‘I’ll say only this,’ the driver said. ‘There’s a Christian prince and princess, his own daughter, driven from her throne by the armies of the Pope. There’s a Spanish match that he would still make if he could. The Spanish ambassador is to return to him – by his own request! And year after year the country gets poorer while the court gets richer. You can’t expect people to dance in the streets. The death cart goes past them too often.’

John shook his head and looked away.

‘There’s those that think the land should be shared,’ the driver said under his breath. ‘There’s those that think that no good will come to England while people starve every winter and others are sick of surfeit.’

‘It is as God wills,’ John insisted. ‘And I won’t say more. To speak against the king is treason, to speak against the way things are and must be is heresy. If your mistress heard you, you’d be on the street yourself. And me too, for listening to you.’

‘You’re a good servant,’ the man sneered. ‘For you even think in obedience to your lord.’

John shot him a hard dark look. ‘I am a good servant,’ he repeated. ‘And proud of it. And of course I think in obedience to my lord. I think and live and pray in obedience to my lord. How else could it be? How else should it be?’

‘There are other ways,’ the driver argued. ‘You could think and live and pray for yourself.’

John shook his head. ‘I’ve given my allegiance,’ he said. ‘I don’t withdraw it, and I don’t pay three farthings to the penny. My lord is my master, heart and soul. And you’ll forgive me saying, but you might be a happier man if you could say the same thing.’

The driver shook his head and sulkily fell silent. John wrapped himself in his borrowed cloak and nodded off to sleep, only waking when they were driving towards Theobalds under the great double avenue of ash and elm, with the daffodils flooding around the trunks.

The carriage drew up outside the door and the duke himself came out to greet his mother.

‘Thank you, John,’ he threw over his shoulder and drew her into the house and up to the king’s chamber.

‘Is the king better?’ John asked a manservant as the countess’s box was carried up the stairs.

‘On the mend,’ the man said. ‘He took some soup this midday.’

‘Then I think I’ll take a turn around the garden.’ John nodded towards the door and the enticing view. ‘If my lord wants me you will find me at the bath house, or on the mount. I have not been here for many years.’