Caesar clip-clopped towards his stable, his ears back, his head low. John dropped off his back in the stable yard and fell to his knees as his legs buckled under him. The garden lad ran to raise him and shouted for Cook. She took one look out of the kitchen door and called for Frances and Hester who were tidying the rarities room.

Hester ran out to the terrace and then round the corner to the stable yard to find John seated on the mounting block, rubbing his stiff muscles. He tried to get to his feet when he saw her, but she went to him and put her arms around him.

‘Are you injured?’

‘Heartsick.’

‘Hurt in your body?’

‘No.’

‘Your legs?’

‘I’m just stiff. I’m too old, Hester, to ride all day and all night.’

‘Was there a battle?’

‘There was a skirmish. We were hopelessly outnumbered. On the day when it mattered, when it mattered more than anything in the world, there were not enough men ready to stand up and fight for their liberty.’

She wrapped her arms around him and held his weary head close to her heart. She found she was rocking him as she used to rock Johnnie when he woke from a nightmare.

‘There was hardly anyone there,’ John said flatly. ‘Lambert was captured almost straight away. They didn’t even bother with us. It was him they wanted. He would have got away but his horse was tired, we were all tired. And discouraged. Because when it really mattered there were not enough men ready to stand up and fight for their liberty.’

He pulled back and stared up into her face as if she could answer him. ‘Why is it?’ he demanded. ‘Why is it that people can see so clearly when it is a question of their safety or their wealth, or their comfort? But when it is a question of their freedom they leave it for someone else to defend. They don’t see how they come to their freedom. They don’t realise that if the bargees at Wapping are unjustly taxed and the miners in the Forest of Dean are excluded from their rights, if the commoners are driven from the commons and the rich and the mighty encroach, then we are all at risk – even if it is not our own gardens which are taken. Even if it is not yet our rights which are threatened. Why don’t people see it? When governments persecute the sick, the poor, the women, then everyone has to stand up and defend them. Why don’t people see that?’

Hester looked into his angry face for a moment and then pulled him back to her and held him against her heart. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘You would think people would know by now that when there is an evil you should stop it at once.’

Summer 1660