John spent Wednesday idling at the little house in the Minories with Frances. The court was not sitting.

‘What are they doing then?’ Frances asked. She was kneading dough at the kitchen table, John seated on a stool at a safe distance from the spreading circle of flour. Frances had learned her domestic skills from Hester, so she would always be a competent cook; but her style was more enthusiastic than accurate and Alexander occasionally had to send out for their dinner after a catastrophe in the bread oven or a burned-out pot.

‘They’re hearing witnesses,’ John said. ‘It’s to put the gloss of legality on it. Everyone knows he raised the standard at Nottingham. We hardly need witness accounts on oath.’

‘They won’t call you?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘They’re seeking the smallest of trifles. They’re calling the man who painted the standard pole. And for the battles they’re using the evidence of men who fought all the way through. I was there only at the very beginning, remember. I was there at Hull which everyone has forgotten now. I never saw proper fighting.’

‘Are you sorry now?’ she asked, with her stepmother’s directness. ‘Do you wish you had stayed by him?’

John shook his head. ‘I hate to see it come to this, but it was a bad road wherever it led,’ he said honestly. ‘We would be in a far worse case today if he had succeeded, Frances. I do know that.’

‘Because of the Papists?’ she asked.

John hesitated. ‘Yes, I do think so. If he is not a Papist himself then the queen certainly is and half the court with her. The children – almost bound to be. So Prince Charles may be, and then his son after him, and then the door open again to the Pope and the priests and the monasteries and the convents and the whole burden of a faith that is ordered on you by your masters.’

‘But you don’t even pray,’ she reminded him.

John grinned. ‘Yes. And I like to not pray in my own way. I don’t want to not pray in a Papist way.’ He broke off at her chuckle. ‘I have travelled too far and seen too much to believe in anything very readily. You know that. I have lived with people who prayed very faithfully to the Great Hare and I prayed alongside them and sometimes thought my prayers were answered. I can’t see only one way any more. I always see a dozen ways.’ He sighed. ‘It makes me uncomfortable with myself, it makes me a poor husband and father, and God knows it makes me a poor Christian and bad servant.’