He could feel his throat tightening and his eyes burning. ‘Don’t say such a thing!’

She smiled and turned her head to look at him. ‘Of all the men who could do without their wives you would be the first,’ she said. ‘Half of our married life you have been away with your gardens or on your travels, and the other half you were with your lord.’

The usual complaint struck him very painfully now she said it for the last time. ‘Did I neglect you? I thought – you had J and your house – and it was my life before I married you … I thought …’

Elizabeth gave him her gentle, forgiving smile. ‘Your work came first,’ she said simply, ‘and your lord before everything. But I had third place in your life. You never loved a woman more than you loved me, did you, John?’

Tradescant had a brief memory of a dimpled serving girl at Theobalds, decades, it seemed like centuries, ago, and a dozen half-remembered women between then and now.

‘No,’ he said, and he spoke the truth. ‘None that came anywhere near my love for you. I did put the gardens first, and my lord before all else, but there was always you, Elizabeth. You were the only woman for me.’

‘And what a long way we have come,’ she said wonderingly. Through the wooden floorboards of their bedroom came the muffled sounds of the baptismal party. They could hear Josiah Hurte’s voice above all the others, and then, in a sudden silence, Frances’s delighted giggle as someone swung her up in the air.

John nodded. ‘A grand house, a collection of rarities, a nursery garden and an orchard, and a post at the king’s palace.’

‘And grandchildren,’ Elizabeth said with satisfaction. ‘I feared when there was only J – and then when they had only Frances …’

‘That there would be no-one to carry our name?’

She nodded. ‘I know it is a vanity …’

‘There are the trees,’ John said. ‘The flowers, the fruits, and my chestnut trees. We nursed them up just as we nursed J. And now there is one in all the greatest gardens of the country. That is our legacy. The chestnut trees we nursed up together.’

She turned her head and closed her eyes. ‘You would say that,’ she said, but it was not a complaint.

‘You lie quiet,’ John said, rising stiffly from the bed. ‘I will send up the maid with a posset for you. Lie quiet and get well. You will see my daffodils this spring, Elizabeth, and even the pink and white candle blossoms on our chestnut trees.’