John could not hear him. He was still staring at the stage, still waiting for the final act when the king, gorgeously dressed in white, would step down from the stage and dance with the queen.

‘Come on!’ Alexander said. He grabbed John’s arm and dragged him to one side. The crowd eddied, rushing to the sides of the street, many running forwards to the scaffold to snatch a piece of the pall, to scrabble for a bit of earth from under the stage, even to dip their handkerchiefs in the gush of scarlet hot blood. John, pulled by Alexander, and pushed by the people behind him trying to get away from the remorseless cavalry advance down the street, lost his feet and fell. He was kicked in the head at once, someone trod on his hand. Alexander hauled him upwards.

‘Come on, man!’ he said. ‘This is no place to linger.’

John’s head cleared, he struggled to his feet, ran with Alexander to the side of the road, pressed against the wall as the cavalry forced their way down to the scaffold, and then slipped away as they went past. At the top of the road he checked, and looked back. It was over. Already it was over. Bishop Juxon had disappeared, the king’s body had been lifted through the window of the Banqueting House, the street was half-cleared of people, the soldiers had made a cordon around the stage. It was a derelict theatre at the end of the show, it had that stale leftover silence when the speeches have been finished and the performance is all over. It was done.

It was done but it was not over. John, returning home, found his house besieged with neighbours who wanted to hear every word, every detail, of what he had seen and what had been said. Only Johnnie was missing.

‘Where is he?’ John asked Hester.

‘In the garden, in his boat on the lake,’ she said shortly. ‘We heard the church bells toll in Lambeth and he knew what it was for.’

John nodded, excused himself from the village gossips and went down the cold garden. His son was nowhere to be seen. John walked down the avenue and turned right at the bottom for the lake where the children had often gone to feed ducks when they were little. The irises and reeds planted in the wet ground at the margin were in their stark frosted beauty. In the middle of the lake the boat was drifting, Johnnie, wrapped in his cape, sitting in the stern, the oars resting on the seat either side of him.

‘Hey there,’ John said gently from the landing stage.

Johnnie glanced up and saw his father. ‘Did you see it done?’ he asked flatly.

‘Aye.’

‘Was it done quickly?’