John had a sense that the whole world was collapsing around him. He hesitated and looked toward his monarch. The king leaned back against the dirty wheel of the coach, as if he were exhausted.

“I did not expect this sort of welcome!” Charles said mournfully. “The doors of my own palace closed to me!”

The queen looked pleadingly at Tradescant. “What shall we do?”

John felt an irritable sense of responsibility. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll find someone.”

He left the royal coach before the imposing grand front doors and went around to the back. The kitchens were in their usual careless state; the whole household always took a holiday during the king’s absence.

“Wake up,” John said, putting his head around the door. “The king, queen and royal family are outside waiting to be let in.”

It was as if he had set off a fire-ship among the cockle boats at Whitby. There was a stunned silence and then instantaneous uproar.

“For God’s sake get the front door open and let him in,” John said, and went back to the courtyard.

The king was leaning back against the coach surveying the high, imposing roofs of the palace as if he had never seen them before. The queen was still seated in the carriage. Neither of them had moved since John had left them, although the children were whimpering inside the coach and one of the nursemaids was praying.

John pinned a smile on his face and stepped forward and bowed. “I am sorry for the poor welcome,” he said. As he spoke the great doors creaked open and a frightened-looking footman peeped out. “There’s a couple of cooks here and a household of servants,” John said reassuringly. “They’ll make Your Majesties comfortable enough.”

At the sight of a servant the queen brightened. She rose to her feet and waited for the footman to hand her down from the carriage. The children followed her.

The king turned to John. “I thank you for the service you have given us this day. We were glad of your escort.”

John bowed. “I am glad to see Your Majesty safe arrived,” he said. At least he could say that with a clear conscience, he thought. He was indeed glad to get them safe out of London. He could not have stood by and seen the queen and the royal princes pulled out of their carriage by a mob, any more than he could have watched Hester and the children abused.

“Go and see that there are r-rooms made ready for us,” the king commanded.

John hesitated. “I should return home,” he said. “I will give orders that everything shall be done as you wish, and then go to my home.”

The king made that little gesture with his hand which signified “No.”

John hesitated.

“S-stay until we have some order here,” the king said coolly. “Tell them to prepare our p-privy chambers and a dinner.”

John could do nothing but bow and walk carefully backward from the king’s presence and go to do his bidding.

There was only so much that could be done. There was only one decent bed in the house fit for them; and so the king, queen, and the two royal princes were forced to bed down together in one bed, in the only aired linen in the whole palace. There was a dinner which was ample, but hardly royal; and no golden plate and cups for the service. The trappings of monarchy – the tapestries, carpets, gold plate and jewels, even the richly embroidered bed linen that always traveled with the king in his great progresses around the country – were still at Whitehall. All that was ever left in the empty palaces was second-rate goods, and Hampton Court was no exception. The queen ate off pewter with an air of shocked disdain.

Dinner was served by the kitchen staff and the lowly gentlemen of the household who maintained the palace in the king’s absence. They served it as it should be done, on bended knee, but all the ceremony in the world could not conceal that it was plain bread and meat on pewter plates on a plain board table.

“You will escort the queen and I to Windsor tomorrow,” the king said, when he had finished eating. “And from thence to Dover.”

Tradescant, who was seated at a lower table down the hall, got up from his bench and dropped to his knee on the stale rushes on the floor. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He kept his head down so that he showed no surprise.

“See that the horses are ready at dawn,” the king ordered.

The royal family rose from their places at the top table and left the great hall by the door at the back of the dais. Their withdrawing room would be cold and smoky with a chimney which did not properly draw.

“Are they running for it?” one of the ushers asked John as he rose from his knees. “All of them?”

John looked appalled. “They cannot do so!”

“Did they need to run from London? Like cowards?”

“How can you tell? The mood of the rabble around Whitehall was angry enough. There were moments when I feared for their lives.”

“The rabble!” the man jeered. “They could have thrown them a purse of gold and turned them around in a moment. But if they run from London, will they run from the country? Is that why they’re going to Dover? To take a ship to France? And what will become of us then?”

John shook his head. “This morning I was taking leave of my wife in my stable yard at Lambeth,” he said. “I hardly know where I am, let alone what is to become of the king and the queen and their kingdoms.”

“Well, I bet you they run for it,” the young man said cheerfully. “And good riddance,” he added under his breath, and then snapped his fingers at his dog and left the hall.

It was a long, cold journey to Dover; the royal family were muffled up inside the coach but John was standing in the footman’s place behind, holding on to the strap. By the time the coach rumbled in to Dover castle John was clinging on with fingers that were blue, his eyes running with tears from the cold wind in his face, every bone in his face aching as if he had an ague. From his place on the back of the coach he had heard, over the rumble of the wheels, the queen steadily complaining, all the way down the long frosty roads.

They slept that night in Dover castle, in better comfort; and then lingered undecided for a week. First they were waiting for news, then deciding to sail to France, missing the tide, changing their minds, waiting for more news. Courtiers slowly reassembled from the rout of London, noblemen were recalled from their country seats. Everyone had different advice, everyone was listened to with kingly courtesy, no one could agree, no one could act. Eleven-year-old Princess Mary, setting sail to live with her bridegroom in Holland, joined them during the week that they hesitated, havering between one choice and another, and found that the queen, her mother, was very bitter with her daughter for marrying a Protestant and leaving the family in such distress. Princess Mary made no undutiful replies to her mother, but sulked in eloquent silence.

A couple of heavy bags arrived at dawn from the Tower of London and John assumed, but did not ask, from the dour expression of the guard who never let them out of his sight, that the king was sending the country’s treasure overseas with his wife and that once again the most precious stones in England would be hawked around the moneylenders in Europe.

The king and queen finally came to a decision to separate. Princess Mary was bound for Holland in one ship, the queen and the three babies were to set sail for France in another: the Lion. The two princes – Charles and James – and the king were to stay in England and find a solution to the demands of Parliament. John and the other attendants waited at a distance on the quayside as the royal couple forced themselves to the brink of parting. The king held both her hands and kissed them tenderly.

“You will not yield one inch to them,” the queen said, her voice demanding and penetrating so that every man on the quayside could hear how the king of England was hagridden. “You will not make one concession. They must be brought to heel. They must know their master. You will not even speak with them without keeping me informed.”