She smiled. She had no sense that there might be anything behind his question but spellbound admiration. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘How could it be otherwise when it is ruled by my husband, and by me?’

Summer 1631

John had thought he would enjoy some time away from his home – never in his life before had he been so settled and he feared that the domestic life of Lambeth would be too narrow for him. But he found that he missed the daily changing business of the Ark, the midsummer flowering of the garden, and, more than anything else, the rapid changing of Frances who grew, in the summer of 1631, from a rosebud-mouthed, lisping toddler, to a little girl of rare determination.

He went home to Lambeth at every opportunity he could, to choose his stock from his own garden, and so that he could see his granddaughter. Each time he set off back to the palace, J would loiter in the stable yard, helping to pack the wagon with the heavy earthenware pots of plants.

‘D’you need me at the palace?’ he would ask, and John would drop his hand on his son’s shoulder.

‘I can manage without you another week,’ he would say. ‘I’ll tell you when I need you there.’

‘I’ll come then,’ J would promise. ‘As I agreed to.’

He would watch his father swing into the seat and go, and John would chuckle to himself at the seriousness of his beloved son who had bound himself in so many contradictory ways: to his conscience, to his promise, to his father, to his wife.

By the end of the summer John had completed the designs for the work in the king’s court, had shown them to the queen, and was ready to start the labour of digging over the garden and replanting it. He had a team of men ready to start but he needed J to supervise the work while he went on to the queen’s court, so that it should be designed in time for autumn planting.

‘Will you come back to the palace with me this time, J?’ he asked as the family were seated on the terrace one evening. J was drinking a glass of small ale, John had a small tot of rum. ‘There’s the physic garden which needs replanting, and now the queen has asked for a flowery mead.’

Jane looked up from her sewing, affronted. ‘A what?’

John smiled. ‘A flowery mead,’ he said. ‘Modelled on an old tapestry, those you see with the unicorn surrounded by hunters. It’s supposed to be like a meadow, a perfect meadow, with all the flowers of the field but no stinging nettles. You plant it with wild and garden flowers and then you cut a little path around it for the pleasure of walking with wild flowers.’

‘Why not walk by a meadow, then?’ Jane asked.