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  ‘Very disheartened,’ Hester said. ‘Would you let him make his bow to you?’

  John Lambert cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: ‘Ho! Tradescant!’

  Johnnie looked up at the shout and came up from the tulip beds at a run, skidded to a halt, and dipped in a bow.

  ‘Major!’ he said.

  ‘Good day.’

  Johnnie beamed at him.

  ‘You must have been disappointed in recent months, I am sorry for it,’ John Lambert said gently.

  ‘I can’t see what went wrong,’ Johnnie said passionately.

  John Lambert thought for a moment. ‘It was mostly how we used the infantry,’ he said. ‘Cromwell has them trained in such a way that they change formation very fast, and they can hold their ground even against a charge. And once the king dismissed Rupert then the morale among his commanders was very low. That’s one of the keys, especially in a war inside a country. Everyone’s got to trust each other. That’s what Cromwell got right, when he got the Members of Parliament out of the army. We made the army a family which prays together and thinks together and fights together.’

  Johnnie nodded, listening avidly. ‘It wasn’t Prince Rupert’s fault that he lost Bristol!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Indeed it was not,’ John Lambert agreed. ‘It was mostly the weather. It rained and their gunpowder was soaked. They were going to mine the city walls, rather than let us take a fortified town. They had the mines dug and the gunpowder in place – but then it was wet and didn’t fire. No commander could have done anything about that. But there was another thing –’

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘It’s about belief,’ Lambert said slowly. ‘There are very few like you, Johnnie, who have such certainty about the king. But there are very many, most of my army in fact, who truly believe that if they can win the war that we can make a better country here, better for everyone. They think they are doing God’s work and man’s work. They think that they will make a world of greater justice and fairness – we think that.’

  ‘Are you a Leveller, sir?’ Johnnie asked. Hester would have interrupted but Lambert was unruffled.

  ‘I think we all are in a way,’ he said. ‘Some of us would go further than others, but all the honest men I know think that we should be governed by our consent, and not by the king’s whim. We think we should have a parliament elected by everyone in the country and that it should sit all the time and return to the country for election every three years. We don’t think that the king and only the king should decide when and where it sits, and whether or not he will listen to it.’

  ‘I’m still a royalist,’ Johnnie said stubbornly.

  Lambert laughed. ‘Perhaps we can find a way to persuade you royalists that it is for the good of us all – king to beggar – that we live in some order and harmony. And now I must go.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Hester called, her hand on Johnnie’s shoulder. ‘Come again.’

  ‘I’ll come next spring and bring my Violetten!’ he called, and with a swirl of his cape he was gone.

  Spring 1647

  Johnnie sat in his rowing boat on the little lake at the bottom of the garden, a news-sheet spread before him, his coat turned up around his ears against the sharp frost. He was reading one of the many royalist papers that spread a mixture of good cheer and open lies in an effort to keep the king’s cause alive, even while he squabbled with his Scots hosts at Newcastle. This edition assured the reader that the king in his wisdom was forging an agreement which would convert the Scots from their stubborn determination never to accept the English prayer book or the English system of bishops. As soon as the Scots had agreed they would then sweep down through England, return the king to his throne and all would be well again.

  Johnnie looked up and saw his father coming through the orchard. John waved and walked to the bank where a little pier stretched into the water.

  ‘You must be freezing,’ John remarked.

  ‘A bit,’ Johnnie said. ‘This can’t be right. The Scots aren’t likely to surrender all they believe in when they have all but won the war. They aren’t likely to start fighting for the king against Parliament when they’ve been allies with Parliament for the last few years.’

  ‘No,’ John said briefly. ‘You bought the paper. What did you think it would tell you: the truth?’

  ‘I just want to know!’ Johnnie sat up abruptly and the boat rocked. ‘He has no chance, has he?’

  John shook his head. ‘What your paper doesn’t tell you is that they’ve refused to take him to Edinburgh unless he too signs their covenant, against Laud’s prayer book and against the bishops. Of course he can’t sign. He’s just turned the kingdom upside down to try and make us do it his way. But the Scots are going back to Scotland, and they don’t know what to do with him. Nobody knows why he went to them in the first place. There was never any chance of an agreement. They’ll send him to Parliament.’

  Johnnie went pale. ‘Betray him to his enemies?’

  ‘He’s with his enemies already but he wouldn’t see it,’ John said bluntly. ‘The Scots and Parliament have been allies since the war started. Of course they would work on him to try and make a peace. Of course if he won’t bend they have to hand him over.’

  ‘What will he do?’ Johnnie asked, anguished.

  John shook his head. ‘He must surrender and accept the terms Parliament imposes. Parliament and the army have defeated him. He has to give up.’

  John was wrong. The king did not give up. He attempted to escape, an ill-planned, unlikely attempt which was as successful as it deserved to be. The guard around him was doubled, he was warned that he should know that he was a prisoner of the English Parliament, and taken to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire.

  Hester found John at the bottom of the orchard, scowling at the cherry tree. ‘I think I killed it,’ he said. ‘And I watched my father moving trees twice the size of this when I was a boy and never learned the knack of it.’

  ‘It looks no worse than the others,’ Hester said, looking round the orchard where the whippy bare boughs of the trees flailed against a white sky.

  ‘I’ve killed it,’ John said. ‘For all the care I took. I don’t have my father’s talent. I worked at his side all my life and still I’m not half the gardener he was. He knew where he belonged, he knew who he served, and he knew his trade and I –’ He broke off and put his hand on the bough of the tree as if for support.

  ‘What’s the news?’ Hester asked, guessing at once the source of John’s discomfort.

  John gave her a quick look from under his lowered brows. ‘Just some lads at the back door, begging for bread on their way home,’ he said. ‘Discharged from the army and heading homeward.’

  Hester waited. John put his hand out and held the trunk of the dead cherry tree. ‘They said that the army would rule Parliament and they would have their revenge on the king,’ he said. ‘They said they would make him pay because a new day is coming when all men will have land and all men will have a vote to choose their rulers and all men will be equal with one another.’

  ‘These are young men’s thoughts,’ Hester said quickly. ‘You were a young man wild for change yourself once, John.’

  He nodded. ‘But these were not young men, they were men of my age. And they said that many think as they do. They are Levellers and they say the best men of the army are with them. They want to finish what Parliament started. They want to exile the king and turn the country into a new land of freedom and equality.’

  Hester looked around the security of the walled orchard. ‘Parliament would not give away land?’ she asked.

  John shook his head. ‘I don’t think they’ll wait for Parliament,’ he said. ‘These are men of action and determination. They’ve been fighting to make a better country for working men. They have little patience for the gentlemen in Parliament. They want to see the land given to working men. They want the royal estates, the church estates, the commons, and the wastes.’

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