Hester glanced towards John for help and saw the smallest shrug. ‘Why don’t you pack them up,’ she suggested. ‘And send them to Charles Stuart in Edinburgh. Don’t put your name inside,’ she stipulated cautiously. ‘But you could at least send them to him. Then you would know that you had served him as you should serve him. You’re not a soldier, Johnnie, you’re a gardener. You could send him the fruit you have grown for him. That’s how you serve him. That’s how your father served his father, and your grandfather served King James himself.’

Johnnie hesitated for only a moment then he looked to his father. ‘May I go?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Yes,’ John said in relief. ‘Of course you can go. It’s a very good thing to do.’

Spring 1651

In the cold, dark days of February John was glad to go to London and stay with Frances, or with Philip Harding, or Paul Quigley, and join the men in their discussions. Sometimes one of the physicians would conduct an experiment and summon the gentlemen to watch so that they might comment on his findings. John attended an evening in which one of the alchemists attempted to fire a new glaze for porcelain.

‘John should be the judge,’ one of the gentlemen said. ‘You have some porcelain in your collection, haven’t you, John?’

‘I have some china dishes,’ John said. ‘They range in size from as big as a trencher to so small that a mouse could dine off it.’

‘Very fine?’ the man asked. ‘You can see light through them, can’t you?’

‘Yes,’ John said. ‘But strong. I’ve never seen the like in this country. I think we don’t have china clay which is fine enough.’

‘It’s the glaze,’ said another man.

‘The heat of the furnace,’ suggested another.

‘Wait,’ said the alchemist. ‘Wait until the furnace is cooled enough and you shall see it.’

‘A drink while we wait?’ someone suggested and the maidservant brought a bottle of Canary wine and glasses, and they drew up high stools to sit companionably around the alchemist’s working bench.

‘Have you heard that Oatlands Palace is to be taken down?’ one of the men asked John. ‘You planted the gardens there, didn’t you?’

John checked in the act of drinking. ‘Taken down?’ he repeated.

Another man nodded. ‘They can’t sell it. It’s too big for a private residence, and it needs too much work done. It’s to be destroyed.’

‘But – the gardens?’ John stammered.

‘You should petition Parliament,’ one of the mathematicians recommended. ‘Ask them if you may uproot your plants before they start to knock the whole thing down. You have some rarities there, don’t you?’