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an ordinary Monday in spring with the gallants out flaunting.”
    “What is their work?” Andrew asked.
    “Showing off to each other and begging favors from the Queen,” Mr. Harriot laughed. “They own land. Their tenants keep them in finery.”
    They entered a room marked “Lottery Office.” Andrew watched close as Mr. Harriot talked numbers and shuffled the pieces, explaining to the officer how the new counting cloth and tokens would make division easy. The man’s eyes glazed over.
    “So, clear enough?” Mr. Harriot asked at last.
    The lottery officer scrunched up his mouth and nodded weakly.
    “Good. You’ll demonstrate it to the lord commissioners and send word to Mr. Raleigh. He waits to hear.
    “They’ll have me back,” Mr. Harriot laughed as they walked out. “That poor fellow can’t count beyond his fingers—like most of them,” he said, gesturing at the fops around. “They look down on tradesmen and merchants who soil their hands with money, but if you handle money or try following a mapped course, you learn how to count quick enough.”
    Hurrying back to Durham House, they passed the great yard where men in armor trained for combat on horses, spearing and dodging bright-colored tethered balls the size of a man’s head. Andrew thought he recognized Peter. He waved; the other didn’t.
    The bells hadn’t struck ten when he joined Pena in the garden. The Frenchman was mixing something in his wheelbarrow.
    “You’ve heard about men who mix strange things together to make gold, yes? Well, we gardeners do alchemy too,” he said, pointing. “In this bin we have ground limestone; in that one, wood ash; there, seaweed. The others are washed sea sand, peat, oak leaf mulch, cow dung well rotted. In the farthest ones, the stinks—fish meal and chicken droppings. We work to make the right soils for the Spanish seedlings.
    “I’ve divided the plants among a dozen plots: one sweet with lime, ash, peat, and fish meal; one sour with oak mulch and dung; some sections sandy, some loose with seaweed. The farthest one is simple London clay and river muck. Your first job every morning will be to mark the progress of each plot. Once we see where the seedlings thrive and where they fail, we’ll move them around.
    “Then to the work every gardener knows: on your knees for the battle against weeds! Always we have weeds. They come like Spanish spies in the night, hiding until they make themselves secure and deep-rooted, and then they rise and prove tough to pull. So now I show you what is weed and what is worthy. It is easier with plants than with people, and there is this difference: if you pull up something you want to keep, you can always replant it. With a dead man, no.”
    He handed the boy a triangle blade on a pole.
    “You loosen around…”
    Andrew showed what he knew. He’d weeded in his father’s beds since he could walk. It was the same thing when Pena demonstrated how to prune: Andrew knew the art.
    Every few feet there were shallow dishes, some with small gray bodies floating. “Slugs,” Pena explained. “We trap them with beer. The other pests we pick and pinch. As for crows—stone them!”
    When the noon bells rang, Pena led Andrew to a large shed filled with pots and tools. “Here we put away,” he said. “We wipe the blades clean and sharpen what we’ve dulled. They are precious, these edge tools—French, the best.” Andrew felt a pang: the shed’s smell reminded him of the one at home, and Pena’s words about caring for the tools—they were like what Andrew’s father always said when they finished work together.
    Dinner was served when the bells struck one. All the Durham House folk took their places for the main meal of the day: slices of roast beef, as much as anyone could eat, dark bread, and warm ale. Many then went off to sleep.
    Although drowsy himself from the heavy food, Andrew slogged up to Mr. Raleigh’s turret and began work writing a summary of the Spaniard’s