‘What will we do?’ Jane asked. She had one hand resting on the curve of her belly, as if she would protect the baby from even hearing of such troubles.

‘You can stay here,’ her father offered instantly. ‘If there’s nowhere else you can always stay here.’

‘I promised to provide for her and I will,’ J said, stung. ‘I can get a place at any house in the land.’

‘But you swore you’d never work for a great lord again,’ Jane reminded him. ‘Such work leads us into vanity and no man in the king’s service is to be trusted.’

John raised his head at such radical thoughts but Jane met his gaze without shrinking. ‘I am only saying what everyone knows,’ she said steadily. ‘There are no good courtiers. There is none whom my John would happily call master.’

‘I have a little land,’ Tradescant said slowly. ‘Some woodland at Hatfield and some fields at New Hall. We could perhaps build a house near New Hall, near my fields, and set up on our own account …’

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘And do what, John? We have to find a business that will give us a living at once.’

There was a brief silence. ‘I know a man who has a house for sale on the south side of the river, it has an established garden and some fruit trees already planted,’ Josiah said quietly. ‘There are fields around it that you could buy or rent as well. It was a little farm and now the farmer has died and his heirs are ready to sell. You might raise rare plants and trade as a plantsman and gardener.’

‘How would we afford it?’ John asked them. The purse containing the diamonds was heavy around his neck.

Elizabeth shot a quick collusive glance at her son, and then moved from the chair at the window and sat opposite her husband at the table. Her face was pale and determined. ‘There is a cart full of goods in the yard below,’ she pointed out. ‘And another ship docked this morning with plants and curiosities for his lordship. If we sell the goods we can buy the house and the land. The rare plants and seeds you can nurse up and sell to gardeners. You’ve always said how difficult it is to get good stock for a garden. Remember how you travelled all around England for your trees? You could grow your stock and sell it.’

There was a tense silence in the little room. John absorbed the evidence that this was a plan, formed among the Hurtes and his family and now presented to him for his consent. He looked from Elizabeth’s determined face to J’s stoical blankness.

‘You mean that we should take my lord’s goods,’ John said flatly.

Elizabeth drew in a breath and nodded.

‘That I steal from him?’

She nodded again.