‘I think he didn’t know what to do,’ Alexander said. ‘I think he was riding and hoping that something would happen, a stroke of luck, the arrival of a French army or the Irish army or a sudden change of heart in Parliament. I think he was just spinning out the time before he surrendered.’

John shook his head. ‘To the Scots?’ he said somberly.

Alexander nodded. ‘To the Scots army at Newark.’

‘Does he think that they will treat him better than his own people?’ John demanded. ‘Does he think so little of Englishmen that he goes to the Scots who were the first to speak against bishops and the prayer book? Has he forgotten that his own father came south and never went back to Scotland willingly again? His own father said: “no bishops, no king”? And the Scots have never had bishops.’

Frances, sitting by the fireside in the parlour of the Lambeth house sewing a little nightdress, lifted her head at her father’s distress. ‘If we can only have peace now.’

‘But what will they do with him?’ John asked. ‘They’ve been his enemies since the start of this. They must hand him over to Parliament at once, and then he is no better off than if he had come direct to London.’

‘He must be hoping that he can play them off against the English army and Parliament. If he is there in person, offering them the chance to conquer England, who can say which way they would go? They could fall in behind him and march on England with him as their figurehead. That must be his fondest dream.’ Alexander ticked off the options on his fingers. ‘Or they can set him up in Edinburgh as their king and not ours. Or they can help him get abroad and pretend they had nothing to do with it, so they don’t have his imprisonment on their hands.’

‘Or they can hold him as a pawn in their own game,’ John exclaimed. ‘Who is advising him? Who ever could have advised him to stroll around the kingdom and then go to the Scots in the end? What fools does he have at his side? Why is there no-one there thinking of his safety?’

‘I think he is trusting to luck,’ Alexander said. ‘And still, even now, who knows which way the luck will run?’