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.

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 realized 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 harbor was ahead, the gray 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 honor. 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 gray 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 gotten 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.