The Conscience of the King

He was in hell, he knew. The agonising, burning, searing pain was as anticipated and more, the perpetual agony of the incessant heat to be expected. But why was it so dark? Surely Lucifer would want his prisoners to see the flames as well as feel them? And why were there sometimes these voices, flittering in and out of his brain, never so close as to be understood? And the tiny, fragmentary moments of great peace, when a cooling balm seemed to come over him? It was strange. Well, he had eternity to understand it…

There had been two explosions, though Gresham had felt only one. The first as the powder on the second galliass was ignited by the fuse, the second as Gresham's boat blew up in sympathy. The blast had mostly been directed upwards — the engineers had secured iron panels around the barrels so that the explosion made a fiery plume up into the sky. It had still nearly swamped Jane's tiny boat, and for a few seconds she could see herself and her children being dragged down to the bottom of the Thames by the weight of the chains and the neck collars. Then there had been a thump alongside, willing hands reaching down to help them. The House. A boat from The House. The largest boat, sturdy, able to survive almost anything, full of men, angry men, their men.

Mannion had been in the second boat. For a brief moment he saw his master silhouetted, arms outflung, against the impossible-light of the powder. He had ducked as the surprisingly weak blast passed over them, wrenching the boat around and leaving them deaf but otherwise unharmed. He had seen the body, face down in the water, the cloth ripped off its back, blood across the white of the flesh. As he came to within yards of it, urging the men on and on, it sank. Mannion dived cleanly into the water, into the pitch black, down and down and down. His hand flailing in front of him caught hold of something. Hair. His master's hair. He kicked upwards with huge force, arms now around Gresham's chest.

They thought he was dead. A huge, jagged splinter of wood had struck him in the arm, just above the elbow, and hung there. A leg was broken. He was not breathing! Mannion flung himself on Gresham's chest and pushed down with all his might three times. He turned his master over, hung his head from the edge of the decking, thumping at his back. One minute. Two minutes. Nothing. An awful, hacking retching suddenly came from Gresham's throat and his body convulsed, arching upwards in a spasm so powerful that it threatened to tip him over the side. Mannion waited for the vomit and foul water to dribble from Gresham's mouth, pushed down on his rib cage, waited, and then placed his mouth firmly over Gresham's. He removed his lips from the cold flesh of his master, repeated it. With another shuddering, heaving spasm, Gresham sucked in his own breath. Mannion cradled him until they reached the shore.

They sat by his bedside. His breathing was slight, feathery, threatening to stop at any moment. He was in a deep coma, showing no sign of consciousness. The first doctors shook their heads, retreated into a corner and muttered, and then suggested intensive bleeding.

He had been covered in blood when they had brought him back home. A part of Jane rebelled, not least against the thought of the cruel little knives piercing her husband's flesh. God had put as much blood in him as he needed, and he had lost pints of it. Why did he need to lose more? Mannion took her aside.

'Look, mistress,' he said. '1 ain't no surgeon. But your master and me, we seen a lot of injuries on campaign, never mind the ones he's 'ad. He never did like bleedings, I can tell you for sure. He refused when he had a fever once, wouldn't be doing with it. We saw lots of people bled on campaign. Bled on purpose, that is. Didn't see any of 'em get any better for it, and saw a lot get worse.'

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.

And because she was lonely, appallingly lonely, and more terrified than she had ever been in her life of losing the man who gave meaning to her existence, she talked of that terror, the lurching, rattling moments in the coach when she had clasped the children desperately to herself, being flung from side to side and terrified that she would be hurled out on to the road. The awful silence as the coach had ground to a halt and she had been hauled roughly out, reaching down in a paroxysm of anger and fear for the knife she carried strapped to her inside leg and feeling the blow to the side of her head. She talked of the utter horrors of waking, devils beating at the side of her face, to find herself trussed and chained by the neck like a slave girl. The appalling feeling of helplessness in the face of this bloated monstrosity. The anger and the bitter recrimination… why had she not spotted something was wrong? Gresham would have seen something was wrong! She was just a weak, stupid woman, in her element checking the supply of preserves and feeble as a child when real business was in hand. And then the sickening, stomach- and brain-churning realisation that this foul, evil thing intended to have her, in front of her children, and there was nothing she could do! Without realising it, her hand tightened on Gresham's as she gazed into the fire and recreated her own hell. Could she have been born to be penetrated by this satyr? Well, many a woman had endured worse and stayed silent — but her children would know and have seen her so violated! The syphilis! The pox! To live on for a few more years in the face of her husband, diseased? And then the answer had come to her. She could bite off her tongue! And her mouth had been open at its widest, ready to clamp down hard and without hesitation, when the other boat had hit.

She was panting now, breathing heavily, her hand still clutching Gresham's.

His hand tugged at hers.

She looked down, disbelieving. His hand, gently, was squeezing hers.

She leaned over him. His eyes were closed still. Two, three huge tears dropped from her eyes and fell on his lids. 'Warm,' he said. 'Warm.'

An eye opened, blinked in her tears, and shut again. Hurriedly, she brought the cloth by her side to his eyes and wiped them. He was speaking, croaking, a half-whisper. She leaned forward, her ears nearly pressing his lips.

'I should… have been there,' he was trying to say. 'I should have been there.' Then, something else, stronger this time. Both his eyes were open. 'You must never die on me. Never…'

She screamed her happiness, screamed it out for the whole house to hear, screamed it so that Mannion leaped up as if the whole Spanish army was in his tent and The House under attack.

'If he comes back, you must hold on to him. Do not let him slip back into oblivion…' Dr Napier had said.

Her grip threatened to kill him all over again. Crying, babbling, calling out, she made him keep those eyes open, made him speak, made him live.

It was easier being dead, thought Gresham. Much calmer. Much quieter. Yet perhaps, after all, this was better. He smiled into the eyes of his wife.