‘Not again,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear it. And even if we did, what about the garden?’

‘I do really want to go,’ John said. ‘I am so weary of this house without our boy, and I miss him in the garden. I hate the lake, I can’t go down to that end of the orchard at all, and I can’t find the energy to weed and plant and prune and pot on. In every part of the garden I come across tasks which I would give to him to do, or where he was especially skilled. Half of the plants are his plants, nursed up by him while I was away. It’s as if I meet him everywhere.’

Hester nodded. ‘That’s why I’ll stay,’ she said quietly. ‘Because I too feel that I meet him everywhere, and here I can guard the things he loved and watch the things he planted grow tall and beautiful, and it’s as if he is still here.’

John raised an eyebrow. ‘Shall I go alone? Would you want that?’

She met the little challenge. ‘Will you come back again?’

‘Yes. There’s no life for me there. But I could bring back some new rarities, there is so much more to discover.’

‘I will wait for you,’ she promised. ‘And keep the rarities and the garden safe for you.’

He bowed his head and kissed her hand as it rested on the table. ‘You will not blame me for leaving you to your grief?’

She touched his head with her other hand like a blessing. ‘I would want it,’ she said simply. ‘I should like to spend a little time alone. Perhaps I will become accustomed to being without him, if I have a little time alone.’

‘Very well then,’ he said gently. ‘And I promise I will come home.’

Spring 1654

John was at sea, running from grief, once more, and knew that he had chosen the right course. The movement of the ship rocked his sleep at night and the noise of the wind in the sails and the creaking of the timbers were the sounds of mourning to him. He thought of Johnnie constantly and, away from the land and from Hester, he felt free to think of Jane, his first wife, and knew that if there were a heaven and a communion of saints, then she was with her son now. As the seven-week voyage went on, he felt that he could let Johnnie go, as he had once before let Jane go, and love him only in his heart as a memory, and not with that wrenching desire to bring him back.