes and permits for sailing in our waters.”

“Ahoy,” Gilbert shouted irritably. “Our passes and permits are packed away for the voyage and besides, we need none. On board is Sir Dudley Digges and traveling with him is the Russian ambassador, homeward bound. You won’t want to trouble the noblemen, I suppose?”

There was a longer silence as the Danish captain decided whether or not the troubling of the gentlemen was worth the possible embarrassment, and then decided it was not.

“You can pass freely,” he bellowed back.

“Thank you for nothing,” Gilbert muttered. “I thank you,” he shouted. “Do you have any provision we can buy?”

“I’ll send a boat over,” came the reply, half-muffled by the fog.

Tradescant stepped swiftly down the companionway and tapped on the door to Sir Dudley’s cabin.

“It’s me, all’s well,” he said quickly.

“Shall I come out?”

“If you wish,” John said and went back to the rail and watched with Captain Gilbert as a rowing boat, like a Dutch scuts, came out of the mist.

“Anything worth having?” Sir Dudley asked, from behind Tradescant.

The men waited. The little boat came alongside and threw up a rope. “What’ve you got?” Captain Gilbert shouted.

The two men on board simply shook their heads. They understood no English but they held up a basket of salted salmon. Sir Dudley groaned, “Not salmon again!,” but he held up two silver shillings for them to see.

They shook their heads and held up a spread hand.

“They mean five,” Tradescant remarked.

“They can add then, even if they can’t speak a civilized language,” the captain noted.

Sir Dudley reached into his purse and held out four silver shillings.

The men spoke briefly one to another and then nodded. Sir Dudley tossed the coins down into the boat and Tradescant caught the rope the sailors threw to him. He hauled in the basket of salmon and presented it to Sir Dudley.

“Oh, wonderful,” Sir Dudley said ungratefully. “I know, let’s have it with dry biscuit for a change.”

Tradescant grinned.

The rest of the voyage they hugged the coastline and watched the landscape change from the steady unyielding white of snow to a russet dry brown, and then slowly to a green.

“Almost like England in a hard winter,” Tradescant remarked to Captain Gilbert.

“Nothing like,” Gilbert said crossly. “Because half the year it’s under snow and half the year it’s under fog.”

Tradescant nodded and retreated to his vantage point at the bowsprit. Now there was more and more for him to see as the coastline unrolled before the rocking prow. On land John could see the people of the country, who startled him at first with their appearance of having no necks, but heads which grew directly from their shoulders.

“It can’t be,” he said stoutly to himself, and shaded his eyes from the sun to see better. As the people ran down to the beach, shouting and waving to the passing ship, and the ship drew a little closer to shore to avoid a midriver sandbank, John could see that they were wearing thick cloaks of skins over their heads and shoulders, giving them the illusion of a hooded misshapen head.

“God be praised,” John said devoutly. “For a moment I thought we were among strange countries indeed, and that all the travelers’ tales I had heard were coming true.”

The people on the shore held up their bows and arrows and spread a deerskin for John to see. John waved back; the ship was too far out to make any bargaining a possibility, though he would dearly have loved to examine the bows and arrows.

The ship anchored at sunset, Captain Gilbert declaring that he was more afraid of sandbars in an unknown river than all the sailing he ever did across the North Sea.

“Can I have the boat take me on shore?” Tradescant asked.

The captain scowled. “Mr. Tradescant, surely you can see all you need from here?”

John smiled engagingly at him. “I need to gather plants and rarities for my Lord Wootton,” he said. “I’ll be back before dusk.”

“Don’t come to me with an arrow up your arse,” the captain said coarsely.

John bowed and slipped away before he could change his mind.

A young sailor rowed him to the shore. “Can I wait by the boat?” he asked, his eyes round in his pale face. “They say there are terrible people on this shore. They call them the Sammoyets.”

“Don’t go without me,” John said. “The captain is far more of a terror than the Sammoyets, I promise you. And he will kill you for sure if you maroon me here.”

The lad managed a weak smile. “I’ll wait,” he promised. “Don’t be too long.”

John slung a satchel over his shoulder and took a little trowel. In the pockets of his breeches he carried a sharp knife for taking cuttings. He had decided against carrying a musket. He did not want the trouble of keeping the fuse alight, and he thought he was as likely to shoot his own foot off in a moment of abstraction as confront an enemy.

“You won’t be too long, will you?” the lad asked again.

John patted his shoulder. “As soon as I have found something worth bringing home I will come straight back,” he promised. “Ten minutes at the most.”

He walked up from the shelving beach and at once plunged into the deep forest. Huge trees, a new fir tree that he had never seen before, interlaced their boughs above his head and made a twilight world which was shadowy green and sharply cold. Underfoot there were thick cushions, as big as bolsters, of fresh damp moss. John knelt before them, like a knight before the Holy Grail, and patted them with loving hands before he could bring himself to dig in his trowel and take a clump to stuff in his satchel.

There were shrubs he had never seen before, many in flower, white star-shaped flowers, and some tinged with pink. He walked on and came to a bush of whorts, with an unusual red flower. John brought out his little knife and took cuttings, wrapped them in more of the damp moss and laid them carefully in his satchel. A few steps more and he was in a clearing. Where the sunlight poured in there were bushes forming fruit like an English hedge mercury except that they were a brighter red and with three sharply shaped leaves at the head of the twig, and every leaf bearing a berry inside it. In the darker places, beneath the trees, John saw the gleaming blossom of hellebores, thickly growing and carpeting the forest floor.

There was an explosion of noise from the trees above his head and John instinctively ducked, fearing attack. It was half a dozen birds, a new species to John, big pheasant-sized birds in white with green bodies and slate-blue tails. John clasped his hands together in frustration, longing for a musket so he could have shot one for the skin, but they were gone with a clatter of wings and there was no one there for John to compare notes with, and wonder if he could possibly have seen aright.

He dug and snipped like a squirrel preparing for winter until, from the distance, he heard a faint voice calling his name and looked up, realizing that it was growing dark and that he had promised the lad that he would be little more than ten minutes – and that was more than an hour ago.

John trotted down the path back to the boat and the shivering lad.

“What is it?” he asked. “Cold or terror?”

“Neither!” the lad said stoutly, but as soon as he had the boat pushed off and rowed back to the ship he scampered up the ladder at the side and swore that he would never take Mr. Tradescant anywhere again, whatever the captain said.

He did not need to risk a charge of mutiny. The next day the captain waited for the fullness of the tide to save them from the dangers of being grounded on sandbanks, and the ship landed at Archangel. The ship’s company were able to go ashore to eat the oat bread and cheese and drink the Russian beer. And the gentlemen traveling with Sir Dudley unloaded their goods and moved into houses on the quayside. The company were particularly scathing about the houses – which were wooden cabins – and about the bread, which was made in different shapes, some rolls no bigger than a single mouthful.

John waylaid the Russian ambassador and was given permission to hire a local boat and set sail around the islands in the river channel. He took a purse of gold with him and bought every rarity he could find for his lord’s collection, and took cuttings and roots and seeds from every strange plant he saw. At every island John went ashore, his eyes on his boots and his little trowel in his hand. And at every place he came back to the boat with his satchel bulging with cuttings and plants which had never before been seen in England.

“You are a conquistador,” Sir Dudley remarked when Tradescant arrived back at the Archangel quay and had his barrels of plants set in damp earth unloaded on the quayside. “This is a treasure for those who love to make a garden.”

John, filthy and smelling strongly of fish, which was all he had eaten for many days, grinned and came stiffly up the quayside steps.

“What have you seen?” Sir Dudley asked. “I have spent all my time getting my goods unloaded and preparing for the journey to Moscow.”

“It is mostly waste ground,” Tradescant explained softly to him. “But when they clear a piece of land for farming, they are good farmers; they can lay their crops down into soil which is only just warm and get a harvest off it inside six weeks.”

Sir Dudley nodded.

“But a poor country?” he suggested.

“Different,” John judged. “Terrible ale, the worst taste I have ever had. But they have a drink called mead made with honey which is very good. They have no plane to work their wood, but what they can do with an axe and a knife is better than many an English carpenter. But the trees!” He broke off.

“Go on, then,” Sir Dudley said with a smile. “Tell me about the trees.”

“I have found four new sorts of fir trees that I have never seen before, the buds of the boughs growing so fresh and so bright that they are spotted like a dappled pony, the bright green against the dark.”

Sir Dudley nodded.

“And a birch tree, a very big birch tree which they tell me they can tap for liquor and they make a drink from it. And they have a little tree for making hoops for barrels that they say is a cherry, but it was between the blossom and the fruit so I can’t be sure. I can’t believe there could be a cherry tree which could make hoops. But I have a cutting and a sapling which I will set to grow at home and see what it is. Its leaf is like a cherry. If you so much as bend a twig down to the ground it will grow where it is set, like a willow. That would be a wood worth growing in England, don’t you think?”

Sir Dudley had lost his indulgent smile and was looking thoughtful. “Indeed. And it must be strong to survive this climate. It would grow in England, wouldn’t it, John?”

Tradescant nodded. “And white, red and black currants, much bigger than our fruit, and roses – in one place I saw more than five acres of wild roses like a cinnamon rose. Hellebores, angelica, geranium, saxifrage, sorrel as tall as my son John at home – and a new sort of pink-” John broke off for a moment, thinking how pleased his lord would have been to hear that he had found a new sort of pink. “A new pink,” he said quietly. “With very fair jagged leaves.”

“These are treasures,” Sir Dudley said.

“And there are plants which could yield medicines,” Tradescant told him. “A fruit like an amber strawberry which prevents scurvy, and I was told of a tree which grows at the Volga River which they call God’s tree. It sounds like fennel but they say it will cure many sicknesses. You might see it, my lord. You might take a cutting if you see it.”

“Come with me, John,” Sir Dudley replied. “Come and take your own cuttings. You’ve been here such a little time and found such novelties. Come with me to Moscow and you can collect your plants all the way.”

For a moment he thought the man would say yes. John’s face lit up at the prospect of the adventure and the thought of the riches he would see.

Then he shook his head and laughed at his own eagerness. “I’m like a girl running after a fair,” he said. “I can think of nothing I would like more. But I have to go home. Lord Wootton expects me, and my wife and son.”

“His lordship comes first?”

John was recalled to his duty. “My lord must come before everything. Even my own desires.”

Sir Dudley dropped an arm carelessly around John’s shoulders, and they strolled together to his waiting horses. “I am sorry for it,” he said. “There’s no man I would rather have beside me, all the way to China.”

John nodded to hide his emotion. “I wish I could, my lord.” He looked down the wagon train of the strong Tartar horses, tacked up with deep traveling saddles.

“All the way to China, you say?”

“Think what you would find-” Sir Dudley whispered temptingly.

John shook his head but his hand was on the stirrup leather. “I cannot,” he said.

Sir Dudley smiled at him. “Then safe homeward journey,” he said. “And if I find anything very rare or strange I will cut it and send it to you, and I will make a note of where I found it so that you can make the journey yourself one day. For you are a traveler, John, not a stay-at-home. I can see it in your eyes.”

John grinned, shaking his head, and made himself release his grip on the stirrup, and made himself step back from Sir Dudley’s horse. He forced himself to watch, and not run after, as the whole cavalcade of them turned from the quayside to set off on the track toward Moscow and the East.

“Godspeed,” John called. “And good fortune at the court of the Russian king.”

“God send you safe home,” Sir Dudley replied. “And when I get home you can name me as your friend, Tradescant. I shall not forget your care of me when I was sick.”

John watched them till the dust from the last of the train was gone, till the dust had blown across the gray sky, until the sound of the harness bells and the beat of the hooves was silent.

That night they rocked at anchor, and on the next tide they loaded the last of their goods and cast off with Tradescant’s cuttings in boxes on the deck and his trees loosely lashed to the mast, and his heart in his seaboots.

Elizabeth was watering the chestnut tree in its great box on the morning that John returned. The earth in the rest of the garden was dry and parched. It had been a bad year for the harvest, wet in the early months and scorching in July. The wheat crop had failed and the barley was little better. There would be hunger in the cities and in the poorer villages the price of flour would rise beyond the pockets of the poor. But through sun or rain the little chestnut sapling had thrived. Elizabeth had made it a little shelter of thatched straw to keep off the strongest sun, and watered it without fail on the dry days.

“Now there’s a pretty sight!” John said, coming up behind her.

Elizabeth jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to see him. “Praise God,” she said steadily, and paused for a moment, her eyes closed, to give thanks.

John, impatient with her piety, pulled her close to him and held her tight.

“Are you safe?” she asked. “Was it a good voyage? Are you well?”

“Safe and well and with boxes full of treasures.”

Elizabeth knew her husband too well to imagine that he was talking of Russian gold. “What did you find?”

“A Muscovy rose – bigger and sweeter than any I have seen before. A cherry tree with wood you can weave like a willow, which roots by bending its twigs into the ground, like a willow. Some new pinks with jagged leaves. I could have loaded the whole boat with white hellebores which grew so thick on one island that you could see nothing else, a new purple cranesbill, a great sorrel plant-” He broke off. “A cart is following me. And I bought some rarities too for Lord Wootton’s collection: Russian boots and strange shoes for walking on the snow and rare stockings.”

“And you are safe, and you were well?”

John sat down on the garden bench and drew Elizabeth onto his lap. “Safe as a summer garden, and I was well all the time, not even seasick. And now tell me your news,” he said. “Is J well?”

“Praise the Lord, yes.”

“And all your family? No plague in Kent?”

Elizabeth dipped her head in that familiar gesture which meant that she was swiftly praying. “None, thank God. Is there sickness in London?”

“I passed swiftly through to avoid the risk.”

“And are you home now, John? Home for good?”

She saw his roguish smile but she did not respond to it. “John?” she repeated gravely.

“There is a ship which I will take passage on, but it does not go for a year or two,” he assured her. “An expedition to the Mediterranean against the pirates, and I may have a place on a supply pinnace!”

She did not return his smile.

“Think of what I might find!” John said persuasively. “Think of what they grow in those hot places and what I might bring back. I should make my fortune for sure!”

Elizabeth folded her underlip.

“It will not be for a year or so,” he said placatingly. “And it is all uncertain as yet.”

“You will always travel whenever you can,” Elizabeth replied bitterly. “A man your age should be staying home. I thought we would settle here, away from the courts of great lords; I thought you would be happy here.”

“I am happy here, and it is not ever that I want to leave you…” John protested as she got up from his lap and went to one side, gently stroking the leaf of the chestnut. “But I have to obey, Elizabeth – if my lord says I am to go, I have to go. And I must seek plants if I have the chance of them. It is to the glory of God to show men the wealth He has given us, Elizabeth. And a trip to the Mediterranean could bring back great things. Flowers and trees, but also herbs. Maybe a cure for the plague? That would be godly work!”

She did not smile at his overt appeal to her piety. “It would be godly work to stay home and serve your lord at home,” she said firmly. “And you are getting old, John. You should not be sailing out at your age. You are not a seaman, you are a gardener. You should be at home in your garden.”

Gently he drew her back to him. “Don’t be angry with me,” he said softly. “I have only just got home. Smile for me, Lizzie, and see: I have brought you a present.”

From deep in the pocket of his coat he brought a small pine cone. “A new tree,” he said. “A beautiful fir tree. Will you nurse it up for me, Elizabeth? And keep it as well as you have kept our chestnut? I love you as much now as I did when I gave you the chestnut.”

Elizabeth took it but her face remained grave. “John, you are nearing fifty years old,” she said. “It is time for you to stay home.”

He kissed the warm nape of her neck, slightly salt beneath his lips. Elizabeth sighed a little at the pleasure of his touch, and sat still. In the apple tree above their heads a wood pigeon cooed seductively.

“The next voyage shall be my last,” he promised. “I will go to the Mediterranean on the Mercury and then I shall come home with orange trees and olive trees and all manner of spices and grow them quietly in my garden with you.”

When J learned that his father was to go to the Mediterranean he insisted that he go too, but John refused. J went quite pale with anger. “I am old enough to come with you now,” J insisted.

“I want you to continue at school,” John said.

“What’s the use of that!” J exclaimed passionately. “You never went to school!”

“And I felt the lack of it,” John pointed out. “I want you to read and write in Latin as well as English. I want you to be brought up as a gentleman.”

“I won’t need that; I shall be a planter in Virginia. Captain Argall said that the last thing the new plantation needs is gentlemen. He said the plantation needs hardworking men, not scholars.”

Elizabeth looked up at the mention of Argall’s name and compressed her lips.

“He may be right,” John said. “But I was counting on you to help me with my business, before you leave for Virginia.”

J, who was in full flight, checked at that. “Help you?”

“All the plants these days are given new names, Latin names. When the King of France’s gardeners, the Robins, write to me and send me cuttings, they send them with their Latin names. I was hoping you would learn to read and write Latin so you could help me.”

“I shall work with you?”

“Of course,” John said simply. “What else?”

J hesitated. “So you’ll stay home and teach me?”

“I shall go on this trip to the Mediterranean,” John stipulated. “Destroy Algiers, defeat the corsairs, collect all the Mediterranean plants and come home. And after that I shall stay home and we shall garden together.”

J nodded, accepting the compromise. Elizabeth found that she had been gripping her hands tightly together under the cover of her apron, and released her grasp. “Tradescant and son,” John said, pleased.

“Tradescant and son,” J replied.

“Of Canterbury,” Elizabeth added, and saw her husband smile.