The man hesitated and looked at her with a sharp look. Hester felt a sudden fear, she had taken him for a fool but the bright assessing gaze he turned on her was not the gaze of a fool. ‘I trust you are for the king, Mrs Tradescant,’ he said, and there was menace in his voice. ‘When he comes into London he will expect support from his loyal servants. You will have to put this house at his disposal.’

‘I know nothing of these matters,’ Hester said weakly. ‘I am just conducting the business of the house and the garden in my husband’s absence …’

‘There are wives and widows in the same case as you all around the country,’ the man said sharply. ‘And they have not forgotten where their loyalties lie. Are you for the king? Or not?’

‘For the king,’ Hester said unenthusiastically.

‘Then His Majesty will call on your services,’ the man said. ‘You may count on it.’

He nodded to her, turned and walked across the little drawbridge over the stream at the side of the Lambeth road. Hester watched him stride away, his coat flung back, his feathers bobbing in his hat, every inch a nobleman, every inch a cavalier, then she closed the door on the sight of him, and on her fear.

She thought for a moment and then went into the parlour to write a note to Alexander Norman.

It may be that I need your assistance. Please let me know that your neighbourhood is free of the plague. I may wish to come and stay with you for a few days.

She sealed the note and went through to the kitchen. The gardener, Joseph, was in there, eating his midday dinner of bread and bacon.

‘Can you take this to Cousin Norman at Aldgate?’ Hester asked abruptly.

The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I was going to cut back the leaves of the early tulips this afternoon,’ he said.

Hester hesitated. There were few things more precious in the Ark than the tulips. ‘Even so,’ she said. ‘I think this is more important. Put it into his hands only, and wait for a reply.’

Joseph brought a message back as it was getting dark. Hester was sitting on the terrace before the house, enjoying the setting sun and the slow gathering of the darkness. The garden before her was an enchanted place in the quiet twilight. The apple blossom was like a mist around the heads of the trees in the lower orchard, the tulips were drained of their daytime colour and glowed like white cups in the beds. Hester thought of John Tradescant, the old man she had met, who had willed his grandchildren into her care, and thought that this garden was his memorial, as much as the ornate stone tomb in the churchyard.