‘I should want no other than to leave a beautiful garden,’ Jean Robin declared. He smiled at his son. ‘And what an inheritance for a young man!’

When they parted, a week later, they had sworn eternal friendship in the brotherhood of gardeners, and Tradescant was loaded with trays of cuttings, purses of seeds, and dozens of roots and saplings.

‘And where d’you go now?’ Robin demanded at a final farewell dinner.

John knew an instant temptation to say that he was going on to Spain, that he would ride slowly down the country ways and collect a plant from every roadside verge. ‘Home,’ he said, in his halting French. ‘Home and my wife.’

Robin clapped him on the back. ‘And the new garden at Hatfield,’ he said, as if there was no doubt which was the most important.

John arrived back at Meopham in December to kiss Elizabeth and make his peace with Baby J, who was angry at being neglected. He had brought Baby J a little wooden soldier, carved by a Frenchman and dressed in the uniform of the king’s personal guard. Baby J was talking clearly now and very firm in his opinions. He particularly disapproved of John’s return to Elizabeth’s bed.

‘That’s my place,’ he stated flatly, glaring at his father in the early hours of John’s first day at home. John, who had planned to make love to Elizabeth when they woke, was rather taken aback by the unmistakable enmity in his son’s little face.

‘This is my bed,’ John said reasonably. ‘And my wife.’

‘She’s my mother!’ Baby J shouted and launched himself at his father.

John caught the little fists and tucked the writhing, angry body under his arm. ‘Hey day! What’s this? I’m home now, Baby J, and this is my place.’

Elizabeth smiled at the two of them. ‘He’s been the man of the house for three months, John, you stayed away too long.’

John bent his face down to his little son’s wriggling body and smacked a kiss on his bare stomach. ‘He’ll learn to love me again,’ he said. ‘I shall stay till Twelfth Night.’

Elizabeth did not protest, she was learning that the lord’s garden came before everything, but she swept out of bed in a way which made her feelings very plain. John let her go, his eyes on his son’s bright little face.

‘One time I shall take you with me,’ he promised. ‘It’s not that I’m in your place here – you should be sharing my place with me.’ He nodded to the window which overlooked the village street but he meant the wider world, beyond the lanes to London, beyond even London. He meant Europe, he meant Africa, he meant the East.

Spring 1611