‘You are for the king still?’ Johnnie pressed him. ‘I know you were away for most of the fighting but you were there when he raised his standard, and you are the king’s man, aren’t you, Father?’

John looked into the determined face of his son and dropped a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s hard for me to say,’ he said. ‘I am the king’s man in the sense that my father was his gardener and I gardened for him too. I don’t forget that I have been in his service, or in the service of the court, for most of my life. But I never thought that he was perfect – not like some of the others, not like he would have had us think. I saw him make too many mistakes, I heard too much nonsense for that sort of faith. I thought he was a foolish man, sometimes wickedly foolish. So I don’t think him one step below God.’

‘But still the king,’ Johnnie persisted.

John nodded, resigned. ‘Still the king.’

‘If he sent for you, would you go?’

‘If he sent for me, I would have to go. I would be bound by honour and duty to go if he sent for me by name.’

‘Would you take me?’

John hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s a burden I’d rather not lay on you, my son. If he does not have command of the gardens of the royal palaces then there is no need for you to call him master.’

Johnnie’s conviction blazed out of his brown eyes. ‘But I long to call him master,’ he said. ‘If I had been there when he raised his standard I would never have left his side. I’m so afraid it will be all over before I can go into his service, and I’ll have missed it all.’

John gave a gruff bark of laughter. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I can see you would fear missing it all.’

That night John put his head around the door of Hester’s bedroom to see his wife, kneeling at the foot of her bed. He waited in silence till she rose to her feet and noticed him, standing in the doorway.

‘I came to ask if I might sleep here.’

She got into bed and held up the covers to him, grave-faced. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I am your wife.’

John pulled the nightcap off his head and came into the room.

‘I don’t want you to have me in your bed as part of your duty,’ he said carefully.

‘No.’

‘I would want there to be warmth and tenderness between us.’

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to forgive me for going away and leaving you alone and unprotected, and for being with another woman.’

She hesitated. ‘Did you leave her of your own free will?’