The carter and Hester had Johnnie on his feet, walking slowly towards the kitchen door, an arm around each of them. Cook flung open the door and Hester guided them through to the parlour and seated Johnnie in his father’s chair at the fireside.

He had gone very white, his lips pale in his pale face. Hester snapped over her shoulder, ‘Fetch the brandy,’ and Cook ran to obey her. John came in, treading mud on to the polished wooden parlour floor.

‘Son?’

Johnnie looked up at his father and something in that glance, something vulnerable and unjustly hurt, reminded John so powerfully of Jane, his lost wife, that his pity for his son and his old grief for her hit him like a renewed blow. He dropped to his knees and took his son’s hands.

‘You’re safe now,’ he said. ‘Safe home. Are you hurt much?’

‘I got a pike in my side,’ Johnnie whispered. ‘It hurt a lot and bled a lot. But it’s healing now.’

Hester held the glass of brandy to his lips and Johnnie sipped.

‘We’ll have you in bed in a moment,’ she promised him. ‘And a proper dinner for you.’ She smoothed his long fair hair from his forehead. ‘My boy,’ she said tenderly. ‘My poor boy.’

Cook returned. ‘His bed is ready for him, sheets warmed.’

The carter and Hester stepped forwards to help him but John put them back. ‘I can manage,’ he said huskily, and took his son in his arms.

The boy weighed little more than he did when he was only ten years old. Tradescant scowled at the lightness of the body and went towards the stairs. Hester ran ahead and opened the bedroom door, turned down the sheets.

‘I’m lousy,’ Johnnie protested. ‘And covered with fleas.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Hester said, slipping off his boots and stripping down his breeches.

He gave a little whimper of pain as she pulled up his shirt and she saw that the dirty linen had stuck to the raw wound.

‘We’ll soon have you well again,’ she said.

Both her husband and her son heard the old determination in Hester’s voice. ‘We’ll soon have you well again.’

King Charles blithely celebrated his forty-eighth birthday at Newport and entertained the Parliamentary negotiators who had been sent from London to make a new peace with a king who had broken every agreement they had made before. This time he was more accommodating than ever; but would not, swore that he could not, allow the sale of the bishops’ lands and palaces. The bishops could not be abolished, their position must be maintained. The most he would agree was to rule without them for three years, the promise he had already given to the Scots. But Parliament was firmer than the Scots. It would settle for nothing less than the complete abolition of all the bishops and the freeing of their wealth and lands.