John shook his head. Unconsciously he put out a hand and tucked a stray shoot of the Virginian woodbine beneath a guiding piece of twine nailed into the wall. ‘I’ve been torn all my life, Hester. I’m growing quite resigned to divided loyalties.’

‘Johnnie’ll take it hard,’ she said. ‘He’s held to being one of the king’s gardeners through all this time.’

‘We’re gardeners to the best gardens in the kingdom,’ John said firmly. ‘And Oatlands has always been one of the best. I’d stay faithful to my garden before I stayed faithful to any master, you know that. Especially a master as faithless and as changeable as the king. The garden comes first, Hester. If someone will pay me to plant it and tend to it I’ll go at once and I’ll take Johnnie to help me. He has to learn. King or no king, we have to work for our living. And our living is the gardens. Our great duty is to the gardens.’

‘But why would Parliament care for the gardens?’ Hester mused. ‘With so much else to do? And they were the queen’s own gardens. Unless they’re putting them in order for her return? And there’s been some secret agreement?’

John shook his head. ‘Could be. Or maybe they’re just men of sense. If the king never returns and Parliament owns Oatlands and all the other royal palaces, then they will sell it at a better profit if it is set in a handsome garden and not in a wilderness. But if the king comes back to his own again and finds it overgrown, then he will only make them pay to set it right.’

‘Will you be gone long?’ she asked.

‘A month at least,’ he replied. ‘I have duties now, Hester. I am gardener to the Parliamentary commissioners! I am a Parliament man!’

She laughed with him. ‘But Johnnie may not find it so easy to change masters,’ she warned.

‘Johnnie will have to learn,’ he ruled. ‘It is one thing to be a boy and love stories of Prince Rupert. It is another thing to be a man and to know that if you serve a master who changes as often as the weather then you had better not cleave too tight to him. The king is spinning like a weathercock. The rest of us must look to our own lives.’

April 1648, Oatlands Palace

A troop of Parliamentary horse was still quartered at Oatlands and John’s first action, after he had opened up his old house next to the silkworm house, was to find the commander and demand that the horses be banned from grazing in any of the courts or on the bowling lawns.

The commander was happy to agree and promised John the use of as many troopers as he needed to help him in the weeding and the setting of the garden to rights.