“But he will recover?” John asked one of the maids.

“It is only the ague,” she said. “Why should he not recover?”

John nodded and went to the duke’s bedroom. The cold March dawn was turning the sky from black to gray; the frost was white on the terraces. John leaned his elbows on the windowsill and watched the familiar landmarks of Theobalds, his first great garden, swim upward from the mist. In the distance he could see the woods, bare-branched now, and cold; and underneath them deep in the frozen earth would be the bulbs of the daffodils that he had planted for the king who was now old, and to please the master who was long dead.

He wondered what Cecil would have thought of his new master, if he would have despised or admired the duke. He wondered where Cecil was now; in a garden, he thought, the blessed last garden where flowers were always in bloom. John felt great tenderness for the master he had lost and this garden they had loved together.

Then the door behind him opened and Buckingham came into the room.

“Shut the window for the love of God, John!” he snapped. “It’s freezing!”

John obeyed and waited.

“Get some sleep,” the duke said. “And when you wake I want you to go to London, and fetch my mother.”

“I could go now,” John volunteered.

“Rest,” the duke said. “Go as soon as you wake and are fit to ride. Take her this message, I shan’t write it down.” He crossed the room to John and spoke very low. “Tell her that the king is sick but not yet dying, and I need her help. Badly. D’you understand?”

John hesitated. “I understand the words, and I can repeat them. But I dare not think of your meaning.”

Buckingham nodded. “John, my John,” he said softly, “that is what I wish. Just remember the words and leave the rest to me.” He met John’s worried look with an open face. “I loved the king like my own father,” he said persuasively. “I want him cared for with love and respect. That crowd in there will not leave him alone; they torture him with remedies, they bleed him, they turn him, they blister him, they sweat him, and chill him. I want my mother to come and nurse him gently. She’s a woman of much experience. She will know how to ease his pain.”

“I’ll fetch her at once,” John said.

“Rest now, but go as soon as you wake,” the duke said and went quietly from the room.

John peeled the borrowed breeches off his sore buttocks, tumbled into the pallet bed and slept for six solid hours.

When he woke it was past noon. Someone had placed a jug and ewer on the dark wooden chest at the head of his bed, and he washed. In the chest was a change of clothes, and John slipped on a clean shirt and breeches. He did not trouble to shave. The duke’s mother could take him as he was. He went quietly down the stairs and out to the stable yard.

“I need a good horse,” he said to the chief groom. “The duke’s business.”

“He said you would be riding,” the man replied. “There’s a horse saddled and ready for you, and a lad to ride part of the way with you to bring back the horse when you need to change. In which direction are you going?”

“London,” John said briefly.

“Then this horse will take you all the way. He’s as strong as an ox.” The groom took in John’s stiff walk. “Though I imagine you’ll not be galloping.”

John grimaced and reached for the saddle to haul himself up.

“Where in London?” the groom asked.

“To the docks,” John lied instantly. “The duke has some curious playthings come from the Indies which he thought might amuse the king and divert him in his illness. I am to fetch them.”

“The king is better then?” the groom asked. “They said this morning he was on the mend, but I did not know. He has ordered his horses to move to Hampton Court so I thought he must be better.”

“Better, yes,” John said.

The groom released the reins and the horse took three steps back. With his bruised muscles aching, John leaned forward against the pain and sent his horse at the gentlest canter he could command, back down the road to London.

The countess was at her son’s grand London house. John went to the stables first and ordered them to harness the carriage for her, and then went into the house. She was a powerful old woman, dark-eyed like her son, but completely lacking his charm. She had been a famous beauty when she was a girl, married for her looks and jumped from servitude into the gentry in one lucky leap. But her struggle for respect had left its mark, her face was always determined; in repose she looked bitter. John recited his message in a whisper, and she nodded in silence.

“Wait for me downstairs,” she said shortly.

John went back down to the hall and sent a maidservant racing for some wine, bread and cheese. Within a few moments Lady Villiers was sweeping down the stairs, wrapped in a traveling cape, a pomander held to her nose against the infections of the London streets, a small box in her hand.

“You will ride in front to guide my driver.”

“If you wish, my lady.” John got stiffly to his feet.

She walked past him but as she got into the carriage she made a quick gesture with her hand. “Get up on the box; your horse can be tied behind.”

“I can ride,” John offered.

“You are half-crippled with saddle sores,” she observed. “Sit where you will be comfortable. You are of no use to my son or to me if you are bleeding from a dozen bruises.”

John climbed up to sit beside the driver. “Perceptive woman,” he remarked.

The driver nodded and waited for the carriage door to shut. John saw that he was holding the reins awkwardly with each thumb between the first and second finger: the old sign against witchcraft.

The roads were bad, thick with mud from the winter. In the heart of London, beggars held out beseeching hands as the rich carriage went by them. Some of them were pocked with rosy scars where they had recovered from the plague. The driver kept to the line of the track at a steady pace, and left it to them to leap clear.

“Hard times,” John remarked, thinking with gratitude to his lord of the little house at New Hall and his son and wife safely distant from these dangerous streets.

“Eight years of bad harvests and a king on the throne who has forgotten his duty,” the driver said angrily. “What would you expect?”

“I don’t expect to hear treason from the duke’s own household,” John said shortly. “And I won’t hear it!”

“I’ll say only this,” the driver said. “There’s a Christian prince and princess, his own daughter, driven from her throne by the armies of the Pope. There’s a Spanish match that he would still make if he could. The Spanish ambassador is to return to him – by his own request! And year after year the country gets poorer while the court gets richer. You can’t expect people to dance in the streets. The death cart goes past them too often.”

John shook his head and looked away.

“There’s those that think the land should be shared,” the driver said under his breath. “There’s those that think that no good will come to England while people starve every winter and others are sick of surfeit.”

“It is as God wills,” John insisted. “And I won’t say more. To speak against the king is treason; to speak against the way things are and must be is heresy. If your mistress heard you, you’d be on the street yourself. And me too, for listening to you.”

“You’re a good servant,” the man sneered. “For you even think in obedience to your lord.”

John shot him a hard dark look. “I am a good servant,” he repeated. “And proud of it. And of course I think in obedience to my lord. I think and live and pray in obedience to my lord. How else could it be? How else should it be?”

“There are other ways,” the driver argued. “You could think and live and pray for yourself.”