Hester said nothing. She thought the king was perfectly capable of waiting and doing nothing while the queen campaigned for him in France, Montrose risked his life and his men in the Highlands and Ormonde tried to fight his way through a maze of the king’s own self-betraying plotting in Ireland. ‘If the Irish were to come over and join with Montrose and fight for the king –’ she suggested.

John flashed her a quick, irritated look. ‘Papists and Scotsmen?’ he asked. ‘Fighting for a Protestant king? An Irish army? The alliance would last half a day and the country would never forgive him.’

‘If he is a Protestant king,’ Hester said carefully.

John dropped his head into his hands. ‘No-one knows what he believes any more, nor what he stands for. How could it have come to this?’

‘And what do you believe?’ Hester asked him. ‘You were always against the court, and against Papacy?’

John shrugged wearily. ‘I didn’t go to Virginia just because I had no stomach for killing Englishmen,’ he said. ‘I went because I was torn. I served the king, and my father served the king or his servants all his life. I can’t just turn away and pretend that I don’t care for his safety. I do care. But he’s in the wrong and has been in the wrong since –’ He broke off. ‘Since he marched his soldiers into the House of Commons,’ he said. ‘No, before. Since he allowed the government of this country to be run by that madman, Buckingham. Since he took a Papist wife and thus ran the risk of Papist children. From the moment that he set his heart on having a kingdom run as a tyranny and would not listen to his advisors.’

Hester waited.

‘I want the kingdom free of his tyranny, I have always wanted that. But I don’t need the kingdom free of him. Or his son. Does that make any sense at all?’

Hester nodded and then turned to a more pressing topic for her. ‘Shall we unpack the rarities?’

John gave a short laugh. ‘D’you think we are at peace? With the king held by the Scots at Newcastle and refusing to agree with his own Parliament?’

‘I don’t think we’re at peace,’ she said equably. ‘But if we could show the rarities and summon people to the garden to see the Virginian plants we might make some money this summer. And we are in debt, John. This war has been hard on everyone and we are taking no more than a few shillings each month.’

He rose from the chair. ‘Let’s go and have a look at that tree,’ he said.

They stood before the great black cherry tree. It had not liked the situation before the ice-house door and there had been few blossoms in spring and now only a few buttons of green berries which might, in time, ripen and swell.