They had stopped and stood there together, looking at the scene for a little while; then her father had said: 'I'm building this house for you, Alice. This will be your very own and no one shall take it away from you.' Then he had looked down and smiled, and squeezed her hand.

She had looked up and thought that her father must love her very much if he was building a whole house for her. And she experienced a moment - perhaps there are just one or two in a lifetime - of perfect happiness.

It wasn't a big house. It was only a little larger than the old Tudor house of her grandfather and his father before him. Built in red brick, in a simple Jacobean style, it certainly qualified as a small manor house; yet hidden away, in a modest clearing in the middle of the woods, it had almost the air of an isolated grange or hunting lodge. To Alice it was magical. It was her house; because her father loved her.

Of course, he had hoped to have a son. She understood that now; but ten years had passed since that summer's day.

Of Clement Albion's two sons, William and Francis, it was her father William, the elder, who had done better. In fact, he had done brilliantly. As a young man, in the last years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, he had gone up to London to study law. William had worked hard. It was a litigious age; a clever lawyer could do well. And when, fifteen years after the great Armada, the old queen had died and been succeeded by her cousin, King James of Scotland, the opportunities for amassing money had grown even greater.

For if James Stuart had one idea when, as a middle-aged man, he became King James of England, it was to have a good time. He'd never had any fun before. Son of the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots - whom he'd scarcely even known - the dour Scots Presbyterians who had thrown out his mother brought him up to rule according to their way of thinking and kept him on a tight rein. So when at last he got the throne of England as well, he was anxious to make up for lost time.