“Things are changing,” Jane agreed. “But not in favor of lords and the court. Perhaps this family should not be linked with the king. Perhaps we would do better to be like my family, independent traders who do not fear the king’s favor. Who are not dependent on any master.”

“Yes, if we were mercers,” Elizabeth answered gently. “And could trade from a little shop, and every man and woman in the country would need our goods and could afford them. But we are gardeners and keepers of a rarities collection. Only the wealthy men will buy what we have to sell and show. And we cannot get our stock without owning land to grow it in. It is not a trade that can be done on a small scale. This is a business that puts us in the hands of the great men of the country. We sell to the great houses, we sell to the courtiers. Of course, sooner or later, we would come to the mind of the king.”

“And he wants us, as he wants everything that is beautiful and rare,” Jane said bitterly. “And he thinks he can buy us too.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Just so.”

The men came into dinner in silence. Jane and Elizabeth exchanged a few remarks about the weather and the progress of the work in the garden but gave up when neither man responded with more than a word or a nod.

As soon as they had eaten the men went back outside and Jane, looking from the window of the rarities room, saw J heading down for the orchard, as far away from the house as he could go, while John was weeding the seed beds in the cool shadow of the house. The day was hot. Even the wood pigeons that usually cooed in the Tradescant trees were silent. Jane took Frances to feed the ducks in the pond at the side of the orchard and saw her husband scything nettles in a distant corner. When he saw her he carefully sheathed the blade and came over.

“Wife.”

She looked into his unhappy face. “Oh, John!”

“You don’t want to leave here,” he said flatly.

“Of course not. Where could we go?”

“We could go to your father’s while we looked about and found some position.”

“You swore you would garden for no master.”

“The Devil himself would be better than the king.”

She shook her head. “You said no master.”

Frances leaned longingly toward the deeper water. Jane took the little hand in a firm grip. “Not too near,” she said.

“There are two places I would choose to live, if you would consent,” J said tentatively.

Jane waited.

“There is a community, of good men and women, who are trying to make a life of their own, to worship as they wish, to live as they wish.”

“Quakers?” Jane asked.

“Not Quakers. But they believe in freedom for men and even for women. They have a farm in Devon near the sea.”

“How have you heard of them?”

“A traveling preacher spoke of them, a few months ago.”

Jane thought for a moment. “So we don’t know them directly.”

“No.”

He saw her grip on Frances’s hand tighten. “I can’t go among strangers and so far from my family,” she said firmly. “What would become of us if one of us were ill? Or if they are no longer there? I can’t go so far from my mother. What if we have another baby? How would we manage without my mother or your mother?”

“Other women manage,” J said. “Leave home, manage among strangers. They will become your friends.”

“Why should we?” Jane asked simply. “We, who have two families who love us? We, who have a house to live in which is the most beautiful house in Lambeth and famed throughout the world for the rarities and the gardens?”

“Because it comes with too high a price!” J exclaimed. “Because I rent this beautiful house with my obedience, by putting my conscience in the keeping of my father who himself has never thought a thought which was not licensed by his lord. He is an obedient dutiful man, Jane, and I am not.”

She thought for a moment. Frances pulled at her hand. “Frances feed ducks,” she said. “Frances feed ducks.”

“Down there,” Jane said, hardly looking. “Where the bank is not so steep. Don’t get your feet wet.” She let the little girl go and watched her progress to the water’s edge. The ducks gathered hopefully around; Frances plunged her hands into the pockets of her little gown and came out with fistfuls of breadcrumbs.

“What is your other wish?” Jane asked.

J took a deep breath. “Virginia,” he said.

Jane looked into his face and then came into his arms as simply as she had done the day they were married. “Oh, my love,” she said. “I know you have such dreams. But we cannot go to Virginia; it would break my mother’s heart. And I could not bear to leave her. And besides – we don’t need to go. We are not adventurers, we are not desperate for a fortune or to run away from here. We have a place here, we have work here, we have a home here. I would not leave here for choice.”

J would not look at her. “You are my wife,” he said flatly. “You are duty-bound to go where I go. To obey me.”

She shook her head. “I am bound in duty to you as you are to your father, as he is to the king. If you break one link they all go, J. If you do not acknowledge him as your father then I need not acknowledge you as my husband.”

“Then what do we become?” he demanded in impatience. “All whirling, unconnected, unloving, atoms; like thistledown finding its own way on the wind?”

She said nothing. Behind them, Frances put one tentative foot in the water.

“If you are guided by your conscience and only by your conscience then that is what we must become,” she said thoughtfully. “All of us, guided by our own consciences, coming together only when it suits us.”

“A society cannot live like that,” J replied.

“A family cannot,” Jane said. “As soon as you love someone, as soon as you have a child, you acknowledge your duty to put another’s needs first.”

J hesitated.

“The other way is the king’s way,” Jane continued. “The very thing you despise. A man who puts his own desires and needs before everyone else. Who thinks his needs and desires are of superior merit.”

“But I am guided by my conscience!” J protested.

“He could say the same,” she said gently. “If you are Charles the king, then your wishes could very well seem to be conscience and there would be no one to tell you your duty.”

“So where is my course?” J asked. “If you are my adviser this day?”

“Somewhere between duty and your own wishes,” Jane said. “Surely we can find a way for you to keep your soul clear of heresy and yet still live here.”

J’s face was bleak. “You would put your comfort before my conscience,” he said flatly. “All it is with you, is living here.”

She did not turn away from him but tightened her grip around his waist. “Think,” she urged him. “Do you really want to walk away from the garden that is your inheritance? The chestnut tree which your father gave to your mother the year you were conceived? The black-heart cherry? His geraniums? The tulips that you saved from New Hall? The larches from Archangel?”

J turned his head away from her pleading face but Jane did not let go. “If we never have another child,” she said bravely. “We both come from small families, we might only ever have Frances. If God is not kind to us and we never have a son to carry your name, then all that will be left of the Tradescants is their name on their trees. These are your posterity, John – will you leave them to be named for another man, or grown by him? Or worse, neglected and felled by him?”

He looked down at her. “You are my conscience and my heart,” he said softly. “Are you telling me that we should garden for the king – even such a king as this – because if we do not then I lose my bond to my father and my rights to his name, and my claim to history?”

She nodded. “I wish it were an easier road to see,” she said. “But surely you can plant the king’s garden and take the king’s gold without compromising your soul or your conscience. You don’t need to be his man, as your father was wedded to Cecil and then to Buckingham. You can just take his wage and do his work. You can be an independent man working for pay.”