They dined as usual that night and John waited for his son to speak, but J said nothing. It was left to John to lead the prayers of the household. He did not have Jane’s easy gift for addressing the Almighty as if He were a benevolent friend of the family. Instead he read the service for Evening Prayer from the King James Bible, and when the kitchen maid was disposed to speak out and give witness he shot her a sharp discouraging look from under his grey eyebrows and she fell silent.

‘Perhaps you should lead the prayers,’ John remarked to J after a week of this. ‘I have not the knack for it.’

‘I’ve nothing to say to such a God,’ J said shortly, and left the room.

1636

In January, during the most difficult time for a gardener who lives off his plants, and the most frustrating time for a man who is only happy with his hands in the loam, the Tradescant luck turned. They were offered the work of the Oxford physic garden, a wonderful compact garden lying alongside the Isis, to grow herbs for the faculty of medicine at the university.

‘You go and see what is needed,’ John said, watching his son’s face which had grown leaner and harder in the long cold months of winter. ‘They’re paying us fifty pounds a year and we have made next to nothing on the Ark this season. Go and see what work needs doing and take it in hand, J. I cannot go to Oxford in mid-winter, the cold will get into my bones.’

John had hoped that the notorious rich hospitality of the town would divert J from the deep silence of his grief. But he came back within a month saying that there was only careful planting and thorough weeding needed. Lord Danby, who had gifted the garden to Magdalen College, had ordered a wall and a gatehouse built, and protection from the winter-flooding river.

‘Nothing needs doing,’ J said when he was home again. ‘I’ll grow some extra herbs to stock it in the spring, and I’ve appointed a couple of weeding girls.’

‘Pretty ones?’ John asked carelessly.

J looked grim. ‘I didn’t notice,’ he said.

In February a man came to the door bearing an earthenware pot with the tips of green bulbs showing.

‘What’s this?’ J asked, hiding his weariness.

‘I need to see John Tradescant,’ the man said eagerly. ‘Himself and no other.’

‘I am John Tradescant the younger,’ J told him, only too well aware that that would not be enough.

‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘So it’s your father I want.’

‘Wait here,’ J said shortly and went to find his father. John was in the rarities room, enjoying the warmth from the fire, moving from cabinet to cabinet, admiring the precious things.