‘A grand mount,’ John suggested. ‘Planted thickly with a winding allee to the summit. Perhaps cherry trees, espaliered into a hedge to make them thick and shady. I have some wonderful new cherry trees. Or even apple trees and pears. They take time to establish but you have a pretty effect with blossom in spring, and at the end of summer it is very rich to walk under boughs heavy with fruit. We could thread them through with roses and eglantine, which would climb and hang their blooms down through the leaves. You could row out to your island and wander among roses and fruit.’

‘And where would you put the knot gardens?’ Buckingham demanded. ‘Beyond the lake?’

John shook his head. ‘Near to the house,’ he said firmly. ‘But you could show me your favourite window-seat and I could plant a garden which leads the eyes outwards, into the garden, a little maze for your eye to follow, in stone and with small pale-leafed plants, and herbs to aid your meditations.’

‘And an orchard with a covered walk all around it, and turf benches in every corner. I must have an orchard! Great fruiting trees which bow low to the ground. Where can we get quick-growing fruit trees?’

‘We can buy saplings. But it will take time,’ John warned him.

‘But I want it now,’ Buckingham insisted. ‘There must surely be trees which will grow swiftly, or trees we can buy full-grown? I want it at once!’

John shook his head. ‘You may command every man in England,’ he said gently. ‘But you cannot make a garden grow at once, my lord. You will have to learn patience.’

A shadow crossed Buckingham’s face, a dark flicker of frustration. ‘For God’s sake!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is as bad as the Spanish! Is everything I desire to go so slow that by the time it comes to me I am sick of waiting? Am I to grow old and tired before my desires can be met? Do I have to die before my plans come to fruit?’

John said nothing, only stood still, like a little oak tree, while the storm of Buckingham’s temper blew itself out. Buckingham paused as he took the measure of John Tradescant, and he threw back his curly dark head and laughed.

‘You will be my conscience, John!’ he exclaimed. ‘You will be the keeper of my soul. You gardened for Cecil, didn’t you? And they all say that when you wanted Cecil, you had to go out into the garden and find him; and half the time he would be sitting on a bench in his knot garden and talking to his man.’

John nodded gravely.

‘They say he was the greatest Secretary of State that the country has ever had, and that your gardens were his greatest solace and his joy.’

Tradescant bowed and looked away, so that his new mercurial master should not see that he was moved.