‘Caught you,’ he said easily. ‘Drinking away my fortune.’

‘My lord! I never –’

He laughed again. ‘How have you done, my John? Are you rich in tulip notes?’

John shook his head. ‘I am rich in tulips, in real bulbs, my lord. The men in this town seem to have forgotten what they are buying and selling, they want only a piece of paper with a name written on it and the Bourse seal at the bottom. I had to go far inland to find growers who would sell me the real thing.’

Buckingham came into the ale house and sat at John’s table. ‘Finish your dinner, I have dined already,’ he remarked. ‘So where are they? These tulips?’

‘They are packed away and ready to sail tonight,’ John said, reluctantly picking up a crust of bread smeared with creamy Dutch butter. ‘I was on my way home to New Hall with them.’

‘Can they sail alone?’

John thought quickly. ‘I’d send a man I could trust to go with them. It’s too precious a cargo to leave to the captain. And I’d like someone to see them all the way to New Hall.’

‘Do it,’ the duke said idly.

John swallowed his question with his bread, rose from the table, bowed swiftly to the duke and went out of the tavern. He ran like a deer for his inn, engaged the landlord’s son to go to England and to see the barrels of tulips safely delivered to New Hall, pressed money and a note of introduction to J into the young man’s hand, and then ran back to the tavern as the duke was downing his second pint of ale.

‘All done, Your Grace,’ he reported breathlessly.

‘I thank you,’ the duke said.

There was a tantalising silence. John stood before his master.

‘Oh, you can sit down,’ the duke said. ‘And have an ale. You must be thirsty.’

John slid into the seat opposite his master and watched him as the girl brought his drink. The duke was pale, a little tired from the festivities of the French court, but his dark eyes were sparkling. John felt a stir of his venturing spirit.

‘Are you not attended, Your Grace?’

The duke shook his head. ‘I am travelling unknown.’

John waited but his master volunteered nothing.

‘Anywhere to stay?’

‘I thought I’d bed with you.’

‘What if you had not found me?’ John grimaced at the thought of the greatest man in England wandering around the Low Countries in search of his gardener.

‘I knew I only had to wait somewhere near the tulip exchange and you would turn up,’ Buckingham said easily. ‘And besides, I do not crumple without a dozen servants to support me, you know, John. I can fend for myself.’

‘Of course,’ John agreed quickly. ‘I just wondered what you are doing here?’