Earthly Joys

November 1612

John was working in Lord Wootton’s garden, hands among cold clods of earth, when he heard the bell tolling. On and on it went, a funeral bell. Then he heard the rumble of cannon fire. He stood up, brushed the mud on his breeches, and reached for his coat where it was hooked over his spade.

“Something’s happened,” he said shortly to the garden lad who was working beside him.

“Shall I run into town and bring you the news?” the boy asked eagerly.

“No,” John said firmly. “You shall stay and work here while I run into town and find out the news. And if you are not here when I get back it will be the worst for you.”

“Yes, Mr. Tradescant,” the boy said sulkily.

The bell was ever more insistent.

“What does it mean?”

“I’ll find out,” John said and strode out of the garden toward the cathedral.

People were gathered in gossiping circles all the way down the road but John went on until he reached the cathedral steps and saw a face he recognized – the headmaster of the school.

“Doctor Phillips,” he exclaimed. “What are they ringing for?”

The man turned at the sound of his name and John saw, with a shock, that the man’s face was wet with tears.

“Good God! What is it? It’s not an invasion? Not Spain?”

“It’s Prince Henry,” the man said simply. “Our blessed prince. We have lost him.”

For a moment John could not take in the words. “Prince Henry?”

“Dead.”

John shook his head. “But he’s so strong, he’s always so well-”

“Dead of fever.”

John’s hand went to his forehead to cross himself, in the old superstitious forbidden sign. He caught his hand back and said instead, “Poor boy, God save us, poor boy.”

“I forgot, you would have seen him often.”

“Not often,” John said, his habitual caution asserting itself.

“He was a blessed prince, was he not? Handsome and learned and godly?”

John thought of Prince Henry’s handsome tyrannical disposition, of his casual cruelty to his dark little brother, of his easy love of his sister Elizabeth, of his royal confidence, some would say arrogance. “He was a boy born to rule,” John said cleverly.

“God save Prince Charles,” Doctor Phillips said stoutly.

John realized that the little eleven-year-old lame boy who ran after his brother and could never get nor keep his father’s attention would now be the next king – if he lived.

“God save him indeed,” he repeated.

“And if we lose him,” Doctor Phillips said in an undertone, “then it’s another woman on the throne, the Princess Elizabeth, and God knows what danger that would bring us now.”

“God save him,” John repeated. “God save Prince Charles.”

“And what is he like?” Doctor Phillips asked. “Prince Charles? What sort of a king will he make?”

John thought of the tongue-tied boy who had to be taught to walk straight, who struggled so hard to keep up with the older two, who knew himself never to be beloved like them, never to be handsome like them. He wondered how a child who knew himself to be second best and a poor second at that would be when he was a man and was first in the land. Would he take the people’s love and let it warm him, fill the emptiness in that ugly little boy’s heart? Or would he be forever mistrustful, forever doubting, always wanting to seem braver, stronger, more handsome than he was?

“He’ll be a fine king,” he said, thinking that his master would not be there to teach this king, and how the boy would learn the Tudor guile and the Tudor charm with only his father to advise him and the court filled with men picked for their looks and their bawdiness and not for their skills. “God will guide him,” Tradescant said hopefully, thinking that no one else would.