She nodded enthusiastically. ‘And one corner in blue as a tribute to Our Lady.’ She turned her dark eyes on him. ‘Are you of the true faith, Tradescant?’

John thought briefly of Elizabeth in her modest grey gown, the staunch Baptist faith of his daughter-in-law, and his promise to J that his conscience would not be offended by this work. He kept his face perfectly steady. ‘I attend the church of my fathers, Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘I’m a simple gardener, I don’t think much of things other than plants and rarities.’

‘You should think of your immortal soul,’ she commanded. ‘And the church of your fathers is the church of Rome. I am always telling the king this!’

Tradescant bowed, thinking that she had just said enough to get both of them hanged if the king applied the laws of the land – which he manifestly only did when it suited him.

‘And I shall want flowers for my chapel, for my private chapel,’ she said. ‘Blue and white for Our Lady.’

‘Of course, Your Majesty.’

‘And for my private rooms, and strewing herbs, and the king wishes you to maintain and replant the physic garden and look at the herb garden.’

Tradescant bowed again.

‘I want the house to be like a palace in a fairytale,’ she said, changing at once from the evangelical Roman Catholic into the flirtatious queen. ‘Like a bower for a fairytale Princess. I want people all over the country, all over Europe, to hear of it as a fairytale garden, a perfect garden. Have you heard of the Platonic ideal?’

John felt a sense of weariness he had never before known while talking about a garden. He had a sudden sympathy for the king who had lost the easy male companionship of Buckingham and had no-one to turn to but this vain woman.

The queen was laughing. ‘I suppose not!’ she cried. ‘It does not matter, Gardener Tradescant. It is an idea which we make much of at court, in our masques and poetry and plays. I will just tell you that it is an idea that there is a perfect form of everything – of a woman, of a man, of a marriage, of a garden, of a rose, and the king and I want to attain that ideal.’

John glanced at her to see if she was speaking seriously. He thought of how the duke would have roared with laughter at the pedantry, at the pretentiousness. He would have slapped John on the back and called him Gardener Tradescant for ever after.

‘Think of it,’ she said, her voice as sweet as syrup. ‘A perfect garden as a shell for a perfect palace for a perfect king and queen.’

‘In a perfect country?’ John asked incautiously.