‘My John can’t go,’ Jane said suddenly. She made a small betraying movement, her hand to her belly. ‘I need him here.’ She flushed. ‘We need him here. He is to be a father.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ Elizabeth stretched across the fire and held Jane’s hands in her own. ‘I am so glad! What a blessing.’

The two women remained clasped for a moment, and Elizabeth closed her eyes in a swift silent prayer. John watched them with a weary sense of exclusion from the world of small joys. ‘I am glad for you,’ he said levelly. ‘And Jane is right, J cannot go with a baby on the way. If he sends for me, it will have to be me.’

The little family was silent for a moment. ‘Perhaps he will not send for you?’ Jane asked.

John shook his head. ‘I think he will. And I have promised to go whenever he calls me.’

‘To your death?’ J demanded passionately.

John raised a weary face to his son. ‘Those were the very words of my oath,’ he said slowly.

Summer 1628

The message came in the middle of June, one of the best months of the year for a gardener. John had started his day’s work in the rose garden, dead-heading the blowsy blooms and tossing the petals into a basket for the still room. They would be dried and used in pomanders, or for scattering in the linen cupboards to scent the duke’s sheets. Or they might be claimed by the cooks and candied to decorate the duke’s sweetmeats. Everything in the garden, from drowsily humming bees to falling rosy pale petals, was the duke’s and grew for his pleasure. Except he was not here to see them.

At midday John went around to the front of the house to see the young limes, planted in the long, gently curving double avenue. He had a thought that they might grow better-shaped if their lower branches were pruned, and he had a small axe and a saw for the purpose, and a lad coming behind with a ladder. But before he had done more than whistle to the lad to set the ladder before the first tree, he heard hoofbeats.

John turned, raised his hand to shield his eyes, and saw, like a dream, like a long-awaited vision, the single rider still a mile off, his lathered horse going from grey to black as it passed from brilliant sunlight into deep green shadow down the drive. John stepped out from the shade of the trees on to the broad sunny road, waiting in the hot light for the messenger, knowing that it would be his summons, knowing that he must obey. He felt for a moment that it was Death himself, with his scythe over his shoulder, riding between the trees with the drunken bees buzzing wildly and the leaves dripping with nectar and pollen.