Free Virgin Earth by Philippa Gregory Page B

on to flower in great profusion…”
    “And what is the flower like?” John asked.
    “Like a geranium,” the merchant said. “And the leaves are sweet, like geranium leaves. But much finer, a quite extraordinary blossom.”
    Cecil raised an eyebrow at John. John made a small shrug of his shoulders. They looked like the roots of a geranium but with neither leaf nor flower no one could tell. They would have to be bought on trust. “Anything else?” Cecil asked.
    “These.” The merchant pulled a little hessian purse from the bottom of the box and opened it. Inside were fat green globes as large as a bantam’s egg with hard little spines all over.
    “A new chestnut,” the merchant promised. Gently he prised open one of the shells, and spilled, into John’s cupped palm, a bold round handsome nut, dappled like a brown roan horse in light and dark brown, with a paler gray and brown circle at the top. John caressed the moist inside casing of the shell, turned the nut in the light to see the sheen on it. Bigger than a walnut, shinier than mahogany, it was a delightful nut, a great jewel of a nut, a brown warm pearl.
    “Where did you get these?” John could not keep the quiver of excitement from his voice.
    “Turkey,” the merchant said. “And I saw the tree that gave this fruit.”
    “Can you eat them?” Cecil asked.
    The man hesitated for that single half-moment which reveals a lie. “Surely,” he said. “They are chestnuts, after all. And they are a powerful medicine. The man that sold them to me says they use them for curing broken-winded horses. They mend the lungs of horses, perhaps of men too.”
    “Is the leaf the same as our chestnut?” John asked.
    “Bigger,” the merchant replied. “And spreading. And the trees are massive round trees, better-shaped than ours, like a great ball on a stick. And when they are in flower they are covered all over with huge white cones of flowers, as big as both your hands. White blossoms and the tongues of the flowers are speckled with pink.” He thought for a moment. The price would depend on his description. “Like apple blossom,” he said at once. “White and pink together like apple blossom, but in a great shape like a cone.”
    John fought to keep the excitement from his voice. “Great trees? What height?”
    The man waved his hand. “As big as a full-grown oak. Not tall like a fir but broad and tall, like a big oak tree.”
    “And the wood?” Cecil interrupted, thinking of the nation’s insatiable demand for timber for shipbuilding.
    “Fine wood,” the merchant said quickly. Too quickly for truth, Cecil thought. “Though I did not see it myself, they tell me the wood is very fine.”
    “How many?” John asked, his eyes on the box, but he kept the chestnut in his hand. “How many do you have?”
    “Only half a dozen,” the merchant said seductively. “Just six. And that’s the only six in the whole of the kingdom, the only six outside Turkey. The only six in Christendom. For you to own, Your Grace; for you to grow, Mr. Tradescant.”
    “Anything else?” Cecil asked nonchalantly.
    “These seeds,” the merchant said, and showed a little purse filled with hard black seeds. “Of rare flowers.”
    “What flowers?” John asked. The nut was warm and smooth and comforting in his hand. He thought he could almost feel the life enfolded inside it, like a new-laid egg.
    “Rare beauties, like lilies,” the merchant said.
    Tradescant looked doubtful. Lilies grew from corms, not little seeds. He suddenly doubted the merchant, and his fingers closed tightly. At least the beauty and promise of the nut could not lie.
    “How much?” Cecil asked. “For the roots, the seeds and the chestnuts?”
    The merchant looked quickly from the gardener to the master, and read, correctly, the speechless desire in Tradescant’s face. “Fifty pounds.”
    Cecil choked. “For a handful of wood?”
    The merchant smiled and nodded at Tradescant. Cecil followed his