The young woman flushed with pleasure. ‘I will block them out for you,’ she promised.

‘Can you draw and colour tulips?’ John asked. ‘There are some in the queen’s apartment which are just coming into flower and I should like to have a picture to show my son. He chose them, bought them, and planted them. He will want to know how they have done. We have had our disappointments with tulips –’

‘Money?’ she guessed acutely. ‘Were you caught when the tulip market fell?’

John nodded. ‘But I should like him to know that they are still beautiful, even if they are not profitable.’

‘I would be pleased to try,’ she said. ‘I have not had the chance of seeing many tulips in flower. I know the Dutch tulip paintings, of course.’

‘Come to my house this evening,’ John suggested. ‘I live adjoining the silkworm house. I’ll bring a little bowl of them.’

Hester did not curtsey as she left them but dipped her head, like a boy, and went away. Her stride was like a boy’s as well, firm and matter-of-fact.

‘It is all right that she comes?’ John asked, suddenly remembering his manners. ‘I had thought I was speaking to a young draughtsman. I forgot she was a young woman.’

‘If she were a boy I would have had her as my apprentice,’ her uncle said, watching her go. ‘She can come to your house, Mr Tradescant, but I have to guard her around the court. It is a nuisance. Some of these gentlemen write sonnets to the queen all day and then go wenching like lechers at night.’

‘I have a lass like her at home,’ John said, thinking of Frances and her desire to be gardener to the king. ‘She’s been told that she will have to marry a gardener, that is the closest she can get to the work; but she wants to be one herself.’

‘What does her mother say?’

‘She has none now. Plague.’

The man nodded in sympathy. ‘It’s hard for a maid to grow up without a mother. Who cares for her?’

‘We have a cook who has been with us for many years,’ John said. ‘And housemaids. But when my son comes home from Virginia he will have to re-marry. There’s my grandson as well. They cannot be left in the care of servants.’

De Critz slid a thoughtful sideways glance at him. ‘Hester has a good dowry,’ he said casually. ‘Her parents left her with two hundred pounds.’

‘Oh,’ said John, thinking of that straightforward nod of the head and the confident walk. ‘Did they, indeed?’

Hester Pooks sat at the table in John’s little sitting room and drew the queen’s bowl of tulips, squinting against the candlelight and the last rays of the evening sunshine.

‘I’ve seen the tulip books,’ she said. ‘My uncle borrowed one to copy once. They show the bulb, don’t they? And the roots?’