It was as if the boy had not heard him.

“That’s the queen’s house,” Johnnie said bluntly.

Lambert heard the repressed passion behind the words and replied very calmly. “It was confiscated, as are all the royal houses and palaces. And now I have bought it. I paid good money for it, Johnnie. It was a proper transaction, not booty. I didn’t steal it.”

“It wasn’t the king’s house, it was the queen’s,” Johnnie insisted. “She’s never been tried for treason, her estates have never been sequestrated. How can anyone have her house? It has nothing to do with the royal palaces. It’s her own house.”

Hester glanced at John.

“Her fortunes go with her husband,” Lambert answered. “That’s the law, Johnnie. And all royalists have lost their houses.”

“Fetch the plans for me.” John tried to stem the rise of his son’s temper.

“Fetch the damned things yourself!” Johnnie burst out. “I’ll have no part in robbing the queen of her own. I won’t pretend that it’s not thievery to live in a queen’s palace and steal her fruits! It’s nothing better than looting! It’s a dead king’s goods!”

He flung out of the house and ran down the shallow steps into the garden, they saw him tear down the avenue and through the gate toward the lake. There was an appalled silence.

“I apologize,” John said. “He will be disciplined, your lordship. He will apologize to you himself. He doesn’t realize the gravity of what he is saying.” John shot a swift look at Hester, asking for help. At the very least Johnnie was guilty of appalling rudeness; at the worst, treason.

“I’m so sorry,” Hester said in a whisper. “He’s still very young, you understand. And distressed. I would not have had him speak so to anyone, you least of all. He does realize that the war is over. He is not an active royalist. We are all of us loyal to Parliament here.”

Lambert leaned back against his chair and took up his glass of wine. “Oh, there’s no need to apologize,” he said gently. “There are many who feel as he does up and down the country, it’s bound to take some time for feelings to die down. And there have been enough trials for treason. The lad has strong feelings and it’s hard to lose two battles by – what is he? – twenty? Did he get that scar at Worcester?”

“Yes. A scratch from a pike,” Hester said. “Thank God it missed his eye. It was all but healed up by the time he came home. And he’s only eighteen. I am sorry, your lordship. He spent his youth in the shadow of the war.”

“He’s at an age when you see things in black and white,” Lambert said easily. “Things are not so simple in real life. If Charles Stuart would make half the promises to us that he made to the Scots then he could have come home to his throne. But we can’t trust him. Those of us who dealt with his father remember that the Stuarts find it easier to promise than to deliver. And the son is even worse than the father for reneging on his debts and word. He’s not much of a model for Johnnie to set his heart on.”

“I know,” Hester said sadly. “But I can’t seem to persuade him.”

Johnnie did not reappear for dinner and Hester laid the table, served the gentlemen, and dined on her own in the kitchen before she went out to look for him.

She knew where to go. He was lying in the little rowing boat, his long legs over the back of the boat, gazing up at the sky where a few silver stars were showing against the pale blue.

Hester sat at the foot of the tree where she used to bring him to feed the ducks when he had been such a happy little boy. She observed the gently moving boat for a few moments before she spoke.

“That was ill-done, Johnnie. You will have to apologize to Lord Lambert. He is a good man and he has been kind to me.”

The boat rocked a little as he leaned forward, saw her, and then reclined again. “I know I was in the wrong. I will beg his pardon for speaking out.”

“It’s foolish to fly out like that. You said enough to be tried for treason tonight.”

“No more than thousands of others.”

“Even so.”

The rocking of the little craft steadied and slowed.

“I know,” Johnnie said. “I am sorry. I will say I am sorry to father and to his lordship. And I won’t do it again.”

She waited for a moment. In the garden somewhere an owl cried hauntingly.

“Are you not cold?”

“No.”

“Hungry?”

“No.”

“Will you come in now?”

“In a little while.”

Hester paused for a moment. “You know, Johnnie, I doubt that even Charles Stuart grieves more than you do. From what I hear of him he is a lighthearted man who goes from plotting to dancing; and would rather be dancing. He gambles away the money that people risk their lives to raise for him. His friends have given their livelihoods and even their lives for him and yet he dresses in the best clothes and goes to balls, and chases women shamelessly. He’s a drunkard and a gambler and a lecher. He’s a young man, as you are a young man. But he takes his cause very lightheartedly. Why should you grieve for him? Why grieve more than he does himself?”

“It’s not that.” Johnnie’s voice came over the still water, she could barely see the boat now in the twilight. “All that you say about him is true. I was with him at Worcester long enough to see that he is light, as you say. Lighthearted and lightweight. But I don’t grieve for the loss of him as a man, I grieve for the loss of everything that kingship means. The loss of the court, the loss of a nation under one ruler, the loss of the beauty of the Church and music and color, the loss of certainty of every man having a master. The loss of the gardens, the loss of the palaces. The loss of our gardens.”

“We still have the Ark,” she said.

“One little garden, more like a farm than a garden,” he said dismissively. “We’re getting a grand reputation for growing onions. This is nothing to a family which had Oatlands, or Hatfield, or Theobalds. Even Wimbledon. All we have now is a tiny patch of ground and no one plants great gardens anymore.”

“They will do again,” she said. “The country is at peace once more, they will plant gardens again.”

“They’ll plant turnips,” Johnnie predicted. “And marrows. Like father is growing for them. I saw Oatlands Palace and I saw them uproot it, rose by rose. And now the building is pulled down and they made a canal bed with the stone. They didn’t even try to make another building of beauty. There’s nothing for me to do with my life, there’s nothing to do in this country anymore. I am a gardener, a gardener who needs great palaces. A physic garden and a vegetable patch is not enough for me.”

“You’ll find something,” Hester urged him. “You’ll find your own way, even if it is not our garden, nor a garden fit for a king. You’re young, you will find your way.”

“I’ll never be a king’s gardener in England,” he said slowly. “That was my inheritance and now I can’t have it. There is nothing left for me.”

The boat was drifting away a little to the other side of the lake. Hester paused, taking in the tranquility of the scene: the sky slowly turning from blue to indigo, the color of Tradescant spiderwort. The stars were like silver pinheads against navy cloth. The evening air was cool against her cheek, sweet with the scent of windfall apples, and late-flowering wallflowers.

“We spent hours and hours here together when you were a little boy,” she said tenderly. “You used to beg to come down here to feed the ducks. D’you remember?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I remember feeding the ducks.”

She waited, and when he did not say any more, she rose to her feet. “Shall I stay with you?” she asked him tenderly. “Would you like some company?”

“No,” he said and his voice seemed to come from a long way over the still water. “I’ll spend a little time on my own, Mother. I’ll come home when I can be merry again.”