The woman was spooning a pale yellow mixture from the pot, suspended over a miserly fire, into four wooden bowls. She slapped them onto the table and bowed her head over her callused hands for a brief grace. Another man who had stayed the night sleeping on the floor beside the fire drew up his stool, took out his own spoon and ate with relish.

‘What is it?’ J asked cautiously.

‘Porridge made with Indian corn,’ she replied.

‘You’ll have to get used to it,’ the man said. ‘Indian corn is almost all we eat.’

J smiled. ‘I wasn’t expecting milk and honey.’

‘There’s many that do,’ the woman said shortly. ‘And many that die still hoping.’

There was a short silence.

‘You here prospecting?’ the man asked.

‘No,’ J said. ‘I’m a gardener, a plant collector. I’ve come to collect plants. Authorised by King Charles himself.’ He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should tell them about the great garden in Lambeth and his father’s reputation as the greatest gardener that had ever been, advisor to the Duke of Buckingham, gardener to the king and queen, one of the greatest collectors of rarities in the world. He looked at the woman’s enfolded, bitter face and thought that he would not.

The man nodded. ‘Will you see the king when you get home? If you get home,’ he added.

J nodded and took a spoon of the porridge. It was bland, the corn boiled to the consistency of paste. ‘Yes. I work for him in his garden at Oatlands Palace,’ he said.

‘Well, tell him that we can’t do with this governor,’ the man said bluntly. ‘Tell him that we won’t do with him, and that’s a fact. We’ve got enough worries to deal with here without having a fat fool set over us from England. We need a general assembly with a voice for every planter. We need a guarantee of our rights.’

‘You’d be imprisoned if you spoke like that in England,’ J pointed out mildly.

‘That’s why I’m not in England,’ the man said shortly. ‘And I don’t expect to live as if I were. Which is more than can be said for the governor who expects to live like a lord with servants in a land where men and women have come to be free.’

‘I’m not his advisor,’ J said. ‘I speak to the king – when I ever see him – about plants and his garden.’

The man nodded. ‘So who does advise him now?’

J thought for a moment. It all seemed a long way away and of little interest in this new country. ‘The queen,’ he said. ‘And Archbishop Laud.’

The man made a grimace and turned his head to spit but then checked the movement when he saw the woman glare. ‘Beg pardon. So he hasn’t called a parliament?’