‘I want it done all new,’ the queen said eagerly. ‘A pretty style to match the house.’ She gestured back at the manor house. It was a handsome place new-built of red brick, with two arching flights of steps down from the terrace and gardens terraced down the slope. ‘I want many fruit trees. The king and I will come here in midsummer to escape from the noise and fuss of the court and we will eat fruit off the trees and grapes off the vine and melons off the …’ She broke off.

‘Off the ground,’ the king suggested. ‘They g … grow on the g … ground, do they not, Tradescant?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ John said. ‘My father learned the way of making them grow rich and ripe when he was with Sir Henry Wootton at Canterbury, and he taught me the way. I can grow you melons here and all sorts of fruit.’

‘And pretty flowers,’ the queen added. ‘White and blue flowers in the knot garden.’

John bowed his assent, keeping his face hidden. White and blue were the flowers of the Virgin Mary. The queen was asking for a Papist knot garden on the very edge of a London on the brink of revolt.

‘We need somewhere to retire in these troubled times,’ the king said. ‘A little hidden garden, Tradescant. Somewhere that we can b … be ourselves.’

The queen stepped to one side to look at a neglected watercourse, lifting her silk dress carefully away from the wet ground.

‘I understand,’ John said. ‘Will you be here only in summer, Your Majesty? It helps me if I know. If you are not to be here in autumn then I do not need to plant for that season.’

‘Yes,’ the king said. ‘A summertime p … place.’

John nodded and waited for further orders.

‘It pleases me to give her a p … pretty little h … house of her own,’ the king said, watching the queen at the end of the little terrace. ‘I have great work to do – I have to d … d … defend my crown against wild and wicked men who w … would pull me down, I have to d … defend the church against levellers and s … and s … and sectaries and Independents who would unstitch the very fabric of the country. It is all for m … me to do. Only I can preserve the country from the m … madness of a few wicked men. Whatever it costs me, I have t … to do it.’

John knew he should say nothing; but there was such a strange mixture of certainty and self-dramatisation in the king’s voice that he could not remain silent. ‘Are you sure that you have to do it all?’ he asked quietly. ‘I know some sectaries, and they are quiet men, content to leave the Church alone, provided that they can pray their own way. And surely, no-one in the country wants to harm you or the queen, or the princes.’