Bit by bit, piece by piece, drawer by drawer, object after object, the rarities room was reassembled, and when they stepped back and looked around after a full fortnight of work they saw an impressive collection of wealth and novelty. Only someone who had grown up in the room, as the Tradescant children had done, rocked in the light of those great windows, would have known that anything was missing. The visitors, who would surely come again now that peace was here, could not fail to be amazed.

Summer 1647

John was digging in the new vegetable bed and setting in lettuce seeds to see which would grow the fastest when Hester came out of the house, shading her eyes against the bright sunshine, and then hurried down the path towards him.

‘The king’s been taken,’ she said baldly.

He looked up with as much anxiety as if she had said one of the children was ill. ‘Taken?’

‘Some whippersnapper Cornet marched up to Holdenby House and arrested His Majesty,’ Hester said, nearly spitting with rage.

‘How did you hear this?’ John asked, wiping his muddy hands on his leather gardening apron.

‘The ferry boatman. Frances has come for a visit, I went down to the river to meet her. London is buzzing with the news.’

‘Who has him?’

‘A man of no importance,’ Hester said. ‘A nobody. One of the new men of the New Model Army, rode to Holdenby House and captured the king as if he was a piece of baggage in the baggage train. It is these people who will bring us down. People who have no respect. Men who have spent four years learning that nothing matters, not pictures in church, not music, not gardens, not kings.’

‘And where has he taken His Majesty?’ John asked.

‘To Maidenhead,’ she said. ‘And they say Oliver Cromwell himself is going out to meet him.’

‘Cromwell?’

She nodded. ‘D’you think that means peace?’

John shook his head. ‘I suppose it means that the game has changed again,’ he said, baffled. ‘When the king was held by the Scots he was in the power of Parliament. But now the army has him, I don’t know what will become of him, or us for that matter.’

‘We may be in danger,’ Hester said. ‘The ferry boatman said that the soldiers of the New Model Army may march on Parliament. They’re determined to have their pay. And they recognise no loyalty to anyone but their commanders and their levelling ideas. They are saying that Parliament and the City may hold out against the army. But if the army comes to the City from the south then they will march right through here. We may have to pack up the rarities again. They are marching for their pay, they are hungry and desperate men. And they have sworn that all the land and all the property shall be held in common.’