John pulled his horse up and fell in at the rear of the royal train as they trotted down the great avenue of Theobalds Park, through the sea of golden daffodils between the trees. He thought for a moment of his father, and how his father would have loved the ripple of cold wind through the yellow bobbing heads, and then he realised with a smile that his father had probably had a hand in planting them. As the party trotted out through the great gates John looked back at the avenue of trees and the sea of gold washing around their trunks and thought that his father’s legacy to the country might last longer than that of the royal master he had served.

When they reached York in mid-March the king and his immediate friends settled in the castle, while the other courtiers and hangers-on found billets in all the inns and ale houses in the town. John lodged in the stables on a pallet bed in the hay store. After a few days when he had not been summoned he thought that the king had finished with his service and he might go home. He went to find the king in the main body of the castle. He was in his privy chambers, books and maps all around him.

‘Your Majesty, I beg your pardon,’ John said, putting his head around the door.

‘I did not send for you,’ the king said frostily.

John came no nearer. ‘Spring is here, Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘I seek your permission to go and supervise the planting of the queen’s gardens. She likes the flower gardens at Oatlands to be well-planted, and she wants fruits from her manor at Wimbledon. They need to be planted soon.’

The king softened at once at the mention of his wife.

‘I would hate Her Majesty to be disappointed.’

‘You shall go,’ the king decided. He thought for a moment. ‘After we have taken Hull.’

‘Hull, Your Majesty?’

He beckoned Tradescant in and gestured him to shut the door against eavesdroppers. ‘The queen bids me to make the garrison of Hull my own,’ he said. ‘So that I may have a strong port for our allies to send supplies. She has bought up half the armies of Europe, and her brother the king of France will aid us.’

John closed his eyes briefly at the thought of French Papist troops marching against the English Protestant Parliament.

‘She wants us to take Hull for her – and so we will,’ the king said simply. ‘After that you can go home.’

John dropped to one knee. ‘Your Majesty, may I speak freely?’

The king smiled his tender smile. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘All my people can speak to me freely, and in safety. I am their father, I am their only true friend.’