To his surprise she did not laugh and disclaim, as she would have done only a few years before. ‘I am studying my Bible more than I have done before,’ she told him. ‘There is a lecturer who teaches me and some other women on Wednesday nights. He’s a man of much learning and wisdom too. And I find I am thinking of things with more care than when I was a girl full of folly.’

John bent his knees awkwardly in the little wooden tub to get his shoulders under the suds. ‘I don’t remember you as full of folly,’ he remarked. ‘I always thought you were a God-fearing serious woman.’

Elizabeth nodded and again he saw the new gravity about her. ‘These are fearful times,’ she said. ‘The plague seems to get worse every summer and no-one can tell where it strikes. There are rumours about a king and a court who don’t walk in the way of the Lord. And a church which does not reproach them.’

John straightened and rose up from his bath, water cascading all over the floor. Elizabeth handed him a linen sheet and he threw it around his shoulders. She was carefully looking away as if the sight of her husband’s nakedness might lead her into sin. It was that turning away of her head which tripped John into irritation.

‘We don’t repeat gossip about the king in this household,’ he said flatly. And when Elizabeth was about to argue he held up his hand. ‘It’s not a matter of piety or truth, Elizabeth. It’s a lesson I learned from my lord. We don’t gossip against the king. The price is too high if you’re overheard. Whatever you are reading at your classes, you keep your mind on your Bible and off King James and his court, or you won’t go again.’

For a moment she looked as if she might argue. ‘Does this man preach against the authority of God vested in men over their wives?’ he demanded.

She dropped her head. ‘Of course not.’

John nodded, hiding his sense of immense smugness. ‘Good.’

‘You know that all I have ever wanted is for you to come home and stay home,’ Elizabeth said, dragging the big bath towards the back door where it could be tipped into the yard. ‘If you had been home I would have had no time to go to meetings.’

John gave her a sharp look. ‘Don’t lay it at my door,’ he said. ‘You can go where your conscience leads you as long as it does not take you into treason or into denying the authority of those set over you. All of those set over you. Me as your husband, my lord above me, the king above him, and God above him.’