With that she said nothing more but led the way to the magistrate’s house, past the fort where the bored soldiers whistled and called to her, and inland up a rough dirt road until she stood before a house which was grand by Virginia standards but would have been nothing more than a yeoman’s cottage in England.

‘Mr Joseph’s house,’ she said shortly, and turned and left him at the rough wood front door.

J knocked, and opened the door when a voice shouted to him to come inside.

The house was divided into two. The largest room, where J was standing, served as the kitchen and dining room. There was no separate parlour. There was a ladder at the back of the room leading to attic bedrooms. A light wooden partition, hardly a wall, divided the master bedroom on the ground floor from the rest of the house. Mr Joseph was sitting at the roughly made table in the living room, writing in a ledger.

‘Who are you?’

‘John Tradescant, from England,’ J said, and proffered the governor’s note.

Mr Joseph read it quickly. ‘I’ve got no native guide for you,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve got no messengers due to arrive either. You will have to wait, sir.’

J hesitated. ‘I wonder if a white person might be free to take me out, now and then. Perhaps a servant or a labourer might be spared from their work.’ He looked at the man’s unhelpful expression. ‘Perhaps just for a few hours?’

Mr Joseph shook his head. ‘How long have you been here?’ he demanded.

‘Just arrived.’

‘When you have been here a little longer you will realise that there is never a spare hour,’ the man said grimly. ‘Never a spare moment. Look around you. Every single thing you see here has to be wrested from this land. Remember your ship – did you see houses as cargo? Ploughs? Baker’s shops? Market stalls?’ He paused for emphasis and then shook his head.

‘You did not, and that is because we can ship hardly anything. All that we need has to be made or grown or wrought here. Everything. From the shingles on the roof to the ice in the cellar. And this by people who did not come here to farm; but came hoping to pick up gold plates from the seashore, or emeralds from the rivers, or pearls from out of every oyster. So not only are we farming with wooden ploughshares that we have to carve ourselves, but we are farming with labourers who have never seen a ploughshare before, wooden or metal! Who have to learn every step of the way. Who are taught by men who came out to mine gold but find themselves growing tobacco. So there is no-one, not a man nor woman nor child, who has a moment to do anything but work.’