John unpacked the India rarities and laid them out, as his fancy took him, in a small room. They looked well all together, he thought. There were some handsome skins and some silks, and he ordered the maids to sew them to strips of stout canvas which he could fix to the walls to make into hangings. He had a cabinet made to hold the jewels, fastened with an intricate gold lock with only one key, which he held for the duke. Still, the duke never came.

Then John had news. The king’s delayed marriage to the French princess was to go ahead; the duke had already left for France.

“He’s out of the country?” John asked the steward, in the safe privacy of the household office.

William Ward nodded.

“Who has he taken from his household?” John demanded.

“You know his way,” Ward said. “He was up and gone within the day. He forgot half his great wardrobe. The moment the king said he was to go, he was gone. He took hardly a dozen servants for his own use.”

“He did not ask for me?”

He shook his head. “Out of sight, out of mind, when you serve His Grace,” he said.

John nodded and went back outside.

The plan for the fish had worked. The terrace was a delightful place in the April sunshine. The goldfish swam in their own pool on the top terrace and the banks around them were gleaming with kingcups and celandine, as gold as they. The stream overflowed and babbled down to the next level, where silver fish swam under the overhanging pale green stems of what would bloom into white carnations. The glass fence was quite invisible; the water rippled down just as John had planned. He sat in one of the arbors and watched the water play, knowing that it was only his own folly which made the sound mournful and made him feel that great events were taking place out of reach and out of sight.

There was much to do in the garden. The ships of the Navy still obeyed Buckingham’s command that John should have the pick of rarities and new plants every time they returned from a voyage. Often a traveler would make his way to the garden at New Hall with something to sell: a plant, a seed, a nut, or some rare and curious gift. John bought many things and added them to the collection, keeping a careful account and submitting it to William Ward, who repaid him. The things accumulated in the cabinet, the India skins grew dirty and John ordered a woman to come into the rarities room to dust and clean. Still the duke did not come home.

Finally, in May a message came for Tradescant, scrawled in the duke’s own hand and brought all the way from Paris. It read:

My best suit and shirts forgotten in the hurry. Do bring all the things I may need, and anything precious and rare which might amuse the little princess.

“He sends for you?” the steward asked.

John read and reread the note and then laughed aloud, like a man who has been told that he shall be rescued. It was a laugh of relief. “He needs me. At last he needs me. I am to take his best suit and some curious playthings for the princess herself!” He stuffed the note in his pocket and headed for the rarities room, his step lighter, his whole being straighter, more determined, as if he were a young man commanded to set out on a quest, a chivalric quest.

“William, help me. Send for the housekeeper and get his things packed for me at once. He must have everything he might need. His best suit, but shirts as well, and I had better take a pair of his horses. Remember his riding clothes, and his hats. Everything he might want, I must take it all. His jewel box and his best diamonds. Nothing must be forgotten!”

The steward laughed at Tradescant’s urgency. “And when is all this to be ready?”

“At once!” John exclaimed. “At once! He has sent for me, and he trusts me to forget nothing. I must leave tonight.”

John scattered orders like plentiful seed up the stairs and down the stairs, in the stable and in the kitchen, until everyone in the household was running to pack whatever the duke might require in France.

Tradescant himself ran like a man half his age across the park to his cottage. Elizabeth was spinning, her wheel pushed alongside the window so that the sunshine fell on her hands. John hardly saw the beauty of the moving strands of wool in the sunshine and the quiet peace of his wife, humming a psalm as she worked.

“I’m off!” he cried. “He has sent for me at last!”

She rose to her feet, her face shocked, knowing at once who he meant. “The duke?”

“God be praised!”

She did not say, “Amen.”

“I am to follow him to France, with his baggage,” John said. “He wrote to me himself. He knows that no one else could get it done. No one else would take the care. He wrote to me by name.”

She turned her face away for a moment, and then quietly put her spindle down. “You will need your traveling cape, and your riding breeches,” she said and went to climb the little stair to their bedchamber.

“He wants me!” Tradescant repeated exultantly. “He sent for me! All the way from France!”

Elizabeth turned back to look at him and for a moment he could not understand her expression. She was looking at him with regret, with a strange inexplicable pity.

“This is what I have been waiting for!” he said. But at once the words sounded lame. “At last!”

“I know you have been waiting for him to whistle and for you to run,” she said gently. “And I will pray that he does not lead you down dark pathways.”

“He is leading me to the court of France!” John exclaimed. “To the heart of Paris itself to bring home the new Queen of England!”

“To a papist court and a papist queen,” Elizabeth said steadily. “I will pray for your deliverance night and day, husband. Last time you went to court you came home sickened to your soul.”

John swore under his breath and flung himself out of the cottage to wait on the road for his wife to pack his bag. So when they said farewell he did not take her in his arms but merely nodded his head to her. “I bid you farewell,” he said. “I cannot say when I shall return.”

“When he has finished with you,” she said simply.

John flinched at the words. “I am his servant, as he is the king’s,” he said. “Duty to him is an honor as well as my task.”

“Indeed, I hope his service always is an honor,” she said. “And that he never asks anything of you that you should not perform.”

John took her hand and kissed her lightly, coldly, on the forehead. “Of course not,” he said irritably. The cart, packed with the duke’s goods and drawn by two good horses, with his lordship’s two best hunters tossing their heads at being tied on behind, clattered down the lane. John hailed it and swung up on the seat beside the driver. When he looked down on her he thought his wife seemed very small, but as indomitable as she had been the day of their engagement twenty-four years ago.

“God bless you,” he said gruffly. “I shall come home as soon as I have done my duty.”

She nodded, still grave. “J and I will be waiting for you,” she said. The cart rolled forward; she turned and watched it go. “As we always are.”

When J came in for his supper she sent him back out to the pump to wash his hands again. He came in wiping his palms on his smock, leaving muddy stains.

“Look at you!” Elizabeth exclaimed without heat.

“It’s clean earth,” he defended himself. “And I’ve never seen my father’s hands without grimy calluses.”

Elizabeth brought bread and meat broth to the table.

“Chicken broth again?” J asked without resentment.

“Mutton,” she said. “Mrs. Giddings killed a sheep and sold me the lights and a leg. We’ll have a roast tomorrow.”

“Where’s Father?”

She let him break bread and take a spoonful of soup before she answered. “Gone to France after my lord Buckingham.”