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be chaste. There had been parties everywhere she had gone, masques and balls and picnics, but all behavior that fell under the scrutiny of that fierce gaze had been strictly constrained. John realized that the long carnival-like journey from Scotland to England must have been a revelation to the English courtiers and what he was seeing was the consequence of a rapid recognition that anything was now permitted.
    The king emerged from a slobbering kiss. “We must have more music!” he shouted.
    In the gallery, the musicians who had been fighting to make themselves heard above the hubbub of the hall started another air.
    “Dance!” the king exclaimed.
    Half a dozen of the court formed two lines and started to dance; the king pulled the young man down to sit between his knees and caressed the dark ringlets of his hair. He bent down and kissed him full on the mouth. “My lovely boy,” he said.
    John felt the wine in his veins and in his head but feared that no wine would be strong enough to persuade him that this scene was joyful, or this king was gracious. Such thoughts were treason, and John was too loyal to think treason. He turned around and left the hall.

July 1604

    “What do we have that is the most impressive?” Sir Robert came upon John in the scented garden, a square internal court where John had grown jasmine, honeysuckle and roses against the walls to soften their grim grayness. John was balanced on the top of a ladder, pruning the honeysuckle which had just finished flowering.
    John turned to look at his master and took in at once the new lines of strain on his face. The first year of the new king’s reign had been no sinecure for his Secretary of State. Wealth and honor had been showered on Cecil and on his family and adherents; but wealth and honor had equally been poured on hundreds of others. The new king, born into a kingdom of bleak poverty, thought the coffers of England were bottomless. Only Cecil knew and appreciated that the wealth that Queen Elizabeth had hoarded so jealously was flowing out of the treasure room of the Tower quicker than he could hope to gather it back in.
    “Impressive?” John asked. “An impressive flower?” His expression of complete bewilderment made his master suddenly laugh aloud.
    “God’s blood, John, I have not laughed for weeks. With this damned envoy from Spain at my heels all the time and the king slipping away to hunt at every moment and them always asking me, what will the king think? and I without an answer! Impressive. Yes. What do we grow that is impressive?”
    John considered for a moment. “I never think of plants as impressive. D’you mean rare, my lord? Or beautiful?”
    “Rare, strange, beautiful. It is for a gift. A gift which will make men stare. A gift which will make men wonder.”
    John nodded, slid down the ladder like a boy and turned from the garden at a brisk walk. At once he remembered who he was leading and slowed his pace.
    “Don’t humor me,” his lord snapped from a few paces behind. “I can keep up.”
    “I was slowing to think, my lord,” John said swiftly. “My trouble is that the main flowering season is over now we are in midsummer. If you had wanted something very grand a couple of months ago I could have given you some priceless tulips, or the great rose daffodils which were better this year than any other. But now…”
    “Nothing?” the earl demanded, scandalized. “Acres of garden and nothing to show me?”
    “Not nothing,” Tradescant protested, stung. “I have some roses in their second bloom which are as good as anything in the kingdom.”
    “Show me.”
    Tradescant led the way to the mount. It was as high as two houses, and the lane which led the way to the top was broad enough for a pony and a carriage. At the summit was a banqueting hall with a little table and chairs. Sometimes it would amuse the three Cecil children to dine at the top of the hill and look down on all that they owned, but Robert Cecil only