Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

Another great shriek of approval drowned out his words. Tradescant watched, smiling, as the duke shook back his black curls and laughed again. “I have the ear of the king!” he said.

“Aye, and other parts!” came a bawdy yell.

Buckingham grinned but he did not disagree. “Does anyone doubt that if I wish it we will be at the doors of Paris this time next year?” he said. “I say we will return to France, and not stop at some pox-ridden island but we will march on Paris itself and I will have my revenge.”

Tradescant pushed his way farther into the room. The men were a wedge of scented velvet and rich linen – the duke’s aristocratic friends and courtiers, who had been waiting and waiting in Portsmouth to give him a hero’s send-off. As they unwillingly stood aside Buckingham caught the movement and glanced down the room. His eyes met John’s and for a moment, for one blissful moment, there was nothing and no one but the master and the man looking at each other with a deep connection.

“My John,” Buckingham said softly, as sweet as a whisper after his bragging of a few moments earlier.

“My lord,” Tradescant replied.

Buckingham put one hand on the table and vaulted over it to Tradescant’s side. He put his hands on his shoulders.

“Did you bring everything?” he asked simply.

“I have everything you commanded,” John said steadily. There was not a word that could have betrayed them. Only the two of them knew that the duke was asking if John was still his and his alone; and John was answering: yes, yes, yes.

“Where are you lodged?” Buckingham asked him.

“At a little house on Southsea Common.”

“Get your things loaded and stowed in my cabin; we sail today.” Buckingham turned toward his place at the table.

“My lord!” At the urgency in his tone Buckingham paused.

“What is it, John?”

“Stay a moment. Go down to the harbor and listen to your commanders,” John said earnestly. “They are saying we may not be able to sail. Take some advice, my lord. Let’s proceed cautiously.”

“Cautiously! Cautiously!” Buckingham threw back his head and laughed and the room laughed with him. “I am going to free the Protestants of La Rochelle and give the French king such a trouncing that he will regret his impertinence to us. I shall have Queen Elizabeth back on her throne in Bohemia, and I shall take the war to the very doors of Paris.”

There was a confused hurrah at the bragging. John scowled around at the gentlemen who had never been closer to a battle than a naval review. “Don’t say such things. Not here. Don’t speak like this in Portsmouth. There are families here still grieving for the men who went with you last time and will never come home again. Don’t jest, my lord.”

“I? Jest?” The duke’s arched eyebrows flew upward. He turned to the room. “Tradescant thinks I jest!” he exclaimed. “But I tell him and I tell you all that this war with France is not finished; it will not be finished until we have won. And when we have beaten them we will take on the Spanish. No papist mob shall stand against us; I am for the true king and the true faith.”

“And where will you get your army, Steenie?” someone cried from the back. “All the men who marched with you last time are dead or injured or sick or insane.”

“I shall press-gang them,” he cried. “I shall buy them. I shall take them out of the jails, and out of the hospitals for the mad. I shall order them to come on pain of treason. I shall take boys from their school desks, I shall take farmers from their ploughs. Does anyone doubt that I can force my will on this whole kingdom? And if I want to wager half of England to avenge this slight on my honor, I can do it!”

John felt as if he were clinging to a runaway horse that nothing could stop. He laid a rough hand on his lord’s sleeve and pulled him close so that he could whisper in his ear. “My lord, I beg you, this is no way to plan a campaign. It’s too late in the year; we will meet the autumn storms at sea; when we get there the weather will be bitter. You remember the island; there was no shelter, there were the stinking marshes and the constant storms. They will have reinforced the citadel, and it cost us four thousand lives last time and we still came home in defeat. My lord, don’t take us there. Please, I beg you, think again. Think in silence, think when you’re sober, not when you have a room of puppies barking at your every word. Think, Villiers. Before God I would die rather than see you there again.”

Buckingham turned in John’s grip but he did not throw off his hand, as he could have done. Just as he had done in the long-ago fruit garden beside the warmed peach trees, he put his own hand on top of John’s and John could feel the warmth of the long soft fingers and the hardness of the rings.

“We have to go,” he replied, his voice low. “A victory is the only thing which will pull me clear with the country. I would have to go if it took the life of every man in England.”

John met his lord’s dark determined gaze. “You would destroy this country for your own triumph?”

Buckingham put his mouth very close to John’s ear. The silky curls tickled John’s neck. “Yes,” he whispered. “A thousand times over.”

“Then you are mad, my lord,” John said steadily. “And your country’s enemy.”

“Then cut me down like a mad dog,” Buckingham dared him with a wolfish grin. “Behead me for treason. Because my madness will run its course. I have to win the Isle of Rue, John. I don’t care what it costs.”

It was John who drew his hand away first; it was John who broke their interlocked gaze. Buckingham let him go and snapped his fingers at one of his companions, and took his arm in John’s place. “Come,” he said. “I must get my hair curled and then I shall sail for France.”

There was a roar of laughter and approval. Tradescant, sick and cold, turned away. The duke and his companions passed through the crowd and into the narrow corridor. One of the French officers bustled up.

“My lord duke! I bring news! The best news in the world!”

Buckingham stopped, the crowd behind him pressing forward in the corridor to hear.

“ La Rochelle has broken out! The Protestants are free and the French army is defeated! The French are suing for terms.”

Buckingham reeled, fighting for sobriety. “Never!”

“Indeed, yes!” the man declared, his English becoming less and less clear in his own excitement. “We have won! We have won!”

“Then we need not sail,” John thought aloud. “My God, we need not sail.”

Buckingham was suddenly powerful and decisive. “This alters everything,” he said.

“It does,” Tradescant agreed, pushing through to his side. “Thank God, yes. It does.”

“I must speak with the king,” Buckingham said. “Now is the time to strike against France; we need to go at once, we need to raise a greater army. We should go through the Netherlands, and then…”

“My lord,” John said desperately. “There is no need. Now we are excused. La Rochelle is free, our wrongs are avenged.”

Buckingham shook his head and laughed his wild boyish laugh. “John, after all the trouble I have taken to get here, d’you think I shall go peaceably home again without a cannon being fired! I am wild for a fight, and the men are wild for a fight! We will go to the very heart of France. Now is the time for an all-out attack, now they are failing. God knows how far we could go. We could take and keep French castles, French lands!”

He slapped the French officer on the back and stepped forward. Felton suddenly appeared at his side, pushing through the crowd. Tradescant recognized him with a gasp of fear, saw his eyes were wild and his hand was gripped on the knife in his pocket. He saw the officer who should protect the duke lounging in the doorway, his face buried in a cup of wine.

Buckingham turned to greet a new arrival and swept his graceful bow. There was a slice of time, which seemed to hold and wait, like a petal from a blossom lingering on its fall.

Tradescant saw Felton’s determined face and knew that the great love of his life, his master, was not, after all, untouchable.

“Save us from him,” Tradescant said softly. “Do it, Felton.”

He was dead within moments, and it was John who leaped forward to catch him, and lowered the long slim body to the ground. Even dying in pain he still had the face of the saint that King James had called him. His skin had flushed as scarlet as an embarrassed maid with the shock of the wound, and then drained white as Italian marble. John cradled his heavy lolling head and felt the smooth tumbling black curls against his cheek for the last time. There was a loud sound of hoarse dry sobbing and John realized it was his own voice; then someone pulled him away from his lord and pressed a glass of spirits into his hand and left him.

He heard the noise of Felton’s capture, and the dreadful scream from Buckingham’s wife, Kate. He heard the running to and fro of men who were suddenly leaderless. He sat quite still, the glass of Hollands in his hand, while the room brightened as men drifted away and the August sunshine poured uncaringly through the window. The little motes of dust danced in the sunshine as if everything was still the same, when everything was different.

When he thought he could stand, John walked to the door of the house. To his left at the end of the street, the gray wall of the harbor was still there, still crumbling and unfit. Before him the rambling skyline of ramshackle houses and beyond them the tops of the masts of the fleet, still flying Buckingham’s flags. No one had ordered them to half-mast; people were still running around, denying the news, disbelieving their own denials. It was a beautiful day; the wind still blew steadily offshore. It would have been a good day to set sail. But Buckingham and John would never set sail together again.