John met his wife’s eyes across the boy’s bobbing head. ‘I don’t know about you; but I feel very confident,’ he said wryly.

They went by the river, rowed in a wherry, Johnnie seated beside his father and looking all around him. When they were past the village of Staines, John said quietly, ‘There it is,’ and pointed to the little rose-pink palace, sitting on the terraces with the unkempt lawns running down to the river. ‘D’you know, I never thought I’d see it again,’ John said softly. ‘I never thought I’d be here, working in these gardens again.’

Johnnie glanced quickly at his father’s darkened expression. ‘But you’re glad of it?’ he asked. ‘Glad you came home and that the king is back in his palace, and soon everything will be as it was?’

John dropped his hand on his son’s thin shoulder. ‘I don’t think everything will be quite as it was,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of men dead and a lot of tears shed, and the king is in his palace but not on his throne. We’ll have to mind our tongues here, and beware even of our thoughts.’

The boatman shipped the oars and the wherry nudged against the landing stage. John stepped quickly ashore and caught the mooring rope, dug in his pocket for a coin and dropped it down into the boat as Johnnie tossed up their bags and then handed up, one at a time, a dozen pots with nodding blooms.

John shouldered his bag. ‘We’ll come back for the pots,’ he said, and led the way up the slope to the palace.

Prince Rupert had allowed his cavalrymen’s horses to graze on the lawns and they were pocked with hoofprints and lumpy with droppings but at least the animals had kept the grass down. As John approached the palace he saw that the creepers and the wall climbers which he had trained so carefully to take blossoms and scent up to the windows were doing well – overspread, sometimes pulling away from their ties, but thriving on neglect.

The beds at the feet of the rose-brick walls were overrun with weeds but some flowers were still struggling through. Pansies and gillyflowers, irises and peonies had thrust their heads above the encroaching green. ‘Soon hoe that out,’ John remarked, nodding to his son.

The yew tree allée was overgrown but looked thick and bushy, throwing a welcome green shade against the brightness of the afternoon sunshine. The orangery which John’s father had rebuilt was dilapidated – the white paint was peeling and some of the ornamental woodwork had been wrenched off for the troopers’ campfires – but the silkworm house and the neighbouring gardener’s house were as Hester had left them, swept clean and bare and empty.