Lambert nodded and went quietly out to the garden to look around at the avenue of horse chestnuts and the beds of exquisite tulips and wondered if they would ever give John any joy ever again, now there was no Tradescant to follow him in the garden.

Winter 1654

The new parliament was short-lived. Its programme of social justice was too radical for the temper of many of the men of influence whose chief hopes of reform had been for a fat slice of the king’s wealth and power, and had never gone as far as the soldiers of the army who had fought for an end to greed and tyranny and who truly thought that a new world could be born out of their battles.

When Cromwell saw that he had tried a parliament of selected good men who would have imposed justice on a country too sluggish to become saintly, and then tried a parliament chosen by the voters which could not rise above self-interest, something of the joy went out of him. He took the title of Lord Protector and took the burden of power in a mood of frustration and disappointment and never again thought that he might see the new Jerusalem in London.

‘I don’t know what the fighting was for if we merely exchanged a king for a Lord Protector,’ John said wearily to Hester as they sat at dinner.

‘No,’ she said quietly.

They sat in the silence which was a constant presence at their table now; it was as if without Johnnie to plan for, there was no business to discuss. The takings at the door were good, the order books were filled. But Hester had withdrawn from much of the business and had lost interest in the garden. She never complained, but she felt as if she had been struggling too hard for too long and that, as it turned out, it had all been for nothing.

‘I have been thinking about Virginia,’ John said tentatively. ‘Bertram Hobert, my old friend from over there, came to see me today.’

Hester raised her head. ‘Hobert who nearly died there?’

John nodded. ‘He finally brought off a good crop of tobacco and came home to sell it. By making the voyage with his wife he gets another two headrights for free and he wants to make his plantation bigger. He’s hired some labourers to take with him and he gets their headrights too. He’s full of confidence. He is going back again with the Austin family and they have spare places on their ship.’