Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

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.