John turned to greet the man. He looked incongruously more like a farmer than a seller of cloth and haberdashery. He was broad-shouldered and red-faced, well-dressed in sober black and grey and with a small lace collar. He held his hat in his hand and put out his other hand to John for a firm handshake.

‘I am glad to meet you at last,’ he said. ‘We have heard nothing from John but about his father’s travels since he first came here, and we prayed for you while you were in such peril off France.’

‘I thank you,’ John said, surprised.

‘Daily, and by name,’ Josiah Hurte went on. ‘He is a mighty all-wise, all-powerful God; but there is no harm in reminding him.’

John had to suppress a smile. ‘I suppose not.’

Josiah Hurte looked at his daughter. ‘Any sales?’

‘Just a piece of lace to Mr Tradescant, here.’

His tradesman’s instinct warred with his desire to be generous to John’s father. The desire for a small profit won. ‘Times are very hard for us,’ he said simply.

John looked around the well-stocked shop.

‘It doesn’t show yet,’ Josiah said, following his gaze, ‘but every month things are getting tighter. We have a constant stream of requisitions from the king, fines for this, new taxes for that. And goods which were free to buy and sell suddenly become farmed out to courtiers as monopolies and we have to pay a fee to the monopoly holder. The king demands a free gift from his subjects and the vicar or the churchwardens come round to my shop, look at the outside, decide on their own what I can afford, and I face prison if I refuse.’

‘The king has great expenses,’ John said pacifically.

‘My wife and my friends would spend all my money too if I let them,’ the Puritan said shortly. ‘So I don’t let them.’

John said nothing.

‘Forgive me,’ the man said suddenly. ‘My daughter swore me to silence on this matter and I broach it the moment I am in the door!’

John could not resist a laugh. ‘My son too!’

‘They feared we would quarrel but I would never come to blows over politics.’

‘I have seen enough of warfare this year,’ John agreed.

‘It is a criminal shame, though,’ Josiah continued, leading the way up the stairs from the shop. ‘My guild can no longer control the trade because the court favourites now run the market in thread and lace and silk, and so my apprentices are no longer guaranteed their work or their wages, other men come into the trade and force prices and wages down and up at their whim. I wish you would tell the duke that if the poor are to be fed and the widows and children safeguarded, we need a powerful guild and a steady trade. We cannot have changes every time a courtier needs a new place.’