‘I just signed it,’ John said numbly. ‘I just agreed with him that it would be a fine thing to have the collection in the care of the university. So I just signed it. And I made you sign it too.’

‘And what does it say?’

‘I didn’t read it carefully enough. And he is a lawyer. He has made sure that it is unclear. It says that the collection is to go to him entire; but there is nothing about the university. He is not a trustee, he will inherit everything for himself. He will have it when we die. He can keep it as he likes. Or he can give it to his heirs. My God, Hester, he can break it up and sell it piece by piece.’

She said nothing, she was aghast. Her face was as white as her nightcap, as her gown.

‘And I signed too,’ she said, her words a tiny thread of sound.

John took his gardening cape hung on a hook near the door wrapped it around her shoulders, then turned and looked out over the garden, leaning on the rail of the terrace. He thought of the many hours his father had spent, leaning on the rail and looking out at his trees, at his beloved chestnut avenue.

The night was kind to the garden, the trees were as beautiful as black lace against the sky which was slowly growing blue. Somewhere amid the rare plum trees a robin was starting to sing, its haunting ghostly song enhancing the silence. Further down the orchard a duck, disturbed in its sleep beside the lake, quacked once briefly and then was still.

John leaned his head in his hands and blotted out the garden. ‘He will have it all when I am gone, Hester. He was witty and helpful, and I thought I was doing a clever thing. And now my head is fit to split and I know that you are married to a fool. There will be no Tradescant collection to carry my father’s name to future generations, they will call it the Ashmolean and we will all be forgotten.’

He thought for a moment that she would cry out against him and beat him, but she had turned away and was reading the document by the light of the setting moon. In the pallor of the moonlight she looked sick with the shock. ‘I have broken my promise to your father,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I told him I would guard your children and guard the rarities. I lost Johnnie and now I have lost the rarities too.’