Virgin Earth by Philippa Gregory Read Free Book Online

might shower the host with honors or with favors, or with some of the new farmed-out taxes, so that a favorite might grow rich collecting a newly invented duty from some struggling industry; or the king might merely smile and pass on. Whether he paid for his board in privileges or took it with nothing more than a word of thanks, his courtiers had to provide him with the best of food, the best of drink, the best hunting they could manage and the best entertainment.
    They had learned their skills with Queen Elizabeth; no one could teach them anything about lavish hospitality, extravagant gifts and outright sycophancy. But King James demanded all this and more. His favorites too must be honored, and his days filled with unending sport, hunting hunting hunting, until gamekeepers were at a premium and no man dared cut down a tree in a forest which the king knew and loved. His evenings must be filled with a parade of pretty men and pretty women. No one refused him. No one even thought to refuse him. Anything the new king wanted he had to have.
    Even when he wanted Theobalds Palace itself.
    “I shall have to give it to him.” Sir Robert had left his palace as he often did to find Tradescant. The gardener was directing the garden lads at the entrance to the maze. A team of boys was being supplied with blunt knives and sent into the maze on their hands and knees to root up weeds in the gravel. A team of older men would go with them with little hatchets and knives to trim the yew hedging; they had already been lectured with passion and energy by John as to the care they must take to keep the top of the hedge even, and on no account, on pain of instant dismissal, were they to cut an unruly bough in such a way that it might leave a hole which would make a peephole from one path to another and spoil the game.
    John took one look at his master’s dark expression, abandoned the pruning gang and came to him.
    “My lord?”
    “He wants it. My house, and the gardens too. He wants it, and he’s promised me Hatfield House in return. I’ll have to give it to him, I suppose. I can’t refuse the king, can I?”
    John gave a little gasp of horror at the thought of losing Theobalds Palace. “The king wants this house? Our house?”
    Robert Cecil gave an unhappy shrug, beckoned to Tradescant and leaned on his shoulder as they walked. “Aye, I knew that you would feel it almost as much as me. I came to tell you before I told anyone else. I don’t know how I can bear to lose it. Built for me by my own father — the little islands and the rivers, and the fountains, and the bathing house… all this to be given away in exchange for that drab little place at Hatfield! A hard taskmaster, the new king, don’t you think, Tradescant?”
    John paused. “I don’t doubt you will get a better price than you might have had from any other monarch,” he said cautiously.
    The earl’s cunning courtier face crinkled into laughter. “Better than from the old queen, you mean? Good God! I should think so! There never was a woman like her for taking half your wealth and giving you nothing but a smile in return. King James has a freer hand for his favorites…” He broke off and turned back toward the house. “With all the favorites,” he muttered. “Especially if they’re Scots. Especially if they’re handsome young men.”
    They walked side by side together, the earl leaning heavily on John’s shoulder.
    “Are you in pain?” John asked.
    “I’m always in pain,” his master snapped. “I don’t think about it if I can help it.”
    John felt a sympathetic twinge in his own knees at the thought of his master’s twisted bones. “Doesn’t seem right,” he said with gruff sympathy. “That with all the striving and worry you have to suffer pain as well.”
    “I don’t look for justice,” said England’s foremost lawmaker. “Not in this world.”
    John nodded and kept his sympathy to himself. “When do we have to leave?”
    “When I have