‘You took no oath,’ she pressed him. ‘You think of yourself as his man and he treats you like a vassal right enough, but these are new times, John. The way you served Lord Cecil with such love and devotion is the old way. Other men work for Villiers for nothing more than their wages and they move on as it suits them. You could serve him like that. You could tell him that it does not suit you to go to war with him, and seek another place.’

He was genuinely shocked. ‘I tell him that it does not suit me to go to war when he is going? Tell him that it suits me to stay at home when he is fighting for my country in a foreign land? I to be a turncoat, having eaten his bread and lived in his house for five years? After he has paid me and trusted me, and employed my own son so he served his apprenticeship in one of the finest households in the land? I wait till now, till the worst moment of his life, to tell him that I was only here until it suited me to be elsewhere? This is not a matter of a wage, Elizabeth, it is a matter of faith. It is a matter of honour. It is a matter between my lord and me.’

J made a little impatient gesture, and then sat still. John did not even glance at him.

‘Then serve him where you are placed,’ Elizabeth said urgently. ‘Cleave to your master and do the work he employs you to do. Keep his cabinet of rarities, keep his gardens.’

‘I am placed at his side,’ John said simply. ‘Wherever he is, there I should be. Wherever that is.’

She swallowed her pride as it rose up, a wife’s pride, a jealous pride, stung by the devotion in his voice. She kept her temper with an effort. ‘I don’t want you running into danger,’ she said quietly. ‘We have a good place here, I acknowledge our debt to the duke. You have a fine life here. Why d’you have to go away? And this time to make war against the French! You told me yourself what a court they have and what an army! What chance does the fleet have against them?’ – ‘Especially commanded by the duke’, she thought but did not say it.

‘He thinks that we will sail into a heroes’ welcome and sail home again,’ John said. ‘The Protestants of La Rochelle have been under siege by the French government troops for months. When we relieve the siege we will free the Huguenots and slap Richelieu’s face.’

‘And why should you slap Richelieu’s face?’ she demanded. ‘He was an ally only months ago.’

‘Policy,’ John answered, concealing his ignorance.