I thank you for your tulips. You seem to have put in half a dozen more bulbs than I paid for. I wish I could render you greater service in return, but I will be alert for any familiar name and I will write again if I have any news.

Hester took the letter into the rarities room where the fire was kept burning against the wintry weather and plunged it deep into the heart of the red-hot logs. She very much wanted to keep the note for the little comfort she could draw from it; but she knew that she should not.

Winter 1651

In a dark afternoon of December as Hester was closing the shutters in the rarities room and the parlor she heard a horse walking steadily up the road. She went to the window and looked out, as she always did whenever she heard a single horseman riding by the house. She looked without expectation of seeing her son, but she looked, just as she burned the candle: because he should always be looked for, because a vigil should always be kept for him.

When she saw the size and solidity of the horse, she blinked and rubbed her eyes because for a moment she thought it must be Caesar. But she had thought that she had seen Caesar so many times before that she did not start forward and cry out.

He came steadily closer and she realized it was indeed Caesar, and that on his back, slumped in the saddle, was Johnnie, his warm cape wrapped around him, bare-headed, finding his way home along the darkened road as much by memory as by sight.

She did not scream or cry or run; Hester had never been a woman for screaming or crying or running. She went quietly to the front door and opened it, opened the garden gate, and stepped quietly across the little bridge over the stream, into the road. Caesar pricked up his ears at the whisper of her skirt, gray against twilight, and quickened his pace. Johnnie, who had been half-asleep in the saddle, glanced up and saw the figure of a woman, waiting in the lane, as if she had waited for him at the gatepost ever since he had left.

“Mother?” His voice was a little hoarse.

“My son.”

He reined in the horse and tumbled down from the saddle. He dropped the reins and stepped toward her outstretched arms. She took his weight in the embrace as his legs buckled as he hit the ground.

“My son, my son,” she said.

He smelled different. He had gone away smelling like a well-washed boy, he came home smelling like a hard-worked man. There was a tang of woodsmoke in his hair, which was tangled and matted. His woolen cloak was heavy with grime, his boots muddy. He was thinner but hard-muscled, she could feel the strength in his shoulders and back as he held her tightly.

“Mother,” he said again.

“Praise God for you,” she whispered. “I thank God that he heard me pray and sent you home.”

She did not think she could bear to release him but after a moment more she stepped back and led him into the house. Caesar, knowing full well that he was home, walked riderless around the house into the stable yard and as Hester and Johnnie came in the front door there was an explosion of noise from the stables as the lad and John recognized the horse and came running into the house.

“He’s home!” John yelled as if he could hardly believe it.

He ran through the kitchen and into the hall and then checked at the sight of his son’s weary face and dirty clothes. Then he spread his arms to him and enfolded Johnnie in a powerful hug. “Home,” he said.

Autumn 1652

The boy was home, the country was at peace. Oliver Cromwell was ruling Parliament with such power and dominance that he might as well have been king himself. Scotland was no longer an independent kingdom but was annexed by England and General George Monck was driving roads through Highland pride and through Highland courage which might never be healed. Charles Stuart was far away in France, or the Low Countries, or wherever he might scrape a living for doing nothing but being his charming self.

The peace brought gardeners back to the orchards and flower beds, and men of inquiring minds into the rarities collection. Takings at the door grew every day, and the order book for Tradescant flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetables grew full. John’s reputation for strange, beautiful and exotic plants was established and he was gaining increasing respect for his experiments with new vegetables and fruit. He grew potatoes and Indian corn and peaches, nectarines, cherries, grapes for eating and for wine and for drying as raisins; and the scientists and philosophers who dined at the Ark would ask to try the new vegetables and fruits for their dinner.

In the autumn John Lambert came home from Scotland and visited the garden at the Ark and admired John’s new collection of cyclamen which he had in a new bed under the chestnut trees. Lambert kneeled down in the dirt of the avenue to look at them, their delicate little petals folded back like a nun’s coif. He greeted Johnnie without remarking on the scar beneath his eye, and kissed Hester’s hand without mentioning the package of tulips or the hidden note.

“I’m glad to see your boy is home” was all he said to her.

“Thank you,” she replied. “And I was glad to see you are now Lord Lambert.”

“Aren’t I grand?” he asked her with a smile, and then turned to walk around the flower beds with John.

“You gardened for the queen at Wimbledon House, did you not?” he asked when they were seated on the terrace, looking out over the chrysanthemums planted thickly in the beds before the house to give the garden some early autumn color.

“I did,” John said. “We planned it and I even planted the beds by the house, a knot garden, and a watercourse; but they had very little time there. She wanted it as a retreat, I was going to make a flowery mead down by the river, I should think it’s a hay meadow now.”

“What d’you think of the soil and the situation? There are some good plants still growing.”

“It would have been a most pretty garden,” John said. “I still have the plans for planting. Johnnie goes up there every summer.”

“I have bought it for my own use. I want a country house not too far from London. I should like to see what you had planned for it.”

“You have it? Well that’s-” John broke off.

“A surprise,” John Lambert finished diplomatically for him. “I think so too. I certainly didn’t ever think to find myself in a queen’s house, but I think it will suit me very well. I was especially interested to know if any of your plantings have survived. I’d be sorry to spoil a bed of rarities through my own ignorance.”

“Johnnie told me that some things are still there. I know the trees have done well, and Johnnie told me that the horse chestnuts are growing and the fruit trees in the orchards.”

“Horse chestnuts?” John Lambert asked with a gleam.

“Yes.”

“Mature?”

John thought for a moment. “They’d be, oh, fifteen years old now.” He laughed. “They’ll be flowering and coming into their full beauty. I think you’ll find you have a bargain in the garden. And I had planted plum and medlar and quince apples and pears; also the Tradescant great black cherry, and espaliered peaches.”

Hester came out onto the terrace with a bottle of wine and two glasses, Johnnie washed and tidy behind her. “Will you stay for dinner, Lord Lambert?” she asked. “Elias Ashmole and his wife are staying with us at the moment, and we expect some other guests too.”

“Thank you, I would like to,” he said.

“His lordship has bought Wimbledon House,” John told her. “Johnnie, would you go and see if you can find the garden plans for me? They were in the documents in the rarities room.” He looked directly at his son and spoke with emphasis. “We must be glad that one of our gardens has been bought by a man who will love it,” he said firmly.