Virgin Earth by Philippa Gregory Page A

say Prince Charles is a sickly boy. D’you ever see him at Theobalds, John?”
    She glanced up to John, who had leaned out of the window and was thoughtfully weighing a flowerpot in his hand. Poking from the moist earth was a whippy slim stem crowned with a little hand of green leaves.
    “Oh! that eternal pot! Every day Elizabeth sighs over it as if it were worth its weight in gold! I told her! No twig in the world is worth that sort of attention! But I was asking you — John — d’you ever see Prince Charles at Theobalds? I heard he was sickly?”
    “He’s not strong,” John replied, putting the chestnut tree gently on the windowsill. “They say he is much better since he came from Scotland. But I rarely see him. The king does not keep his family by him. When he comes hunting, he comes with only his most intimate circle.”
    Gertrude leaned forward, avid for gossip. “And are they as bad as everyone says? I’ve heard that the king adores the Duke of Rochester, that he loads him with pearls, that the duke rules the king and the king rules the kingdom!”
    “I wouldn’t know,” John said unhelpfully. “I’m just the gardener.”
    “But you must see them!”
    John thought of the last visit of the king. He had come without his wife Anne, who now never traveled with him. She was completely replaced by his young men. John had seen him walking in the garden with his arm around the Duke of Rochester’s waist. They had sat together in the arbor and the king had rested his head on the duke’s shoulder, like a country girl mooning over a blacksmith. When they kissed, the court turned aside and pretended to be busy about its own concerns. No one pried, no one condemned. The young Duke of Rochester was the favorite of everyone who wanted to be the favorite of the king. A whole court was formed around his handsome lithe figure. A whole morality was lightly constructed around the king’s love for him that permitted any sort of display, any sort of drunkenness.
    At night the duke went openly to his bed in the king’s room. The king was said to be afraid of assassination and it soothed him to sleep with a companion, but there were loud groans of pleasure from the inner chamber and the repetitive squeaking of the royal bed.
    “They go out hunting; I weed the paths,” John said unhelpfully.
    “I hear the queen misses him and pines for him, and has become a papist for consolation…”
    John shrugged.
    “And what of the children, the royal princes and princesses?”
    John looked deliberately vague. He was disinclined to gossip and in any case he had seen more than enough of the royal princes and princesses. Princess Mary was only a baby and not yet at court but Prince Henry, the heir and the darling of the whole court, was an arrogant boy whose charm could be blown away in a moment’s rage. His sister, Elizabeth, had all the Tudor temper and all the Tudor hastiness, and poor little Prince Charles, the second surplus heir, the rickety-legged runt of the litter, ran behind his stronger, older, more attractive siblings all the day, breathless with his weak chest, stammering with his tied tongue, longing for them to turn and pay him attention.
    They never did. They were courted beloved spoiled children, the first children of four kingdoms, and they had no time for him. John would see them boating on the lake or riding across the park and never looking back as poor little Charles struggled to keep up.
    “I scarcely see Their Highnesses,” he said.
    “Oh, well!” Gertrude leaped to her feet in frustration. “Tell Elizabeth I called in to wish her well. I’m surprised she is not downstairs by now. Tell her that I said she should stir herself. And tell her that the baby should be called George David.”
    “No, I don’t think so,” John said in the same quiet tone of voice.
    “What?”
    “I will not tell her any of that. And you shall not tell her either.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    John smiled his easy smile.