“I have a little land,” Tradescant said slowly. “Some woodland at Hatfield and some fields at New Hall. We could perhaps build a house near New Hall, near my fields, and set up on our own account…”

Elizabeth shook her head. “And do what, John? We have to find a business that will give us a living at once.”

There was a brief silence. “I know a man who has a house for sale on the south side of the river; it has an established garden and some fruit trees already planted,” Josiah said quietly. “There are fields around it that you could buy or rent as well. It was a little farm and now the farmer has died and his heirs are ready to sell. You might raise rare plants and trade as a plantsman and gardener.”

“How would we afford it?” John asked them. The purse containing the diamonds was heavy around his neck.

Elizabeth shot a quick collusive glance at her son, and then moved from the chair at the window and sat opposite her husband at the table. Her face was pale and determined. “There is a cart full of goods in the yard below,” she pointed out. “And another ship docked this morning with plants and curiosities for his lordship. If we sell the goods we can buy the house and the land. The rare plants and seeds you can nurse up and sell to gardeners. You’ve always said how difficult it is to get good stock for a garden. Remember how you traveled all around England for your trees? You could grow your stock and sell it.”

There was a tense silence in the little room. John absorbed the evidence that this was a plan, formed among the Hurtes and his family and now presented to him for his consent. He looked from Elizabeth’s determined face to J’s stoical blankness.

“You mean that we should take my lord’s goods,” John said flatly.

Elizabeth drew in a breath and nodded.

“That I steal from him?”

She nodded again.

“I cannot believe that this is your wish,” John said. “My lord has been dead and buried for a month and I am to steal from him like a dishonest pageboy?”

“There are the tulips,” J said in a sudden rush. His face was scarlet with embarrassment, but he faced his father as one man to another. “What would you have had me do? The tulips were ready for lifting, they were in their bowls in our garden, the place was in uproar, men were running out of the house with wall-hangings and linen trailing behind them. I did not know what to do with the tulips. Nobody there would have nursed them up. Nobody there knew what to do with them. Nobody would advise me.”

“So what did you do?” John asked.

“I brought them with me. And more than half of them have spawned. We have nigh on two thousand pounds’ worth of tulip bulbs.”

“Prices holding?” John’s acumen flared briefly, penetrating his grief.

“Yes,” J said simply. “Still rising. And we have the only Lack tulips in England.”

“How much are you owed?” Elizabeth suddenly demanded. “In back wages? Did he pay you for the last expedition to Rhé? Did he advance you wages for this one? Did he give you money for the cost of the journey to Portsmouth? Or for your stay in Portsmouth, or this journey home? Because if he gave you nothing you will never have more from the duchess. She is in hiding and the king himself is refusing to tell anyone where she is. They say she is afraid of assassins, but we all know she is more terrified of creditors. How much are you owed, John?”

“I was not paid at midsummer,” J reminded him. “They said they had no coin and gave me a note of promise, and I will not be paid this Michaelmas. That’s twenty-five pounds I am owed. And while you were away I had to buy some plants and some saplings and they could not repay me.”

Unconsciously John put his hand to his throat where the bag of diamonds nestled warm against his skin.

“You cannot agree to this?” He turned to Josiah. “It is theft.”

The merchant shook his head. “I no longer know what is right and wrong in this country,” he said. “The king takes money from the people without law or tradition, Parliament denies that he has the right, and so he closes Parliament and imposes the fines anyway. If the king himself can steal honest men’s money then what are we to do? Your lord stole your service from you for years, and now he is dead and no one will repay you. They will not even acknowledge the debt.”

“Stealing is still a sin,” John said doggedly.

“These are times when a man’s own conscience should be his guide,” Josiah replied. “If you think that he treated you fairly then deliver the goods to his house, pile riches upon riches and let the king take them to pay for his masques and vanities, as you know he will. If you think that the duke died owing you for your service, owing J, if you think these are times when a man does well to buy himself a little house and be his own master, then I think you would be justified in taking what you are owed and leaving his service. You should take only what you are owed. But you have a right to that. A good servant is worthy of his hire.”

“If you return the tulips to New Hall they will die of neglect,” J said quietly. “There is no one there to care for them, and then we will have killed the only Lack tulips in England.”

The thought of the waste of the tulips was as powerful as anything else for John. He shook his head like a bull does after a long baiting when it is so wearied that it longs for the dogs to close and make an end. “I am too tired to think,” he said. He rose to his feet but Elizabeth’s gaze held him.

“He hurt you,” she said. “On that last voyage to Rhé. He did something to you then that broke your heart.”

John made a gesture to stop her but she went on. “He sent you home with that pain in your heart, and then he recalled you, and he was going to take you to your death.”

John nodded. “That’s true,” he said as if it did not much matter.

“Then let him pay,” she said gently. “Let him repay us for the grief and terror he has caused us, and I will consider the matter settled, and I will remember him in my prayers.”

John put his hand on the little purse of diamonds at his throat. “He was my lord,” he said and they could all hear the deep pain in the back of his voice. “I was his man.”

“Let him go in peace,” she said. “All debts to us paid, all grievances finished. He is dead. Let him pay his debts and let us start a new life.”

“You will pray for him? And mean it in your heart?”

Elizabeth nodded.

Silently John took the purse from his neck and handed it to his wife. “Go and see the farm,” he said. “You decide. If you and J and Jane like it, then buy it and we will make our home there. And in return for that you must go and pray for his soul, Elizabeth. For he needs your prayers, and there are few enough praying for him, God knows.”

“And the tulips?” J asked.

John met his son’s questioning look. “Of course we keep the tulips,” he said.