He walked inland north of the city, where there were great forests. John walked under the branches and remembered his hunt for Sir Robert Cecil’s trees and the long journeys with the heavily laden carts. Sometimes he saw red deer and roe deer, always he watched his feet for a new fern, a new flower.

He did not walk to the east – there was a foul ill-drained marsh on that side of the city, lonely with the cry of wading birds and treacherous with tracks and deceptive paths. It stank of mud and decay under the hot summer sunshine, and when the heat haze shimmered above it he could not tell where the water began and the land melted unreliably away. In the drier fields the red poppies nodded their heads. It reminded John too much of their destination. He hated the flicker of sunlight on mud and water now, it was the light of death, he thought. After he had walked once to Farlington marshes he never went that way again.

Buckingham did not come until the end of August, just as the captains and officers were talking of having to disband for the winter rather than throw bad money after good on an expedition which was clearly not going to depart. Another month and the weather would break, it could take days to get out of harbour in the autumn, and no fleet could risk being separated running before a storm. It would be too late, it was too late, surely the Lord Admiral would be bound to see that it was too late – and then he came, sunny, smiling, delightful, in his best coach from London, and took breakfast at Captain Mason’s house in the High Street, as blithe and merry as if that had not been the very house where he had washed his hands of the blood of his soldiers the last time he came back from Rhé.

The rumour that Buckingham had arrived in the city reached Tradescant as he fed the last of his hay to the cows. For a moment he shuddered as if someone had walked on his grave. It was both a premonition of death, and a flicker of desire. John shook his head at his own folly, brushed down his suit of clothes, put on his hat, and walked around to the High Street.

The house was crowded, the outer courtyard filled with officers waiting for news and the usual hangers-on and favour-seekers. One man put his hand on Tradescant’s sleeve as he pushed through.

‘He’s come to cancel the sailing, hasn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. I have not spoken with him.’

‘The captain of the Triumph says that they’ll need to re-victual and re-water before they sail. And there’s no money to pay the chandlers. We’ll have to delay until the spring.’

‘I don’t know,’ Tradescant replied. ‘I don’t know any more than you do.’