John was wrong. The king did not give up. He attempted to escape, an ill-planned, unlikely attempt which was as successful as it deserved to be. The guard around him was doubled, he was warned that he should know that he was a prisoner of the English Parliament, and taken to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire.

Hester found John at the bottom of the orchard, scowling at the cherry tree. ‘I think I killed it,’ he said. ‘And I watched my father moving trees twice the size of this when I was a boy and never learned the knack of it.’

‘It looks no worse than the others,’ Hester said, looking round the orchard where the whippy bare boughs of the trees flailed against a white sky.

‘I’ve killed it,’ John said. ‘For all the care I took. I don’t have my father’s talent. I worked at his side all my life and still I’m not half the gardener he was. He knew where he belonged, he knew who he served, and he knew his trade and I –’ He broke off and put his hand on the bough of the tree as if for support.

‘What’s the news?’ Hester asked, guessing at once the source of John’s discomfort.

John gave her a quick look from under his lowered brows. ‘Just some lads at the back door, begging for bread on their way home,’ he said. ‘Discharged from the army and heading homeward.’

Hester waited. John put his hand out and held the trunk of the dead cherry tree. ‘They said that the army would rule Parliament and they would have their revenge on the king,’ he said. ‘They said they would make him pay because a new day is coming when all men will have land and all men will have a vote to choose their rulers and all men will be equal with one another.’

‘These are young men’s thoughts,’ Hester said quickly. ‘You were a young man wild for change yourself once, John.’

He nodded. ‘But these were not young men, they were men of my age. And they said that many think as they do. They are Levellers and they say the best men of the army are with them. They want to finish what Parliament started. They want to exile the king and turn the country into a new land of freedom and equality.’

Hester looked around the security of the walled orchard. ‘Parliament would not give away land?’ she asked.

John shook his head. ‘I don’t think they’ll wait for Parliament,’ he said. ‘These are men of action and determination. They’ve been fighting to make a better country for working men. They have little patience for the gentlemen in Parliament. They want to see the land given to working men. They want the royal estates, the church estates, the commons, and the wastes.’