No-one was wholly unmoved; but Johnnie, still weak from his injury and defeat at Colchester, was struck very hard. He spent day after day in the boat on the little lake, lying wrapped in his cloak, his long legs folded over the stern and the heels of his boots dipping in the water while the boat drifted around nudging one bank and then another, and Johnnie stared up at the cold sky, saying nothing.

Hester went down to fetch him for his midday dinner and found him rowing slowly to the little landing stage to come in.

‘Oh Johnnie,’ she said. ‘You have your whole life before you, there’s no need to take it so hard. You did what you could, you kept faith with him, you ran away to serve him and you were as brave as any of his cavaliers.’

He looked at her with his dark Tradescant eyes and she saw the passionate loyalty of his grandfather without the security of his grandfather’s settled world. ‘I don’t know how we can live without a king,’ he said simply. ‘It’s not just him. It’s the place he held. I can’t believe that we won’t see him again. His palaces are still there, his gardens. I can’t believe that he is not there too.’

‘You should get back to work,’ Hester said, grasping at straws. ‘Your father needs help.’

‘We are gardeners to the king,’ Johnnie said simply. ‘What do we do now?’

‘There’s the trading business for Sir Henry in Barbados.’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll never be a trader. I’m a gardener through and through. I’d never be anything else.’

‘The rarities.’

‘I’ll come and help if you wish it, Mother,’ he said obediently. ‘But they’re not the same, are they? Since we packed and unpacked them again. It’s not grandfather’s room any more, it’s not the room we showed the king. We have most of the things and it should be the same. But it feels different, doesn’t it? As if by packing them and hiding them away, and then unpacking them, and then hiding them again, somehow spoiled it. And people don’t come as they used to. It’s as if everything is changed and no-one knows yet how.’

Hester put her hand on his arm. ‘I just mean you should stop brooding and return to work. There is a time to mourn and you do yourself no favours if you exceed it.’

He nodded. ‘I will,’ he promised. ‘If you wish it.’ He hesitated as if he could not find the words for his feeling. ‘I never thought that I could feel so low.’