‘But the king will bring out the clans,’ Hester whispered. ‘Men who would march all night to die for him and for their clan chief. Wild men who won’t count the price, who will fight like savages.’

‘The clans won’t leave Scotland, they never do,’ John predicted. ‘They’ll come no further south than a raiding party.’

‘And they’ll be poorly equipped,’ Alexander agreed. ‘They’ll come out with daggers and pitchforks and meet Cromwell and Lambert and the Model Army with its cavalry and cannon and muskets and pikes. I’ll have to go back to London today, there will be new orders for barrels. But you can be sure that my orders will be to send the ordnance by sea to Scotland to meet the army there – that’s where Cromwell will choose his battlefield.’

Hester turned to the window and looked out over the garden. The flowerbeds before the house were filled with pinks, gillyflowers, and the new star-faced spiderwort in pink. The roses on the walls were shedding petals as they bloomed. Johnnie was striding down the avenue, his head up, his shoulders back, his listlessness and sadness quite gone.

‘How can we bear it?’ she asked softly. ‘How could you give him permission and your blessing to go into danger again?’

John was beside her, he slid his arm around her waist and half-reluctantly she let him hold her. ‘I am doing the very thing that I think will keep him safe,’ he said. ‘That is my only intention.’

All July and all August Johnnie was in a fever for news, desperate to be ready to go the moment his father said he might leave. He persuaded John to buy him a horse, a reliable old war charger called Caesar with big, strong haunches and broad shoulders that looked as if it would carry Johnnie’s light weight for hundreds of miles.

He tied a sack stuffed with hay into the low branch of a tree and practised charging it and stabbing at it with his lance. The first few practices he followed his horse back to the stable after a couple of hard tumbles; but then he learned the knack of thrusting and withdrawing the lance in one smooth motion so the horse and he could go on together.

He bought a travelling cape and a bag that he could strap on the back of the saddle and he kept them packed with everything he might need so that he was ready to leave at a moment’s notice. He was alive and vital with excitement and determination, and the whole house rang with the noise of him singing, whistling, running up and down the wooden stairs in his riding boots, shedding mud and creating confusion out of sheer energy.