In the silkworm house the shelves were full of dusty little corpses. When the king and queen had left the court and abandoned the old life, the boiler had gone out and all the worms had died. Hester, with her instinctive hatred of waste, cleaned out the trays and swept the floor with a bustling irritation against a queen who could command such things into being, and then forget them completely. Every day Hester and Frances hitched up their skirts, rolled up their sleeves and worked in the gardens, noting the positions of the tulips which should be lifted in autumn, tying in climbing plants to the bowers and arbours, and weeding, weeding, weeding: the white gravel of the stone gardens, the drive, the terrace, the stone-flagged arbours. Johnnie put himself in charge of the watercourses and drained and scrubbed them, coming home at dusk wet through with triumphant tales of streams running clean, and cracks in the watercourses repaired with his own sticky mixture of clay and white chalk.

In the afternoons he was allowed to watch the cavalry drilling, practising turning and wheeling at a shouted order, and once he saw Prince Rupert himself on his huge horse with his poodle held over his saddlebow and his dark hair in a curled mane over his shoulders. Johnnie came home full of joy at the sight of the handsome prince. Prince Rupert had seen him and smiled at him and Johnnie had asked if he could serve in his regiment as soon as he was old enough and could find another horse.

‘You didn’t say anything about the cavalier who took Father’s horse?’ Hester asked quickly.

At once all the boyish wildness drained from his face and he looked cautious. ‘Of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m not a child.’

Hester had to stop herself from drawing him on to her knee and taking him in her arms. ‘Of course you’re not,’ she said. ‘But we must all mind our tongues in these dangerous days.’

She smiled to reassure him that she was not afraid; but at night, in all the long dark nights, Hester remembered that she was in exile from her home and in danger of her life, and sometimes she feared that while they were safely hidden at Oatlands the other army, who were at least as well-armed and perhaps as well-trained as this one, might march on the little house at Lambeth and destroy it with all the treasures and all the plants as a nest of treason.

She could get neither news nor gossip. The soldiers stationed at Oatlands Palace knew nothing more than they would get their marching orders any day, and Hester was too fearful to go into Weybridge for news. She had to wait for a message from Alexander Norman. In the third week of June he came himself.