Virgin Earth (40 page)

“I am cold in my heart,” Buckingham said softly. “Icy. Is my heart broken, d’you think, John?”

Without thinking what he was doing, John reached out and gathered Buckingham so that the dark tumbled head rested on his shoulder. “No,” he said gently. “It will mend.”

Buckingham turned in his embrace and put his arms around him. “Sleep with me tonight,” he said. “I have been as lonely as a king.”

John moved a little closer and Buckingham settled himself for sleep. “I’ll stay,” John said softly. “Whatever you want.”

The horn lantern swung on its hook, throwing gentle shadows across the gilded ceiling as the boat heaved and dropped in gentle waters. There was no sound from the deck above them. The night watch was quiet, in mourning. John had a sudden strange fancy that they had all died on the Isle of Rue and that this was some afterlife, on Charon’s boat, and that he would travel forever, his arms around his master, carried by a dark tide into nothingness.

Sometime after midnight John stirred, thought for a moment he was at home and Elizabeth was in his arms, and then remembered where he was.

Buckingham slowly opened his eyes. “Oh, John,” he sighed. “I did not think I would ever sleep again.”

“Shall I go now?” Tradescant asked.

Buckingham smiled and closed his eyes again. “Stay,” he said. His face, gilded by the lamplight, was almost too beautiful to bear. The clear perfect profile and the sleepy languorous eyes, the warm mouth and the new sorrowful line between the arched brows. John put a hand out and touched it, as if a caress might melt that mark away. Buckingham took the hand and pressed it to his cheek, and then drew John down to the pillows. Gently, Buckingham raised himself up above him and slid warm hands underneath John’s shirt, untied the laces on his breeches. John lay, beyond thought, beyond awareness, unmoving beneath the touch of Buckingham’s hands.

Buckingham stroked him, sensually, smoothly, from throat to waist and then laid his cold, stone-cold face against John’s warm chest. His hand caressed John’s cock, stroked it with smooth confidence. John felt desire, unbidden, unexpected, rise up in him like the misplaced desire of a dream.

The lantern dipped and bobbed and John moved at Buckingham’s bidding, turned as he commanded, lay face down in the bed and parted his legs. The pain when it came to him was sharp like a pain of deep agonizing desire, a pain that he welcomed, that he wanted to wash through him. And then it changed and became a deep pleasure and a terror to him, a feeling of submission and penetration and leaping desire and deep satisfaction. John thought he understood the passionate grief and lust of a woman when she can take a man inside her, and by submitting to him become his mistress. When he groaned it was not only with pain but with a deep inner joy and a sense of resolution that he had never felt before, as if at last, after a lifetime, he understood that love is the death of the self, that his love for Villiers took them both into darkness and mystery, away from self.

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 color 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 gray 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 toward 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 traveling, 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 his 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 dishonor 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 honor.”

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 judgment 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 toward 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.