They gathered in the stable yard to see him off. He kissed his sister, he kissed his stepmother and she clung to him for a moment as if she would beg him to stay. She inhaled the scent of him, the newly washed linen which had been stored with lavender bags, the warm straw smell of his hair, the warmth of his skin, the tender stubble of his cheek, the soft apprentice moustache on his upper lip. She held him and thought of the child he had been when she had taken him into her care, and she thought of the terrible gulf in her life that would be carved out if he were lost.

‘Let him go,’ John said quietly from behind her.

Johnnie briskly embraced Alexander and then he turned to his father. He dropped his head and was about to kneel for his blessing. ‘Don’t kneel,’ John said quickly, as if a patch of damp on his son’s knee mattered one way or another when the boy was going out to fight a doomed battle. He wrapped him in his arms and held him furiously tight.

‘God bless you and keep you,’ he whispered passionately. ‘And come home as soon as you feel you can. Don’t linger, Johnnie. Once the battle is done there’s no shame in riding away.’

The youth was ablaze with joy, he could not hear words of caution. He turned to his horse and he sprang up, swung his leg over and gathered in the reins. The old knowledgeable war horse, Caesar, knew the signs, he pawed the ground, arched his neck and sidled a little, eager to be off.

Hester felt her knees giving way, she put her hand into John’s arm and leaned against him.

‘I’m away!’ Johnnie sung out. ‘I’ll write! Goodbye!’

Hester folded her upper lip in a tight, admonitory grip between her teeth and raised her hand to wave.

‘Good luck!’ Frances called. ‘God bless you, Johnnie!’

They crowded to the stable-yard entrance to watch him ride out, and then followed him, under the wall with the stone-carved crest, over the little bridge, and then eastwards along the road to the Lambeth horse ferry and the northern roads.

‘God bless you,’ John called.

The horse’s polished haunches moved powerfully. As he reached the firm going of the road, Johnnie let the animal extend into a trot and then into a broad-paced canter. He went too fast for Hester, the big horse’s pace took him too swiftly away.

‘Johnnie!’ she called.

But he did not hear her, and in a moment he was gone.

Autumn 1651