Virgin Earth

Winter 1646, Barbados

John’s ship took the southerly route home and revictualed and took on cargo at Barbados. John, very conscious that he was bringing home a fortune only in seeds and roots that would take an unreliable year before they could be propagated and sold, strolled on the quayside and let it be known that he was prepared to execute errands for the wealthy planters for a small consideration. While the ship was loaded with barrels of sugar and rum John walked inland, past the sugar plantations where gangs of black men and women slaves were bent over the new plants, seeding and weeding the crop while white overseers lounged on their horses with long-tongued hunting whips ready to lash out. John found his way into the woods where the fields stopped and kept his eyes open for new plants.

It was returning from one of these walks, with a couple of seedlings damp in his pocket, that John met a man riding homeward on the road.

“I heard of you,” the man greeted him informally. “You’re Tradescant, the king’s gardener, aren’t you?”

John uncovered his head and made a little bow. “Yes, sir. And you?”

“Sir Henry Hants. A planter, these are my fields. I have a little garden of my own, you might like to have a look at some of my things.”

“Indeed I would,” John said eagerly.

“Oh, come for dinner then,” the man said. “Stay the night.”

He led the way along the lane toward a large white house, as grand as the queen’s manor at Wimbledon. John blinked at the opulence of the building, at the best wax candles set at every window so that the house twinkled like a beacon in the soft twilight, and then at the rush of black servants who came running when they heard the sound of the master’s horse.

Sir Henry dismounted and let the horse go, secure in the knowledge that two grooms would catch the reins, as he led the way indoors.

There was a terrace at the back of the house and Sir Henry led John through the gleaming hall where the white walls were laden with rich oil paintings, to where the last of the sun was shining on the terrace. A lady gestured languidly from a sofa. “My wife, Lady Hants,” Sir Henry said briefly. “Never gets up.”

John bowed and was rewarded by a faint wave.

“Now, let me show you my garden,” Sir Henry said eagerly.

John had been hoping for tropical rarities and was hard put not to show his disappointment. Sir Henry had poured wealth and labor into making a classic English garden in the most unlikely of circumstances. There was a smooth lawn, as good as the king’s bowling green at Oatlands. There was a perfect knot garden with low hedges of bay enclosing white stones. John, looking a little more closely, saw that they were not stones but the most exquisite white shining shells.

“Cowries,” Sir Henry said gloomily. “Cost me a fortune. But actually easier to get than proper English gravel.”

There was a flower garden, planted exclusively with English flowers and shaded with a thatched roof suspended from stakes at each corner. “Sun’s too hot for them otherwise,” Sir Henry complained. “And the ground’s too dry. I keep three boys watering almost constantly all day, and even then I can never grow more than a dozen daffodils every year.”

There was an orchard. John saw that the sun-loving fruits would do well in such a climate. “I can’t grow apples to taste like the ones in Kent.”

They came full circle back to the house. “You only plant English plants?” John asked carefully.

“Of course,” the man said briskly. “Why would I want these damn ugly savage flowers?”

“I have a great liking for new plants myself,” John remarked.

“You’re a fool,” the man said. “If you lived here you would find you were longing for the sight of a proper English wood and proper English flowers again. I fight and fight and fight against this soil and against the heat to grow a proper garden.”

John nodded neutrally. “I see that it takes a very great deal of labor,” he said.

His host nodded and mounted the terrace again. Without a word he put out his hand. At once the black woman presiding behind a great bowl of punch poured a glass, handed it to another woman who put it on a silver tray and bowed and presented it to Sir Henry. John was reminded of the silent, perfect service of the royal court and accepted a glass of his own with a word of thanks.

“Don’t thank them,” Sir Henry corrected him swiftly. “Don’t give one word of thanks for service in my house, if you please, sir. It has taken me years to knock some sense of obedience and decorum into them. I don’t want them thinking they’re doing me a favor by working for me.”

Dinner was a miserable affair of lavish food and the best wines but Lady Hants, half-reclining in her chair at one end of the table, said not one word for the whole of the meal, and her husband drank steadily and deeply of rum and water, becoming more gloomy and irascible with every glass.

One of the slaves among the half a dozen waiting at the table was wearing a strange headdress: a triangular plate bolted over her mouth with straps running from both sides and over her head to keep it in place, a great buckle at the back to keep it pressed tight against her mouth and a padlock to fasten the buckle. John found he could hardly drag his eyes away from the masklike appearance of the woman, the dark, tragic eyes, and then the sharply geometric shape on the mouth.

“What’s the matter with you?” Sir Henry asked irritably. “Oh! Are you looking at Rebecca? She’s been stealing food, haven’t you, Becky? Tasting it as she cooks, dirty bitch. So she’ll have nothing to eat at all for a couple of days, nothing in her mouth but what I put there.” He gave a shout of laughter and a wink to John at the sexual innuendo. “Are you sorry now that you tasted my soup, Becky?”

Silently the woman bowed her head.

“Good, good,” Sir Henry said, cheered by the somber grief of her silence, and waved for another glass of rum and water.

A woman slave escorted John to his bedroom and stood, as still as an obedient dog, at the doorway.

“You can go,” John said, careful not to thank her.

“Sir Henry say you can have me if you want,” she said in carefully spoken English.

John was taken aback. “Er – I don’t-”

“You want a man?”

“No!”

She dropped her dark eyes, a world of despair hidden by the downsweep of her lashes. “You want a child?”

“No!”

She waited. “What you want to do then?” she asked wearily, dreading some demand more vile than she had faced before.

“I want nothing!” John exclaimed. “Just to sleep.”

She bowed. “If he ask you – you tell him I said you can have me.”

“I’ll tell him you were very, er, generous,” John corrected himself. “Obedient.”

“Yes, sir,” she said dully. “I am obedient.”

In the morning Sir Henry was in a better temper. Over breakfast he asked John about his own garden and about the treasures of the Ark. “I could send you some things,” he said pleasantly. “Things I pick up here. If you like savage things.”

“I do,” John said. “I do indeed. And if there are any plants from England that you desire I could send them out to you. You could grow vines here very well, I would have thought.”

“Could you take a note of credit for me and buy some carpets for me?” Sir Henry asked. “I want some Turkey carpets for the hall.”

“I should be delighted to do so,” John said. “And anything else you require.”

“We’ll start with this,” Sir Henry said cautiously. “I’ll give you the note of credit and you can buy some carpets and some glass for me, and then I’ll send you a few hogsheads of sugar and you can see if you can obtain a better price for me than my normal agent. And then you can send me some more goods. Rarities are no use locked up in a cabinet, you know. They should be traded.”

John nodded. “I should be glad to do a little trading,” he said. “My father’s rarities have to stay together in the collection we have made. But if you shoot any strange birds I should be glad of their skins and their feathers.”

“I’ve got some trophies,” Sir Henry said without any great interest. “I could sell them to you.”

“I have no money until I am at home,” John said awkwardly.

“Note of credit,” Sir Henry said equably. “We all do it by notes of credit all the time. Just as well there are no damned thieving Jews to redeem the notes before the sugar crop is in, eh?”

By the time John sailed he had a new shrub, a most curious and delightful plant which the islanders called the tree of life because it acted like a living thing, shrinking away when touched. He had a couple of roots of the cabbage tree, and a dozen skins and feathers including a rather fine specimen of the West Indian kingfisher which Sir Henry donated for free. “Just do me some decent business, when you are in England,” he grumbled. “An honest agent in London is as rare as a virtuous woman. Which is to say, rare enough to put in your collection.”

“I shall be delighted,” John said politely and watched Sir Henry recede into the distance without any regret as the ship slipped her ropes and drifted away from the shore.