J’s hand holding the trowel trembled. ‘A thousand pounds? A thousand? But father – what if they rot?’ he asked, his voice a whisper. ‘What if they grow blind and fail to flower at all?’

John smiled grimly. ‘Then we seek another line of work. But what if they grow and split into new bulbs, J? Then our master has doubled his wealth in one season.’

‘But we stay on the same wages,’ J observed.

John nodded and put the six pots in a cool cupboard in the corner of the room. ‘That is how it works,’ he said simply. ‘But there could be no objection to us taking a bulb for every two we grow for him. My master Cecil taught me that himself.’

John was popular in the great dining room of New Hall on his return. He was able to tell a rapt audience of the prettiness of the little French princess: only fifteen and tiny, dark-haired and dark-eyed. He told them of her dancing and her singing, of her complete refusal to learn English. He told them that the news in London was that when the young King Charles met her at Dover Castle, he had covered her little face with kisses, laughed at her prepared speech, and spent the night in her bed.

The ladies wanted to know what she was wearing and John struggled through a description of her clothes. He assured them that the king and queen entered London by the river in a grand barge, both dressed in green, with the guns of the Tower roaring out a salute, and that was a vivid enough picture to be told and retold by a dozen hearthsides. He did not tell them that there had been a nasty quarrel between the king and his bride of only a day when she had wanted her French companions in the carriage from Dover to London, and the king had insisted that she travel with Buckingham’s wife and his mother.

The king had said that the French attendant was not of high enough station to ride with the Queen of England; and the young queen incautiously retorted that she knew well enough that the Buckinghams had been nobodies just ten years ago. She did not yet know enough to mind her sharp tongue, she had not yet learned of the extent of the duke’s influence. As it was, she rode in her carriage with the duke’s wife and the duke’s mother for the long journey into her capital and it might be safely assumed that no promises of friendship were made on the drive.

‘So did she look happy?’ asked Mrs Giddings, who worked in the New Hall laundry but had her own little farm and would kill another sheep for the Tradescants if John’s story was good enough.