The earl shook his head. ‘Leave it. An extra hall with its own kitchen and stables is always useful if someone important comes with a big entourage. Come and see the new house!’

He led the way up the garden, John following him slowly, looking everywhere with his quick perceptive glance. ‘Fine trees,’ he remarked.

‘They can stay,’ the earl said. ‘Mountain Jennings does the park and a Frenchman has designed the garden. But you plant it.’

John suppressed an instant, unworthy pang of envy. ‘I’d rather plant a garden than design it anyway.’

‘You know it comes to the same thing after the first summer,’ Cecil said. ‘The Frenchman goes back to Paris, and you have a free hand then. Anything you don’t like, you can tell me it has died – I’m not likely to know.’

John chuckled. ‘I can’t see me lasting long in your employ if I kill off your plantings, my lord,’ he said.

The earl smiled. ‘Never mind the plants, what about the new house?’

It was a large stately house, not as big as Theobalds, which was built as a palace and had sprawled to become a village, but it was a grand beautiful house in the new style, fit to display the staggering wealth of the Cecils, fit to welcome the prodigal luxury of the Jacobean court, fit to take its place as a great display house of Europe.

‘Surrounded by great courts on every side,’ the earl pointed. ‘A hundred rooms, separate kitchen and bake house altogether. I tell you, John, it has cost me nigh on thirty thousand pounds for the house alone, and I expect to spend as much again on the park and gardens.’

John gulped. ‘You’ll be ruined!’ he said bluntly.

The earl shook his head. ‘The king is a generous master to those who serve him well,’ he said. ‘And even to those who serve him ill,’ he added.

‘But sixty thousand pounds!’

The earl chuckled. ‘My money,’ he said grimly. ‘My show house, and in the end my grand funeral. What else should I do with it but spend it on what I love? And what a garden we will make, won’t we, John? Do you want me to scrimp on the plantings?’

John felt his excitement rising. ‘Have you the plans?’

‘Over here.’ The earl led the way to a little outhouse, his boots squelching in the mud. ‘As soon as the workmen have finished you can sow grass here, get the place clean.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ John said automatically, looking at the plans spread out on the table inside.

‘There!’ Cecil exclaimed.