“I did. I know you can’t undertake delivery.”

“If we had anyone we could spare I still wouldn’t send them. I can’t risk losing my horse and cart.” Hester turned to Frances. “Fetch Johnnie, and tell Cook that she can serve dinner.”

Frances nodded and went out of the room.

Alexander held out his hand. “Am I forgiven for my stupidity?”

Hester took his hand. “And you must forgive me. It’s a curiously uncomfortable mistake for a woman to make. If I’d had more experience I would have known how a man usually proposes to a woman.”

He smiled at her and did not release her hand for a moment. “And the matter of Frances’s future?”

Hester shook her head and withdrew her hand. “She’s too young yet,” she said stubbornly. “Ask again in a year or two. I must warn you I would rather see her with a young husband in a little house of her own, starting her own life.”

He nodded. “I understand. But young men are not safe choices these days. Whether he’s a royalist or for Parliament he’s likely to be called to serve his master, and there are no little houses where young people can be sure that they will be left to live at peace in this kingdom any more.”

“When the war ends…”

“When the war ends we shall know whether she should look for a husband at Parliament or at court. But what if it trails on for years? I tell you, cousin, there are stores in the Tower promised to the Parliament army, and stores to match that in royalist hands enough to keep this war going for another twenty years. Parliament is not likely to surrender – that would be to sign their own death warrants for treason – and the king is not a man to come to terms with them.”

Hester nodded. For a moment she looked haggard with worry. “If she is in any danger I shall send her to you,” she promised. “I know you would take care of her.”

Alexander gave a small formal bow. “I would lay down my life for her,” he said simply. “And I love her so much that I would put her interests before mine. If they make peace, or if she falls in love with a man of her own age who could keep her safe, I will not stand in her way, nor even remind you of this conversation.”

A few days after Alexander Norman’s visit Hester, glancing out of the window, saw a stranger slip around the corner of the house and head for the kitchen door. She got up from the hearth, took off her rough hessian apron, and went to see what he wanted.

He was standing on the back doorstep. “Mrs. John Tradescant?” he asked.

The hair on the back of Hester’s neck prickled. “Yes,” she said levelly. “And who is asking?”

He slipped in around the doorframe, so that he was in the kitchen. “Shut the door,” he whispered.

Hester did not make a move to obey him. “There is a stout man in my employ within earshot,” she said. “And half the neighborhood would come running down the road if I called. You had better tell me your business, and swiftly.”

“Not my business. The king’s.”

Hester felt dismay like a blow in the belly. Slowly, she shut the door. “Come in,” she said, and led the way into the rarities room.

“Can we be overheard?” he asked, looking around but not seeing the hanging flags, the dangling birds’ skeletons, the whale’s head, the polished cases crammed with goods.

“Only if I scream,” Hester said with sour humor. “Now, what is it?”

The man put his hand inside his jacket and showed her a glint of gold. “Do you recognize this?”

It was one of the king’s favorite rings. Hester had seen it on his finger many times. “Yes.”

“I am here by the orders of a lady – we need not say her name – who has brought to London the king’s Commission of Array. You know what that means.”

“Not the least idea,” Hester said unhelpfully.

“It’s a summons. A summons to the king’s standard. It’ll be read aloud at Whitehall when our army is at the city gates. You have to play your part. Your husband is commanded to proclaim the king’s authority in Lambeth and order out the loyal men for His Majesty as soon as he is given the word.”

“What lady?” Hester asked flatly.

“I said we need not say her name.”

“If she’s asking me to risk my neck she can tell me her name,” Hester persisted.

He put his mouth to her ear and Hester smelled the familiar scent of sandalwood that the young men of court used as pomade. “Lady d’Aubigny,” he whispered. “A great lady and the widow of a hero. Her lord fell at Edgehill and she is trusted by the king to call out the royalists of London to fight for him. And she is trusting you.”

Hester felt a deep sense of relief that John was far away. “I am sorry,” she said swiftly. “My husband is away in Virginia, gathering rarities, and making his own plantation.”

“When will he return?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The man’s gleeful, conspirational mode deserted him in a moment. He swore and took two hasty paces away from her. “Then what are we to do?” he demanded. “Mr. Tradescant was to secure Lambeth and the riverside. We were counting on him.”

“You were counting on him to secure the king’s safety and you did not think to discover if he was at home?” Hester asked, disbelieving. “He could be sick, he could be dead of the plague, he could have changed sides!”

The man threw her a swift, angry glance. “War is a gamble,” he said grandly. “Sometimes the gamble pays off, sometimes it does not. I was gambling that he would be here, in good health, and keeping faith with his master.”

Hester shook her head. “He does not break his faith. But he can be of no use to you.”

“His son?”

“Johnnie is not yet ten.”

“What about you? Surely you have influence with local people. You could use this house as a rallying point. I could send you an officer to raise the men, or your father… d’you have a father?”

Hester shook her head. “No father, and no influence. I am a newcomer here,” she said. “I am Mr. Tradescant’s second wife. We have only been married four years. I have no friends here. And I have no family.”

“Someone has to do it!” he burst out. “Someone has to secure the riverside and Lambeth!”

Hester shook her head again and led the way to the front door. The royalist conspirator trailed unhappily after her.

“What about someone at the bishop’s palace? What about the local vicar?”

“The archbishop is in the Tower for his service to the king, as you well may recall. And his servants are long gone.” Hester opened the front door. “And the vicar here is an Independent. He was one of the first to preach against Archbishop Laud’s reforms.”

The man would have hesitated but she ushered him out of the house. “I shall call on you if we need a safe house this side of the river,” he promised. “D’you have horses, or barns where a small troop of horse could lie hidden?”

“No,” Hester said.

The man hesitated and looked at her with a sharp look. Hester felt a sudden fear, she had taken him for a fool but the bright assessing gaze he turned on her was not the gaze of a fool. “I trust you are for the king, Mrs. Tradescant,” he said, and there was menace in his voice. “When he comes into London he will expect support from his loyal servants. You will have to put this house at his disposal.”

“I know nothing of these matters,” Hester said weakly. “I am just conducting the business of the house and the garden in my husband’s absence…”

“There are wives and widows in the same case as you all around the country,” the man said sharply. “And they have not forgotten where their loyalties lie. Are you for the king? Or not?”

“For the king,” Hester said unenthusiastically.

“Then His Majesty will call on your services,” the man said. “You may count on it.”

He nodded to her, turned and walked across the little drawbridge over the stream at the side of the Lambeth road. Hester watched him stride away, his coat flung back, his feathers bobbing in his hat, every inch a nobleman, every inch a cavalier, then she closed the door on the sight of him, and on her fear.