John chuckled. “It’s an ill wind.”

“Not so ill,” she reminded him. “Cromwell has brought peace to the country.”

He nodded. “Have you seen Lord Lambert? What does he say?”

“He was here just a few weeks ago to see our show of daffodils. He has a fancy for a garden in orange, gold and yellow and he wanted some bright yellow lenten lilies. He’s not a happy man. He was working on a new constitution for the country, with the backing of the army. He wanted Cromwell to become Lord Protector with an elected parliament. Then Cromwell brought in the major generals and dissolved Parliament. I think he thought that it smacked of tyranny; but he never said. He stays loyal to Cromwell-”

“He’s always loyal,” John interrupted.

“But there’s a strain,” she said. “He doesn’t like to see the army put over the people. He wants an elected parliament, not the rule of soldiers.”

John slid his arm around his wife’s waist. “And you?” he asked gently, his lips against her clean cap. “Are you well?”

She nodded, saying nothing. He did not press the question. They both knew that the answer was now and would always be that she was grieving for Johnnie. They would both always be grieving for Johnnie.

“Your friends have visited in your absence,” she said with forced brightness. “Mr. Ashmole and the others. Mr. Ashmole has been very busy working on a catalogue of the collection as you asked him to. I think it’s nearly done. It is in Latin. He showed me some pages, it looks very fine. I think you will be pleased with it. He says we can sell the catalogue at the door to guide people around the rarities room and around the garden. And that people can take it away with them to study. Gardeners can see what we are growing and write to us with orders. He says we could charge as much as two shillings.”

“And is Frances well?”

Hester nodded. “Alexander was ill this winter, a cough which wouldn’t ease. She was worried about him for a while but he is mending with the warmer weather.”

John curbed his resentment at his young daughter nursing a husband suffering from the ailments of an old man. “No signs of another baby?”

“None yet,” Hester said gently.

John nodded, glanced once more at the sunlit beauty of his garden and then turned to his house.

Summer 1657

In early summer John took the wagon and cart over to Wimbledon House with a delivery of bulbs and saplings for John Lambert. He found Lord Lambert in his rare garden – a walled area facing south and west reserved for exotic plants – with an easel before him, paints on a table beside him and an exquisite white tulip in a porcelain blue bowl. In the center of the garden was a newly planted acacia tree which took John’s eye at once.

“Is that one of mine?” John asked.

“No,” Lambert said. “I had it from Paris last autumn, from the Robins’ garden.”

“Very fine,” John said, a hint of envy in his voice. Lambert heard it at once.

“You shall have a cutting,” he promised. “I know you have so little. I know your garden is so poor.”

John grinned ruefully. “A true gardener can always squeeze in one more plant. Now, I have brought you some orange plants as you asked. This one they call leopardsbane in Virginia, it flowers in autumn: a wonderful rich, bright orange with a heart as dark as chocolate. And the lily bulbs you ordered. And some whips of orange trees.”

“I have a fancy for a garden in yellow and orange,” Lambert explained, “with orange trees in tubs at the center of the beds. And a blaze of color all around. What d’you think? Are there enough orange flowers?”

“Marigolds?” John suggested. “Ranunculus? Sunflowers? Turkish nasturtiums? I have some tulips which would pass as orange, and some new narcissi with orange hearts. My father made a golden garden years ago at Hatfield. He used kingcups and buttercups by the watercourses, and yellow flag iris. And my Virginian trumpet vine is a bright true orange.”

“I’ll have them all,” Lambert declared. “And what lily bulbs d’you have for me? I want to plant some great pots with lily bulbs deep in the base, and tulips in the middle, and snowdrops on the top so they succeed each other from spring through to midsummer.”

John shook his head. “You’ll have to repot every three or four years,” he said. “They won’t thrive in such a small space. They’ll sap the strength of the earth. But the first two years you could leave them and you would get one flower succeeding another, as long as you keep them damp with comfrey water.”

“Anything else new?” Lambert asked as they walked from the rare garden to the stable yard where John had halted the cart.

“I brought you some day lilies and some white lilies, and there are a couple you could use in your orange garden: a red lily and a flame lily. They could pass for orange and you could breed from them, selecting the most orange colors.”

Lambert nodded to his man to unload the cart.

“I hear you are much at home these days,” John said tactfully, skirting the gossip that Lambert’s differences with Cromwell now amounted to an open breach. The rule of the major generals had been replaced by a new parliament which again had failed to agree. Lambert had once more been spokesman for the radical old soldiers of the army who still resisted every attempt to restore the gentry and the lords to their previous power. There was a great suspicion that Cromwell, in an effort to secure peace in the country, was going the way of the Stuart kings, James and then Charles, toward a parliament which served only lords and gentry, an imposed Church which served the needs of the one sole ruler: himself, who might even be called king.

John Lambert had brought a petition from the army to Parliament voicing the old demands of free elections, justice for all, and a fairer chance for working men, as if the Levelers still held the balance of power and could make such demands. He expected a fair hearing from Cromwell, who had once been an army man, as Lambert was still.

But Cromwell was an army man no more. He had moved from the clear, godly certainties of the ranks to the complex machinations of the men of power. When Lambert brought the petition asking for the political changes that the army had fought and died for, Cromwell acted swiftly. He reorganized the army, paid some back wages, promoted some men, dismissed others, and broke whole companies. Lambert had to watch the radical leaders of the army posted to service overseas, Jamaica, or Ireland, or simply discharged from their posts.

Then the blow fell on him. Cromwell dismissed Lambert from his own regiment, from the men that had fought behind him every step of the king’s wars and had never been separated from their commander before. Lambert had taken the order without argument from Cromwell, because he would not disobey his commander. But he would not take the oath of fealty to him. And he did not admire Cromwell when the republican leader appeared in the robes of state carrying a scepter.

Lambert scowled for a moment at John, hardly seeing him. “I am much at home,” he agreed. “As it turns out, I have little choice. There’s no place for me at Westminster, it seems. And no place for me with my regiment. It’s been given to Lord Fauconberg.”

“Your regiment?” John asked.

Lambert nodded, scowling.

“Who is Lord Fauconberg? I’ve never heard of him.”

“A noble lord. A royalist who has become Cromwell’s man. I think my regiment is his dowry,” Lambert said wryly. “He’s to marry Oliver’s daughter Mary. Quite a little dynasty that Cromwell is making, isn’t it? And with a man who was a royalist, and would be a royalist again, especially if his father-in-law was to be king.”

“I never thought he could govern without you,” John volunteered. “I never thought he would turn against the army.”