John handed her the reins of the steady horse and went round to the back of the wagon to find the barrel with the tree. It was leaning at an angle against the rail. The movement could have rubbed the bark off the tender trunk. John compressed his lips over hard words. Elizabeth had much work to do: moving house, and a young child, active as a puppy under her feet all day. He should not blame her for being careless with something which had only meant much to her as a token of his love. She never cared for it as he did. It was unfair to expect that she should.

He unloaded a couple of stools and repacked the corner of the wagon so that the tree was fully supported. Then he came round to the driver’s seat.

‘Your baby safely settled?’ Elizabeth asked sharply.

John nodded, not rising to the bait. ‘It’s a precious rarity,’ he reminded her mildly. ‘Probably worth more than the whole cart of things put together. We would be fools if we broke it out of carelessness.’

Gertrude shot a swift look at Elizabeth as if to bewail the stubbornness of men, then Elizabeth leaned out from the wagon and kissed her mother goodbye.

‘Come and see us at Hatfield,’ Elizabeth said.

Gertrude stepped back as the wagon moved forward. She waved and saw Baby J wave back to her. For a moment she thought she might be able to cry, but though she screwed up her face and thought of the loss of her daughter and her grandson, no tears came.

‘Safe journey!’ she called, and saw Tradescant settle himself on the wagoner’s hard bench seat as if he were ready to travel across half the world.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said under her breath as the wagon drew away. ‘I see you, John Tradescant, with your heart leaping up at the very word “journey”. She’d have done better to have married a good Kent farmer and be christened, married, and buried in her father’s church. But that would never have done for you because you are Cecil’s man through and through and you have all of his ambition – though it shows itself in funny ways with your rarities and your travels – and Meopham would never have been big enough or strange enough or rare enough for you.’

A little handkerchief fluttered from the receding cart, and Gertrude whipped out her own and waved back.

‘Still,’ she said philosophically. ‘He doesn’t beat her, and there are a lot worse things a man can love better than his wife than a garden and a lord.’

Elizabeth and John, unaware of this brutal and nearly accurate summary of their lives, found their spirits rising as they drew further and further away from Meopham.

‘It seems odd to me to live anywhere else, but I shall grow accustomed,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And a bigger cottage and a better garden –’