His brother, Edward, argues in council that Thomas has a great sense of the sea, has travelled far and seen the shipyards of Venice, has watched their galleys manoeuvre and fight; but even as he tells the king this, the brothers’ rivals for the king’s attention: Thomas Howard and his son Henry, laugh scornfully and say that ships will only ever serve the king by delivering his armies to France, or by blocking the English harbours from invading French ships. The idea of a naval campaign fought by sailors at sea is ludicrous. They say Thomas Seymour has been drinking sea water and courting mermaids. He is a dreamer, a fool.
Those in favour of naval war are almost all reformers. Those who say that the ships must be used in the old way are those who want the old religion. The argument deteriorates into the usual division of the court. It is as if nothing can be decided without religion; and religion can never be decided, but lurches from one side to the other.
‘And now it turns out that the Howards are right and Tom Seymour is a fool,’ Henry spits furiously at me as I come to his rooms before dinner. He is not dining in court tonight. His leg is giving him too much pain and now he is running a fever. I look at his red sweating face and I feel as sick with fear as a little child facing an angry parent. I feel as if there is nothing I can do to pacify him; I will be in the wrong whatever I say.
‘Shall I dine with you, my dear?’ I ask softly. ‘I can have a table set for us here. I don’t need to go into the hall.’
‘Dine in the great hall!’ he snaps. ‘They need to see the throne filled and, God knows, my daughters cannot take my place and my son is a motherless child. I am all but alone in the world, and my commanders are fools and Tom Seymour the worst of them all.’
‘I shall come to you when dinner is over,’ I say soothingly. ‘But can I send my musicians to play for you in the meantime? They have a new choral piece based on your own—’
‘Tom has played ducks and drakes with my ships and now stands to lose them all! D’you think I can be cosseted by some fools twanging lutes? D’you think I am not in despair? Despair and nobody can help me!’
Anthony Denny looks up and exchanges a glance with Doctor William Butts. They all wait to see if I can calm the king. I am their only hope. I go very close to him and put my hand against his hot damp face.
‘My love,’ I say. ‘You’re not alone. I love you, the country adores you. This is terrible, I am so sorry.’
‘I have heard this very night from Portsmouth, from Portsmouth, madam. Tom Seymour set sail into the worst storm they have seen for years and is likely to be lost. And all my ships lost with him.’
I don’t flinch, I don’t even close my eyes though I feel a great pulse in the core of my body, as if I am wounded, actually bleeding inside; but I remain steadily smiling down at his furious face, my hand against his burning cheek. ‘God save them for England,’ I say. ‘God save all of them in peril on the sea.’
‘God save my ships!’ he bellows. ‘D’you have any idea how much it costs me to build and equip a ship? And then Tom gets one of his brilliant ideas and throws away the fleet on a hopeless venture! Drowns himself in the process.’
‘He is drowned? The fleet is lost?’ My voice is steady but I can feel my temples pulse with pain.
‘No, no, Your Majesty, it’s not that bad yet. We have no news for certain.’ Denny steps forward and addresses the king. ‘We know there is a storm and that some ships are missing, the admiral’s ship among them, but we have no more news than that. It might all be well.’
‘How can it be well when they are sinking like stones?’ Henry shouts.
We are all silent. Nobody can do anything with the king when he is in such a rage, and nobody dares to try. My hands are trembling but so too is Denny. I think: surely I would know if he were dead? Surely I would simply know it – if he were rolling with the tide, his dark hair floating from his white face, his boots slowly filling with water and taking him down to the seabed? Surely God would have more mercy than to let a sinner like me, a sinner like him, be parted without one word of love?
‘The admiral’s ship is lost?’ I ask Denny quietly as Doctor Butts steps forward with a draught in a small glass. Wordlessly he presses it into the king’s hand, which is clenched on the arm of his chair, and wordlessly we watch as Henry downs it in one great gulp. After silent moments we see his grip ease on the chair, the terrible scowl ironed from his forehead. He heaves a great sigh.
‘I suppose you are not at fault,’ he says begrudgingly to me.
I manage a smile. ‘I think not,’ I say.
He rubs his damp face against my hand like a sick dog seeking a caress. I bend and kiss his cheek. He puts his hand on my tightly laced back and, out of sight of the court, slides it down to clench my buttock. ‘You are distressed,’ he states.
‘For you,’ I say firmly. ‘Of course.’
‘Very good. So go to dinner and come back to me when you are in a quieter frame of mind. Come back when you have dined.’
I curtsey and go to the doorway. Anthony Denny, now Sir Anthony Denny since his knighthood at Boulogne, steps out with me.
‘Are many men lost?’ I ask him quietly.
‘They set out and got scattered, and then they had to run before a storm, but more than that we don’t know,’ he says. ‘It’s in God’s hands.’
‘The admiral’s ship?’
‘We don’t know. Pray God that we get news soon and that the king is not further distressed.’
Of course, that is the most important thing to Sir Anthony. The lives of the sailors, the bright courage of Thomas, matter little – to him, to all of us – compared to the king’s temper. I bow my head. ‘Amen.’
I pray for him; it is all I can do. I pray for his safety and I listen to the king complain of his failure, of his stupidity, of his recklessness, while I pray that he is alive, that he has survived the storm, that somewhere out on the Narrow Seas he is scanning the horizon for a break in the dark clouds and watching the reefed-in sails for the slackening of the gale.
Then we get news from Portsmouth that the fleet has limped into port, one at a time, sails ripped and masts torn down, and that some vessels are still missing. The admiral’s ship comes in with its mainmast broken but Thomas is standing, wrapped in his sea cape, in the stern. Thomas has returned, Thomas is safe. There is joy at court that he is alive – his brother, Edward, runs to the chapel to fall on his knees to thank God for sparing his most brilliant kinsman – but the king does not share it, and nobody dares to voice it before him. On the contrary, he repeats his complaints that Thomas is a fool, a fearless fool, and that he has destroyed the king’s trust and been false to his appointment. The king mutters that it is probably treason, that it is a matter for a trial, a man so reckless with the king’s fortune and forces is as bad as a traitor, worse than a traitor. That since God did not drown him it falls to the king to behead him.
I pray in silence. There can be no thanksgiving Mass from me for the survival of the admiral. I don’t say one word in his defence. Only once do I think, madly, of asking his sister-in-law Anne to write in her own name, never mentioning me, and warn him to come to court at once, before the king argues himself into a greater rage, and arrests Thomas for the crime of bad weather. But I dare not. She may share my interest in the new religion, she may be sworn to my service, but she is no great friend of mine; her devotion to the Seymour family comes before everything else. She has never been a friend to Thomas for his own sake. Foolishly, her passionate devotion to her husband makes her jealous of everyone else in his life. She eyes Thomas with suspicion for his charm and his ease at court. She is afraid that people prefer him to her husband – and she is right. Her only praise for any single member of her husband’s family is reserved for his dead sister Jane, Queen Jane, the mother of Prince Edward, and she mentions her before the king whenever she can: ‘my sister Jane’, ‘sainted Jane’, conveniently dead Jane.