Bertram Hobert, a fellow passenger with John, glanced at him. ‘Does this change your plans, Mr Tradescant?’ he asked.

‘No,’ John said discreetly. ‘My going or staying is nothing to do with the progress of the war. I have interests in Virginia, a plantation there, some land where I have a fancy to build a house. And I made a good sum on the plants I brought back last time. Whether Parliament or the king wins, some day there will be peace and men will want to garden.’

‘Are you not for the king? Won’t you join him now? Now that he is on the road to victory?’

‘I have been in his service all my life,’ John said, hiding his resentment. ‘The time has come for me to do some travelling and gardening for myself. He does not need a gardener now, he needs soldiers, and – you heard that man – he has them.’

Hobert nodded.

‘What about you?’ John asked.

‘I was leaving whatever happened,’ the man said. ‘I can make no progress here. I work as hard as any man; but what the taxes don’t take, the tithes do. I wanted a country where I can see real wealth for me. I’ve seen how a man can prosper in Virginia. I’ll stay a dozen years and come back a rich man and buy a farm in Essex. What about you? Will you stay for long?’

John thought for a moment. It was a question he and Hester had carefully skirted, in all the weeks while she packed for him and took orders in her careful script from gardeners who had heard he was going collecting again. With his boat creaking at the dockside and the wind blowing offshore, with the tide running and a sense of his freedom rising in him, John felt young and reckless again; a young man fit for a young country, full of promise.

‘I shall make a home there,’ he said. ‘My wife and children will stay in England and I shall be back often. But Virginia is the country for me. I shall build a house there and …’ He broke off, thinking of Suckahanna’s small, sideways smile, her tattooed nakedness which had become more erotic for him since his first innocent sight of her. He thought that by now she would be a woman, a woman fully grown, and ready for love and desire.

‘It’s a country where a man can grow,’ the farmer said, throwing his arms wide. ‘There’s land for the asking, and earth which has never been ploughed. There’s a new life there for me.’

‘And for me,’ John said.