Elizabeth poured the broth into the three bowls, for the captain, for her husband, for her son, and stood behind them to wait on them. John saw that she would not sit and eat with them as she always did when it was just him and J at the dinner table. He read, correctly, her absolute opposition to Sam Argall and all the adventure and risk that he stood for, concealed behind chilly courtesy.

‘Virginia!’ Sam Argall exclaimed, blowing on his bowl. ‘Mrs Tradescant, I have been entrusted with a great task. I am appointed Deputy Governor of Virginia and Admiral of the Virginia seas.’

‘Will you say grace, husband?’ Elizabeth asked repressively.

John bowed his head over the bread and Sam, remembering Elizabeth’s strictness in matters of religion, quickly closed his eyes. When he had finished John picked up his spoon and nodded to Sam.

‘Amen,’ Sam said briskly. ‘I have come to ask John here to go venturing with me, Mrs Tradescant. You shall be landowners, madam, you shall be squires. For every place you take on the ship with me you shall have a hundred acres of your own land. For the three of you that will be three hundred acres! Think of that! You, the mistress of three hundred acres of land!’

Elizabeth’s face was as unmoved as if she were thinking of three yards. ‘This is three hundred acres of good farmland?’

‘It’s prime land,’ Argall said.

‘Cleared and ploughed?’

There was a brief silence. ‘Mrs Tradescant, I am offering you virgin land, a virgin land rich with woodland. Your land is standing with tall trees, wonderful rare bushes, fruiting vines. First you cut your own timber and then you build yourself a handsome house. A mansion, if you like. Built of your own timber!’

‘A mansion from green wood?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘Built by a man in his forties, a woman, and an eight-year-old boy? I should like to see it!’

He pushed his bowl away and cut a slice of the ham. Elizabeth, the very model of wifely obedience, poured the jug of small ale and stepped back, folding her hands on the front of her apron, her eyes cast down.

‘What would we grow?’ J asked.

Captain Argall smiled down at the bright face of the boy. ‘Anything you wish. The land is so rich, you could grow anything. But who knows? You might find gold and never trouble yourselves to plant anything ever again!’

‘Gold?’

‘I thought the first shipment of rocks was nothing more than fool’s gold?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘They tipped it out below the Tower and picked it over and found nothing but quartz. And there it stood for many a long day, a little monument to folly and greed.’