John hesitated. ‘If I can,’ he said. ‘It is not easy for me to come and go.’

‘Stay here then,’ Sarah urged him. ‘If they are looking askance then you may be in danger. Don’t go back to them.’

‘It is not them,’ John said slowly. ‘It’s me. It is hard for me to come and go between this world and theirs.’

‘Then stay with us,’ Sarah said simply. ‘You have your bed in the attic, and when our crop is in we will pay you a share. We will come and rebuild your house and clear your field, as we promised. You will be our neighbour again instead of leading this mongrel life.’

John was silent for a moment.

‘Don’t press him,’ Hobert said gently to his wife. ‘Come,’ he said to John. ‘I’ll walk up the river with you.’

He took his gun from the hook behind the door, and lit the fuse from the embers in the hearth. ‘I’ll bring back some meat,’ he said, forestalling his wife’s protest that there was work to be done in the field. ‘I won’t be long.’

John bowed to Sarah and nodded his head to Francis, and the two men left.

Hobert walked beside John instead of jogging behind him. John found it strange to have a man at his shoulder, strange to have to curb his stride to a pace as slow as a child’s, strange to hear the noise they made as they moved so broad and heavy-shod through the wood. John thought that all the game for miles around would be scared away long before Hobert arrived.

‘Is the hunting good now the spring is bringing the deer back into the woods?’ John asked.

Hobert shook his head. ‘Less than last year,’ he said. ‘It is the savages. They are taking too much and they are driving the animals deeper and deeper into the woods in the hopes that they can starve us out.’

John shook his head but did not have the energy to contradict him.

‘There was news from England at Jamestown,’ Hobert said. ‘The Scots have come over the border, they’re in the war.’

‘Against the king?’ John asked, astounded.

‘Against the king and, more important, on the side of Parliament. There were some saying that the king would have to make terms with Parliament or the Scots. He could never fight against them both.’

‘How far south are they?’ John asked, thinking of the little house south of the Thames in Lambeth.

‘By now? Who knows?’ Hobert said carelessly. ‘Thank God it is not our war any more, eh, John?’

John nodded absently. ‘My wife is still at Lambeth,’ he said. ‘My son and my daughter.’

‘I thought you had all but left them?’ Hobert remarked.