John said goodbye to her, and goodbye to the forest that she had loved and shared with him, and by the time the Makepeace sailed by the end of the pier and went upriver to dock at Jamestown, John had said his farewells and was ready to leave.

He had half a dozen barrels of seeds and roots packed in sand. He had two barrels of saplings planted in shallow earth and watered by hand every day. He left them on the end of the pier ready for collection and paddled the canoe upriver to Jamestown to see if this latest ship had brought him a message and the money from Hester.

He hardly expected it. It could be this ship or a later one. But it was part of John’s ritual of saying farewell to Suckahanna and making a new troth with Hester that he should be on the quayside to greet every ship, to show his trust that Hester would work as fast as she could to get the money to him. Their plan should not miscarry through his fault.

There was the usual crowd, shouting greetings and offering goods and rooms for hire. There was the usual anarchy of arrival: goods thrown on the quayside, children squealing with excitement, friends greeting each other, deals being struck. John stood up on a capstan and shouted over the heads of the crowd: ‘Anyone with a message for John Tradescant?’

No-one replied at first so he shouted again and again like a costermonger bawling out his wares. Then a white-haired man, looking frail and sick, came down the gangplank with one eye on his sea chest of belongings and lifted his head and said:

‘I!’

‘Praise God,’ John said and jumped down from his vantage point, and knew at the same time the plummet of disappointment that now there was nothing more to stay for, and he must leave Suckahanna’s land, just as he had left her.

He pushed through the crowd with a smile of greeting on his face. ‘I am John Tradescant.’

‘I am the Reverend Walter de Carey. Your wife trusted me with a letter for you.’

‘Was she well?’

The older man nodded. ‘She looked well. A woman of some courage, I should imagine.’

John thought of Hester’s stubborn determination. ‘Above rubies,’ he said shortly. He opened the letter and saw at once that she had done as he asked. He had only to go to the Virginia Company offices and claim his twenty pounds, Hester had paid the money for him to a London goldsmith and the deed attested to it.

‘I thank you,’ he said. ‘Now, is there any service I can do for you? Do you have somewhere to stay? Can I help you with your bags?’

‘If you could help me carry this sea chest,’ the man said hesitantly. ‘I had thought there would be some porters or servants …’