‘What have you seen?’ Sir Dudley asked. ‘I have spent all my time getting my goods unloaded and preparing for the journey to Moscow.’

‘It is mostly waste ground,’ Tradescant explained softly to him. ‘But when they clear a piece of land for farming, they are good farmers, they can lay their crops down into soil which is only just warm and get a harvest off it inside six weeks.’

Sir Dudley nodded.

‘But a poor country?’ he suggested.

‘Different,’ John judged. ‘Terrible ale, the worst taste I have ever had. But they have a drink called mead made with honey which is very good. They have no plane to work their wood, but what they can do with an axe and a knife is better than many an English carpenter. But the trees!’ He broke off.

‘Go on, then,’ Sir Dudley said with a smile. ‘Tell me about the trees.’

‘I have found four new sorts of fir trees that I have never seen before, the buds of the boughs growing so fresh and so bright that they are spotted like a dappled pony, the bright green against the dark.’

Sir Dudley nodded.

‘And a birch tree, a very big birch tree which they tell me they can tap for liquor and they make a drink from it. And they have a little tree for making hoops for barrels that they say is a cherry, but it was between the blossom and the fruit so I can’t be sure. I can’t believe there could be a cherry tree which could make hoops. But I have a cutting and a sapling which I will set to grow at home and see what it is. Its leaf is like a cherry. If you so much as bend a twig down to the ground it will grow where it is set, like a willow. That would be a wood worth growing in England, don’t you think?’

Sir Dudley had lost his indulgent smile and was looking thoughtful. ‘Indeed. And it must be strong to survive this climate. It would grow in England, wouldn’t it, John?’

Tradescant nodded. ‘And white, red and black currants, much bigger than our fruit, and roses – in one place I saw more than five acres of wild roses like a cinnamon rose. Hellebores, angelica, geranium, saxifrage, sorrel as tall as my son John at home – and a new sort of pink –’ John broke off for a moment, thinking how pleased his lord would have been to hear that he had found a new sort of pink. ‘A new pink,’ he said quietly. ‘With very fair jagged leaves.’

‘These are treasures,’ Sir Dudley said.