The boy was home, the country was at peace. Oliver Cromwell was ruling Parliament with such power and dominance that he might as well have been king himself. Scotland was no longer an independent kingdom but was annexed by England and General George Monck was driving roads through Highland pride and through Highland courage which might never be healed. Charles Stuart was far away in France, or the Low Countries, or wherever he might scrape a living for doing nothing but being his charming self.

The peace brought gardeners back to the orchards and flowerbeds, and men of inquiring minds into the rarities collection. Takings at the door grew every day, and the order book for Tradescant flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetables grew full. John’s reputation for strange, beautiful and exotic plants was established and he was gaining increasing respect for his experiments with new vegetables and fruit. He grew potatoes and Indian corn and peaches, nectarines, cherries, grapes for eating and for wine and for drying as raisins; and the scientists and philosophers who dined at the Ark would ask to try the new vegetables and fruits for their dinner.

In the autumn John Lambert came home from Scotland and visited the garden at the Ark and admired John’s new collection of cyclamen which he had in a new bed under the chestnut trees. Lambert kneeled down in the dirt of the avenue to look at them, their delicate little petals folded back like a nun’s coif. He greeted Johnnie without remarking on the scar beneath his eye, and kissed Hester’s hand without mentioning the package of tulips or the hidden note.

‘I’m glad to see your boy is home,’ was all he said to her.

‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘And I was glad to see you are now Lord Lambert.’

‘Aren’t I grand?’ he asked her with a smile, and then turned to walk around the flowerbeds with John.

‘You gardened for the queen at Wimbledon House, did you not?’ he asked when they were seated on the terrace, looking out over the chrysanthemums planted thickly in the beds before the house to give the garden some early autumn colour.

‘I did,’ John said. ‘We planned it and I even planted the beds by the house, a knot garden, and a watercourse; but they had very little time there. She wanted it as a retreat, I was going to make a flowery mead down by the river, I should think it’s a hay meadow now.’

‘What d’you think of the soil and the situation? There are some good plants still growing.’

‘It would have been a most pretty garden,’ John said. ‘I still have the plans for planting. Johnnie goes up there every summer.’

‘I have bought it for my own use. I want a country house not too far from London. I should like to see what you had planned for it.’