‘Oh yes, gardens,’ the duke said. ‘You must meet the gardeners to the French court, you will be impressed with what they do here. The queen will give me a note for you to introduce yourself to them.’ He bent towards John and spoke softly in his ear. ‘The queen would give me a good deal more too, if I asked for it, I think!’

John found he was smiling at the shameless vanity of the man. ‘I know the Robins, but I shall be pleased to see them again. And you have been amusing yourself.’

Buckingham kissed his fingertips like a Frenchman acknowledging beauty. ‘I have been in paradise,’ he said. ‘And you shall come with me and we shall see the palace gardens together. Come, John, I shall change my clothes and I shall take you around the city. It’s very fair and very joyful, and the women are as easy as mares in heat. It’s a perfect town for me!’

John chuckled unwillingly. ‘My wife would be most distressed. I will go and see the gardens but I cannot go visiting women.’

Buckingham put his arm around Tradescant’s shoulders and hugged him tight. ‘You shall be my conscience then,’ he said. ‘And keep me on the straight and narrow way.’

It could not be done. The Archangel Gabriel with a flaming sword could not have kept the Duke of Buckingham on the straight and narrow way in Paris in 1625. The French court was besotted with the English, a new prince on the throne, a French princess as his chosen bride, and the handsomest man in Europe at court to fetch her to her new home. Crowds of women gathered outside Buckingham’s hôtel just to see him come and go, and to admire the astounding sight of his carriage and six, and the jewels and his clothes and his hat, the ‘bonnet d’anglais’ which was copied by a hundred hatters as soon as they glimpsed it.

The queen herself blushed when he came near her, and watched him from behind her fan if he so much as spoke to another woman, and little Princess Henrietta Maria stammered when he was in the room and forgot what little English she knew. The whole of France was in love with him, the whole of Paris adored him. And Buckingham, smiling, laughing, fêted everywhere he went, passed through adoring crowds as if he were the king himself and not a mere ambassador: the bridegroom himself and not a proxy.

John was weary of Buckingham’s ceaseless round of parties within days.

‘Keep up, John,’ Buckingham threw over his shoulder. ‘We are going to a masked ball tonight.’

‘As you wish,’ John said.

Buckingham turned and laughed at John’s stoical expression. ‘Have you no assignations? No dances promised?’