Earthly Joys

December 1636

They had a quiet Christmastide at the Ark that year. Jane had always been the one to decorate the house with holly and ivy and hang a kissing bunch of mistletoe over the front door. Neither J nor his father had the heart for it. They bought the children their presents for the twelve days of Christmas, gingerbread, candied fruit, a new gown for Frances and a book, beautifully engraved, for Johnny, but there was a terrible sense of going through the motions of present-giving and celebration. There was a dreadful hollowness at the heart of it where before there had been the unthinking spontaneity of joy.

On Christmas night the two men sat either side of the fire drinking mulled wine and cracking nuts. Frances, allowed to sit up late for the occasion, was between them, seated on a footstool, gazing unblinkingly into the flames, sipping hot milk as slowly as she dared to prolong the moment.

“D’you think Mama wishes she was here?” she asked her grandfather. John looked quickly over to J in time to catch his grimace of pain.

“I am sure she does. But she is happy with the angels in heaven,” he said.

“D’you think she looks down on us and sees that I am being a good girl?”

“Yes,” John said gruffly.

“D’you think she would do a miracle, a little miracle, if I asked her?”

“What miracle d’you want, Frances?” John asked.

“I want the king to understand that he should make me Father’s apprentice,” Frances said, putting her hand on John’s knee and looking earnestly up at him. “I thought Mama could do a small miracle and open the king’s eyes to me. To my solid worth.”

John patted her hand. “You can always do your apprenticeship here,” he said. “You don’t have to serve a master to be a great gardener. You don’t need the king’s recognition. I shall teach you the skills you need here, myself. I am aware of your solid worth, Frances.”

“And I can garden here after you are gone? So that there is always a Tradescant’s Ark at Lambeth?”

John dropped his hand on her warm head and held it there, like a blessing. “A hundred years from now there will be a little bit of a Tradescant in every garden in England,” he predicted. “The plants we have grown are already in bloom in every garden in the country. I’ve never sought for greater fame than that and I have been blessed with seeing it. But I should like to think of you gardening here after I am gone. Frances Tradescant, the gardener.”