She did not say, ‘Amen’.

‘I am to follow him to France, with his baggage,’ John said. ‘He wrote to me himself. He knows that no-one else could get it done. No-one else would take the care. He wrote to me by name.’

She turned her face away for a moment, and then quietly put her spindle down. ‘You will need your travelling cape, and your riding breeches,’ she said and went to climb the little stair to their bed chamber.

‘He wants me!’ Tradescant repeated exultantly. ‘He sent for me! All the way from France!’

Elizabeth turned back to look at him and for a moment he could not understand her expression. She was looking at him with regret, with a strange inexplicable pity.

‘This is what I have been waiting for!’ he said. But at once the words sounded lame. ‘At last!’

‘I know you have been waiting for him to whistle and for you to run,’ she said gently. ‘And I will pray that he does not lead you down dark pathways.’

‘He is leading me to the court of France!’ John exclaimed. ‘To the heart of Paris itself to bring home the new Queen of England!’

‘To a Papist court and a Papist queen,’ Elizabeth said steadily. ‘I will pray for your deliverance night and day, husband. Last time you went to court you came home sickened to your soul.’

John swore under his breath and flung himself out of the cottage to wait on the road for his wife to pack his bag. So when they said farewell he did not take her in his arms but merely nodded his head to her. ‘I bid you farewell,’ he said. ‘I cannot say when I shall return.’

‘When he has finished with you,’ she said simply.

John flinched at the words. ‘I am his servant, as he is the king’s,’ he said. ‘Duty to him is an honour as well as my task.’

‘Indeed, I hope his service always is an honour,’ she said. ‘And that he never asks anything of you that you should not perform.’

John took her hand and kissed her lightly, coldly, on the forehead. ‘Of course not,’ he said irritably. The cart, packed with the duke’s goods and drawn by two good horses, with his lordship’s two best hunters tossing their heads at being tied on behind, clattered down the lane. John hailed it and swung up on the seat beside the driver. When he looked down on her he thought his wife seemed very small, but as indomitable as she had been the day of their engagement twenty-four years ago.

‘God bless you,’ he said gruffly. ‘I shall come home as soon as I have done my duty.’

She nodded, still grave. ‘J and I will be waiting for you,’ she said. The cart rolled forward, she turned and watched it go. ‘As we always are.’