April 1648, Oatlands Palace

A troop of Parliamentary horse was still quartered at Oatlands and John’s first action, after he had opened up his old house next to the silkworm house, was to find the commander and demand that the horses be banned from grazing in any of the courts or on the bowling lawns.

The commander was happy to agree and promised John the use of as many troopers as he needed to help him in the weeding and the setting of the garden to rights.

“I visited your garden ten years ago,” he said. “It was a wonderful sight. D’you still have that service tree? I remember it so well.”

“Yes,” John said. “It still grows. And we have many more rare trees that I have brought back from Virginia. I have a tulip tree with great green leaves that flowers with a blossom like a tulip as big as your head. I have a maple tree which has leaves of scarlet. I have a creeper called a passion flower since some say it shows the marks of Jesus. I have a beautiful new convolvulus, I can sell you the seeds for that, and a Virginian foxglove.”

“As soon as I am discharged and in my own home again I shall come and see what you have for sale,” the officer promised.

“Where is your home?” John asked.

“Sussex, in the west of the county,” the man replied. “I have a light, sandy soil, very fertile and easy to work. A little dry in summer perhaps, and I’m on the edge of the South Downs so I get a cold wind in winter; my Lenten lilies only come at Easter. But my summer flowers last for longer than my neighbors’.”

“You will grow almost anything then,” John said encouragingly. “Some of my new Virginia plants can tolerate very cold weather and very hot summers since that is the weather of their home. They would do well with you. I have a creeper with leaves that turn as red as a cardinal’s cloak in autumn. It would look well against any wall, red as a rose.”

“I should like to see it,” the man said. “And what will you do here?”

“Just set the place in order again,” John said. “I was not ordered to do any planting.”

“Is His Majesty to be brought here?” Johnnie asked, driven to interrupting.

The officer heard the hero worship in the boy’s voice and looked hard at him. “I think we should all pray that he never comes near any of his palaces again,” he said sternly. “His greed has taken me and all my men away from our homes and our families and our gardens for six long years. He can rot in Carisbrooke Castle forever, for all I care.”

John leaned on his son’s shoulder and the boy obediently said nothing, only the scarlet flush up to his ears showed his distress.

“But you were in his service,” the man said irritably. “I suppose you’re all royalists.”

“We’re gardeners,” John said steadily. “And now I am gardening for Parliament. Still gardening. My enemies are inclement weather and pests. I need no other.”

Unwillingly the commander laughed. “I know no worse, actually,” he said.

Summer 1648

There was a knock on the big front door of the Ark in mid-May and Hester, putting aside her working apron, went to open it with her usual sense of apprehension. But when she saw the visitor on the doorstep her expression turned to pleasure. “Major Lambert!” she exclaimed. “Come to see our tulips?”

“Yes indeed. I couldn’t resist.” He stepped into the hall and bent over her hand.

“Is it still Major?” she asked, looking at the rich feather in his hat and the shining leather of his boots.

“Ah no!” he said with a flourish. “I am a general now, Mrs. Tradescant. And before I have done I shall sit in Parliament and bestow a baronetcy on you for your services to gardeners. Or a dukedom. Whatever you could wish.”

Hester giggled. “Come and see the tulips then,” she urged. “They are lovely this year. My husband came back last spring and he has many new species which you will want to see, some beautiful plants from Virginia. You will never resist our tulip tree.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Hester laughed. “I promise. A most beautiful tree which bears white flowers shaped exactly like a tulip. I’ve not seen them yet because we have only two saplings but we have taken cuttings and my husband swears they will thrive.”

John Lambert followed her through the house and paused on the terrace to look out over the garden. It was the first time he had seen it properly weeded and pruned and looking its best.

“This is a little piece of paradise,” he said, his eyes going over the nodding blossoms of the fruit trees and the flowerbeds and nursery beds before the house. “It was well-named when you called it the Ark. It has been like a flood of terror outside these walls and yet here it always seems to be like peace.”

Hester stood very still and absorbed the compliment like a blessing. “I have spent my whole life trying to make it so,” she said. “I am glad you can see it.”

He glanced at her as if they understood each other very well. “If we can make the country as peaceful and fertile as this garden, Mrs. Tradescant, then it will all have been worthwhile. If I can make every cottage garden a safe place like this, and every hardworking man in the country with a legal right to his cottage and his garden, then I will have done my duty as well as you have done yours.”

She looked curiously at him. “Aren’t those Leveler sentiments?” she asked. “I thought the Leveler cause was stamped out?”

He smiled but he did not disagree. “Not out of the hearts and minds. I think that any man who has seen how the poor suffer in this country, and has seen the way that poor men fought for their rights, would want to see the great wastes and parks opened up so that homeless people could build themselves houses, and hungry people could grow food. I’m a landholder myself, Mrs. Tradescant. I don’t want my garden walls pulled down. But I don’t want huge parks enclosed to feed and shelter deer while men and women outside go hungry.”

Hester nodded and led the way down the garden path toward the blaze of color that was the tulip beds. She glanced back with a half smile at John Lambert’s transfixed expression.

“They’re good, aren’t they?”

“They are superb,” he breathed. “I must, I must have some of those.”

“I’ll fetch a pen and paper for your order,” Hester said with satisfaction. “And you must come again next month and see the roses. They are going to be wonderful this year. I like our roses even better than our tulips.”

He shook his head, and something in that gesture alerted her that he was not as carefree as he had suggested. “I’m afraid I will be busy elsewhere in June,” he said.

Hester understood what John Lambert had meant when the day after his visit the news came of royalist bands mustered in every town and village in every county. Men who had put away their pikes thinking the battle was over were running and riding up and down the country lanes again, calling men to fight for the king, who needed only one battle to be won against a demoralized and divided Parliament and army to come to his own. The navy suddenly declared for the king and sailed into harbors all along the south coast, and declared every port as royalist. All over the country the retired royalist officers were out again, calling men to arms. Each county, each town, each village had its own royalist headquarters and royalist troop. The nation was at war once more, spontaneously, naturally, and the prize was to release the king and restore him to his throne in a great heave of nostalgia for the days of peace before the war.

Men who had stood by and watched Cromwell’s army take the victory in the first king’s war were now seized with such an impatience for peace that they turned out for Charles, certain that only by restoring him to the throne could the kingdom find peace. Men who had been indifferent soldiers under Cromwell turned their coats and hoped for pay and a victory under the command of the royalists. And those who had fought for the king over the long four years of the king’s war and suffered and feared in the two years since, prayed that this one last chance might restore them to their former fortunes.