‘We have a Lack tulip, a Duck tulip, Agatha tulips, Violetten.’ She broke off at the eagerness in his face.

‘I’ve never seen them,’ he said. ‘D’you have them here?’

‘This way,’ Hester said pleasantly, and led him towards the house. Johnnie came running out and checked at the sight of the stranger. He gave a neat bow and the man smiled at him.

‘My stepson,’ Hester said. ‘John Tradescant.’

‘And will you be a gardener too?’ the man asked.

‘I am a gardener already,’ Johnnie replied. ‘I am going to be a cavalry officer.’

Hester scowled a warning at him but the man nodded pleasantly enough. ‘I’m in that line of work myself,’ he said. ‘I’m in the cavalry for the Parliament army.’

‘That John Lambert!’ Hester exclaimed and then flushed and wished she had the sense to be silent. She had read about the talents of the cavalry leader who was said to be the equal of Prince Rupert, but she had not pictured him as a young man, smiling in spring sunshine, and devoted to tulips.

He grinned at her. ‘Shall I keep a place among my officers for you, Master Tradescant?’

Johnnie flushed and looked awkward. ‘The thing is –’

‘He is too young to be thinking of such things,’ Hester intervened. ‘Now … the tulips –’

John Lambert did not move. ‘What is the thing?’ he asked Johnnie gently.

‘The thing is that I am in the king’s service,’ Johnnie said seriously. ‘My family have always been gardeners to the royal palaces, and we have not yet been dismissed. So I suppose I am in the king’s service, and I can’t, in honour, join you. But I thank you for the invitation, sir.’

Lambert smiled. ‘Perhaps by the time you are old enough to ride with me there will be a country united, and only one army and one cavalry and all you will have to choose is your horse and the colour of the feather in your hat,’ he suggested diplomatically. ‘And both Prince Rupert and I will be proud to serve under the same colours.’

He straightened up and looked over Johnnie’s head at Hester’s concerned expression. ‘Please don’t fear, Mrs Tradescant,’ he said. ‘I am here to buy tulips, not to cause you a moment’s uneasiness. Loyalty is a difficult path to tread and these are difficult times. You may well garden in a royal palace once more and I may yet dance off a royal scaffold. Or I might be the new Chief Justice and you Mayor of London. Let’s just look at some tulips, shall we?’

The warmth of his smile was irresistible. Hester smiled in reply and directed him to the terrace where the tulips stood in their beautiful ceramic pots. Warmed by the sunshine and sheltered in the orangery at night, these were more developed than those in the bed and they were showing the colours in their petals.