The funeral was brief and unceremonious, and, like so much of his life, was a show. They buried an empty coffin and said the sacred words over a hollow box. The duke had been interred in secret, in darkness, the night before his funeral. The king’s new advisers had warned him that there could be no guarantee that a mob would not rise up against the Favourite’s funeral. The people of London were not satisfied with his death, they might tear the coffin open, disembowel his perfect body, and hang it out at Traitors’ Gate, slash off his dead face and spike it up on Tower Bridge. The king had shuddered at the thought of it, hidden his face in his hands and left them to make what arrangements they would.

There was no money to pay the duke’s servants. John went back to Captain Mason’s house to find the man in charge of the expedition accounts packing his bags in panic before he could be blamed for the empty coffers. Buckingham had been trading on credit and on the promise of a certain victory, for months. The ship’s master for the Triumph had no money either. In the end John had to sell some of Buckingham’s goods to raise the money to hire the wagon to take the remainder home again. But the diamonds he kept safe in a purse on a cord around his neck. He sold the milch cow to his landlord for the rent, and he exchanged the hens for a pair of muskets. He would have to be his own guard and his own driver, he could afford no other.

He hired an open wagon with two old stubborn carthorses which had to be whipped at every crossroads to make them go ahead, and even then never went faster than an ambling stroll. John did not care how slowly they went. He sat on the driver’s bench, the reins slack in his hands, watching over the hedges the late summer landscape of browning wheat and barley and scrubby hayfields roll slowly past; and knew himself to be alive because the man he had loved more than anyone in the world was dead.

J was waiting for him on the south side of Westminster Bridge where John always changed his horses. He stepped out of the doorway of the inn when he heard the rumble of the wagon and came to the driving box. He had expected to find a broken man; but was surprised. John Tradescant looked relieved, as if some burden had been lifted from him.

‘J,’ John said with quiet pleasure.

‘Mother said to meet you and bring you to the Hurtes’.’

‘Is she well?’

‘Worried about you, but well enough.’

‘And Jane?’

‘Grown very stout around the middle.’ J flushed with embarrassment and pride. ‘When I put my hand on her belly the little lad kicks back at me.’