When Buckingham rolled off him and lay still, John did not move, transfixed by a profound pleasure that felt almost holy. He felt that he had drawn near to something very like the love of God, which can shake a man to his very core, which comes like a flame in the night and burns a man into something new so that the world is never the same for him again.
Buckingham slept but John lay awake, holding his joy.
In the morning they were easy with each other, as old friends, as brothers-in-arms, as companions. Buckingham had thrown off some of his melancholy, he went to visit his injured officers and checked the stores with the ship’s purveyor, he said his prayers with the priest. In the companionway a weary-looking man asked to speak with him and Buckingham gave him his charming smile.
‘My captain was killed before me, drowned off the causeway in the retreat,’ the man said.
‘I am sorry for it,’ Buckingham replied. ‘We have all lost friends.’
‘I am a lieutenant, I was due for promotion. Am I captain now?’
Buckingham’s face lost its colour and its smile. He turned away in disgust. ‘Dead men’s shoes.’
‘But am I? I have a wife and a child, and I need the wages and the pension if I fall …’
‘Don’t trouble me with this,’ Buckingham said with sudden anger. ‘What am I? Some beggar to be hounded about?’
‘You’re the Lord High Admiral,’ the man said reasonably. ‘And I am seeking you to confirm my promotion.’
‘Damn you to hell!’ Buckingham shouted. ‘There are four thousand good men dead. Shall you have all their pay too?’ He flung himself away.
‘That’s not just,’ the man persisted doggedly.
John looked at him more carefully. ‘You are the man who held me on the causeway!’ he exclaimed.
‘Lieutenant Felton. Should be captain. You pulled me out of the sea. Thank you.’
‘I’m John Tradescant’
The man looked at him more closely. ‘The duke’s man?’
John felt a swift pulse of pride that he was the duke’s man in every sense. The duke’s man to his very core.
‘Tell him I should be a captain. He owes it to me.’
‘He’s much troubled now,’ John said. ‘I will tell him later.’
‘I have served him faithfully, I have faced shot and illness in his service. Am I not to be rewarded?’
‘I’ll put it to him later,’ John said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lieutenant Felton,’ the man repeated. ‘I am not a greedy man. I just want justice for myself and for us all.’
‘I’ll ask him when he’s calm again,’ John said.
‘I wish that I could refuse to do my duty when my temper is against it,’ Felton said, looking after the admiral.
John had set some sailors to spinning for mackerel and that night he was able to serve Buckingham with a plate of fish. When he set the tray down, Buckingham said idly, ‘Don’t go.’
John waited by the door as Buckingham ate in silence. The ship seemed very quiet. Buckingham finished his dinner and then stood up from his table.
‘Fetch me some hot water,’ he commanded.
Tradescant took the tray back to the galley and came back with a pitcher of heated seawater. ‘I am sorry, it’s salt,’ he said.
‘No matter,’ Buckingham replied. He stripped off his linen shirt, and his breeches. Tradescant held a towel for him and watched while Buckingham washed himself, and ran wet fingers through his dark hair. He stood to let John pat a sheet around him and then he lay, still naked, on the rich scarlet counterpane of his bed. John could not look away, the duke was as beautiful as a statue in the gardens at New Hall.
‘Do you want to sleep here tonight again?’ his lordship asked.
‘If you wish, my lord,’ John said, keeping the hope from his face.
‘I asked what you wished,’ Buckingham said.
John hesitated. ‘You are my master. It must be for you to say.’
‘I say that I want to know your thoughts. Do you wish to sleep here with me, as we did last night? Or go back to your own bed? You’re free to do either, John. I don’t coerce you.’
John raised his eyes to the duke’s dark smile. He felt as if his face was burning. ‘I want you,’ he said. ‘I want to be with you.’
The duke sighed, almost as if he were relieved of a fear. ‘As my lover?’
John nodded, feeling the depth of sin and desire as if they were one.
‘Take the jug and ewer away and come back,’ the duke commanded. ‘I want to feel a man’s love tonight.’
The next morning they sighted Cornwall and then it was just another night before they arrived in Portsmouth. John expected to be dismissed, but when the priest had left after evening prayers Buckingham crooked his finger and John locked the door behind everyone else and spent the night with the duke. They were learning each other’s bodies, apprentices in desire. Buckingham’s skin was smooth and soft but the muscles in his body were hard from his horseriding and his running. John was ashamed of the grey in the hairs of his chest and his callused hands, but the weight of his strong body on Buckingham made the younger man groan with delight. They kissed, lips lingering, pressing, exploring, drinking from each other’s mouths. They struggled against each other like wrestlers fighting, like animals mating, testing the hardness of muscle against muscle in a lovemaking which gave no quarter and showed no sentimentality but which had at its core a wild savage tenderness, until Buckingham said breathlessly, ‘I can’t wait! I want it too much!’ and lunged towards John and they tumbled together into the darker world of pain and desire until pain and desire were one and the darkness was complete.
November 1627
They woke at dawn with the sound of the sailors making ready for port. There was little time for words and, in any case, what was between them went deeper than speech. John believed that they were bonded together in a way that nothing could break – the love of a man for his brother-in-arms, the strong powerful love of a vassal for his lord, and now the passionate devotion of lovers who have found all the pleasure of the world in each other’s bodies. Buckingham lay back in bed as John swiftly dressed, and smiled. John felt his desires – now insatiable it seemed – rise again at that seductive mischievous smile.
‘Where will we lie tonight?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what reception will meet me,’ Buckingham said, his smile fading. ‘We’ll have to find the court. Chances are that Charles will be at Whitehall this season. I may have to work hard to keep my place.’
‘Whatever place you win I am yours,’ John said simply.
Buckingham gleamed at him. ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I shall need you by me.’
‘And after Whitehall?’
‘Home for the New Year,’ Buckingham decided. He shot John a rueful smile. ‘To our loving wives.’
John hesitated. ‘I could send Elizabeth to Kent,’ he offered. Elizabeth and his long years of marriage seemed part of another life; nothing could interfere with this new way of being, with this new love, with this sudden arrival of passion. ‘My wife has family in Kent. She could visit them. I could be alone at New Hall with you.’
Buckingham smiled. ‘No need. We will always be travelling, you and I, John. I will always need you at my side. People will talk, but people always talk. You will serve me in my chamber again as you have done on this voyage. Nothing will part us.’
John kneeled on the bed and reached for Buckingham. The two men embraced, Buckingham’s curly hair tickled John’s cheek, his neck. He slipped his hand down into the warmth of his lord’s body and felt the hardness of his desire rising to greet his touch.
‘You want me,’ John whispered.
‘Very much.’
John straightened up. ‘I had feared that this was not going to last,’ he confided. ‘That this was part of the madness of these days. The defeat and the grief. I had feared that when we came into port I would be forgotten.’
Buckingham shook h
is head.
‘I could not bear to be without you, not now.’ John felt strange, speaking of his feelings after years of self-imposed silence. He felt strangely freed, as if at last he could lay claim to a strange land inside his own head, an inner Virginia.
‘You will not be without me,’ the lord said easily. He threw back the covers and John felt his breath catch at the sight of the perfect body. The shoulders broad, the legs long, the thatch of dark hair and the rising penis, the smooth white skin of his belly and chest and the tumble of dark curls.
John laughed at himself. ‘I am as besotted as a girl! I am breathless at the very sight of you.’
Buckingham smiled and then pulled on his linen shirt. ‘My John,’ he said. ‘Love no-one but me.’
‘I swear it.’
‘I mean it.’ Buckingham paused. ‘I won’t have a rival. Not wife nor child nor another man, not even your gardens.’
John shook his head. ‘Of course there is no-one but you,’ he said. ‘You were my master before, but after this you have me heart and soul.’
Buckingham pulled on his scarlet hose and red breeches slashed with gold. He turned his back absentmindedly and John tied the scarlet leather laces for him, relishing the intimacy, the casual touch.
‘You are my talisman,’ Buckingham said, speaking half to himself. ‘You were Cecil’s man and now you are mine. He died without failure or dishonour and so must I. And today I shall know if the king forgives me for failing him.’
‘You didn’t fail,’ John said. ‘You did all he set you to do. Others failed, and the Navy failed to supply you. But you were faultless in courage and honour.’
Buckingham leaned back against him, feeling John’s warm solid body behind him, and briefly closed his eyes. John put his arms around the younger man’s body, relishing the hardness of his chest and the contrasting softness of his curly hair.
‘I need you for words like that,’ Buckingham whispered. ‘No-one else can tell me such things and make me believe them. I need your faith in me, John, especially when I have no faith in myself.’
‘I never saw you show a moment’s fear,’ John said earnestly. ‘I never saw you hesitate or fail. You were the Lord High Admiral for every minute. No man could say less. No man did more.’
Buckingham straightened up and John saw the set of his shoulders and the lift of his chin. ‘I shall hold those words to me,’ he said. ‘Whatever else befalls me today. I shall know that you were there, you witnessed everything, and you say this. You have been here with me and I have your love. You are a man whose judgement is trusted, and you are my man – what did you say? – heart and soul.’
‘Till death.’
‘Swear it.’ Buckingham turned and held John’s shoulders with sudden passionate intensity. He took John’s face roughly in his cupped hands. ‘Swear that you are mine till death.’
John did not hesitate. ‘I swear on all that I hold sacred that I am your man, and none other’s. I will follow you and serve you till death,’ he promised. It was a mighty oath but John did not feel the weight of it. Instead he had a great sense of joy at being committed, at last, to another person without restraint, as if all the years with Elizabeth had been only a circling of another, a moving towards intimacy which could never be truly found. Elizabeth’s femininity, her faith, her every difference from John, had meant that he could never reach her. Always between them were the dividing fissures of opinion, of taste, of style.
But Buckingham had been in John’s heart, had penetrated deep inside him. There was nothing which could part them now. It was not a love between a man and a woman which always founders on difference, which always struggles with difference. It was a passion between men who start as equals and fight their way through to mutual desire and mutual satisfaction as equals.
The tension left Buckingham’s shoulders. ‘I needed to hear that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It is like a chain of command, the old king needed me and called me his dog, took me like a dog too. Now I need you, and you shall be my dog.’
The noises on deck grew more urgent, they could hear the sailors shouting to the barges for tow ropes, and then came the gentle bump as the ship dropped her sails and was taken in tow.
‘Fetch hot water,’ Buckingham said. ‘I must shave.’
John nodded and did the work of a cabin boy with a heady sense of delight. He stood beside Buckingham while he shaved his smooth skin of the dark stubble, held a linen sheet for him while he washed, and then handed him his clean shirt and his waistcoat and surcoat. Buckingham dressed in silence, his hand when he reached for his perfume bottle was shaking. He sprayed his hair with perfume, set his plumed hat, winking with diamonds, on his head, and smiled at himself in the mirror: a hollow smile, a fearful smile.
‘I shall go on deck,’ he said. ‘No-one shall say that I was afraid to show my face.’
‘I will be with you,’ John promised.
They went through the door together. ‘Don’t leave me,’ Buckingham whispered as they went up the companionway. ‘Whatever happens, stay at my shoulder this day. Wherever I go.’
Tradescant realised that his master was fearing worse than humiliation; he was fearing arrest. Better-loved men than he had died in the Tower for failed expeditions. They had both seen Sir Walter Raleigh taken to the Tower for less.
‘I shall not leave you,’ John assured him. ‘Wherever they take you they will take me too. I shall always be with you.’
Buckingham paused on the narrow companionway. ‘To the foot of the gallows?’ he demanded.
‘To the noose or the axe,’ John said, as bleak as his master. ‘I have sworn I am yours, heart and soul, till death.’
Buckingham dropped his hand heavily on John’s shoulder and for a moment the two men stood, face to face, their eyes locked. Then with one accord they moved together and kissed. It was a passionate kiss, like a couple of fierce animals biting, no tenderness, no gentleness in it. It was a kiss no woman could give. It was a kiss between men, men who have been through a battle where there was death on either side of them and who are finding, in each other’s passion, the strength to face death again.
‘Stay by me,’ Buckingham whispered, and went up the companionway to the deck.
A cold morning wind was blowing. The beaches of Southsea were spread before them and the green of the town common behind them. The narrow entrance to Portsmouth harbour was ahead, the grey sea walls lined with people, their faces white dots of anxiety. The flags flying over the fort flapped against their poles. Tradescant could not make out if the royal standard was there, or if Buckingham’s flag had been raised in his honour. The sun was not yet up and there was a ragged cold sea mist blowing in with them, as if the ghosts of the men who would not be coming home were drifting in with them across the grey waters.
There was no gun salute, there was no band playing music, there was no applause. The Triumph, ill-named, undermanned and defeated, edged into the quayside, as if the ship itself felt shame.
John stood beside Buckingham by the steersman. Buckingham was dressed defiantly in red and gold, like a victorious leader, but when the people on the quayside saw him they let out a deep groan. Buckingham’s bright smile never wavered but he glanced slightly over his shoulder as if to assure himself that John was there.
They ran the gangplank ashore and Buckingham, with a generous gesture of his hand, indicated that the men should go before him. It was a fine gesture but it would have been better if the two of them had gone first, and got quickly on horses, and ridden away. For there was another deep groan and then a horrified silence from the dockers and the sailors’ and soldiers’ families waiting on shore, as the walking wounded struggled up the companionways from below.
Their faces were blanched white with sickness except where the sun had burned them brick red, their clothes were torn and tattered, their boots worn thin. They were half-starved, their legs and arms pocked with ulcers. There were only a few men brought out on stretchers, very few, and that was b
ecause the sick and injured had died in the low-lying marshes, or bled in agony on the voyage home.
As the men came ashore they were claimed by their families. Some stayed to watch the unloading, but most turned for home, wives sobbing over the wrecks of their husbands, mothers grieving over sons, children staring upwards, uncomprehending, into the newly aged face, into the head laid open with a livid new scar, or a weeping wound, a man they could not recognise as their father.
The crowd hardly diminished at all, and that was when John realised how many men they had left behind in the marshes of the Ile de Rhé, since more than half of the families waiting to welcome their men home were still waiting. The men would not come, they would never come. They had been left on a small island in a small river before a small French town, as he had warned. As many as four thousand families had lost a father.
If Buckingham had such thoughts he did not show them. He stood very still and straight beside the wheel of his ship, balancing his weight lightly on the balls of his feet like a dancer, his hand on his hips, his head up. When someone from the quayside shouted abuse at him, he turned and looked for them, as if he did not fear to meet their gaze, his smile as ready as ever.
‘He has not sent a herald for me,’ he said softly so that only Tradescant could hear. ‘Not soldiers to arrest me; but equally, not a herald to greet me. Am I to be ignored? Simply forgotten?’
‘Hold fast,’ Tradescant replied. ‘We are early. It’s only the poor people who have been sleeping at the quayside and around the city who will have known when we were sighted. The king himself could arrive at any moment.’