The merchant shrugged. ‘It’s not a bad plan. No-one can trust the navy, and if they declare for him how is Cromwell’s army going to lay hold of him? He could be snug enough at Carisbrooke, create his court, build his army, and when he is ready sail straight into Portsmouth. He must have had some secret arrangement with the governor Robert Hammond, though everyone thought that Hammond was a Parliament man through and through. The king must have had a deep plan. He’ll be waiting for the queen’s army from France and then we’ll be at war again, if anyone has the stomach for it.’

John briefly closed his eyes. ‘This is a nightmare.’

The merchant shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you how much money I am losing every day this goes on,’ he said. ‘I can’t induce men to serve, my ships are harassed by pirates in the very mouth of the Thames, and I never know when a ship comes in what price I can command on the quayside or what taxes I shall have to pay. These are times for a madman. And we have a mad king to rule over us.’

‘Not another war,’ John said.

‘He must have laid his plans very deep,’ the merchant said. ‘He was promising to agree with Cromwell and Ireton only the day before, he gave his word as a king. He was about to sign. What a man! What a false man! Y’know, in business we’d never deal with him. How would I manage if I gave my word and then skipped away?’

‘Deep-laid plans?’ John asked, seizing on the one unlikely feature.

‘So they say.’

One of the other merchants glanced up. ‘D’you know better, Mr Tradescant? You were at Oatlands with him, weren’t you?’

John sensed the sudden intensity of interest. ‘I was planting the garden. He hardly spoke to me. I saw him walk by, nothing more.’

‘Well God save him and keep him from his enemies,’ one of the men said stoutly and John noticed that while only a few months before the man would have been booed into silence or even thrown out of the tavern there were now a few men who muttered ‘Amen’ into the bottom of their mugs, and no-one who denied the wish.

‘So what happens now?’ John asked.

‘We wait on his whim,’ one of the merchants said sourly. ‘As we have been doing for this past year and a half. He was defeated fair and square but he still dances around the country and we still have to wait till he tells us what he will agree to. It makes no sense to me.’

‘He won’t lie down till he’s dead,’ one of the men said frankly. ‘Would to God that he might fall sick and die and then we could deal with his son, any of the sons. Anyone rather than this man.’