John stayed for little more than three weeks at Meopham, long enough to get under Elizabeth’s feet in the little cottage and to make his peace with his son, before hiring another cart and driver and travelling down the mud-filled, almost impassable roads to Dorset, seeking more trees for sale: apple trees for the orchard, cherry, pear, quince, plum. Trees for the park: oak, rowan, birch, beech.

‘Wherever will you get them all from?’ Elizabeth wondered, bringing him his well-darned travelling cloak and packing a basket of food under the seat of the wagon.

‘I shall buy them from the orchards,’ John said determinedly. ‘They sell apples by the dozen, why not trees?’

‘And the wild trees for the earl’s park?’

‘I shall take them,’ John said recklessly. ‘From every forest I pass on my way. I shall be going through the New Forest, every sapling I see I shall stop and dig up.’

‘You will be hanged for certain!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘You will be hauled before the verderers’ courts and hanged for damaging the royal chase.’

‘How else am I to find my lord’s trees?’ John demanded. ‘How else am I to do it?’

John travelled around England and brought back his swaying whispering carts filled with the bushy heads of trees. They came to know him on the West Road, and when children saw him coming into a town with his carts rumbling behind him they would run to the well to fetch a bucket to water Mr Tradescant’s trees.

The great house was nearly finished and the gardens were slowly shaping according to the master plan. There had only been one long delay when the workmen had run short of money, and even the great Cecil coffers had run dry. John had feared for his lord then, feared that the cost of the house and the cost of the garden had overstretched him, as everyone had warned that it would. John sensed, but did not know, that there were enemies on every side at court who might bow to and flatter the Secretary of State now, but at the least sign of weakness would pull him down like a pack of hounds upon an old stag. Just as the rumours got out that Cecil had overreached himself and would fail, there was more money delivered to the builders, and more money at the goldsmiths’ in the little provincial towns for John to draw on to buy his trees.

‘How did you manage it?’ John asked Cecil. ‘Have you sold your soul, my lord?’

Cecil’s smile was grim. ‘All but,’ he said. ‘I sold every other property I owned, and borrowed on the rest. But I had to have my house, John. And we had to have our garden.’