After that, there was nothing to do but to let her go. Hester held on a moment longer than was necessary, and when Frances stepped back into the encircling arm of her husband Hester felt a pain in her whole body as if something slowly and deeply was peeling away from her. She smiled at once. ‘God bless you,’ she said, as if the pain was not gripping her inside. ‘Be happy.’

She turned from the pretty hall and stepped out into the street. The Tower of London threw a shadow over the street in the morning and the chill struck Hester as she gathered her cape around her. In a second Johnnie was at her side, offering his arm like a cavalier, and Hester managed to step briskly out towards the river and the boat to take them home.

‘That was well done,’ Johnnie said stoutly, keeping his face turned away from her.

‘Very well,’ Hester replied, rubbing her gloved hand against her cheeks. ‘A plague on this cold wind, it’s making my eyes water.’

‘Mine too,’ Johnnie said.

April 1645, England

Hester felt that the Ark, Tradescant’s Ark, was adrift in the spring of 1645. The promise that she had made to John Tradescant – to care for his grandchildren and his rarities – seemed to be slipping away from her; though she had always thought that whatever else slipped away, that promise at least could hold firm.

But Frances was a woman, with a house and a new life of her own, and Johnnie was growing and would be off to war within four, perhaps five, years. Every young man in England knew that he would see fighting before he was old, and Johnnie, even precious Johnnie, could be no exception. The rarities were well-hidden and she could only hope that neither the cold nor the damp would spoil them. The ice house was safely locked and bolted, and Joseph had planted a cherry tree, one of Tradescant’s great black cherry trees, before it. The sapling had taken well and was spreading its boughs as if it would deny that there had ever been a door there at all. The springing leaves blurred the outline of the wall, and when the blossom came there would be nothing to see but bobbing flowers.

‘We’ll have to cut that tree down when we want to get the door open and the treasures out,’ Joseph observed to Hester in a quiet voice as she was walking around the garden.

‘The way things are going, we’ll never be safe to have them out,’ she replied, and went on.