‘Then why not live less rich?’ Elizabeth suggested, practical as ever. ‘If they are surrounded by hangers-on and flatterers who do them no good, why not be rid of them? Why not spend time with their children? Why not seek out the men who care for their own consciences and would not hang on them and flatter them? God knows there were enough men of principle in the last Parliament, the king must have seen them often enough.’

‘The price a king must pay is the loss of his common sense,’ John said dryly. ‘I’ve seen it over and over, with kings and great men. They are lied to so sweetly and so often that they lose the taste of truth. They have sugar and honey dripped on their tongue until they are sick of the taste of it, but they still cannot call for bread and cheese.’

‘Poor them,’ Elizabeth said with cheerful irony.

‘Poor them indeed,’ said John, thinking for a moment of his duke who died friendless at the end, and was buried at night and in secret.

Winter 1632–3

Jane was not well. She was tired all the time and disliked her food. Christmas came and went and she was no better. When Frances came running in to her parents on the morning of the twelfth day after Christmas for her presents she found her mother pale and sickly.

‘Should she see a doctor?’ Elizabeth asked J.

‘She wants to go to her mother to stay for a few days,’ J said. ‘I’ll take her tomorrow in the wagon.’

‘Leave Frances here,’ John said across the breakfast table. ‘You’ll stay with your grandfather, won’t you, Frances?’

He could see little of her but a head of blonde curls and two interrogative curves of eyebrows. She bobbed upwards. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘And we’ll make things.’

‘What sort of things?’ John asked cautiously.

‘Big things,’ she said ominously.

‘I’ll stay overnight with the Hurtes and come back the next day,’ J said. ‘I’ll call in at the docks in case there’s anything of interest to be had on my way home.’

‘I’ll put up a hamper for you to take,’ Elizabeth said, rising from the table. ‘Come and help me, Frances, you can go into the store room and choose a jar of plums for Grandma Hurte.’

John did not go down to his orchard before Jane left. He waited by the wagon in the yard until he had seen her safely on the seat with her bags stowed. ‘You will come back soon,’ he said, in sudden anxiety.

She was pale but she still managed her familiar smile. ‘No, I shall stay with my mother and tell her you beat me and overwork me.’

‘You’re very dear to me,’ John said gruffly. ‘I don’t like to see you so pale.’