‘What are you doing?’

‘Forcing it,’ John said abruptly.

Beside the tub was a big half-barrel of daffodils that had been lifted from the orchard, their green shoots only just showing above the damp earth.

‘We need an orangery,’ John said. ‘We should have built one years ago.’

‘We do,’ J agreed. ‘But for delicate plants from abroad; not for daffodils and chestnut saplings. What are you doing with them?’

‘I want to get them in flower,’ John said. ‘As soon as I can force them.’

‘Why?’

‘To please your mother,’ John said, telling only half the story.

Every night John banked in the fire so the plants were warm all night, every day he sprinkled them – three, four times a day – with warm water. In the evening he set candles around them to give them extra light and warmth. J would have laughed but there was something about his father’s intensity which puzzled him.

‘Why d’you want them to bloom early?’

‘I have my reasons,’ John said.

Spring 1634

John achieved his goal. When Elizabeth died in March, her room was filled with the golden light of dozens of daffodils, and the sweet scent of them perfumed her room. The very last thing she saw as her eyes wearily closed was John coming in the door, his face warm with a smile, and his hands filled with the exquisite pink and white pyramid blossoms of his chestnut trees.

‘For you,’ he said and bent and kissed her.

Elizabeth tried to say: ‘Thank you. I love you, John’, but the darkness was creeping in; and in any case, he knew.

After the funeral John moved back to the silk house at Oatlands for the rest of the season. He did not feel that he wanted to be at his home, without Elizabeth. At night he could not sleep; but he liked the warmth of the pretty wooden house, and there was something strangely comforting about the thought of the thousands of silkworms, sleeping in their little cocoons, next door, dreaming whatever dreams silkworms spin.

The queen had authorised the building of a coalhouse and a new and beautiful orangery, and John supervised the building in the short hours of springtime daylight. It was another light-timbered fanciful building like a little wooden palace. It went up quickly and John wrote to J, telling him to bring some citrus whips when he next came.

Apart from the building, there was little to do in the gardens in the cold spring days, but John liked to walk around and see that the streams and fountains were clear of leaves, and that the little green snouts of bulbs were pushing their way defiantly through the cold earth. When it was warmer he would plant a new bowling green for Their Majesties, and he watched the men digging, rolling, and harrowing the earth until every smallest stone was gone and the ground was ready for the seed. They grumbled when he made them dig in the old rotted dung from the stables and then water it till it froze and melted and froze again, but John insisted that the ground be rich and smooth before the seed was scattered.