The Taming of the Queen

The painter, hurrying with his sketch book to record the sailing from the harbour, gives a low bow to the king and starts to outline the view before us, the tower where we are standing, the harbour to our right, the ships slowly emerging, the sea before us, the fluttering pennants, the cannon rolled out at the ready.

‘I’m glad that my husband is not on board one of the ships,’ Catherine Brandon remarks quietly.

I look at her pale face and see a reflection of my own unease. This is not a masque, this is not one of the expensive spectacles that the court loves; this is going to be a genuine sea battle fought between our ships and the French in sight of land. I will see what Thomas faces. I will have to watch as his ship is bombarded.

‘Do you know who is commanding which ship?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘Some new admirals were named last night at dinner,’ she says. ‘The king has honoured his friends with commands so that they can take part in the battle. My husband wasn’t very happy at new men being put in command the night before they have to fight. But he is overall commander of land and sea, and, thank God, he stays on land.’

‘Why, are you afraid of the sea?’

‘I am afraid of all deep water,’ she confesses. ‘I can’t swim. But then nobody in armour can swim. Few sailors know how and none of the soldiers would be able to stay afloat in their heavy jackets.’

I stop her with a small gesture. ‘Perhaps nobody will have to swim.’

There is a ragged cheer from the quayside as the king’s newly-refitted ship Mary Rose spreads her beautiful square sails and throws out ropes to the galleys to drag her out to sea.

‘Oh, there she goes. Who is her commander?’

‘Tom Seymour, God bless him,’ Catherine says.

I nod and raise my hand to my forehead, as if to shield my eyes from the sunshine. I think, I can’t bear to watch him sail out to battle, and chirrup like one of my songbirds, as meaningless and as stupid as they. ‘It’s quite windy,’ I remark. ‘Is that good?’

‘It’s a benefit for us,’ Uncle Parr reassures me. He is standing with my ladies, his hands shading his eyes, staring out to sea. ‘They have fighting galleys that can get amongst our ships in flat calm. They can row wherever they like. But on a day like today, when we can cram on sail, we can burst out of the harbour and bombard them. We can come down on them like the wind, with the wind behind us.’

Everyone falls back as the king comes to stand beside me, his head high, gulping in the sea air. ‘It’s certainly a beautiful sight,’ I remark as one by one his ships are dragged out of port, raising their sails and being set free, like flying doves, like seagulls out to sea. The court cheers as each ship, the Peter, and the Henry Grace à Dieu, and the ships we have stolen from the Scots, the Salamander and the Unicorn, go past our vantage point. Then suddenly, as if a cloud has passed over the sun, we fall silent.

‘What is it?’ I ask Henry.

For the first time he is not looking out to sea, his face bright; he is not striking a pose, hands on hips for the artist that is sketching him. He looks behind him, as if to see that his guard is ready to cover his retreat, and then he looks back to where the dark blue mass of the Isle of Wight looms on the horizon. Before the island, in the channel, the French fleet has suddenly silently appeared, sailing in, row upon row of them. If it were land it would be a cavalry charge of huge coursers, ridden knee to knee, one row after another in a great bank of brute strength. But here there is no sound, and it is somehow more terrifying for this. The ships move easily through the water, their sails spread, all on the same tack, and there seem to be hundreds, thousands of them. I cannot see the sea, not between them nor beyond them. It is like a forest of sails on the move. They are like a wall of sail.

And before them, in their vanguard, is another fleet. These are galleys, each one moving with an aggressive thrust through the water, each one keeping time with the other, row after row leaping forward with each blow of the oars into the sea. Even from here, even from our brave pretty little turret on Southsea Common, I can see the dark mouth of the single cannon that is mounted in the prow of each low barge as it looks hungrily towards our ships, our few ships, our little ships, as they tumble out of the safety of harbour to defend our coast, and I know that on his flagship, the Mary Rose, Thomas Seymour will be beside the steersman, looking out and seeing that he is massively outnumbered.

‘God help us,’ I whisper.