But John was burning to quarrel, or to confess. ‘That’s a lie. You are thinking that I was present, that I was witness to acts which might ruin him, acts which are a dreadful crime, the worst crime in the world, and that he leads me on to love him so that I am ensnared in love, and then I am incriminated myself!’

She shook her head and spooned her broth.

Tradescant pushed his bowl away, unable to eat for the anger and the darkness on his conscience. ‘You are thinking that I have been an assistant to a murder!’ he hissed. ‘To assassination. And that it is plaguing my conscience and making me sick with worry! You are thinking that I come home with guilt in my face! You are thinking I come home to you with a stain on my soul! And that even after all I have done for him, in closing my ears and my eyes to what I can see and hear, that even then he will not keep me by his side but vaults on my shoulders to go upwards and upwards and tonight he sleeps beside the new king and dismisses me with no more than a word!’

Elizabeth put her hands over her eyes, shielding her face from his anguish, incapable of disentangling the mortal sins at which her husband was hinting: murder, treason, and forbidden desire.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’

‘How can I stop?’ John yelled in terror for his mortal soul. ‘How can I go forward? How can I go back? How can I stop?’

There was a shocked silence. Elizabeth took her hands from her face and looked up at her husband.

‘Leave him,’ she whispered.

‘I cannot’

She rose from the table and went towards the fireplace. John watched her go, as if she might have the key for them to escape from this knot of sin. But when she turned back to him her face was stony.

‘What are you thinking?’ he whispered.

‘All that I think is that I have given you the wrong spoon,’ she said with sudden clarity. She took off her apron, hung it on the hook and went out of the room.

‘What d’you mean?’ John shouted at her back as she went through the doorway.

‘You need that one.’

He recoiled as her meaning struck him.

She was pointing to the spoon she used for cooking, the long spoon.

The news that King James was dead and his son was to be crowned the first King Charles arrived at Chorley the next day. Elizabeth was told in the marketplace at her small stall selling herbs. She nodded and said nothing. Her neighbour asked her if her husband was home and if he had brought any news of the doings from London.