John stopped every one of the few Powhatan women or children that he saw in Jamestown and asked for Suckahanna, and for Attone, by name, but they all shook their heads at the strange white man and pretended that they could not understand his speech, though he asked them both in English and Powhatan. Ignorance and deafness were their last defence, and they mimed ignorance and deafness and hoped to somehow survive, clinging to the very edge of life in a land which had once been unquestionably their own.

John and the other men on the ship went to the governor’s office where the maps of the territory were kept and claimed his headright and then sold it on to William Lea, with his original claim alongside it.

‘You don’t want it yourself?’ Lea asked.

John shook his head. ‘I’m no planter,’ he said. ‘I tried it before and I have not the skills or the endurance. I’m a gardener. You’ve paid my passage and more and I’m glad for that, but I will spend my time here out in the woods gathering the most interesting plants I can find – my cargo for the return journey.’

A gentleman in the office with them turned at the mention of plants and looked at John keenly. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Now I know who you are. I am sure that you must be Mr John Tradescant. I had not known you were coming to visit us again.’

John felt a little curl of pride at his name being known before him. ‘How do you do, Mr –?’

‘Forgive me,’ the planter said. ‘I am Sir Josiah Ashley. I saw your garden when I was last in London and I ordered some plants for my garden here.’

‘You are gardening?’ John asked incredulously. ‘In Virginia?’

The man laughed. ‘Of course, everything will be very much changed since you were last here. I have a house and before it, running down to the river, I have a garden. Nothing compared to the great gardens you will have worked in, I know. But it is a pretty little couple of acres and it gives me much pleasure.’

‘And do you only plant English plants?’ John asked, wary of another hopeless attempt at an English garden in foreign soil like the barren attempt in Barbados.

‘I grow flowers and plants from the woods too,’ Sir Josiah replied. ‘I have a great love for English plants, of course, they remind us of our old home. But there are some exquisite flowers and shrubs that I have found and brought into my garden and they thrive.’

‘I should so like to see them. And if you had any stock I should offer you a very fair price.’

Sir Josiah bowed. ‘You must come and stay with us.’

‘I could not impose,’ John started shyly.