Johnnie did not look away but faced his father like a young stag facing the leader of the herd. ‘I want to do my duty,’ he said. ‘I want to serve the king.’

‘The king is not served by riots and uproar and Englishmen killing each other in the streets of Maidstone and Canterbury,’ John said slowly.

‘If that is what it takes –’

John shook his head. ‘Making peace in a kingdom is done by ceaseless work, ceaseless working towards agreement,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you lived your childhood through a war and seen that at the end there is nothing agreed, nothing is any further forward?’

‘I want to do my duty!’

John put his hand on the bough of the apple tree as if he would draw strength from it. ‘Your duty is to your God and to your father and mother,’ he said.

‘You don’t even believe in God,’ Johnnie shot back. ‘You don’t believe in anything. You have not done your duty by me as a father – you left us for years. You’re the king’s man but you don’t fight for him, you’re in the pay of Parliament and you joke about being a Parliament gardener. You’re a Virginia planter but you stay at home in Lambeth. I won’t be told my duty by you!’

Hester started forwards to protect her stepson against the blow that must come, and then forced herself to pause, and hold back. John did not strike Johnnie but froze, his hand tightened on the bough of the apple tree until the knuckles went pale.

‘I am sorry you think so low of me,’ John said quietly. ‘And what you say is true. I lost my faith in God when your mother died and I could not even hold her for fear of spreading the infection to you. I have tried to show my respect to others’ faith. But the heart went out of me. I did leave you and Frances and your stepmother at a time when I should have stayed and protected you – but I thought the king would draw me into fighting and never let me go. And I was right to fear that – he has drawn the whole four kingdoms of men into fighting and he has never let them go. I have my headright in Virginia but I could not keep it without killing people that I have every reason to love and respect. It was a war between countrymen there too.’

Johnnie was about to speak, Hester knowing him so well, knew that he was fighting not to break down in tears and pitch into his father’s arms. He held himself very still, rigid as a soldier under fire.