They had no word, they could get no news. Cromwell came home but Lambert stayed in Scotland, ruling from Edinburgh, bringing the Scots gradually into line with a republican England. He sent an order for some tulips to grow in pots in his rooms and Hester, knowing herself to be taking a risk with their whole livelihood and lives, wrote him a note, slipped it in with the bulbs and handed them to his messenger.

Forgive me asking for your assistance, but one very dear to me may have been captured at Worcester. Can you tell me how I might discover what has happened to him, or where he is now?

‘Shall I order more candles?’ the cook asked, preparing the list for market. ‘Or –’

‘Or what?’ Hester snapped.

The suggestion that there was little point setting out the candle every night for Johnnie was too grave to be named.

‘Nothing,’ the cook replied.

John Lambert replied by the next courier travelling to London in a note which showed that he understood exactly who might be very dear to Hester and who might have been at Worcester.

Dear Mrs Tradescant,

I am sorry to hear of your anxiety. The Scots cavalry were not intensely engaged in the battle and retreated in good order to Scotland. There they dispersed. He might well have gone with them till the order came to scatter and thus there is good reason to hope that he may return within the next few months. There were very few captured and he is not among them. I specifically asked for him by name. We are not holding him prisoner. There were very few killed.

I thank you for your tulips. You seem to have put in half a dozen more bulbs than I paid for. I wish I could render you greater service in return, but I will be alert for any familiar name and I will write again if I have any news.

Hester took the letter into the rarities room where the fire was kept burning against the wintry weather and plunged it deep into the heart of the red-hot logs. She very much wanted to keep the note for the little comfort she could draw from it; but she knew that she should not.

Winter 1651

In a dark afternoon of December as Hester was closing the shutters in the rarities room and the parlour she heard a horse walking steadily up the road. She went to the window and looked out, as she always did whenever she heard a single horseman riding by the house. She looked without expectation of seeing her son, but she looked, just as she burned the candle: because he should always be looked for, because a vigil should always be kept for him.