She hugged him as she answered. ‘Of course. Did you not know you had been robbed?’

‘I’ve not been much in the garden,’ he said. It was a statement of his deep distress which she read at once.

‘The king?’

‘I’ve come to see his trial.’

‘You had much better not go,’ she said frankly, drawing him into the little hall and then into the parlour where a small fire of coal was burning.

‘I have to,’ John said shortly.

‘Will you stay here tonight?’

He nodded. ‘If I may. There are no beds to be had in the City and I don’t want to go home.’

‘Alexander is going, but I didn’t want to see it. I remember when the king came to the Ark that day, and I saw him, and the queen. They were both so young then, and so rich. They were wrapped in silk and ermine.’

John smiled, thinking of the little girl who had sat on the wall until her fingertips were blue with cold. ‘You wanted him to appoint you as the next Tradescant gardener.’

She leaned forwards and stirred the coals so they flamed up. ‘It’s unbelievable that everything should be so changed. I don’t expect to be a gardener; but it is impossible to think that there may be no king.’

‘You could be a gardener now,’ John offered. ‘In these strange days anything is possible, I suppose. There are women preaching, aren’t there? And there were women fighting. There were hundreds of women who had their husbands’ and their fathers’ business in their charge while the men were off to war, and many still working because the men won’t be coming home again.’

Frances nodded, her face grave. ‘I thank God that Alexander’s work was here, and that Johnnie was too young for all but the very end.’

‘Amen to that,’ John said softly.

‘Is Johnnie taking it hard?’

‘He’s bound to,’ John said. ‘I wouldn’t let him come to see the end of it. But I had to see it for myself.’

‘Well then,’ she said more cheerfully. ‘I shall send to the bake-house for a special dinner for you. And you will need to rise early tomorrow if you are to find a place inside the courtroom.’

Saturday 20 January 1649

Alexander and John went together to Westminster. The trial was to be held in Westminster Hall, open to the public, who were to be herded into pens in the body of the hall to prevent either an attack on the judges or a rescue of the king. Only the wealthy spectators were seated in the galleries running around the sides of the hall. John and Alexander chose to crowd on to the floor.

‘Like being in the pit at the theatre,’ Alexander complained as they were jostled and pushed.