Nicholas looks to Norris for help.
‘Tell him, Norris,’ Essex barks.
With a diplomatic cough, Norris says, ‘We have suffered a reverse – to Sir Henry Harington’s force, at Arklow–’
Essex breaks in angrily, ‘Reverse? Two hundred or more dead! Men I can ill afford to lose. And all because the old fool Harington allowed the O’Byrnes to catch him unprepared. Those the rebels didn’t kill broke and fled, almost to the walls of Wicklow. Captains deserted their men. English pike – English, mind, not Irish levies – broke and ran like frightened women. I tell you this, Harington is for prison. If he wasn’t a privy councillor, I’d hang the bastard myself.’
‘Your Grace, these are words spoken in haste,’ says Norris. ‘Reflection will put this setback in a better light.’
But Essex is not to be calmed.
‘If Harington’s men – those few who didn’t desert – think they were flying to safety when they quit the field, I have news for them: I’m going to hang every damn one of them!’
Nicholas observes all this with growing alarm. He wonders if Norris has summoned him because he fears Essex is about to drop dead of apoplexy.
‘Your Grace, surely you don’t mean that,’ says Norris soothingly.
‘Watch me, Norris,’ Essex snaps. ‘I’ll knot the ropes myself.’
‘Sir, I urge you to be calm,’ Norris says. He turns to Nicholas for support. ‘Tell him, Dr Shelby: such extremity of the choleric humour is not good for him.’
Nicholas thinks it wiser to let the storm blow itself out.
But it seems the thunder has only just started to roll. Essex jabs a gloved finger at him. ‘What manner of physician are you, sirrah? I’ve more of my army lying in a sickbed than standing in the ranks. Explain to me how so many men can sicken so quickly.’
Perhaps the earl lives in such rarefied air, thinks Nicholas, that he hasn’t realized it’s been raining for ever, and that the cold, the deep bogs, the mud, the bad water and the poor food have taken their inevitable toll on men less extraordinary than himself. He opens his mouth to say as much, but Essex cuts him off.
‘It’s not sickness, Doctor. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s cowardice. A mean wickedness of the spirit, bordering on treachery. They’d rather feign illness than face the enemy.’
A menacing jab of a gloved finger in Nicholas’s direction.
‘And you excuse it.’
Nicholas feels the heat rise in his cheeks. ‘That is unjust and untrue, Your Grace. The men are sickening because of the conditions, their lack of proper equipment and victuals. I treat as many as I can, with what I have. If there is fault in this army, it does not lie on my shoulders.’
For a moment the officers surrounding Essex just stare at him. To his surprise, Nicholas finds himself standing his ground.
‘If Your Grace is displeased with my service here in Ireland, it is within your power to send me back to England. I’m sure the queen will understand.’
Norris puts his palm against his forehead and closes his eyes. One or two of the earl’s officers glance at their master to observe the anticipated eruption of anger. But Devereux keeps himself in check. He waves them all away, ordering only Nicholas to remain. When they are alone, he says,
‘I will tell you plainly, Dr Shelby, I am in a troubled humour.’
‘Your responsibilities would weigh heavily on any man, my lord,’ Nicholas tells him, surprised by the earl’s candour.
‘It’s naught to do with responsibilities. I am accustomed to responsibilities. This is a deeper melancholy.’
‘If I am to assist, Your Grace, I must first know the symptoms.’
Essex turns his back upon Nicholas, as though leaving it to someone else to speak on his behalf, even though everyone else has retreated into the shadows of the great hall.
‘I have moments of great weariness that come upon me. I have no appetite. My body is sometimes afflicted with sharp pains. Do you think, perhaps, it is the first sign of marsh fever?’
‘May I be permitted to make an examination, Your Grace?’
Reluctantly Essex faces him. He sits in a chair while Nicholas looks into his eyes – and notices the broken blood vessels around the irises, marks the greyness of the skin, searches for open lesions that don’t appear to be healing.
‘Do you have any chancres about your body?’ he asks.
‘Only where my armour chafes against wet flesh. They’ll go when it stops raining. If it ever does.’
Nicholas gives a slow, sympathetic nod. ‘I’ll have my wife prepare a balm of moneywort and honey. That should ease them. As for the internal pains, it could be that you are afflicted by a kidney stone. I’ll ask her to grind a medlar kernel and some parsley root into a powder to add to your wine. That may help.’
‘Do so,’ says Essex gruffly. Then, as though it is the hardest symptom of all to confront, he says, ‘I do have a temper, I will admit that. But recently it comes unbidden and with a fury that startles even me. I see enemies everywhere. And I don’t mean the rebels. Can your wife mix me a powder for that?’
For a while Nicholas considers the challenge in silence. Then he says, ‘A man would have to be made of rock not to find this campaign debilitating, Your Grace. It is a testimony to your constitution that you’re not in the hospital alongside all those other fellows, whose ability to bear these trials you so despise.’
‘You mean, you don’t know what’s wrong with me?’ Essex says bluntly. ‘Were Ormonde and Henshawe wrong when they sang your praises?’
Nicholas laughs. ‘I could study a flask of your urine, or bleed you, but I don’t think that would help. Besides, if you know anything of me – and after Her Majesty appointed me, I assume you made enquiries – you will have heard me spoken of as being something of a heretic when it comes to physic. I hold a great deal of what is written by the ancients to be false. I believe our present understanding of medicine to be flawed. Therefore I resist making diagnoses unless I can be sure. And I don’t offer cures beyond what I know will work. My instinct tells me that you demand too much of yourself. If a man sets himself an impossible task, melancholy is to be expected when he fails to achieve it.’
Essex studies him for a moment in silence. For Nicholas, it is an uncomfortable inspection. Then the earl says, ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that I relinquish command of the army, are you? My enemies at court would fall upon me like jackals. Her Highness would discover an enmity in her heart for me as would never again be extinguished.’
‘If you are truly in search of the cause of your melancholy, Your Grace,’ Nicholas says, remembering how Ireland had destroyed the earl’s father, ‘then I believe you should seek the explanation not from me, but from within yourself.’
Essex almost springs out of the chair, throwing it backwards. As it crashes onto the flagstones, he shoos Nicholas away as though he were no better than an impertinent chambermaid. ‘Enough! Be gone,’ he shouts. His once-handsome face scowls with malevolent fury. There is spittle in the corner of his mouth. ‘Ormonde and Henshawe were wrong. You’re just a quack, like all the others. And a quack in the pay of Robert Cecil, more’s the like. In this army, it seems, you don’t have to flee the enemy to be a traitor. Get out of my sight, Shelby, or by God I’ll hang you from the gibbet alongside Harington’s men. Maybe then the queen will send me a physician who knows his business.’
‘The pox? The Earl of Essex has syphilis?’