Impulsively, he stepped over the candles and came into the room. At once she reared up in her bed. ‘Do you want me to die in despair?’ she demanded.

He checked and walked backwards, as if she were the queen herself. ‘I want to hold you,’ he said pitifully. ‘I want to hold you, Jane, I want to hold you to my heart.’

For a moment her gaunt strained face, lit by the dozen golden candleflames, was suddenly soft and young, as it had been when she had sold him inch after inch of ribbons in the mercer’s shop and he had called again and again on one pretext after another.

‘Hold me in your heart,’ she whispered. ‘And care for my children.’

She lay back on the pillows as John stepped over the wall of candleflames and hunkered down on the threshold.

‘I shall stay here,’ he said determinedly.

‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Have you a pomander?’

‘A pomander, and I am sitting in a sea of strewing herbs,’ John said.

‘Stay then,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to die alone. But if I am feverish and wandering and start to come to you, you must slam the door in my face and lock it.’

He looked at her through the haze of the heat of the candles, and his face was nearly as haggard as her own. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘I won’t be able to do that.’

‘Promise me,’ she demanded. ‘It’s the last thing I will ever ask of you.’

He closed his eyes for a moment, to find his resolution. ‘I promise,’ he said eventually. ‘I will not touch you, I will come no closer. But I will be here for you. Just outside the door.’

‘That’s what I want,’ she said.

At midnight Jane grew feverish and tossed on the pillow and cried out against heretics and Popery and the Devil and the queen. At three in the morning she grew quiet and he could see her shivering, and yet he could not go in and put a shawl around her shoulders. At four she grew quiet and at peace, and at five she suddenly said, as simply as a child: ‘Goodnight, my dear,’ and fell asleep.

When dawn came and the sun rose warm on the apple blossoms at six, she did not wake.

Summer 1635

There was a brief unhappy argument about how Jane was to be buried. The parish authorities, responsible for the impossible task of trying to contain the plague, sent an order that the cart would come for her at midnight and her body was to be loaded on it by her family, who must then lock themselves indoors for another week until they were proved to be free of the disease.