‘Who’s the pretty maid?’ he asked abruptly.

‘My stepdaughter.’

‘Keep her out of the way of the men,’ he said.

‘She’ll stay by me,’ Hester said. ‘Can she walk in the gardens?’

‘Yes. But not near the house.’

Hester dipped a little curtsey.

He was about to walk away but he hesitated. ‘I visited the Ark once,’ he said. ‘When I was little older than your lad. The old Mr Tradescant showed me around himself. It was the most wonderful place I had ever been. A palace of curiosities. I could hardly believe the things I saw. A mermaid, and the jaw of a whale!’

Hester smiled. ‘We still have them,’ she said. ‘You are very welcome to visit us again when you come to London. You may come as our guest. I should be glad to show you the new things too.’

The commander shook his head. ‘It seems extraordinary to me that while I am fighting for the king against his own deluded people that you are still collecting mice skins and glassware and tiny toys.’

‘For one thing there is nothing else for me to do,’ Hester said tartly. ‘My husband left the rarities and the garden and the children in my care. A woman should do her duty, whatever else may be happening.’

He nodded his approval of that.

‘And when it is all over, when it is finished, then the men who have been fighting will want to go home to their houses and their gardens,’ Hester said more gently. ‘And then it will be a great joy to them to find rare and beautiful things have survived the war, and that there are strange and lovely plants to grow, and tulips are as bright and fiery as ever, and the chestnut trees are as rich and as green as ever they were.’

There was a little silence, and then he bowed low and took her hand and kissed it. ‘You are keeping a little piece of England safe for us,’ he said. ‘Pray God we all come safely home to it at the end of all this.’

‘Amen,’ Hester said, thinking of John so far away, and of the war going on for so long, and of the young men who came to the Ark to order trees only for their heirs to grow. ‘Amen.’

Hester found a youth who had so far avoided both the excitement of the war and the recruiting officers to mow the courts around Oatlands under her supervision, and then weed the gravel of the knot garden. Little could be done with the kitchen garden except to leave it to grow what vegetables and fruit could struggle through the weeds. But judging from the blossom which drifted like snow in the corners of the walled garden there would be a fine show of fruit, especially plums and apples which thrived on neglect.