‘It was done properly,’ John said. ‘He made a speech, he put his head on the block, he gave the sign and it was done in a single blow.’

‘So it’s over,’ Johnnie said. ‘I’ll never serve him.’

‘It’s over,’ John said. ‘Come ashore, Johnnie, there will be other masters and other gardens. In a few weeks people will have something else to talk about. You won’t have to hear about it. Come in, Johnnie.’

Spring 1649

John was wrong. The king’s execution was not a nine-day wonder, it swiftly became the theme of every conversation, of every ballad, of every prayer. Within days they were bringing to John the rushed printed accounts of the trial and eyewitness descriptions of the execution, and asking him if they were the truth. Only the most hard-hearted of roundheads escaped the mood of haunting melancholy, as if the death of a royal was a personal loss – whatever the character of the man, whatever the reason for his death. The country was gripped with a sickness of grief, a deep sadness which quite obscured the justice of the case and the reasons for his death. No-one really cared why the king had to die. In the end, they were stunned that he had died at all.

John thought that perhaps others had believed like him: that a king in his health simply could not die. That something would intervene, that God himself must prevent such an act. That even now, time might run backwards and the king be found alive. That John might wake up one morning to find the king in his palace and the queen demanding some absurd planting scheme. It was almost impossible to accept that no-one would ever see him again. The chapbooks, the balladeers, the portraitists all fostered the illusion of the king’s surviving presence. There were more pictures of King Charles and stories about him than there had ever been during his life. He was better beloved than he had ever been when he had been idle and foolish and misjudging. Every error he had made had been washed away by the simple fact of his death, and the name he had given to himself: the Martyr King.

Then came the reports of miracles worked by his relics. People were cured of fits or sickness or rashes like the pox by the touch of a handkerchief which had been dipped in his blood. The pocket knives made from his melted-down statue would heal wounds if laid against them, would protect a baby from violent death if used to cut the cord. A sick lion in the Tower zoo had been comforted by the scent of his blood on a rag. Every day there was a new story about the saint, the people’s saint. Every day his presence in the country grew stronger.