‘Not with John Lambert in command,’ Hester remarked. ‘That man is not a fool.’

‘Can it all be as it was?’ Frances asked. ‘The queen come home, and the court restored?’

‘There’ll be some missing faces,’ Alexander pointed out. ‘Archbishop Laud for one, Earl Strafford.’

‘So what was it all for?’ Hester asked. ‘All these years of hardship?’

John shook his head. ‘In the end, perhaps it was to bring the king and Parliament to realise that they have to deal together, they cannot be enemies.’

‘A high price to pay,’ Frances said, thinking of the years when she and Hester had struggled on their own at the Ark, ‘to get some sense into that thick royal head.’

Autumn 1647

‘He’s gone,’ Alexander said flatly the moment he entered the kitchen door and surprised the Tradescants at breakfast. His horse stood sweating in the stable yard outside. ‘I came at once to tell you. I rode over. I couldn’t bear to wait. I couldn’t believe it myself.’

‘The king?’ John leaped to his feet and strode to the door, checked and turned back.

Alexander nodded. ‘Escaped from Hampton Court.’

‘Hurrah!’ Johnnie shouted.

‘My God, no,’ John said. ‘Not to the French? Not when they were so near agreement? The French haven’t rescued him? Kidnapped him?’

Alexander shook his head and dropped into John’s vacated seat. Frances put a mug of small ale beside him and he caught her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist in thanks. ‘I heard the news this morning and came straight here with it. I couldn’t bear even to write it. What days we live in! When will we ever see an end to these alarms!’

‘When will we ever see peace?’ Hester murmured, one eye on her husband who was standing at the window gazing out into the yard as if ready to run himself.

‘Who’s got him?’ John demanded. ‘Not the Irish?’

‘He just slipped away on his own, by the looks of it. There’s not word of him being broken out by soldiers. Just away with his gentlemen.’

‘Sir John Berkeley,’ John guessed.

Alexander shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘And where has he gone? France? To be with the queen and Prince Charles?’

‘If he has any sense,’ Alexander said. ‘But why break away now? When things were going so well? When they were so close to agreeing to what he wanted? When he had an agreement with the army that he could sign? All he had to do was wait. The City is for him, Parliament is for him, the army has nothing but fair demands, Cromwell has destroyed the opposition. He has nearly won.’