Virgin Earth (48 page)

“It’s Felton, isn’t it? That was made captain?”

At once John saw that something was terribly wrong. The man’s face was pale, and two deep lines grooved either side of his mouth. “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

He shook his head. “I prayed that I might take it, but I did not. She died in my arms.”

John edged slightly back. “Who died?”

“My wife. Oh! you need not fear I carry it. They put us out of the village, both of us, and did not let me back into my house until I had buried her on the cold ground where she lay and stripped myself naked and burned my clothes. Then they let me into my home, walking as naked as a sinner. But when I got back into the house, d’you know what I found?”

John shook his head.

“My little daughter, dead of hunger, behind the locked door. No one had gone in to feed her, they were all afraid of catching the plague, and besides, there was no food in the whole village.”

John was silent, facing the horror of the man’s story.

“I was never paid, you see,” Felton said, his voice a dull monotone. “Not the captain’s pay that was promised me, not the lieutenant’s pay that I had earned. Not my campaign money, not my discharge money. Not a penny. When I came home to my wife and daughter I had nothing but my Lord Admiral’s promise, and we could not eat that. When she sickened, I could not buy physic for her; I could not even buy food. When she died I had to bury her in the ground where she lay.”

He laughed shortly. “And they’ve enclosed it now. I cannot even get in to put up a cross at her head. It was common land. I thought I would plant a rosebush beside her grave, but now it is a sheep run, and my lord’s beasts patter over her sleeping face.”

John found he was scowling. “Before God I am sorry for you,” he said.

“And now we are to sail again,” Felton went on, his eyes burning in his white face. “Back to that damned island. It is all to be as it was before. More death, more pain, more folly. We will have to do it all again, and again and again until he has his fill of it.”

“Are you serving?” John asked.

“Who would go willingly who had been there once before? Would you?”

John shook his head. “I am bound by a promise to go,” he said.

“And I am bound by a promise too,” Felton said. “A different promise from you, I should think. A sacred promise to God.”

John nodded. “I will speak with him, when I can get near him,” he said. “I will not forget you, Felton. You shall have your pay and perhaps you can start again somewhere…”

“He has forgotten me,” Felton cried passionately. “But I will remind him. I will tell him what he has cost me; I will give him pain for pain.”

“That’s not the way. Be still, Felton; he is the duke, you cannot fight him any more than you can fight the king. He is untouchable.”

Felton shook his head in brief disagreement and turned away. Tradescant looked after him, saw the hunched shoulders and the way his hand strayed to his pocket and saw the outline, through the ragged clothes, of a knife. He glanced around. The place was packed with the duke’s retainers. When he saw one of the officers he could trust, he would warn him that Felton should be watched, and gently hustled out of the house. Then, when he had the duke’s ear, he would tell him that the man must be paid, must be compensated. That men who had followed the duke to certain death, and who had seen their comrades die beside them, could not be cast off as lightly as a mistress forgets an old lover who has fallen from favor.

There was a roar of laughter from the inner room and then a bellowing of a toast. Tradescant knew that his lord must be inside, at the heart of the party. Now he was near to seeing him again he found that his palms were wet with sweat and his throat dry. He rubbed his hands on his breeches, swallowed, and then pushed through the crowd, through the open double door and into the room.

The duke was seated at a table, a map spread before him, his green jacket ablaze with diamonds, his dark hair tumbled about his perfect face, laughing like a boy.

John fell back at the sight and a man behind him swore as he bumped into him, but John heard nothing. He had thought that he knew every line, every plane, of that face, from the untroubled forehead to the smooth cheekbones, but when he saw Buckingham again, in his vitality, in the brilliance of his beauty, he realized he had remembered nothing, only a shadow.

John felt himself smiling, then beaming, at the very sight of the man, and felt a blaze through his body which was not fear or resentment or hatred, but was joy, a wild intractable joy, that there should be such beauty in the world, that there should be such grace. That such a man had once loved John and taken him into a place where pain and pleasure were one. And at the moment, the long intervening months seemed a small price to pay for having once, just once, been the lover of such a man. As in a dream he saw Buckingham laughing at the head of the table, his black curls thrown back from his face, his black eyes glinting and that exquisite face flushed with wine and laughter; and at the same time he saw him leaning close in the shadowy light of the gilded cabin where the horn lantern swung on its hook with the haunting rhythm of the waves as if it were dancing with their blended shadows.

“Ah, it’s you,” John said with a deep glad sense of recognition and felt that his world, which had been upside-down since he had lost his master, was suddenly powerfully restored to him. He knew it was love, besotted, impossible love, and could feel no shame, nor any sense that it was wasted love. Its very madness was part of the joy of tasting it. It was the taste of life at the very edge of life. It was love as few men ever know it. It was passion, rare passion. A desire that does not even look for return, but is worth all the pain for the few moments of joy, and for knowing that joy to the edge of madness is a possibility. Without this love Tradescant thought he would have lived a quieter life, a steady life. With it he had been ablaze, in the very heart of the furnace of feeling.

Buckingham had not seen him. He was laughing with the gentlemen around him. “I swear it,” he shouted over the noise. “I will be avenged. We have been wronged by France and I will have satisfaction.”

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.