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  Hester sank back in her chair and glanced down the table at her stepson. Johnnie was looking mutinous. She put out a hand to warn him to hold his silence, but the boy burst out:

  ‘It’s the greatest of things! Don’t you see? He’ll be safe in France by now, and they can beg his pardon from there! The queen will have an army ready for him to command, Prince Rupert will take the cavalry again. They said that he was defeated but he was not!’

  John turned a dark look on his son. ‘You’re right about only one thing,’ he said sombrely. ‘He’s never defeated.’

  ‘That’s the wonderful thing about him!’

  John shook his head. ‘It’s the worst.’

  Alexander stayed for breakfast and then agreed to stay on for the rest of the week. John was restless all day and at mid-afternoon he went to find Hester.

  She was in the rarities room, bringing the planting records up to date in the big garden book.

  ‘I can’t stay here, not knowing what’s going on,’ John said briskly. ‘I’ll go into Whitehall, see if I can hear some news.’

  She put down her pen and smiled at him. ‘I knew you’d have to go,’ she said. ‘Make sure you come home, don’t be caught up in whatever is going on there.’

  He paused in the doorway. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh! For what?’

  ‘For letting me go without badgering me with a dozen questions, without warning me a dozen times.’

  She smiled but it did not reach her eyes. ‘Since you would go whether I give you leave or no, I might as well give you leave,’ she said.

  ‘That’s true enough!’ John said lightly and went from the room.

  Whitehall was in a frenzy of gossip and speculation. John went into a tavern where he might find an acquaintance, bought a mug of ale and looked around for a face he knew. At a nearby table were a group of Africa merchants.

  ‘Mr Hobhouse! Any news? I have come up from Lambeth especially and all I can get is what I know already.’

  ‘You know that he’s gone to the Isle of Wight?’

  John recoiled. ‘What?’

  ‘Carisbrooke Castle. He’s set himself up in Carisbrooke Castle.’

  ‘But why? Why would he?’

  The merchant shrugged. ‘It’s not a bad plan. No-one can trust the navy, and if they declare for him how is Cromwell’s army going to lay hold of him? He could be snug enough at Carisbrooke, create his court, build his army, and when he is ready sail straight into Portsmouth. He must have had some secret arrangement with the governor Robert Hammond, though everyone thought that Hammond was a Parliament man through and through. The king must have had a deep plan. He’ll be waiting for the queen’s army from France and then we’ll be at war again, if anyone has the stomach for it.’

  John briefly closed his eyes. ‘This is a nightmare.’

  The merchant shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you how much money I am losing every day this goes on,’ he said. ‘I can’t induce men to serve, my ships are harassed by pirates in the very mouth of the Thames, and I never know when a ship comes in what price I can command on the quayside or what taxes I shall have to pay. These are times for a madman. And we have a mad king to rule over us.’

  ‘Not another war,’ John said.

  ‘He must have laid his plans very deep,’ the merchant said. ‘He was promising to agree with Cromwell and Ireton only the day before, he gave his word as a king. He was about to sign. What a man! What a false man! Y’know, in business we’d never deal with him. How would I manage if I gave my word and then skipped away?’

  ‘Deep-laid plans?’ John asked, seizing on the one unlikely feature.

  ‘So they say.’

  One of the other merchants glanced up. ‘D’you know better, Mr Tradescant? You were at Oatlands with him, weren’t you?’

  John sensed the sudden intensity of interest. ‘I was planting the garden. He hardly spoke to me. I saw him walk by, nothing more.’

  ‘Well God save him and keep him from his enemies,’ one of the men said stoutly and John noticed that while only a few months before the man would have been booed into silence or even thrown out of the tavern there were now a few men who muttered ‘Amen’ into the bottom of their mugs, and no-one who denied the wish.

  ‘So what happens now?’ John asked.

  ‘We wait on his whim,’ one of the merchants said sourly. ‘As we have been doing for this past year and a half. He was defeated fair and square but he still dances around the country and we still have to wait till he tells us what he will agree to. It makes no sense to me.’

  ‘He won’t lie down till he’s dead,’ one of the men said frankly. ‘Would to God that he might fall sick and die and then we could deal with his son, any of the sons. Anyone rather than this man.’

  ‘I’ll not ill-wish him,’ another man said stoutly.

  ‘Then why will he not come to the City and make an agreement?’ someone demanded. ‘God knows all we want is to have things at peace.’

  John looked from one angry, worried face to another and drained his ale. ‘I must go back to my garden,’ he said. He had a sense of relief at the thought of the rarities room restored and the garden in its autumn order. ‘Whether the king has his own again or no, I have my work to do.’

  ‘You won’t go and garden for him at Carisbrooke?’ one of the men asked mischievously.

  John did not rise to the bait. ‘I bid you good day,’ he said gently, took his hat in his hand and went out.

  They learned the rest of the news in dribs and drabs over the week. The king had no deep-laid plans, just as John had suspected. King Charles had taken an impulsive leap into freedom at the very moment when he was about to sign the agreement with Cromwell which would have brought peace between king and Parliament and stability to the kingdom riven by civil war.

  Cromwell had faced down his own army, the men who had fought for him in the long and bitter war. The men had told their commander and told Parliament that they expected more from the peace than a king restored to his own, they wanted changes. They wanted justice for the common people, and a living wage. They wanted Parliaments which would represent all the working men of the country and not just the gentry. Cromwell had taken the hard line against them, defending the king against his own men. He had shot the leaders for mutiny, he had made the men drop down their pamphlets into the mud, and then he had returned to Hampton Court with the blood of his own soldiers on his hands, to meet with Charles and conclude the other side of the bargain which would bring the king home. Cromwell had defeated the men who would have shouted against a restoration of the king, and then returned to the king for his signature on the document, as they had agreed it.

  But Charles had gone. He had given his word, his word of honour as a king, and then slipped away in the night. He rode with two gentlemen to the New Forest where he had hunted so often with Buckingham in the old days, and taken a boat across to the Isle of Wight, putting his faith in the belief that the governor, Robert Hammond, would take his part on the slight evidence that Hammond had once said he disliked the Levellers in the army, because he was a nephew of one of the king’s chaplains, and cousin, many times removed, to the Marquess of Winchester.

  ‘He trusted a man because he knows his uncle?’ John asked Hester in despair as they sat by the fireside before going to bed.

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, John. What else could he do but dodge and dive and scrape about?’

  ‘He could come to an agreement!’ John exclaimed. ‘And have his throne again!’

  She picked up the sewing from her lap. ‘He is the king,’ she said. ‘He would not feel that he has to agree. He has always thought that others should agree with him.’

  Hester was right. When the king arrived at Carisbrooke Castle and found that Governor Hammond imprisoned him, rather than hailing him as a hero, he gave his parole and immediately set to scheming. He sent secret messages to the Scots and told them that he was ready now to agree to the very things he had sworn he wou