The man waved his hand. ‘As big as a full-grown oak. Not tall like a fir but broad and tall, like a big oak tree.’

‘And the wood?’ Cecil interrupted, thinking of the nation’s insatiable demand for timber for shipbuilding.

‘Fine wood,’ the merchant said quickly. Too quickly for truth, Cecil thought. ‘Though I did not see it myself, they tell me the wood is very fine.’

‘How many?’ John asked, his eyes on the box, but he kept the chestnut in his hand. ‘How many do you have?’

‘Only half a dozen,’ the merchant said seductively. ‘Just six. And that’s the only six in the whole of the kingdom, the only six outside Turkey. The only six in Christendom. For you to own, Your Grace; for you to grow, Mr Tradescant.’

‘Anything else?’ Cecil asked nonchalantly.

‘These seeds,’ the merchant said, and showed a little purse filled with hard black seeds. ‘Of rare flowers.’

‘What flowers?’ John asked. The nut was warm and smooth and comforting in his hand. He thought he could almost feel the life enfolded inside it, like a new-laid egg.

‘Rare beauties, like lilies,’ the merchant said.

Tradescant looked doubtful. Lilies grew from corms, not little seeds. He suddenly doubted the merchant, and his fingers closed tightly. At least the beauty and promise of the nut could not lie.

‘How much?’ Cecil asked. ‘For the roots, the seeds and the chestnuts?’

The merchant looked quickly from the gardener to the master, and read, correctly, the speechless desire in Tradescant’s face. ‘Fifty pounds.’

Cecil choked. ‘For a handful of wood?’

The merchant smiled and nodded at Tradescant. Cecil followed his gaze and was forced to laugh. John was turning the chestnut over and over in his hand, unaware of the two men. He looked besotted.

‘It is a treasure beyond price to a gardener,’ the merchant said. ‘A new tree. A completely new tree, which blooms like a rose and stands as broad as an oak.’

‘Eight pounds now, and eight pounds if the tree grows,’ the earl said gruffly. ‘You may come to me next spring and if it has rooted I shall pay you the remainder. If it is a fine tree in five years with flowers like apple blossoms and broad as an oak I shall pay another eight then.’

‘Perhaps nine,’ the merchant said thoughtfully.

‘No more than nine,’ the earl said, and got to his feet. ‘Nine now, and nine if it roots, and nine in five years if it is good.’

‘I shall take these to Theobalds at once,’ John said, emerging from his trance. He still had hold of the chestnut. The merchant put the roots and seeds back in the box and handed them to him.

‘I thought you were newly wed?’ Cecil commented.