The king leaned forwards more urgently. He had not realised that they would not hear him after sentence had been passed. He knew so little of the laws of his own land that he had not realised a man sentenced is not allowed to speak. ‘I may speak after the sentence –’ Charles argued, his voice a little higher in anxiety. ‘By your favour, sir, I may speak after the sentence.’

The guards came closer. John found he was shrinking back, a hand to his mouth like a frightened child.

Charles persisted. ‘By your favour, hold! The sentence, sir, I do –’

The guards closed in, forcing him to his feet. Charles shouted over their heads to the stunned crowd: ‘I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have!’

They hustled him from the hall, there were confused shouts, some for, some against him. The commissioners filed out, John saw them go as if they were floating away, Bradshaw’s red gown and absurd hat a dreamlike imagining. ‘I never thought they would do it,’ John said. ‘I never thought they would.’

Sunday 28 January 1649

John would not attend church with Frances and her husband. He sat at the kitchen table, a glass of small ale before him, while the church bells rang and then fell silent, and then rang again.

Frances, entering in a rush to prepare the Sunday dinner, checked at the sight of her father, so uncharacteristically idle.

‘Are you sick?’

He shook his head.

Alexander followed his wife into the kitchen. ‘They say he is praying with Bishop Juxon. He is allowed to see his children.’

‘No clemency?’ John asked.

‘They are building the scaffold at Whitehall,’ Alexander said shortly.

‘Not here?’ Frances asked quickly.

Alexander took her hand and kissed it. ‘No, my dear. Nowhere near us. They are closing off the street before the Banqueting House. They are fortifying it against a rescue attempt.’

‘Who would rescue him?’ John asked forlornly. ‘He has betrayed every one of his friends at one time or another.’

Tuesday 30 January 1649

It was such a bitter, cold morning that John thought the ice on roof and gutter had crept into his own veins and was freezing his belly and bones as he waited in the street. The king was to be executed before noon but though the streets were lined three-deep with soldiers, and the two executioners waited in the lee of the black-draped scaffold, the note-takers and sketch artists gathered at the foot, there was no sign of the king.

The street, crammed with people packed in behind the cordon of soldiers, had-a strange echo to it, as the sound of talk, prayers, and the shouts of ballad sellers bawling out the titles of their new songs bounced off the walls of the windowless buildings and boomed in the cold air.