The steward laughed shortly. ‘Well, hear this. Buckingham invites Lady Kate to his mother’s house for dinner and when the dinner is ended they don’t let her call for her carriage. They don’t let her go home! Buckingham’s mother herself keeps the girl overnight. So her reputation is ruined and her father is glad to get her wed at any price, takes the duke’s offer and has to pay handsomely for the privilege of having his daughter dishonoured into the bargain.’

Tradescant’s jaw dropped open. ‘He did this?’

William Ward nodded.

‘To a lady?’

‘Aye. Now you get some idea of what he can do and what he is allowed. And now you get some idea of his rashness.’

Tradescant took a couple of swift steps and looked out of the window. Almost at once his sense of anxiety at this new post, at this madly impulsive young master, deserted him. He could see the site of what would be his kitchen garden, and he had it in mind to build a hollow wall, the first of its kind in England, and to heat the inside of it like a chimney. It might warm the fruit trees growing against the wall and make them come early into bud. He shook his head at the promising site and returned to the problem of his new master’s wildness.

‘And is his new wife unhappy?’ he asked.

William Ward looked at him for one incredulous moment and then burst into laughter. ‘You’ve seen my lord. D’you think a new wife would be unhappy?’

John shrugged. ‘Who knows what a woman wants?’

‘She wants rough wooing and passionate bedding and she has had both from our lord. She wants to know that he loves her above everything else and there is no other woman in the land who can say that her husband risked everything to have her.’

‘And the king?’ Tradescant asked, going to the key of all things.

Ward smiled. ‘The king keeps the two of them as lesser men keep lovebirds in a cage, for the pleasure of seeing their happiness. And in any case, when he wants Buckingham all to himself he has only to crook his finger and our lord goes. His wife knows that he must go, and she smiles and bids him farewell.’

The steward fell silent. John looked out again at the parkland that stretched to the horizon. This was flat country, he thought the winds in winter would be cruel. ‘So,’ he said slowly. ‘I have a new lord who is a spendthrift, and wild, a breaker of hearts and no respecter of persons.’

The steward nodded. ‘And any one of us would lay down our lives for him.’

Surprised, John looked up. The steward was smiling.