‘The preachers speak nothing but the truth,’ she said, confronting him at last. ‘They say that a new world is coming where men can share in the wealth of the country and that every man should have his share. They say that the king will see reason and give the country to his people when his adviser is thrown down. And they say that if the king will not turn against Papist practices in his home, and ritual in his church, and poverty in his streets, then we should all go to make a new world of our own.’

‘Virginia!’ John mocked scathingly. ‘That was an investment of mine in a promising business. It was not a dream of a new world.’

‘There is certainly no dreaming in this old world,’ she flashed back. ‘Innocent men in the Tower, poor men taxed into paupers. Plague in the streets every summer, starvation in the country, and the richest king in the world riding around in silk with his Favourite riding beside him on a horse from Arabia.’

John put his hand under her chin and turned her face so that she was forced to meet his eyes. ‘This is treason,’ he said firmly. ‘And I will not have it spoken in my house. I have struck J for less. Mark me well, Elizabeth, I will put you aside if you speak against my lord. I will turn you out if you speak against the king. I have given my heart and soul to the duke and the king. I am their man.’

For a moment she looked as if he had indeed struck her. ‘Say that again,’ she whispered.

He hesitated; he did not know if she was daring him to repeat it, or if she simply could not believe her ears. But either way he could not back down before a woman. The chain of command from God to man was clear, a wife’s feelings could not disrupt the loyalty from man to lord to king to God. ‘I will put you aside if you speak against my lord,’ John said to his wife, as solemnly as he had spoken the marriage oath in church that long-ago day in Meopham. ‘I will turn you out if you speak against the king. I have given my heart and soul to the duke and the king. I am their man.’

He turned on his heel and went out of the room. Elizabeth heard his heavy step going up the stairs to their bedroom and then the noise of the wooden chest opening as he took his travelling suit from where it was laid in lavender and rue. She put out her hand to the chimney breast to steady herself as her knees grew suddenly weak beneath her, and she sank down to the little three-legged stool at the fireside.

‘I want to go with him,’ J suddenly said from his seat at the table.