I am enchanted. ‘You have all these?’

She smiles. ‘We can plant some of them now, some of them will have to wait until the moon is in a different phase. But I have brought them all, in the green or in seed. Your lord commanded that you should have all the herbs of England in your garden. He said that you have a gift. Do you?’

I dip my head. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think I know things, sometimes I know nothing. I am studying his books and I shall be glad to learn how to grow herbs and how to use them. But I have no certainty; all that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.’

She smiles. ‘That is the very path of learning,’ she says.

All afternoon we spend in the garden on our knees like peasant women, planting the herbs in the beds that she has prepared for them, and as the evening grows cool and the sun starts to set I get to my feet and look around the garden that we have made. Twelve regular beds fan out from the circular seat at the heart of the garden. All of them are dug over and weeded, some of them are already planted. Mrs Jourdemayne has labelled the seedlings with their name and their properties. ‘Tomorrow I shall show you how to make tinctures and dry herbs,’ she says. ‘I will give you my recipes.’

I am so tired from our work that I sleep well; but in the night, as if the rising moon is calling to me as well as to the rising sap of the plants, I wake and see the cool light lying along my bedroom floor. My maid is heavily asleep in the bed beside me. I turn back the covers and go to the window. I can hear something, like the chiming of a bell, and I put a gown around my shoulders and push open my bedroom door, and then go out into the gallery.

In the shadows I can just see the outline of a woman: Mrs Jourdemayne. For a moment I step back, fearful of what she is doing in the darkness. She is standing beside one of the windows and she has thrown it open, the singing is louder as if the clear sweet noise is pouring into the gallery with the moonlight. As she hears my footstep she glances around, her face alert, as if she expects anyone, anything; but she fears nothing.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she says, though she should curtsey. ‘Can you hear it?’

I nod. ‘I hear it.’

‘I’ve never heard such a thing before, I thought it was the music of the spheres.’

‘I know it,’ I say sadly. I reach forwards and I close the window, at once the music is muffled, and then I draw the heavy curtain to shut out both music and moonlight.

She puts out her hand to stop me. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘Why do you shut it out? What does it mean?’