They sat in silence for long moments, Elizabeth chafing his hands as if he were cold from sickness and she had to warm him. She thought that there was nothing that she could say which would take that dark painful look from his face. The sun was setting slowly in the deep red of autumn and a cool wind began to blow.

‘The chestnut tree flowered this summer,’ she said inconsequently. ‘As you left, d’you remember you asked me to look to it, for you?’

He did not raise his gaze from his boots. ‘The sweet chestnuts?’

‘No. Your sapling. The one you gave me. The chestnut from Turkey. It bore a strange beautiful blossom, like huge pine cones, a white blossom of many flowers with tiny scarlet freckles inside them, and smelling sweet.’

‘Eh? My sapling flowered? At last?’

‘As you left. And it is setting seed,’ she said. ‘You will have nuts off it this year, John. You can see the seed cases already. They are very strange, I had forgotten how strange. They are fat and fleshy and with a few thick spikes. But they are holding to the tree and swelling with the ripeness of the nut inside.’

He straightened up and looked at her. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I think so,’ she said with loving cunning. ‘But you had better see for yourself, you know there is no-one who has your skill with trees.’

‘Perhaps I should take a look.’ He got to his feet and winced as his boots rubbed his sore feet, but he stepped out down the garden path to where his tree was kept in its great carrying case at the bottom of the garden near the kitchen garden wall.

‘I wish we had named it for you,’ she said, suddenly struck by how little they owned, now that he was a vassal and had lost everything. ‘I wish we had called them “Tradescantia” when Lord Cecil first gave them to you to grow. You were the first to grow them, you had the right.’

John shrugged his shoulders as if it did not matter what they were named as long as they grew tall and strong. ‘The name does not matter. Rights do not matter. But to grow a new tree, to put a new tree into the gardens of England – now that is to live forever.’

J did not come home till dusk and he did not know his father was returned until he came in through the front door and saw the Portsmouth-bought walking boots side by side inside the doorway. He hesitated, but it was too late. John, sitting at the well-worn table, had already seen him.

J was dressed in a suit of grey broadcloth, white linen bands at his throat, plain without lace. On his head was a tall plain black hat, unadorned by feather or badge. Over his shoulder was his warm coat of black.