“It’ll stick in many throats,” John predicted. “But they’ll pay.”

“There will come a time when they will refuse,” J warned his father. “You cannot choke a country year after year and not have to face the people at the end of it. There will come a time when good men will refuse in such numbers that the king has to listen.”

“Maybe,” John said thoughtfully. “But who can say when?”

“If the king knew that his subjects object, that they don’t like being ordered to church and the prayers ordered for them, that they don’t like being ordered to play like children in the churchyard after the service, that there are men in the country who want to use the Lord’s Day for thought and reflection and who don’t want to practice archery and sports – if the king knew all that-”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know that,” John pointed out. “He dismissed the men who might have told him, and those left at court would never bring him bad news.”

“You could tell him,” J observed.

“I’m no better than the rest of them,” John replied. “I’ve learned to be a courtier. Maybe it’s late in life, but I’ve learned it now. I told the truth as I saw it to all the lords I ever served and I never flattered one of them with lies. But this king is a man who doesn’t invite the truth. I tell you, J, I cannot speak the truth to him. He is surrounded by fancy. I would not dare to be the one to tell him that he and the queen are not adored everywhere they go; I couldn’t tell him that the men he has thrown into prison are not wild men, madmen, hotheads, but men more sane and careful and honorable than the rest of us. I cannot be the one to tell him that he is in the wrong and the country is slowly coming to know it. He has made sure that the world appears as best pleases him. It would take more than me to turn it upside down.”

The king kept his promise to visit the Ark, though Tradescant had thought it was a royal promise – one thrown off in the moment with no thought other than to please by the graciousness of the intention. But early in January a Gentleman Usher of the court came to the Ark and was shown into the rarities room.

He looked around, concealing his surprise. “It’s an imposing room,” he remarked to J, who had shown him in. “I had not thought you had built such a grand room.”

J inwardly congratulated his father for overweening ambition. “We need a lot of accommodation,” he said modestly. “Every day we get something new for the collection, and the things need to be shown in the best light.”

The usher nodded. “The king and queen will visit you tomorrow at noon,” he said. “They want to see this famous collection.”

J bowed. “We will be honored.”

“They will not dine here, but you may offer them biscuits and wine and fruit,” the usher said. “I assume you will have no difficulty with that?”

J nodded. “Of course.”

“And there is no need for any loyal address, or anything of that sort,” the usher said. “No poem of greeting or anything like that. This is just an informal visit.”

J thought that the king and queen were very unlikely to get a poem of greeting from his staunchly independent wife but he merely nodded his assent. “I understand.”

“And if there are any in your household who suffer from strong and misguided views-” the usher paused to make sure that J was following him “ – it is your responsibility to make sure that they do not appear before Their Majesties. The king and queen do not want to see long Puritanical faces on their visit; they do not want anyone reflecting on them. Make sure that only your well-dressed and joyful neighbors are on the road.”

“I can make sure that they enjoy their visit to my house, but I cannot clear Lambeth of beggars and paupers,” J replied sharply. “Are they coming by boat?”

“Yes; their carriage will meet them at Lambeth.”

“Then they should drive swiftly through Lambeth,” J remarked unhelpfully. “Or they may see some of their subjects who are not happy and smiling.”

The usher looked at him sharply. “If anyone fails to uncover his head and shout ‘God save the king,’ he will be sorry for it,” he warned. “There are men in prison for treason for less. There are men with cropped ears and slit tongues who did nothing more than refuse to take their hats off when the royal carriage went by.”

J nodded. “They will meet with nothing but courtesy and respect in my house,” he said. “But I am not responsible for the crowd on the quayside by the horse-ferry.”

“I am responsible for them,” the gentleman usher replied. “And I think you will find that every one of them shouts for the king.”

He swung back his coat and J saw the bag of pennies at his belt.

“Good,” J said. “Then I am sure Their Majesties will have a merry visit.”

He had feared that Jane would be rebellious, but the challenge to her housekeeping was such that, for the moment, she put aside her principles. She sent a message to her mother in the city and Mrs. Hurte arrived at dawn on the day of the royal visit with her own store of damask tablecloths, and her own box of ginger biscuits and sugared plums. Josiah Hurte had disapproved; but the women were on their mettle and were determined that there should be no critical comments at the court about the chief gardener’s house.

The rarities room and the parlor had been swept and polished ever since the gentleman usher had left the house. Jane laid the table in the parlor and set the fire against the cold of the January day, while J and his father prowled around the rarities room for the hundredth time, ensuring that every case stood open and that every rarity – even the smallest carved hazelnut shell – was laid out to its best advantage.

When everything was polished and prepared, there was nothing to do but wait.

Frances went to sit on the front garden wall at half past ten. At eleven, John sent the garden lad down the road to keep watch and give them warning when he saw the royal carriage roof rocking down the bumpy road toward them. At midday Frances came in, her fingertips blue with cold, saying that there was no sign of them, and that the king was a liar and a fool.

Jane shushed her and rushed her to the kitchen to get warm before the fire.

At two o’clock John said that he was too starved to wait, and went to the kitchen for a bowl of soup. Frances, perched on her stool and with her face inside a large bowl of broth, emerged only to say that the king shouldn’t say he was coming if he did not mean it, as it caused a lot of people, especially those who had to wait in the cold, a great deal of discomfort.

“If he’s the king, he should do what he promises.”

“You’re not the first to think that,” John remarked.

At three o’clock, after tempers had frayed and the fires in the parlor and the rarities room had burned down and been renewed, there was a thunderous knocking at the garden door and the lad poked his frozen face into the room, his nose blue with cold, and said,“They’re coming at last!”

Frances screamed and ran for her cloak, all complaints forgotten, and rushed to her station on the front wall. J leaped from his seat at the kitchen table, wiped his mouth and rubbed his hands on the cloth.

John pulled on his best coat, which he had laid aside in the heat of the kitchen, and rolled, with his limping gait, to the front door to hold it open as the king and queen visited the Ark.

Their Majesties did not see Frances as the coach drew up, though she stood up on the wall and did her best curtsey, perched on top. When they walked past her without even a glance in her direction, Frances, who had hoped to be appointed as the king’s gardener on that very day, scrambled down from the wall, tore round to the back door and stationed herself by the door of the rarities room, where they could not possibly miss her as they entered.