He returned to Jamestown several times during his visit, to pack barrels of plants and send them back to the Ark and on the second visit he found a letter from Hester.

September 1655

Dear Husband,

Your new maple has arrived safely and been planted into the garden near to your first Virginia maple so that men may make the comparison and see that it is a little different. I shall write and tell you if it too changes the color of its leaves in autumn to scarlet.

Some of the daisy plants were spoiled by saltwater by the negligence of the sailors but Frances has potted up the others and says they will live. She says that your Virginia convolvulus must be called Tradescantia. It flowered this summer and is most beautiful with huge flowers very prettily marked. They only live a day but are succeeded by many others. You did not say whether it will over-winter, so we have taken it into the orangery and we also collected seeds and took cuttings. Lord Lambert has begged some seeds for his rare garden and we sold them to him at one shilling for half a dozen.

Frances is well and stayed with me for the summer, and there have been many other guests too, come to see the rarities and stay to enjoy the garden. Elias Ashmole has been a constant visitor and many other of your friends send their regards.

You may not have heard but the Lord Protector has established the rule of major generals – one to each county to supervise the work of the magistrates and the churchwardens and the parish overseers. The innovation is not much welcomed in Lambeth, but I will say no more in a letter.

I am caring for your rarities and your garden as ever and I am well.

Your loving wife,

Hester

March 1656

In March, when the worst of the winter storms had died down, John loaded his Virginia treasures onto a ship bound for London. A couple of planters had come down to the quayside to see him off and press him with commissions to complete for them in London. John accepted packages and errands but never took his eyes from his barrels of plants and boxes of rarities.

He was importing a dozen saplings in tubs which would have to stand on deck and be shielded from the spray by a little shelter woven of reeds. Three of them were new Virginian walnut trees, never seen in England before; the others were new poplar trees and whips of Virginian cypress. Safely packed in tubs of damp sand were the roots of some new asters and some new geraniums, and a new vine. Sealed with candlewax in a waterproof chest were seeds that John had gathered the previous autumn: of the aconitum, which the Americans called wolfsbane, Virginian parsley, the exquisitely pretty Virginian columbine, the leopardsbane of America – a flower like a daisy but with a flaming orange petal and a black heart, as bright as any marigold.

John looked at his treasures with the joy of a wealthy merchant bringing home gold. He stuffed letters and packages in the deep pockets of his coat and stepped back from the ship’s railing as they ran the gangplank ashore.

“Good-bye!” he called.

“When will we see you again?” Sir Josiah shouted.

“In another few years,” John called back over the widening gulf of water. “When my stocks are low again. When I want new marvels.”

“Be sure you come!” Sir Josiah called. “This is a land of marvels.”

John laughed and nodded and waved good-bye, and then stood on deck to watch the town recede swiftly as the current and the wind took the little ship down the river and toward the sea.

“I would never have thought it,” he said to himself. “From the time when I first came here. I would never have thought that they could have survived and built such a town, almost a city, from the forest.”

The new manicured banks of the river slipped quickly by. John looked upriver, to where the shimmer of light on the water gave the illusion that nothing had changed. “Good-bye,” he said softly, to the landscape and to the woman he had loved.

April 1656

John came back to his garden, to the Ark and to his wife as the tulips were starting to fatten and show their color. The wagon rumbled across the familiar bridge and into the stable yard and Hester, looking out of the window of the rarities room at the noise, saw John sitting beside the carter and came running down the terrace and into her husband’s arms.

“I should have known you wouldn’t miss another spring,” she said. “But I didn’t really expect you till midsummer.”

“I was ready to come home,” John said. “And lucky to get a fast ship.”

They drew back a little and inspected each other, as old friends will do after a long absence. Hester’s hair under her neat cap was nearly as white as the linen, and her face was thinner and more severe. There were lines of grief on her face which would be there forever. John, aged forty-eight, was leaner and fitter than when he had gone away, the days on horseback and on foot had tanned him brown and skimmed off the fat of easy living.

“You look well, but your hair has gone white,” he said.

She gave a little smile. “It was starting to go as you left,” she said. “At Johnnie’s death.”

John nodded. “I stopped at his tomb on the way home. I felt I wanted to tell him I was back. I always promised that he would come with me on the next trip. Someone had planted little daffodils.”

“Frances,” she said. “And when the convolvulus grows she wants to plant some beside your father’s tomb so that it climbs around it. She said she wanted them both to see it.”

They left the carter and the garden boy to unload the cart and went toward the house, their arms interlinked. They walked around to the terrace and John leaned on the railing and looked down over the garden.

The flower beds at the front of the house were blushing with the color of the early tulips, beyond them the orchard was carpeted with yellow daffodils, and the white and orange of the narcissi. Above them, the cherry and apricot trees were showing little pink buds, and the thick, powerful twigs of the horse chestnuts were slowly splitting, the fat, sticky buds bursting pale and green out of their shells.

“It’s good to be home,” John said with pleasure. “What’s the news?”

“I wrote to you that Cromwell dissolved Parliament and set the army to rule over us directly.”

He nodded. “And how is that?”

Hester shrugged. “I don’t know about the rest of the country but it works well for Lambeth. They do the work the Justices of the Peace used to do, but more fairly and more evenly. They’ve closed down a lot of the ale houses and that’s nothing but good. They’re stricter with paupers and beggars and vagrants so the streets are cleaner. But the taxes!” She shook her head. “Higher than ever before and now they remember to collect them. They’re a hardworking bunch of men; and that will be their undoing. People don’t mind the Sunday sports and the maypoles going, they don’t even mind the bawdy houses closed down. But the taxes!”

“Are we in profit?” John asked, looking at the rich prosperity of the garden.

“In plants,” she said, following his gaze. “And to be honest, we’re doing well enough. Sending the Members of Parliament back to their homes has done nothing but good for us. The squires and the country gentlemen have little to do but to tend their gardens. Cromwell’s major generals are running the country, there is nothing for the gentry to attend to in London, and no work for them to do in the counties. All the work of the squires and the JPs is being done by army men. All they have left is their gardens.”