“Yes, sir,” she said dully. “I am obedient.”

In the morning Sir Henry was in a better temper. Over breakfast he asked John about his own garden and about the treasures of the Ark. “I could send you some things,” he said pleasantly. “Things I pick up here. If you like savage things.”

“I do,” John said. “I do indeed. And if there are any plants from England that you desire I could send them out to you. You could grow vines here very well, I would have thought.”

“Could you take a note of credit for me and buy some carpets for me?” Sir Henry asked. “I want some Turkey carpets for the hall.”

“I should be delighted to do so,” John said. “And anything else you require.”

“We’ll start with this,” Sir Henry said cautiously. “I’ll give you the note of credit and you can buy some carpets and some glass for me, and then I’ll send you a few hogsheads of sugar and you can see if you can obtain a better price for me than my normal agent. And then you can send me some more goods. Rarities are no use locked up in a cabinet, you know. They should be traded.”

John nodded. “I should be glad to do a little trading,” he said. “My father’s rarities have to stay together in the collection we have made. But if you shoot any strange birds I should be glad of their skins and their feathers.”

“I’ve got some trophies,” Sir Henry said without any great interest. “I could sell them to you.”

“I have no money until I am at home,” John said awkwardly.

“Note of credit,” Sir Henry said equably. “We all do it by notes of credit all the time. Just as well there are no damned thieving Jews to redeem the notes before the sugar crop is in, eh?”

By the time John sailed he had a new shrub, a most curious and delightful plant which the islanders called the tree of life because it acted like a living thing, shrinking away when touched. He had a couple of roots of the cabbage tree, and a dozen skins and feathers including a rather fine specimen of the West Indian kingfisher which Sir Henry donated for free. “Just do me some decent business, when you are in England,” he grumbled. “An honest agent in London is as rare as a virtuous woman. Which is to say, rare enough to put in your collection.”

“I shall be delighted,” John said politely and watched Sir Henry recede into the distance without any regret as the ship slipped her ropes and drifted away from the shore.

Spring 1646, London

It was a homecoming as ordinary as any man might wish. John hired a carter at London dock to carry his barrels of seeds and roots, the two barrels of saplings, the chest of Barbados goods, and sat up on the wooden seat at the front of the cart as they jolted up the frozen lanes to Lambeth.

“What’s the news of the war?” John asked.

“You’ll have heard that Chester surrendered?”

“No?”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Virginia,” John said. “Is the king truly defeated?”

“Humbled to dust,” the carter said feelingly. “And now pray God we can see some peace and order in this land and that crew of parasites run back to Rome where they came from.”

John tried to say “Amen,” but found the word did not come out. “I’ll pray for peace,” he said. “I’ve had enough of war for a lifetime.”

“And so have we all. And for some the war lasted longer than their lifetimes. How many Englishmen d’you think have died to persuade the king that we want to be governed by Englishmen and pray to God and not to bishops?”

John shook his head.

“Thousands,” the man said glumly. “Hundreds of thousands. How many more died of plague and hardship because of this damned struggle?”

John shook his head again.

“Thousands more. And how many families d’you think have lost a son or a brother or a father?”

John shook his head in silence.

“Every single family in the land,” the carter said solemnly. “This has been a wicked, wicked war, a war without an enemy because we were fighting and killing ourselves.”

Hester was in the stable yard, tossing hay over the door to the horse, when she heard the rumble of the wheels and saw the cart rock as it rounded the corner into the yard. For a moment she saw only the barrels at the back and thought that John had sent some goods ahead, and then she dropped the pitchfork with a clatter on the cobbles as she recognized the man who got down from the carter’s seat and turned to face her.

He looked older than she remembered, and weary. The bear-grease stain had faded from his skin but he was still deeply tanned from the hard sun and wind. He had lost a couple of teeth during his time of near-starvation, and he had grown a brown mustache and beard which were flecked with gray. His eyes were sad, an unmistakable sadness, which made Hester want to hold him and comfort him without even asking what had grieved him so. He looked as if he had lost something very dear to him and Hester wondered what blade in the new world had cut him so deep.

“John?” she said quietly.

He stepped forward a little. “Hester?”

She realized that she was wearing her oldest working clothes, men’s thick boots and a brown scarf over her hair, which was pinned carelessly on the back of her head. She could not have looked more functional if she had tried. She whisked her scarf off her head and tried not to seem embarrassed. She had always tried to be above vanity, especially with this man who had married his first wife for love and lost her while she was still in her youth and beauty.

Hester brushed the hay from her coat. “You are welcome home,” she said.

He took two steps toward her and opened his arms to her and she went toward him and felt the intense relief of a man’s embrace after more than three years of loneliness.

“Do you forgive me?” he said urgently into her hair. She smelled of hay from the stable and the clean, familiar smell of soap from her skin, and lavender from her linen. “Can you forgive me for leaving you so unkindly and then disappearing like that?”

“It’s you that should forgive me for refusing to go with you,” she said quickly. “And I regretted it, John.”

He tightened his grip around her. “I have been unfaithful,” he said quickly, to get the confession over and done with before he was tempted to lie. “I am sorry.”

She rested her head against his shoulder. “That’s the past,” she said. “And in another country. You have come home to me, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

She craned her neck to look up into his sad, weary face and realized that he was wearing the same bewildered expression of pain as when they had first met and he had not recovered from the loss of his first wife. “What happened, John?”

For a moment he was about to answer her, then they were interrupted by the carter. “I can’t unload these on my own,” he said flatly. “And I can’t afford to wait here all day while you two kiss.”

Hester turned with a laugh. “I’ll find Joseph to help you.” She rang the bell which hung at the corner of the yard. “You go in, John, you must be frozen, and Johnnie will be longing to see you. He’ll be in the kitchen eating his breakfast.”

John hesitated at the kitchen door, suddenly shy and hardly knowing how to approach his son who had been a boy of nine when he left and was now a youth of twelve. He opened the door slowly and put his head around it.

Johnnie was seated at the scrubbed kitchen table, his bowl of porridge before him, absently spooning it into his mouth, his eyes on his book propped on his mug of small ale. John took in the sight of his son, the fair head with the cropped golden hair, the light hazel eyes, the long nose in the long face and the sweet innocent mouth. You could see his mother in his coloring and the joy in his face, but he was every inch a Tradescant.