Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

“She knows your service comes first,” John said. “How does the king today? Still better?”

Buckingham looked grave. “He is worse,” he said. “The ague has hold of him, and he is not a young man, and was never strong. He saw the prince privately today and put him in mind of his duties. He is preparing himself… I really think he is preparing himself. It is my duty to make sure he can be at peace, that he can rest.”

“I heard he was getting better,” John ventured cautiously.

“We give out the best reports we can, but the truth is that he is an old man who is ready to meet his death.”

John bowed and left the room, and went down to the hall for his dinner.

The place was in uproar. Half a dozen of the physicians that John had first seen in the king’s chamber were calling for their horses and their menservants. The courtiers were shouting for their carriages and for food to take on their journeys.

“What’s this?” John asked.

“It’s all the fault of your master,” a woman replied shortly. “He has flung the physicians from the king’s presence, and half the court too. He said they were troubling him too much with their noise and their playing, and he said the physicians were fools.”

John grinned and stepped back to watch the confusion of their departure.

“He will regret it!” one doctor shouted to another. “I warned him myself, if His Majesty suffers and we are not at hand, he will regret this insult to us!”

“He is beyond counsel! I warned him but he pushed me from the room!”

“He snatched my very pipe out of my mouth and broke it!” one of the courtiers interrupted. “I know that the king hates smoke, but it is a sure prevention of infection, and how should His Majesty smell it in another room? I shall write to the duke and complain of my treatment. Twenty years I have been at court, and he pushed me out of the door as if I were his serf!”

“He has cleared the room of everyone but a nurse, his mother and himself,” a man declared. “And he swears that the king shall have peace and quiet and no more meddling. As if a king should not be surrounded by his people all the time!”

John left them and strolled into dinner. Buckingham and his mother were at the high table; the place for the king was left respectfully empty. Prince Charles was seated next to the empty place, his head very close to the duke’s.

“Aye, they’ll have much to consider,” a man said in an undertone and took his seat next to John.

John took some fine manchet bread and a large joint of pheasant from the plate in the center of the table. He snapped his fingers for a girl and she came to pour him wine.

“What’s the countess doing here?” one man asked. “The king can’t abide her.”

“Caring for the king, apparently. The physicians have been sent away and she is to nurse him.”

“An odd choice,” another man said shortly. “Since he hates the sight of her.”

“The king is on the mend,” yet another man said, pulling out his stool. “The duke was right to send those fools away. His Majesty had the fever – why! – we’ve all had a fever. And if the countess knows a remedy which cured the duke, why should she not offer it to the king?”

The men glanced at John. “Was it you fetched her?” one asked.

John savored the taste of roast pheasant, the rich juices flowing in his mouth. “I can hardly remember,” he said, muffled. “D’you know this is the first decent meal I’ve had in a day and a half? I was damming up a fishpond in Essex this time yesterday. And now here I am back at Theobalds. And very good fare to be had too.”

One of the men shrugged and laughed shortly. “Aye,” he said. “We’ll get no secrets from you. We all know who is your master, and you serve him well, John Tradescant. I hope you never come to regret it!”

John looked up the hall to the top table where the duke was leaning forward to call to one of the officers. The candlelight made a reddish halo around his black curls; his face was as bright and delighted as a child’s.

“No,” John said with affection. “I’ll never regret it.”

John stayed late in the hall, drinking with the men at his table. At midnight he headed unsteadily to the duke’s chamber.

“Where d’you sleep?” one of his drinking companions asked him.

“With my lord.”

“Oh, yes,” the man said pointedly. “I heard you were a favorite.”

John wheeled around and stared at him, and the man held his gaze, half a question on his face which was an insult. John spoke a hasty word and was about to strike the man when a serving maid ran between the two of them, a basin in her hand, blinded with hurry.

“What’s the matter?” John asked.

“It’s the king!” she exclaimed. “His fever has risen, and his piss is blue as ink. He is as sick as a dog. He is asking for his physicians but he has only Lady Villiers to attend him.”

“Asking for his physicians?” the man demanded. “Then the duke must send for them, to bring them back.”

“He will do,” John said uncertainly. “He is bound to do so.”

He went to Buckingham’s chamber, and found the duke seated by the window gazing at his own reflection in the darkened glass, as if it would answer a question.

“Shall I ride out and fetch the physicians?” John asked him quietly.

The duke shook his head.

“I heard the king was asking for them.”

“He is well nursed,” Buckingham said. “If anyone should ask you, John, you may tell them that he is well cared for. He needs rest; not a dozen men harrying him to death.”

“I’ll tell them,” John said. “But they tell me that he is asking for his physicians and your mother is not a favorite.”

The duke hesitated. “Anything else?”

“That’s enough,” John warned him. “More than enough.”

“Go to sleep,” the duke said gently. “I am going to bed myself in a minute.”

John shucked off his breeches and shoes, lay down in his shirt and was asleep in moments.

There was a hammering on the bedroom door in the early hours of the morning. John started out of sleep, leaped from his bed and ran, not to the door, but to the duke’s bed, to stand between him and whoever might be outside battering the door down. In that first moment, as he pulled back the bed curtains, he saw that the younger man was not asleep but was lying open-eyed, as if he were silently waiting, as if he had been wide awake and waiting all night.

“All’s safe, Tradescant,” he said. “You can open the door.”

“My lord duke!” the shout came. “You must come at once!”

Buckingham rose from his bed and threw a cape around him. “What’s to do?” he called.

“It’s the king! It’s the king!”

He nodded and swiftly went from the room. John, pulling on breeches and his waistcoat, ran behind him.

Buckingham went swiftly through the door to the antechamber but the guards barred John’s way.

“I’m with my lord,” John said.

“No one goes in but the prince and the Villiers: mother and son,” the guard replied. “His orders.”

John fell back and waited.

The door opened and Buckingham looked out. His face was pale and grave. “Oh, John. Good. Send someone you can trust to fetch His Grace the Bishop of Winchester. The king needs him.”

John bowed and turned on his heel.

“And come back here,” Buckingham ordered. “I have need of you.”

“Of course,” John said.

The court was subdued all day. The king was worse; there could be no doubt of it. But the countess was said to be confident. She was applying another plaster, the king was feverish; she was certain her cure would draw the heat from him.

In the evening a message came that the Bishop of Winchester was too ill to travel. “Get me another bishop,” Buckingham said to John. “Any bloody bishop will do. Get me the nearest, get me the quickest. But get me a bishop!”