‘My lord, I …’ John broke off. The old countess looked sharply at him, he was afraid of her black stare. ‘You said I should stay with you this day,’ he reminded his master.

Buckingham laughed again. ‘Yes, but thank God I don’t need your care. The king is my friend, my wife is at my side, my mother guards the interests of my family. Go home, John! I shall see you at New Hall when I come.’

He nodded to the footman and the man shut the door.

‘But when shall I see you?’ John called as the carriage started to move. The footman jostled past him and swung up on the back of the carriage. John wished that he too might at least ride at the back of the carriage, or run behind, or lie like a dog on the floor at their feet. ‘When shall I see you again?’

‘When I come!’ Buckingham cried. He waved his hand as John dropped back from the window. ‘I thank you for your care of me, John. I won’t forget it.’

The lead horse slipped on the cobbles and the carriage checked for a moment. John seized his chance and sprang to the window again. ‘But I thought I was to stay with you! At your shoulder! … As you said … my lord … as you said!’

Buckingham’s wife was pressed to his side, her fine silk gown crushed in his hold. She peeped up at her husband in a laughing complaint at John’s persistence.

‘I have given you leave,’ Buckingham said firmly. ‘Don’t be importunate, John. Go to New Hall. Don’t offend me by asking for more.’

Tradescant skidded to a halt on the cobbles and stood watching the coach rock away down the quayside. The other coaches followed behind the royal coach like some great promenade. Tradescant had to step back to make room for them; and then they were all gone, the trotting horses, the laughing courtiers, the brightness of the liveries, of the courtiers’ clothes, and the dock was left to greyness and mourning once more.

Tradescant stood until the last of them was gone. He could hardly believe the words he had heard his master use to him. When he had been pleading for a place at his side, Buckingham had answered him as if he had been begging for money. Buckingham had slipped, like some beautiful bird, from John’s keeping to another’s. And John might as well whistle to a free bird to come back to its cage as ask the duke to come back to him. John was held and bound by an obsessional desire, by a passionate love and by a sacred oath. He had sworn to love his lord until death. But only now did he realise that Buckingham had sworn nothing.