‘I have a list of tenants, I have a list of rents, I have a list of expenditure. What no-one will tell me is how to make the one agree with the other.’

John paused for a moment to take stock of the man. ‘I am new in this post,’ he said cautiously. ‘I don’t seek to make your task any harder. I do need to buy his lordship trees and plants to stock his gardens and he ordered me to buy from his tenants and see that they deduct the cost from their rents.’

The steward took in Tradescant’s steadiness. ‘Aye,’ he said more quietly. ‘But the rents are already spent, signed away, or promised. They are not free for deductions.’

There was a brief silence. ‘What am I to do then?’ John asked pleasantly. ‘Shall I return to his lordship and tell him it cannot be done?’

‘Would you do that?’ the man enquired.

John smiled. ‘Surely. What else could I do?’

‘You don’t fear taking bad news to a new master, the greatest master in the land?’

‘I have worked for a great man before,’ John said. ‘And, good news or bad, I found the best way was to tell him simply what was amiss. If a man is fool enough to punish his messengers he’ll never get his messages.’

The steward cracked a laugh and held out his hand. ‘I am William Ward. And I am glad to meet you, Mr Tradescant.’

John took the handshake. ‘Have you been in his lordship’s service for long?’ he asked.

The steward nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And are his affairs in a bad way?’

‘He is the wealthiest man in the land,’ William Ward stated. ‘Newly married to an heiress and with the king’s own fortune at his disposal.’

‘Then –?’

‘And the most spendthrift. And the wildest. D’you know how he did his courting?’

John glanced at the closed door behind them and shook his head.

‘He caught the lady’s fancy – not surprising –’

John thought of that smile and the way the man threw back his head when he laughed. ‘Not surprising,’ he agreed.

‘But when he went to her father, the man declined. Again, not surprising.’

John thought of the rumours that Buckingham was the king’s man in ways that a sensible man did not question. ‘I don’t know,’ he said stoutly.

‘Not surprising to those of us who have seen the king on his visits here,’ the steward said bluntly. ‘So what does my lord do?’

Tradescant shook his head. ‘I have been away, and in Canterbury, we don’t hear gossip. I rarely listen to it, anyway.’