‘I was ready to come home,’ John said. ‘And lucky to get a fast ship.’

They drew back a little and inspected each other, as old friends will do after a long absence. Hester’s hair under her neat cap was nearly as white as the linen, and her face was thinner and more severe. There were lines of grief on her face which would be there forever. John, aged forty-eight, was leaner and fitter than when he had gone away, the days on horseback and on foot had tanned him brown and skimmed off the fat of easy living.

‘You look well, but your hair has gone white,’ he said.

She gave a little smile. ‘It was starting to go as you left,’ she said. ‘At Johnnie’s death.’

John nodded. ‘I stopped at his tomb on the way home. I felt I wanted to tell him I was back. I always promised that he would come with me on the next trip. Someone had planted little daffodils.’

‘Frances,’ she said. ‘And when the convolvulus grows she wants to plant some beside your father’s tomb so that it climbs around it. She said she wanted them both to see it.’

They left the carter and the garden boy to unload the cart and went towards the house, their arms interlinked. They walked around to the terrace and John leaned on the railing and looked down over the garden.

The flowerbeds at the front of the house were blushing with the colour of the early tulips, beyond them the orchard was carpeted with yellow daffodils, and the white and orange of the narcissi. Above them, the cherry and apricot trees were showing little pink buds, and the thick, powerful twigs of the horse chestnuts were slowly splitting, the fat, sticky buds bursting pale and green out of their shells.

‘It’s good to be home,’ John said with pleasure. ‘What’s the news?’

‘I wrote to you that Cromwell dissolved Parliament and set the army to rule over us directly.’

He nodded. ‘And how is that?’

Hester shrugged. ‘I don’t know about the rest of the country but it works well for Lambeth. They do the work the Justices of the Peace used to do, but more fairly and more evenly. They’ve closed down a lot of the ale houses and that’s nothing but good. They’re stricter with paupers and beggars and vagrants so the streets are cleaner. But the taxes!’ She shook her head. ‘Higher than ever before and now they remember to collect them. They’re a hard-working bunch of men; and that will be their undoing. People don’t mind the Sunday sports and the maypoles going, they don’t even mind the bawdy houses closed down. But the taxes!’

‘Are we in profit?’ John asked, looking at the rich prosperity of the garden.