‘And what sort of man am I?’ Buckingham asked. ‘You’ve worked for a king’s adviser before now. You worked for Cecil and you work for me. What d’you think of me? What d’you think of me, compared with him?’

Tradescant leaned forward and pulled gently on the oars, and the boat slid smoothly through the water. ‘I think you are still very young,’ he said gently. ‘And impatient, as a young man is impatient. I think you are ambitious – and no-one can tell how high you will rise or how long you will stay at the height of your power. I think that you may have won your place at court on your beauty but you have kept it by your wit. And since you are both beautiful and witty you will keep it still.’

Buckingham laughed and leaned back on the cushions again. ‘Both beautiful and witty!’ he exclaimed.

John looked at the tumbled dark hair and the long dark lashes sweeping the smooth cheeks. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘You are my lord, and I never thought to find a lord that I could follow heart and soul ever again.’

‘Do you love me as you loved Lord Cecil?’ Buckingham asked him, suddenly alert, with a sly searching look from under his eyelashes.

John, innocent in his heart, smiled at his master. ‘Yes.’

‘I shall keep you by me, as he kept you by him,’ Buckingham said, planning their future. ‘And men will see that if you can love me, as you loved him, then I cannot be less than him. They will make the comparison and think of me as another Cecil.’

‘Maybe,’ Tradescant replied. ‘Or maybe they will think I am a man with a sense to garden in only the best gardens. It would be a man overproud of his sight to boast that he could see into men’s hearts, my lord. You’d do better to follow your own counsel than wonder how it might look to others – in my view.’

March 1625

John was working late. The duke had ordered a watercourse to flow from one terrace to another and it was his fancy that in each terrace there should be a different breed of fish, in descending orders of colours, so that the gold – the king of fish – should only swim in the topmost pool near the house. The garden around it was to be all gold too, and it was to face the royal rooms that King James used on his visits. Tradescant had sent out messages to every ship in the Royal Navy commanding them to bring him the seeds or roots of any yellow or gold flowers they saw anywhere in the world. The Duke of Buckingham ordered the highest admirals in the Navy to go ashore and look at flowers that John Tradescant might have his pick of yellow flower seeds.