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  ‘I need advice.’

  There was an unhelpful silence.

  ‘Suckahanna turns from me and says not one word to me.’

  Attone nodded.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to make it better between us?’

  Attone bent down and raised the trap from the water. The delicate withy-work was bending in the current; he straightened a twig and then carefully bedded it in with pebbles before he answered. He took his time, the whole process took nearly half an hour.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Will she take me back as a husband if I serve her without complaint? Perhaps in Coltayough? In the warm time?’

  Attone thought for a moment, his eyes still on his fish trap, and then shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘At Nepinough?’

  Again the dismissive shake of the head.

  ‘Will she ever forgive me for coming home without blood on my hands?’

  Attone turned from the river and looked John squarely in the face. The relief of being seen, of gaining a response, was so great that John wanted to fling his arms around his former friend. Just that one look was an affirmation that he was a man still; that he could be seen and acknowledged.

  ‘Never, I should think,’ Attone said.

  Tradescant drew breath. ‘What have I done that is so bad?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  Dumbly, Tradescant shook his head.

  ‘You’ve shamed her. She stood for you before all the People and said you were a man worthy to be tested. You were tested and you passed and she chose you as her man, before all the People. Now they all look at her and say what a fool that woman is to choose a man who bends like a willow, who is neither white nor brown, who is neither English nor Powhatan, who is neither hunter nor gardener, who is neither Eagle nor John.’

  ‘Will she never forgive me?’

  ‘How can she? Will she ever not feel the shame?’

  ‘If we were to go away –’

  Attone laughed a brief bitter laugh. ‘Where? D’you think she’d live in Jamestown? D’you think they’d not take her out and hang her or worse? D’you think she’d live with you in that house and send tobacco down the river and pack up your plants for you, and be a wife like the other one, the one you left behind in England? Or d’you think to take her to England and watch her die in exile, as Pocahontas did?’

  John shook his head, he felt as bewildered as a scolded child. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ he said.

  For a moment Attone softened. He dropped his hand on John’s shoulder. ‘These are foolish times,’ he said. ‘I think at the end of it all, when the Great Hare runs through the world all alone again, we will all seem fools.’

  ‘Can the People survive?’ John asked in a low whisper.

  Attone shook his head.

  January 1645, England

  Johnnie was in the garden at first light, looking for flowers for his sister’s wedding bouquet. The frost was as thick on the ground as snow, his boots crunched as he walked across the frozen grass. The sun was bright and hard and the air smelled sharp and exciting: of leaf-mould, of coldness, of the earth waiting for sunshine. Johnnie had a powerful sense of being young and alive and that his life, as the only Tradescant heir, was about to begin.

  He wanted to give Frances something beautiful. If she had married in springtime she would have carried a bouquet of flowers from the chestnut tree, their grandfather’s pride. If she had married in summer he would have cut the stems and snapped the thorns off a hundred roses. But she had chosen the very heart of the winter and Johnnie feared he could give her nothing from his grandfather’s garden but the shiny hardness of evergreen leaves.

  Hester, seeing him bare-headed and wearing nothing warm, swung open her bedroom window, hearing the hinge crack against the frost. ‘Johnnie! What are you doing?’

  He turned and waved. ‘I’m picking her a bouquet!’

  ‘There’s nothing to be had!’

  Johnnie shook his head and went on down the garden. Hester watched him go, the lithe little figure with the determined set to his shoulders: Johnnie Tradescant. Then she turned back into the house to wake Frances for her wedding day.

  Frances, bathed, dressed, perfumed and wearing a new gown, came downstairs in a shimmering cloud of palest blue silk. She wore her hair down to her shoulders, curled in ringlets, a tiny scrap of lace for a cap on the back of her head. Her gown, rich pale silk embroidered all over with pale blue patterns, hushed and whispered on the flagstones of the hall. Her wide collar was of the finest Valenciennes lace; the future Mrs Norman could import the very best from France. It matched the deep lace edging of her sleeves, crisp and sweet-smelling with starch. The dress was cut low, the cream of Frances’s warm skin contrasting with the coolness of the white lace.

  ‘How do I look?’ Frances asked, knowing that she was beautiful.

  ‘Awful ugly,’ Johnnie said with a smile, invoking the nursery insult. He whipped out a posy from behind his back. ‘I picked you these. But you don’t have to carry them if you don’t like ’em.’

  Frances took the posy from him without any word of gratitude or thanks and looked carefully at it. Hester was reminded that they were children and grandchildren of perhaps the finest gardeners the world had ever known. Neither of them exclaimed over the gift of a plant, they always carefully looked, carefully assessed.

  He had cut her fronds of yew, the needles as soft as wool, the green so dark as to be almost black, starred with deep pink berries and smelling hauntingly of winter and Christmas. He had picked her mistletoe from the clumps on the old trees in the orchard and woven the light green wings of leaves around the darker yew so the white berries looked like drops of pearls against the needles. He had found some tiny buds of early snowdrops and woven them into a chain which linked leaves, needles and buds altogether, and he had twisted it around with the lace-like twigs of a rambling rose starred with pink hips.

  ‘Thank you,’ Frances said.

  ‘But I have this for your hair,’ Johnnie said with simple pride. From the table behind him he produced a spray of primroses, and their sweet, clear smell filled the hall.

  ‘How ever did you get primroses?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Potted them up as soon as you said you’d marry him,’ Johnnie said proudly. ‘I wasn’t going to let you catch me out with a winter wedding. We are the Tradescants, after all.’

  Frances laid down her green bouquet and took the pot of primroses to the mirror in the rarities room. Her high heels sounded hollow on the floorboards; only the big things were left in the room, with a collection of lesser pieces which could be sacrificed to save the others. The room was rich enough to fool a looting soldier into thinking that he had seen all the treasures. Hester kept the key to the ice-house door on a chain round her neck and the ivy was growing thickly over the hinges.

  Frances picked the flowers, nipping the soft stems with her fingernails, and tucked them behind her ears and into her ringlets.

  ‘Pretty?’ she asked, turning to her brother.

  ‘Well enough,’ he said, concealing his pride as he took her hand and tucked it under his arm.

  They married at Little St Bartholomew’s Church, Old Fish Street, in the City with Hester as one witness and Alexander’s friend Thomas Streeter as the other. They dined that night at Alexander’s house opposite the Tower of London and raised a glass to the father of the bride.

  ‘I wonder where he is tonight?’ Mr Streeter asked thoughtlessly. Alexander glanced quickly at Hester’s stricken face.

  ‘I don’t mind, as long as he’s safe,’ she said.

  It was hard for Hester to leave Frances. She had cared for her since she had been a fair-headed, sad little girl of nine years old, overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after her brother, missing her mother every night and every day. She had been too proud to ask for help; she would always have all of the Tradescant stubbornness. She had been too independent to ask for love; but Hester would treasure