J shook his head. ‘He hopes to rule without one.’

‘I heard he was halfway to being a Papist.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘I heard that he has taken so many fines and so much wealth into his own hands that he does not need to call a parliament for them to vote taxes, that he lets his wife worship openly as a Papist, and that daily there are men and women in the country crying out for him to change,’ the man said precisely.

John blinked at the accuracy and malice of the description. ‘I thought you were royalists in Virginia?’

‘Not all of us,’ the man said with a hard smile.

‘Where are you going to find your plants?’ the woman interrupted. ‘There’s nothing grown up and down the river but tobacco.’

‘Surely people farm other crops?’

She shook her head. ‘We keep beasts – or at any rate they keep themselves. But with the fish jumping out of the river and the animals in the forest it’s not worth the labour of doing more than fishing and hunting. Besides, we can trade for anything we need with the Indians. They can do the labour of farming for us. We can all be squires here.’

‘I thought I’d travel round,’ J said. ‘Hire a horse and ride round the country, see what I can find.’

They both looked at him and rudely laughed in his face.

‘Hire a horse!’ the woman exclaimed. ‘There’s not more than half a dozen horses in the whole plantation. You might as well ask for a coach and four.’

J kept his temper. ‘I see I have much to learn.’

She rose from the table and went to the fire. ‘Dark morning,’ she said irritably. She bent to the fire and lit what looked like a little twig of kindling. To J’s surprise it burnt with a bright clear flame at the very tip, like a specially made taper. She rested it on a small holder, placed on the stone hearth for that purpose, and came back to the table.

‘What’s that?’

She glanced back without interest. ‘We call it candlewood. I buy it from the Indians every autumn.’

‘But what sort of wood is it?’

‘Candlewood,’ she said impatiently.

‘But from what sort of tree?’

She looked at him as if he were foolish to be asking something that no-one else cared about. ‘How should I know? I pay the Indians to fetch it for me. D’you think I go out into the woods to gather my own candlewood? D’you think I make my own spoons from spoonwood? D’you think I make my own sugar from the sugar tree or my own soap from the soapberry?’

‘Candlewood? Spoonwood?’ J had a moment of wild imagining, thinking of a tree growing candles, a tree growing spoons, a bush growing soap. ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me?’