John softened at the sight of his son’s distress. ‘A king must be on his throne,’ he said gently. ‘You can understand that he might think it was worth anything to get back to his place.’

‘And will he do it?’ Johnnie asked. ‘Will he come back to London? Will I see him on his throne?’

John shook his head. ‘They’ll never let him off the Isle of Wight again,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were General Cromwell.’

Spring 1648

John was in his garden, planting out his tender rarities which had wintered in the orangery. The great tufted American daisy was putting out fresh shoots from its rosette of leaves, and the Virginian woodbine was throwing out scarlet snaky shoots with little unfurling green leaves from its dry, dead-looking trunk. John thought for a moment of Suckahanna with the scarlet honeysuckle flowers in her dark hair, and the night-time scent of honeysuckle on their sleeping platform when he kissed her neck and crushed the flowers beneath his cheek. He patted the earth gently around the roots, saw that the climber could extend and find footholds on the strings hammered in to the rough wall and then turned his back on them to admire his tulip beds.

‘There is nothing, nothing to compare with them,’ he remarked to Hester as she came down the path towards him. Then he broke off abruptly at the sight of her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

He glanced towards the lane as if he feared a troop of horse there. Even with the king imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle no man could be certain that the nation would stay at peace. There were too many nations that might wish to meddle, there were too many armies that the queen or Prince Charles might prevail upon to muster.

‘I don’t know,’ Hester said, producing a letter from her apron pocket. ‘A letter. For you. From the Parliamentary commissioners.’

John scowled and held out his hand. He broke the seal, spread the paper, read it, and then read it again. He chuckled incredulously.

‘What is it?’ Hester demanded, trying to read upside down.

‘I am to go to Oatlands and make good,’ John said. ‘Who would have thought it? They want me to mend the walks in the vineyard garden and mow the bowling green, and make good.’ He paused and looked up at her. ‘How times change and yet change not at all,’ he observed. ‘I am gardener to Oatlands Palace still it seems, though there is no king and no court to see my work.’

‘You’ll go –’ she suggested, looking at him warily.

He folded the letter, very businesslike. ‘Of course. Why not?’

‘I thought you might have some feeling that you wouldn’t garden for them, where you had gardened for the king, and for her.’