There was no money to pay the duke’s servants. John went back to Captain Mason’s house to find the man in charge of the expedition accounts packing his bags in panic before he could be blamed for the empty coffers. Buckingham had been trading on credit and on the promise of a certain victory, for months. The ship’s master for the Triumph had no money either. In the end John had to sell some of Buckingham’s goods to raise the money to hire the wagon to take the remainder home again. But the diamonds he kept safe in a purse on a cord around his neck. He sold the milch cow to his landlord for the rent, and he exchanged the hens for a pair of muskets. He would have to be his own guard and his own driver; he could afford no other.

He hired an open wagon with two old stubborn carthorses which had to be whipped at every crossroads to make them go ahead, and even then never went faster than an ambling stroll. John did not care how slowly they went. He sat on the driver’s bench, the reins slack in his hands, watching over the hedges the late summer landscape of browning wheat and barley and scrubby hayfields roll slowly past, and knew himself to be alive because the man he had loved more than anyone in the world was dead.

J was waiting for him on the south side of Westminster Bridge, where John always changed his horses. He stepped out of the doorway of the inn when he heard the rumble of the wagon and came to the driving box. He had expected to find a broken man, but was surprised. John Tradescant looked relieved, as if some burden had been lifted from him.

“J,” John said with quiet pleasure.

“Mother said to meet you and bring you to the Hurtes’.”

“Is she well?”

“Worried about you, but well enough.”

“And Jane?”

“Grown very stout around the middle.” J flushed with embarrassment and pride. “When I put my hand on her belly the little lad kicks back at me.”

John found that he was smiling at the thought of J’s baby.

“And are you well, Father? We heard the news at New Hall. Were you with the duke?”

John nodded. “I am well,” he said shortly.

“Did you see him?” J asked, curiosity overcoming him. “Were you there when he died?”

John nodded. He thought he would remember forever that timeless long moment when he could have cried out a warning, but instead he gave the word for the blow. “I was there.”

“Was it very dreadful?”

John thought of the beauty of the duke, of the smooth slow arc of the knife, of the exclamation of surprise, of the duke’s one word, “villain,” and then his sinking down, his limp weight in Tradescant’s arms.

“No,” he said simply. “He fell in all his beauty and his pride.”

J was silent for a moment, comparing his father’s loss with the country’s joy. “I’ll never work for a master again,” he vowed.

John looked down at him from the box, and J suddenly had a sense that there was more to the death of Buckingham than he would ever know, that there was more between the two men, master and vassal, than had ever been clear.

“Nor will I,” said John.

J nodded and swung up onto the box seat beside his father. “There’s another cart stored at the Hurtes’,” he said. “Goods from India and from the west coast of Africa, sent for my lord Buckingham. He won’t want them now.”

John nodded and said nothing as J steered the cart carefully through the swarm of pedestrians, barrow boys, sellers, loiterers, idling militia men, to the Hurtes’ door. At the rear of the house was a small yard for unloading and a couple of stables. The cart, loaded with treasures for Buckingham, was standing on the cobbles with a lad beside it to keep watch. J drew up alongside and helped his father down. John had to lean heavily on him when his feet touched the cobbles.

“I’m stiff from sitting too long,” John said defensively.

“Oh, aye,” J said skeptically. “But how ever would you have managed a long sea voyage and then sleeping on the ground with winter coming? It would have been the death of you! It’s a blessing you didn’t go.”

John closed his eyes for a moment. “I know it,” he said shortly.

J led the way through the storeroom at the back of the shop and up the stairs to the living quarters. As they came into the parlor Elizabeth started forward and flung herself into her husband’s arms. “Praise God you are safe,” she cried, her voice choked with tears. “I never thought to see you again, John.”

He rested his cheek against the smoothness of her hair and the crisp laundered edge of her cap, and thought, but only for a moment, of a warm perfumed riot of dark curls and the erotic scratch of stubble. “Praise God,” he said.

“It was a blessing,” she said.

John met Josiah Hurte’s gaze over the top of his wife’s head. “No, it was an ill business,” he said firmly.

Josiah Hurte shrugged. “There are many that are calling it a divine deliverance. They are saying that Felton was the saviour of his country.”

“They are praising a murderer then.” Inside John’s head he could see Felton’s pale determined face at the moment when John could have called out, and did not. “It was a sin, and any that stood by and failed to prevent it are sinners too.”

Elizabeth, skilled with years of experience in reading John’s moods, pulled back a little so that she could see his grim expression. “But you could not have stopped it,” she suggested. “You were not the duke’s bodyguard.”

John did not want to lie to her. “I could have stopped it,” he said slowly. “I should have been closer to him, I should have warned him about Felton. He should have been better guarded.”

“No point in blaming yourself,” Josiah Hurte said briskly. “Better thank God instead that this country is spared a war and that you are spared the danger.”

Elizabeth said nothing; she looked into her husband’s face. “Anyway, you are free now,” she said quietly. “Free from your service to him, at last.”

“I am free at last,” John confirmed.

Mrs. Hurte gestured that he should take a place at the table. “We have dined because we did not know when to expect you, but if you will take a bowl of broth and a slice of pie, I can have it before you at once.”

John sat at the table and the Hurtes’ maid brought him small ale and food. Josiah Hurte sat opposite him and took a pint of ale to keep him company.

“No one knows what will happen to the duke’s estate,” Josiah said. “The family is still in hiding, and the London house is quite shut up. The servants have been turned away, and there’s no money to pay the tradesmen.”

“There never was any,” John remarked wryly.

“It may be that the family decide to sell up to cover their debts,” Josiah said. “If they decide to honor their debts at all.”

Mrs. Hurte was shocked. “They’ll never refuse to pay!” she exclaimed. “Good merchants will go bankrupt if they renege. His lordship had run bills for years; it would have been called treason to refuse him credit. What of the honest men who depend on his widow paying them?”

“They say that there is no money,” J said simply. “I have had no wages. Have you?”

John shook his head.

“What will we do?” Jane asked. She had one hand resting on the curve of her belly, as if she would protect the baby from even hearing of such troubles.

“You can stay here,” her father offered instantly. “If there’s nowhere else you can always stay here.”

“I promised to provide for her and I will,” J said, stung. “I can get a place at any house in the land.”

“But you swore you’d never work for a great lord again,” Jane reminded him. “Such work leads us into vanity and no man in the king’s service is to be trusted.”

John raised his head at such radical thoughts but Jane met his gaze without shrinking. “I am only saying what everyone knows,” she said steadily. “There are no good courtiers. There is none whom my John would happily call master.”