He grinned. ‘I always mean to, then I start work and I think I can do it without scratching myself, and then I can’t be troubled to stop and go and find them, and then I draw blood and think there’s no point in fetching them now.’

‘You’ll never guess who came to the door.’

‘All right. I never will.’

‘A messenger from the king,’ she said, watching for his reaction.

He stiffened, like an old hunter when it hears the hunting horn. ‘The king sent for me?’

She nodded. ‘To attend him at Windsor. The man was clear that you need not go unless you wish. The king has no power to order you to obey. But he brought the message.’

John stepped carefully through the rose bushes, disentangling his coat when it was caught by a thorn, his mind already at Windsor.

‘What can he want of me?’

She shrugged. ‘Not some harebrained scheme of escape?’

He shook his head. ‘Surely not. But there’s nothing to interest him in the garden at this time of year.’

‘Will you go?’

Already he was walking towards the house, his pruning knife slipped in his belt, his roses almost forgotten. ‘Of course I have to go,’ he said.

They had no horse, there was not enough money to replace the mare who had carried Johnnie to Colchester and been slaughtered for meat during the siege. John walked to the ferry at Lambeth and took a boat upriver to Windsor.

The castle looked much the same: a guard of soldiers at the door, the usual bustle and work which surrounded the royal court. But it was all strangely diminished: quieter, with less excitement, as if even the kitchen maids no longer believed that they were cooking the meat of God’s own anointed representative on earth, but instead working in a kitchen for a mere mortal.

John paused before the crossed pikes of the men on guard.

‘John Tradescant,’ he said. ‘The king sent for me.’

The pikes were lifted. ‘He’s at his dinner,’ one of the soldiers said.

John went through the gateway, through the inner court, and into the great hall.

There was an eerie sense of a life lived again. There was the royal canopy billowing a little in the draughts from the open windows. There was the king seated in state below it, the great chair before the great table, and the table crowded with dishes. There were the common people, crammed into the gallery, watching the king eat as they always did. There was the yeoman usher to declare the table ready for laying, the yeoman of ewry to spread the cloth, the yeoman of pantry to lay out the long knives, spoons, salt, and trenchers, the yeoman of cellar standing behind the chair with the decanter of wine. It was all as it had been, and yet it was completely different.