He was lucky, the royal party were delayed at Richmond and did not come to Oatlands until early March, and the tulip buds were fat and green and striped with the promise of colour when they arrived.

They were accompanied by a troop of new designers and decorators. It was the queen’s desire that her apartments should be remodelled and repainted. ‘What colours shall I have on the walls?’ she asked John. ‘Here is Monsieur de Critz, who will paint me cherubs or angels or saints, or whatever I will.’

John looked at the tulips on her table which were slowly going a deep glossy red. ‘Scarlet,’ he said.

She rounded on him, spitting with anger. ‘D’you think to insult me?’ she demanded.

He realised at once that she was smarting from the bawdy songs they were shouting in the streets of London about the two scarlet whores – the Pope and the Queen of England, who was shamefully in his toils.

‘No!’ John stammered. ‘No! I was looking at your flowers!’

She turned and caught sight of the tulips. ‘Oh.’ Her charm had quite deserted her. ‘Well, anyway. Cream and pink and blue, the ascension of Mary,’ she said shortly to the painter, and left the room.

The painter raised a cautious eyebrow at John.

‘I’d best have a care,’ John said.

‘Both she and the king are quick-tempered these days,’ the man said in a quiet undertone. ‘The news from the country gets worse every day. It is not always easy, serving at court.’

John nodded and extended his hand. ‘Good to see you again, Monsieur de Critz.’

‘It’s been a long time,’ the man said. ‘I last saw you years ago, when I was commissioned by my lord Cecil.’

‘I remember,’ John said. ‘You did the portrait of my lord which was made into a mosaic for the fireplace at Hatfield.’

They heard the queen’s voice raised in temper in the inner room.

‘I’m off to my garden,’ John said hastily.

‘Will you show me around before you go? I am halfway to being lost here.’

John nodded and led the way from the rooms. ‘These are the queen’s apartments, the king’s rooms match them but lie the opposite side. Down below is the king’s court. On the other side, the queen’s.’

The painter looked down from the window to where John’s intricate knot garden was green and white and yellow. The outside border was the bright green of fresh growing bay, clipped tight and neat, and inside the square, as the queen had first commissioned, was a love-knot made of bay with H M and C monograms at each corner made with the brilliant iridescent blue of violets and the bright white-gold of the new daffodils.

‘If they had been a month later, it would all have had to be re-dug with pansies,’ John said.

‘Did you design it?’ John de Critz asked, impressed.