John felt a darkness within himself as if the shade of the limes had cast a deep green into his very blood, and a coldness which he thought must be fear. He had never known fear before in this bleak premonitory way. He understood now, for the first time, why the pressed men had whispered to him as he went through the ranks: ‘Ask him to send us home, Mr Tradescant, ask him to turn back.’ Now he felt as slavish as they, as unmanned as they.

The rider came slowly towards him and Tradescant put up his hand for the letter as if he were warding off a blow from a knife.

‘How did you know it was for you?’ the messenger asked, sliding from his horse’s back and loosening the girth.

‘I have been waiting for it since I heard he was returning to Rhé,’ John said.

‘Then you will be the only willing recruit,’ the man said cheerfully. ‘There were riots outside his house when the sailors heard he was taking them back there. His carriage is stoned every time he takes it out. They are saying that the expedition is cursed and that it will fall into a whirlpool which stretches down to Hell itself. They drink to his death in the ale houses, they pray for his downfall in the chapels.’

‘That’s enough,’ John said roughly. ‘Go and take your horse to the stable. I won’t hear the duke traduced on his own land by his own servant.’

The man shrugged and twitched the reins over his horse’s head. ‘I’ve left his service. I am on my way to my own home.’

‘You have work to go to?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’d rather beg from door to door than go with the duke to the Island of Rue. I’m not a fool. I know how it will be commanded, and how it will be paid, and what the risks will be.’