The man sat back in his seat and beamed. ‘And it’s more than double,’ he confirmed. ‘The prices are steadily rising. People are ready to pay more and more each year.’ He scratched his broad belly with quiet satisfaction. ‘I shall have a handsome house in Amsterdam before I retire,’ he predicted. ‘And all from my tulips.’

‘I shall buy from you,’ John promised.

‘You have to come to the auction,’ the man said firmly. ‘I don’t sell privately. You will have to bid against the others.’

John hesitated. An auction in a foreign country in a language he did not understand was almost bound to drive up the price. One of the other growers leaned forward.

‘You have to,’ he said simply. ‘The market for tulips is all agreed. It has to be done in the colleges, in the appointed way. You cannot buy without posting a bid. That way we all know how much is being made on each colour.’

‘I just want to buy some flowers,’ John protested. ‘I don’t want to post a bid in the colleges, I don’t understand how it is done. I just want some flowers.’

The first grower shook his head. ‘It may be just flowers to you, but it’s trade to us. We are traders and we have formed a college and we buy and sell in each other’s view. That way we know what prices are being charged, that way we can watch the prices rise. And not be left behind.’

‘Prices are rising so fast?’ John asked.

The grower beamed and dipped his face into his great mug of ale. ‘No-one knows how high it can go,’ he said. ‘No-one knows. If I were you I would swallow my English pride and go to the college and post my bid and buy now. It will be dearer next season, and dearer the year after that.’

John glanced around the ale house. The growers were all nodding, not with a salesman’s desire for a deal but with the quiet confidence of men who are in an irresistibly rising market.

‘I’ll take a dozen sacks of plain reds and yellows,’ John decided. ‘Where is this college?’

The grower smiled. ‘Right here,’ he said. ‘We don’t leave our dinner table for anything.’ He took a clean dinner plate, and scribbled a price on it and pushed the plate across to John. The man at John’s elbow dug him in the ribs and whispered, ‘That’s high. Knock off a dozen guilders at least.’

John amended the price and pushed it back, the man rubbed the number off and wrote his own total. John agreed and the plate was posted on a hook on the wall of the room. The grower extended a callused hand.

‘That’s all?’ John queried, shaking it.