The queen took a fancy to J. It was as if she had to find some way of encompassing his refusal to do exactly as she wished about the oak tree. She could not leave his rejection of her plans alone, it rubbed the tender spot of her vanity. When she was walking in the gardens with her ladies, wrapped up in the richest of furs, or watching her courtiers practising archery at the butts, she would stop if she saw J and call him over. ‘Here is my gardener who will only plant what he pleases!’ she would exclaim in her strong French accent. ‘The young Tradescant.’

J would take his hat off his head in the chill wind, in obedience to his father’s instructions, and bow, but not very low, in obedience to his wife, and assume an expression of dogged patience as the queen was once more charming to him.

‘I want you to plough up the allee of yews. It is so very dark and dreary now it is winter.’

‘Of course,’ J replied. ‘Only …’

‘There you go!’ she cried. ‘I can never do what I wish in my own garden, Tradescant will always have his own way. Why may I not have those trees grubbed out?’

J glanced down the court to the beautiful allee of trees. They were so old that they had bowed together and interlinked at the top so that they made a perfectly round tunnel. A bare brown earth path ran beneath them, marked with perfectly round white stepping stones. Nothing grew beneath them in the deep greeny light, not even in midsummer did the sunshine filter through. In the heat of the day it was as cool as a cave. To touch such trees other than to prune and shape them would be an act of wanton destruction.

‘They are useful to Your Majesty for bows for your archers,’ he said politely. ‘The yew is specially grown for it, it is very strong, Your Majesty.’

‘We can get yew anywhere,’ she said lightly.

‘Not as good as this.’

She threw back her head and laughed like a little girl. J, who knew the ring of real laughter from a mischievous girl, was not impressed by the queen’s coquetry.

‘You see how it is? You see?’ she demanded, turning to one of her courtiers. The young man smiled responsively. ‘I am allowed to do nothing with my own land. Tradescant, I am glad I am not your wife. Do you have a wife?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ J disliked it most when the queen became intimate with him.

‘At your home? At – what do you call it? – the Ark?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘And children?’

‘A boy, and an older girl.’

‘But this is very good,’ she exclaimed. ‘And do you adore your wife, Tradescant? Do you do her every wish?’

J hesitated.