‘Oh, yes,’ John said. The pain in his belly seemed to have stretched out to his fingers and his toes, he felt numb in his legs and shoulders. If he did not start to walk home soon, he thought he would lie down on the cobbles and die. ‘Excuse me, I must go, my wife will be waiting for me.’

‘I must go too!’ Felton cried, remembering. ‘I have a wife waiting for me, thank God. I shall tell her to call me captain!’

He hefted his pack and strode off whistling. John looked down at his shoes and put one in front of the other, as if he had just learned to walk. At each step he thought he could hear Buckingham laugh and say: ‘I have given you leave. Don’t be importunate, John. Go to New Hall. Don’t offend me by asking for more.’

He had not thought how he would get to New Hall. He had been on such a crest of desire and happiness that he had thought he and the duke would ride side by side, the two of them together. Or perhaps they would have used the duke’s coach and horses and rocked along the badly made roads, and laughed when they had to stop for a loose wheel, or walked shoulder to shoulder up a hill to spare the horses.

But now he was trudging alone in stiff new walking boots. He had some money in his pocket, he could buy or hire a horse, or he could take a ride with any carter. But as the sun came slowly up – an English sun, he thought with a sudden pang of recognition – he found that he wanted to walk, walk like a poor man, walk slowly along the rutted road which led away from the port to London. He wanted to look at the changing blushing colours of the trees and the berries in the hedgerow and the grass seeds bobbing in the wind. He felt as if he had been in exile for a dozen years, he had dreamed of lanes like this, of a sun as warm and mild as this one, while they had been trapped on that island waiting for reinforcement, waiting for a decisive battle, waiting for victory, for glory.

At midday he knocked on the door of a small wayside farmhouse and asked if he could buy some dinner. The farmer’s wife gave him a trencher of bread and cheese and a flagon of ale to drink. Her hands were ingrained with dirt and there was dirt under her fingernails and in the thorn scratches.

‘You’re a gardener,’ Tradescant guessed.