‘She’s impertinent,’ Hester said as the door shut. ‘But it’s only lightness of spirit.’

‘I know it,’ Alexander Norman agreed with her. ‘And I would not see her subdued. She’s very like her mother. She was a light-hearted girl but her spirits were kept much in check by her strong sense of religion, and her strict upbringing. But Frances was spoiled from the moment she was born by John and by them all. It’s too late to try to weigh her down now, I would rather see her soar.’

Hester smiled. ‘I feel that too,’ she said. ‘Though it falls to me to try to keep her in check.’

‘You worry about her safety?’

‘I do. I worry for all of us, of course, and for the treasures. But mostly for Frances. She is at an age when she should be venturing out a little more, going into society, to make friends; but she is cooped up here with me and with her brother. The plague is everywhere again this year so I cannot let her stay with her grandparents in the City – and besides they are not sociable people, they meet no-one.’

‘She could go to court at Oxford …’

Hester’s face was a picture. ‘I’d as soon throw her into the lion’s cage at the Tower than send her among that crowd. Everything that was bad about the king’s court when they were properly housed and properly served is ten times worse now they are crowded into Oxford and drunk nine nights out of ten with celebrating victories.’

‘I’ve been thinking the same,’ Alexander said. ‘I wondered if you would consider me … I wondered if you would let me offer her – and yourself of course – a safe haven. I wondered if you would leave here, shut the Ark up until the end of the war, and come and live with me at the Tower of London: the safest place in the whole of the kingdom.’

When she said nothing he added, very quietly, ‘I mean marriage, Hester.’

She went quite pale for a moment, and moved her chair back from his a little.

‘You did not expect this? Though I have been such a frequent visitor?’

Mutely, she shook her head. ‘I thought it was just kindness for Mr Tradescant’s family,’ she said softly. ‘As a family friend, as a relation.’

‘It was more.’

She shook her head. ‘I am a married woman,’ she said. ‘I do not consider myself deserted or widowed. Until I hear from John that he is not coming home ever again I shall bear myself as his wife.’ For a moment she looked at him as if she were pleading with him to disagree with her. ‘You may think he has left us forever, but I am sure he will come home. There are his children, there are the rarities, there is the garden. He would never abandon the Tradescant inheritance.’

Alexander did not answer, his face was very grave.