‘And the parkland all around instead of the lanes for J to play in,’ John reminded her. ‘And gardens the like of which no-one in England has ever seen. Fountains and rivers!’

‘We must take care he doesn’t wander off and fall in,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’s very restless. I can’t think how many times someone has brought him back to me and told me he was halfway to Sussex.’

‘He can stray all he likes in my lord’s gardens,’ John said with satisfaction. ‘He’ll come to no harm there.’

‘And we’ll eat our dinner in hall or at our home as we wish?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘As we wish when the lord is away from home. But when he is at the palace he likes his men to dine in the hall. And I like to see him.’

‘Well enough when you had no-one to cook your dinner at home,’ Elizabeth remarked. ‘But now I shall be there –’

John put a hand gently on hers. ‘If he looks down the hall to see me, I must be there,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s not a question of a dinner cooked by you or a dinner cooked by the cooks. It’s not even a question of whose company I would rather keep. It is just that if he looks down the hall for me, I must be there. You must know that by now, Elizabeth. You must know that now that we are going to live on his land, in a cottage owned by him and given to us free. You must know that he comes first.’

For a moment he thought she would fly out at him and then there would be a quarrel and a sulk – for they were both terrible sulkers – which could easily last for the whole two days of the journey. But then he saw her recognise the simple truth of it.

‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘But it is hard for me. The people I come from, my family, are freeholders on their own land. They dine where they please.’

‘Sometimes only on bread and bacon,’ John pointed out.

‘Even so. It’s their own bread and bacon and they fear no-one’s favour.’

John nodded. ‘And if I had been content to be a farmer or perhaps a gardener on my own account in a small way with a little market garden for bulbs or flowers or fruit, then I should be a man like that too. But I wanted something more, Elizabeth. I wanted the chance to make the greatest garden in England. And he gave me that when I was a young man, so young that most masters would have made me work an apprenticeship under another man for another year or three before they even considered me. He trusted me, he took a risk with me. He gave me Theobalds when I was little more than a lad.’