They kept the bulb in the orangery, warm in the pale spring sunshine as it poured through the windows, but shaded from the midday sun so the leaves should not scorch. Every morning John watered it himself with tepid water spiced with his own mixture of stewed nettles and horse dung. The bulb put out fresh green leaves and then finally, from its secret heart, the pointed precious snout of a flower.

The whole household held its breath. Frances was in and out of the orangery every day watching for the green of the flower to blush into colour. John never passed the door without glancing in. Only J remained wrapped in his own darkness. He could not see the orangery as a place where their fortune was slowly blooming, he could not forget that Jane had lain there, and it seemed to him that nothing good could come out of that room, in the wake of her small lead-heavy coffin.

‘It’s white! It’s red and white!’ Frances exploded into her grandfather’s bedroom one morning while he was dressing.

‘The tulip?’

‘Yes! Yes! It’s red and white!’

‘A Semper Augustus!’ he crowed and, still half-dressed, grabbed her hand and ran down the stairs with her. At the door to the orangery they stopped, afraid to run towards the plant as if the very pounding of their feet on the bare boards could shake the colour from the petals.

The exquisite rounded perfect petals had blushed into colour in the dawn light, though they were still tightly closed together. They were clearly a deep blood-coloured crimson slashed like a silk doublet with white.

‘I have made my fortune,’ John said simply, looking at the miracle-flower on its slender wax-green stem. ‘This day I have made my fortune, Baby John will be a baronet, and none of us will ever work for another man again.’

They showed it in the rarities room, of course, as the most valuable tulip in the world. When the courier came for the rest of his money they had borrowed only two-thirds of it. The rest they had taken from visitors, flocking to see the priceless tulip.

When the queen at Oatlands heard of it she said she would buy it as it stood, in the pot, and J was about to name a figure which would cover their purchase price and give them a Christian profit of two per cent. But John was there to forestall him.

‘When the bulb is lifted, Your Majesty, we will be honoured to give it to you,’ he said grandly.

She beamed, she loved presents. John pulled J away before he could argue. ‘Trust me, J. We will plant up one of the bulblets for her and still have the mother bulb. And she will reward us later for our generosity. Don’t fear. She knows as well as I how these matters are gracefully done.’