‘I will,’ Frances said easily. ‘But may I come and work for you and be your gardener, as my grandfather and father do? I am very good with seeds and I can take cuttings and some of them do grow.’

It would have cost the king nothing to smile and say yes; but he was always a man who could be ambushed by shyness, and by his own desire to be seen to do the right thing. With only one person had he been free of his need to set an example, to be kingly and wise in all things; and that man was long dead.

‘M … maids and wives must stay at home,’ he decreed, ignoring Frances’s shocked little face. ‘Everyone in their r … right place is what I wish for my kingdom now. You must obey your father and then your husband.’ Then he passed on towards the parlour.

J threw a quick harassed glance at Frances’s appalled face, and followed him.

Frances looked up at her grandfather, and saw that his face was warm with sympathy. She turned and pitched into his arms.

‘I think the king is a pig,’ she wailed passionately into his coat. John, a lifelong royalist, could not disagree.

Mrs Hurte went home that evening, pleasantly shocked and appalled by the queen’s jewels, the richness of her perfume, the king’s lustrous hair, his cane, his lace. As the wife of a mercer she had taken particular note of their cloth and she was anxious to hurry home with news of French silk and Spanish lace, while English weavers and spinners went hungry. The king had a diamond on his finger the size of Frances’s fist, and the queen had pearls in her ears the size of pigeon’s eggs, and she had worn a cross, a crucifix, a most ungodly and unrighteous symbol. She had worn it like a piece of jewellery – heresy and vanity in one. She had worn it on her throat, an invitation to carnal thoughts as well. She was a heretical wicked woman and Mrs Hurte could not wait to get home to her husband and confirm his worst fears.

‘Come and see me next month,’ she said, pressing Jane to her heart before she left. ‘Your father wants to see you, and bring Baby John.’

‘I have to be here to guard the rarities when Father Tradescant and John are away,’ Jane reminded her.

‘When they are both here then,’ her mother said. ‘Do come. Your father will want to know about Oatlands too. Did you see the quality of the lace she wore on her head? It would buy you a house inside the city walls, I swear it.’

Jane packed her mother into the wagon and handed her the basket with the empty jars and the crumpled tablecloths.

‘No wonder the country is in the state it is,’ Mrs Hurte said, deliciously shocked.