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  ‘What lady?’ Hester asked flatly.

  ‘I said we need not say her name.’

  ‘If she’s asking me to risk my neck she can tell me her name,’ Hester persisted.

  He put his mouth to her ear and Hester smelled the familiar scent of sandalwood that the young men of court used as pomade. ‘Lady d’Aubigny,’ he whispered. ‘A great lady and the widow of a hero. Her lord fell at Edgehill and she is trusted by the king to call out the royalists of London to fight for him. And she is trusting you.’

  Hester felt a deep sense of relief that John was far away. ‘I am sorry,’ she said swiftly. ‘My husband is away in Virginia, gathering rarities, and making his own plantation.’

  ‘When will he return?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  The man’s gleeful, conspiratorial mode deserted him in a moment. He swore and took two hasty paces away from her. ‘Then what are we to do?’ he demanded. ‘Mr Tradescant was to secure Lambeth and the riverside. We were counting on him.’

  ‘You were counting on him to secure the king’s safety and you did not think to discover if he was at home?’ Hester asked, disbelieving. ‘He could be sick, he could be dead of the plague, he could have changed sides!’

  The man threw her a swift, angry glance. ‘War is a gamble,’ he said grandly. ‘Sometimes the gamble pays off, sometimes it does not. I was gambling that he would be here, in good health, and keeping faith with his master.’

  Hester shook her head. ‘He does not break his faith. But he can be of no use to you.’

  ‘His son?’

  ‘Johnnie is not yet ten.’

  ‘What about you? Surely you have influence with local people. You could use this house as a rallying point. I could send you an officer to raise the men, or your father … d’you have a father?’

  Hester shook her head. ‘No father, and no influence. I am a newcomer here,’ she said. ‘I am Mr Tradescant’s second wife. We have only been married four years. I have no friends here. And I have no family.’

  ‘Someone has to do it!’ he burst out. ‘Someone has to secure the riverside and Lambeth!’

  Hester shook her head again and led the way to the front door. The royalist conspirator trailed unhappily after her.

  ‘What about someone at the bishop’s palace? What about the local vicar?’

  ‘The Archbishop is in the Tower for his service to the king, as you well may recall. And his servants are long gone.’ Hester opened the front door. ‘And the vicar here is an Independent. He was one of the first to preach against Archbishop Laud’s reforms.’

  The man would have hesitated but she ushered him out of the house. ‘I shall call on you if we need a safe house this side of the river,’ he promised. ‘D’you have horses, or barns where a small troop of horse could lie hidden?’

  ‘No,’ Hester said.

  The man hesitated and looked at her with a sharp look. Hester felt a sudden fear, she had taken him for a fool but the bright assessing gaze he turned on her was not the gaze of a fool. ‘I trust you are for the king, Mrs Tradescant,’ he said, and there was menace in his voice. ‘When he comes into London he will expect support from his loyal servants. You will have to put this house at his disposal.’

  ‘I know nothing of these matters,’ Hester said weakly. ‘I am just conducting the business of the house and the garden in my husband’s absence …’

  ‘There are wives and widows in the same case as you all around the country,’ the man said sharply. ‘And they have not forgotten where their loyalties lie. Are you for the king? Or not?’

  ‘For the king,’ Hester said unenthusiastically.

  ‘Then His Majesty will call on your services,’ the man said. ‘You may count on it.’

  He nodded to her, turned and walked across the little drawbridge over the stream at the side of the Lambeth road. Hester watched him stride away, his coat flung back, his feathers bobbing in his hat, every inch a nobleman, every inch a cavalier, then she closed the door on the sight of him, and on her fear.

  She thought for a moment and then went into the parlour to write a note to Alexander Norman.

  It may be that I need your assistance. Please let me know that your neighbourhood is free of the plague. I may wish to come and stay with you for a few days.

  She sealed the note and went through to the kitchen. The gardener, Joseph, was in there, eating his midday dinner of bread and bacon.

  ‘Can you take this to Cousin Norman at Aldgate?’ Hester asked abruptly.

  The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I was going to cut back the leaves of the early tulips this afternoon,’ he said.

  Hester hesitated. There were few things more precious in the Ark than the tulips. ‘Even so,’ she said. ‘I think this is more important. Put it into his hands only, and wait for a reply.’

  Joseph brought a message back as it was getting dark. Hester was sitting on the terrace before the house, enjoying the setting sun and the slow gathering of the darkness. The garden before her was an enchanted place in the quiet twilight. The apple blossom was like a mist around the heads of the trees in the lower orchard, the tulips were drained of their daytime colour and glowed like white cups in the beds. Hester thought of John Tradescant, the old man she had met, who had willed his grandchildren into her care, and thought that this garden was his memorial, as much as the ornate stone tomb in the churchyard.

  ‘He didn’t write it, he spoke it to me.’ Joseph made her jump, appearing suddenly before her on the path.

  Hester put her hand to her heart. ‘You frightened me! Coming out of the gloaming like a ghost!’

  ‘He said: “No plague. Rooms ready. Whenever.”’

  Hester smiled at the man’s frowning delivery. ‘Was that all?’

  ‘Absolutely all,’ he said. ‘I made sure I would remember it, and he heard me say it over and over a dozen times before I left.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Hester said. ‘Johnnie and Frances and I will help you with the tulips tomorrow.’

  He nodded and went round the back of the house to the yard pump and the kitchen door. Hester sat alone, watching the last light leave the tops of the trees, the nodding flowers. When it grew cold she rose to her feet and went towards the door. ‘John,’ she said softly. ‘I wish you would come home.’

  Summer 1643, Virginia

  The days that followed John’s arrival in the Indian village fell into a routine as orderly as the smooth running of John’s English home. In the morning Suckahanna’s boy would waken him with one of the smooth black bowls filled with hot water for washing. Outside his hut, in the cool dawn light, John would see the People coming and going as they went down to the river for the morning prayer.

  When they returned John would look for Suckahanna, her face bright as she walked beside her husband, his son at one side, her baby strapped on her back. The boy was Suckahanna’s shadow and she seemed to know his whereabouts, without even turning her head to look for him. It was as if, when she adopted him and married his father, she had made a bond with him that stretched over any distance but was as palpable as touch.

  Before he was allowed to eat the boy had marksman training. Suckahanna plucked a piece of moss from a tree and threw it in the air for him. Not until his little arrow had pierced the falling moss could the boy eat his breakfast. Some mornings Suckahanna was out under the trees with him for three, four, five attempts before John heard her word of praise and the quick touch of her fingers on his dark head.

  ‘He had no mother for his early years,’ she explained to John. ‘He has much to learn.’

  ‘Why did his father not teach him?’ John asked. He was tempted to complain of Suckahanna’s husband, to make him look foolish in her eyes. She just tossed her head and laughed. ‘Bringing a child into the world is work for a woman,’ she said simply. ‘A man cannot do it.’

  As the sun rose and warmed the air they would all gather for a breakfast of fruits or nuts or a gruel made from cornfl