The new cottage at Canterbury was little bigger than their first home at Meopham but Elizabeth did not complain as the front door opened to a proper city street and the finishing of the house was elegant. They cooked and ate and lived in the large ground-floor room and Elizabeth and John slept in a curtained four-poster bed in the room next door. J, now a boy of eight years old, went up the shallow stairs to a pallet bed in the attic. During the day John went and gardened for Lord Wootton, and J went to Dame School where, for a penny a week, he was taught to read and write and to figure sums. They both came home for their dinner at four o’clock on the darkening autumn afternoons, John with a spade over his shoulder, J with his schoolbook clutched under his arm.

Elizabeth, slicing parsley for the soup one afternoon, heard three, not two, sets of boots stamping off mud in the porch of the little cottage and put her sacking apron off in the expectation of company. She opened the front door to John, to her son, and to a young man, brown-faced and smiling, with the unmistakable swagger and roll of a seafaring man.

‘Captain Argall,’ Elizabeth said without pleasure.

‘Mrs Tradescant!’ he exclaimed and swept into the house, kissing her heartily on one cheek and then the other. ‘The most beautiful rose in all of John’s gardens! How are you?’

‘Very well,’ Elizabeth said, disengaging herself and going back to the kitchen table.

‘I have brought you a handsome ham,’ Sam Argall said, looking at the stewpot and sliced vegetables without much enthusiasm. J, his face a picture of moonstruck admiration, produced the leg of ham from behind his back and dumped it on the table. ‘And a taste of paradise too,’ Sam Argall went on, offering a flask of rum. ‘From the Sugar Islands, Mrs Tradescant. A taste of sweetness and strength that will bring a taste of the tropics even here, to chilly Canterbury.’

‘I find the weather very mild for the time of the year,’ Elizabeth said stoutly. ‘Do sit down, Captain Argall. J will fetch you a glass of small ale if you would like one. We do not serve strong liquors in this house.’

J rushed to do his mother’s bidding while John and Sam sat at the table and watched Elizabeth slice the last pieces of parsley and toss them into the pot hanging over the fire.

There was a silence while they drank. Elizabeth busied herself with setting out the wooden bowls and a knife at each place, and a loaf of bread in the centre of the table.

‘Sam is to be master of a great venture,’ John began at last.

Elizabeth stirred the pot and prodded one of the floating parsnips to see if it was cooked.

‘A great venture, and he has offered me a place,’ John said.