Earthly Joys

Winter 1632-3

Jane was not well. She was tired all the time and disliked her food. Christmas came and went and she was no better. When Frances came running in to her parents on the morning of the twelfth day after Christmas for her presents she found her mother pale and sickly.

“Should she see a doctor?” Elizabeth asked J.

“She wants to go to her mother to stay for a few days,” J said. “I’ll take her tomorrow in the wagon.”

“Leave Frances here,” John said across the breakfast table. “You’ll stay with your grandfather, won’t you, Frances?”

He could see little of her but a head of golden brown curls and two interrogative curves of eyebrows. She bobbed upward. “Yes,” she said firmly. “And we’ll make things.”

“What sort of things?” John asked cautiously.

“Big things,” she said ominously.

“I’ll stay overnight with the Hurtes and come back the next day,” J said. “I’ll call in at the docks in case there’s anything of interest to be had on my way home.”

“I’ll put up a hamper for you to take,” Elizabeth said, rising from the table. “Come and help me, Frances, you can go into the storeroom and choose a jar of plums for Grandma Hurte.”

John did not go down to his orchard before Jane left. He waited by the wagon in the yard until he had seen her safely on the seat with her bags stowed. “You will come back soon,” he said, in sudden anxiety.

She was pale but she still managed her familiar smile. “No, I shall stay with my mother and tell her you beat me and overwork me.”

“You’re very dear to me,” John said gruffly. “I don’t like to see you so pale.”

She leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “I think I may be sick for a good reason,” she said. “A very good reason. I’ve not told John yet, so mind you hush.”

It took him a moment to realize what she meant and then he stepped back and beamed up at her. “Sir John Tradescant of Lambeth?”

“Sir John Tradescant himself,” she said.