John shook his head. ‘I’ve longed to travel ever since I was a boy,’ he said. ‘And my work for my lord has tempted me every time I go down to the docks and speak to the men who have sailed far overseas. The things they have seen! And they can bring back only the tiniest part of it. If I might go to India with them or even Turkey, just think what rarities I might bring home.’

She watched him, frowning slightly. ‘You would not want to go so far, surely?’

John put his arm around her waist to reassure her, but could not bring himself to lie. ‘We are a nation of travellers,’ he said. ‘The finest of the lords, my lord’s friends, are all men who seek their fortunes over the seas, who see the seas as their highway. My lord himself invests in every other voyage out of London. We are too great a nation with too many people to be kept to the one island.’

Elizabeth was a woman from a village that counted the men who were lost to the sea, and tried to keep them on the land. ‘You don’t think of leaving England?’

‘Oh, no,’ John said. ‘But I don’t fear to travel.’

‘I don’t know how you can bear to leave us for so long!’ she complained. ‘And Baby J will be so changed by the time you come back.’

John nodded. ‘You must note down every new thing he says so that you can remember to tell me when I return,’ he said. ‘And let him plant those cuttings I brought for him. They are his lordship’s favourite pinks, and they smell very sweet. They should grow well here. Let him dig the hole himself and set them in, I showed him how to do it this afternoon.’

‘I know.’ Elizabeth had watched from the window as her husband and her quick dark-eyed dark-haired son had kneeled side by side by the little plot of earth and dug together, John straining to understand the rapid babble of babytalk, Baby J looking up into his father’s face and repeating the sound until between guesswork and faith they could understand each other.

‘Dig!’ Baby J insisted, thrusting a little trowel into the earth.

‘Dig,’ his father agreed. ‘And now we put these little fellows into their beds.’

‘Dig!’ Baby J insisted again.

‘Not here!’ John said warningly. ‘They need to rest quiet here so that they can grow and make pretty flowers for Mama!’

‘Dig! J want dig!’

‘Not dig!’ John replied, descending rapidly to equal stubbornness.

‘Dig!’

‘No!’

‘Dig!’

‘No! Elizabeth! Come and take your son out of this! He is going to destroy these before they even know they’ve been transplanted!’

She had come from the house and swept Baby J up, and taken him down to the end of the garden to pet Daddy’s horse.