‘It is like that for me,’ she said quietly to the dying fire, as if she were swearing a solemn oath. ‘You have turned aside from the paths of righteousness, husband, and I can walk by your side no more.’

John waited for news of his master but there was silence for the first two, three days. Then news of the escapade of the young prince and the young duke began to leak out. They were incompetent conspirators and, indeed, such incompetent travellers that it was a wonder they were not stopped at Dover as John had hoped. But Villiers threw silver around their journey, and ordered the ships out of Dover harbour on his authority as Lord High Admiral, and soon the court and the old king heard that the boys had been entertained in Paris, ridden halfway across France, and finally reached Madrid.

The king saw the whole business as a handsome piece of the knight errantry, like the court masques when the handsome hero wins the fairest lady and then they dance. But the rumour that came back to England, even to the King’s Arms at Chelmsford where John had taken to drinking in the evening, alert for gossip, was that matters were more difficult. The weeks went by and the young men did not come home with a princess for a bride. Instead they sent demands for money and more money.

The king grew fretful, missing the duke, even missing his usually neglected son. The court was robbed of life when Villiers was not there to arrange amusements, the hunting, the masquing, the scandals. John, lingering in the steward’s room, found the courage to ask him outright if he thought their master would hold his place if he did not come home soon, and saw his own worry reflected in William Ward’s eyes.

‘They will introduce the king to another man every day that our lord is away,’ Mr Ward said quietly. ‘And the king does not like demands for money. He will hold it against our lord. He will resent it.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You knew the prince when he was a boy, is he faithful-hearted?’

John thought of the lame boy who stammered on his plea that his handsome brother should wait for him, and was always left behind. The sickly boy who was never anyone’s favourite while his older brother was the heir. He nodded. ‘Once he gives his love he clings,’ he said simply. ‘If he loves our duke as he loved his brother, then he worships him.’

William Ward nodded. ‘Then maybe our lord is playing a wiser game than we realise. He may be breaking the heart of the father but there will be another king when the father is gone.’