‘Good day, Mr Tradescant,’ she said. ‘And welcome to our home. Will you step upstairs to wait? Father will be back in a moment.’

‘I’ll wait down here with you if I may,’ John said. He looked around the shop which was lined with small drawers, none of them marked. ‘It’s like a treasure chest.’

‘John told me that the Duke of Buckingham has a room like this, but he stores curiosities,’ she said. With a shock John realised that she did not call his son J, but John.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My lord has some very beautiful and curious things.’

‘And you arrange them and collect them for him?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must have seen many marvels,’ she said seriously.

John smiled at her. ‘And many falsehoods. Foolish forgeries cobbled together to try to catch the unwary.’

‘All treasure is a trap for the unwary,’ she observed.

‘Indeed,’ John said, disliking the tone of piety. ‘I shall buy something from you to take home to my wife. Do you have some pretty ribbons or lace for her to trim a collar?’

Jane bent below the counter and slid out a tray. She spread a little black velvet cloth so the lace was shown to its best advantage and laid out one piece, and then another, for him to see.

‘And ribbons,’ she said. They came from a dozen little drawers, arranged by colour. She spread them before him, the cheap scratchy thin ones, and the lustrous silkier lengths.

‘Are they not a trap to catch the unwary?’ John asked, watching her absorbed face as she smoothed the lengths of ribbon before him, and folded them so that he could admire their shine.

She met his smile without embarrassment. ‘They are the hard work of good women,’ she said. ‘They work to put bread in their mouths and we pay them a fair price and sell at a good profit. It is not just what you earn, but how you spend your money, that is judged on the great day. In this house we buy and sell fairly and nothing is wasted.’

‘I’ll take that lace,’ John decided. ‘Enough to make a collar.’

She nodded and cut him the measure he needed. ‘A shilling,’ she said. ‘But you may have it for tenpence.’

‘I’ll pay the full shilling,’ he said. ‘For the good women.’

She gave a sudden, delicious gurgle of laughter, her whole face lighting up and her eyes dancing. ‘I’ll see that they get it,’ she said.

She took his coin and put it away in a strongbox under the desk, entered the purchase in a ledger, and then wrapped the scrap of lace very carefully and tied it with a piece of wool. John stowed it in the deep pocket of his coat.

‘Here’s Father,’ Jane said.