Martin Stephen: The Conscience of the King

Dare she take the risk? No, she muttered firmly to the doctors, you will not bleed him. You will let him be.

It took an age for Dr Napier to come to them, for all that Jane knew he had come as quickly as he could. Gresham was weaker now, his face hollow. The gaping wound where they had taken out the huge splinter was angry and red, seeming not to heal, threatening at any time to break out into the gangrene that they knew would lose him his arm or more likely kill him.

Napier spent an hour by Gresham's bedside. He demanded the fire be built up to chimney-threatening proportions, then closed all the windows and doors, increasing the heat. Only then did he take the clothes off the bed and strip Gresham down to his bare flesh.

'Have him washed, while we're at it,' said Napier, 'from top to toe. Warm water, and soap.'

He came back to Jane and Mannion. 'There is one thing you must understand. I believe you are a strong woman, from what you endured on the river. Sometimes when a man is in water and does not breathe for a period of time, strange things happen in the brain. The life of the person, his character, his individuality, seems to leave him, the brain carrying on only the basic functions of the body. I cannot guarantee this is not the case with your husband. It may not be so. Yet you must prepare.'

'Is that all?' asked Jane bleakly.

'No, far from it. First, there is this.' He produced two boxes, each containing a paste, one white and one brown. 'Exactly this much of each paste must be placed on his tongue every night at nine. He must be watched to see he does not spit it out or the material drop from his mouth. In time it will dissolve. It is essential that the dosage is regular and that it is taken without a single exception.'

'Unicorn's horn?' asked Mannion hopefully, who liked his medicines exotic.

'No,' said Napier scathingly. 'The first is made of a mould that grows in very wet conditions on the bark of a certain tree. The other is a compound of roots and herbs.'

'Mandrake root?' asked Mannion, unrelenting. The mandrake was said to grow where a man had spilled his seed on the ground, and it was also said that it screamed when it was picked. Napier did not deign to answer. Instead he gave other instructions. Gresham must be kept warm, but given a cooling bath every hour. At all times someone must try and force beef broth through his lips. 'Most of it he will reject, some will stay. Place a small amount of fine wheat bread in his mouth. Watch him in case he chokes, but keep it there and let it dissolve. Also honey and sweetmeats. Any wholesome food that will dissolve in his mouth, anything, will help.'

Napier turned again, ponderous, slow. 'I believe he thought himself dead. Death has not called him yet, but it will do so if he waits long enough at its door. His mind has withdrawn. It is at a level we mere mortals cannot reach, somewhere near to Hades. Smell is a potent sense, a most potent sense. And sound. What smells does he respond to?'

'My perfume,' said Jane, looking down, flushing. 'Fresh bread, and bacon well done on the spit,' said Mannion instantly. 'A really good wine…' 'Music,' said Jane. 'He loves music'

'Then sprinkle your perfume on his pillow at all times,' said Napier, 'and have music in the room — some half hour of playing, and then some half hour of silence. Bring your fresh bread in here, fry your bacon. And pray.'

'He does not believe in God,' said Jane, a terrible admission that could have brought a terrible punishment. Yet she misted this cumbersome, pedantic man.

'No, but God might believe in him,' smiled Napier. He took a deep breath. 'I will stay, if I may, Your Ladyship, for the duration of his illness.'

And so the vigil commenced, Jane at Gresham's bedside until her head was dropping on the counterpane with fatigue, then a few hours of blessed sleep while Mannion took over, then the bedside again. They brought the children to see him, on Napier's advice.

'Children are more robust than anyone imagines,' he said. 'This is a world they do not understand, and from that lack of understanding comes fear. The more they are shown, within reason, the less they fear. The less they fear, the stronger they become.'

Had they been asked to understand too much? wondered Jane, the horror of that closed hold coming on her again. 'Was that man a bastard?' Walter had asked, remembering their father's outburst by the river side. 'What is rape?' queried a thoughtful Anna. Neither child seemed outwardly much hurt by what had happened, though neither wished to talk about it. Jane asked the servants to enquire gently, but they said nothing. And then Anna woke up screaming one night after such questioning, and Jane ordered it to cease. Scars can be covered up on the flesh, and covered up on the mind, but they never go away, she thought sadly. On her or her children's minds.

The vigil went on. The paste provided by Napier seemed to do something to lessen the angry redness of the wound. The broken leg was mending, a clean break. Yet still he lay there, breathing lightly, eyes closed, expressionless.

The chief beneficiary was Mannion. He had assembled nothing less than a small kitchen in front of Gresham's bed, cheerfully bringing the bacon to sizzle on the hearth and the newly baked bread to fill the room, and the wine for Gresham to smell which had, after all, to be drunk once it had been opened. Gigantuan snores were emanating from the corner where he had fallen asleep. Jane, for whom his company had become as natural as that of the sky or the walls around her, did not wake and move him.

'It is the small hours of the morning that are the danger time,' Napier had said to her. 'You must, if you can, be by his bedside at these times. You must talk to him. It will be hard, but you must talk.'

It was a half hour past two. London and The House were silent. The candles gave enough light to see by, softened the room. The servant would come any minute now with fresh coal to build up the fire. Mannion would wake with a huge grunt in an hour or so, see he had fallen asleep in the room and apologise. She would brush it aside, perhaps go and throw cold water over her face, see if sleep would come for a few hours. Then The House would slowly come to life as its people stirred and started their lives again, yet for Gresham that daily rebirth would have no meaning, and for it he would have no ears or eyes. Just lie there, breathing ever so gently.

And so she talked to Gresham. She talked of the doings of The House: the silly servant who had poured sugar instead of salt into the beef pie and the anger of the chef; that Young Tom's father and mother were both taken by an ague that looked to see them off this world and Young Tom was torn between going to see them and staying to wait out his master's vigil. And talked of how there seemed to be a dearth of good, fresh meat in the city, and the milk had come in sour yesterday, the farmer swearing it had come straight from the cow and an old woman had given the bad eye to his beasts, so she had.

And when she ran out of tittle-tattle, she told him of their children. How little Anna had asked her what rape was, and how she had tried to answer without spoiling the innocence of her little girl, and how Anna had known, as Anna always did, that she was not being told the truth but had said nothing more, choosing instead to spare her mother on an instinct that ran deeper than anything else.

She talked then of her love for him. How, as a beaten and starved little girl, this man had ridden into her village, thin and emaciated, with the trappings of a lord on his back and horse and that strange man-mountain riding beside him. How could a man so rich be so thin, and look so unhappy? she had thought. How could a man be more glamorous? He had talked to her, by the pond, and then her stepfather had come out and whipped her and he… he had broken his arm. And there had been a massive row and she, Jane, had found herself riding out of the village she hated with all her heart, seated on the saddle of the man-mountain's horse. And she had screamed and screamed and screamed until even these great men had listened, screamed that he had saved her and she was going to ride on his horse and no one else's, and so with an expression of disdain Gresham had plonked her on his saddle and they had ridden in triumph to London. How from the moment she had first seen him, her knight in grubby armour, she had decided that there would be only one man in her life. She had spurned the endless advances of other men, and even the servant boys, her contempt withering their pathetic desire even as it blossomed. She was not for them, nor for any other man. She had organised his house for him, put it straight, become his housekeeper without his knowing. And then, one evening, she had forced him to look at her as a woman.