‘I like men in their places,’ Tradescant agreed. ‘It’s like a garden. Things ordered in their right places, pruned into shape.’

‘No wild disorder? No tumbling vines?’ Sir Robert asked with a smile.

‘That’s not a garden, that’s outside,’ John said firmly. He looked down at the knot garden, the straight lines of the low clipped hedges, and behind them the sharply defined coloured stones, each part of the pattern in its right place, each shape building up the design which could not even be seen clearly by the workers on the ground who weeded the gravel. To understand the symmetry of the garden you had to be gentry – looking down from the windows of the house.

‘My job is to make order for the master’s pleasure,’ Tradescant said.

Sir Robert touched his shoulder. ‘Mine too.’

They walked together along the terrace to the next great flight of steps. ‘All ready for His Majesty?’ Sir Robert asked, knowing what the answer would be.

‘All prepared.’

Tradescant waited to see if his master would speak more and then he bowed, and fell back, and watched Sir Robert limp onward, towards the grand house, to supervise the preparation for the visit of the Lord’s Anointed, England’s new, glorious king.

April 1603

They had news of the arrival long before the first outriders clattered in through the great gates. Half the country had turned out to see what sort of man the new king might be. The whole royal court moved with the king – the baggage trains behind his carriages carried everything from silver and gold cutlery to pictures for his walls. One hundred and fifty English noblemen had attached themselves at once to the new king, their hats banded with red and gold to demonstrate their loyalty. But travelling with him also was his own Scots court, drawn south by the promise of easy pickings from the fat English manors. Behind them came all the retainers – twenty for each lord – and behind them came their baggage and horses. It was a massive battalion of idlers on the move. In the centre of the whole train came the king, riding his big black hunter, and scarcely able to see the country he had come to claim as his own for the lords and gentry who milled about him.