‘Yes,’ he says with pleasure. ‘We might even see some action.’
‘There might be a battle?’ My voice is perfectly steady.
‘I hope so. I did not refit the Mary Rose for her to sit in harbour. She is my great weapon, my secret weapon. D’you know how many guns I have on her now?’
‘But you won’t go on board, will you, my lord?’
‘Twelve,’ he says, not answering me but pursuing his thoughts about his refitted ship. ‘She was always a mighty ship and now we’re going to use her like a weapon, as Thomas says. He’s quite right, she is like a floating castle. She has twelve port pieces, eight culverins and four cannon. She can stay far out at sea and bombard a land-based castle with guns as big as they have. She can shoot from one side and wheel around and shoot from the other while the first are reloading. Then she can grapple a ship and my soldiers can board them. I’ve put two fighting castles on her upper deck, fore and aft.’
‘But you won’t sail in her with Sir Thomas?’
‘I may.’ He is excited at the thought of a battle. ‘But I don’t forget that I have to keep myself safe, my dear. I am the father of the nation, I don’t forget it. And I would not leave you alone.’
I wonder if there is a way that I can ask which ship Thomas will command. The king looks at me kindly. ‘I know you will want to see that all your pretty things are packed. My steward shall tell yours when we will leave. We should have a good journey; the weather should be fine.’
‘I love going on progress in the summer,’ I say. ‘Shall we take Prince Edward with us?’
‘No, no, he can stay at Ashridge,’ he says. ‘But we can call on him as we come back to London. I know you will like that.’
‘I always like to see him.’
‘He is studying well? You hear from his tutors?’
‘He writes to me himself. We write to each other in Latin now for practice.’
‘Well enough,’ he says, but I know that he is at once jealous that his son loves me. ‘But you must not distract him from his studies, Kateryn. And he must not forget his true mother. She must live in his heart before anyone else. She is his guardian angel in heaven, as she was his guardian angel on earth.’
‘Whatever you think, my lord,’ I say, a little stiff at this snub.
‘He is born to be king,’ he says. ‘As I was. He has to be disciplined, and well taught and strictly raised. As I was. My mother was dead in my twelfth year. I had no-one writing loving letters to me.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You must have missed her very much. To lose her, when you were so young.’
His face compresses with self-pity. ‘I was heartbroken,’ he says huskily. ‘The loss of her broke my heart. No woman has ever loved me as she did. And she left me so young!’
‘Tragic,’ I say softly.
There is a knock at the door and the grooms of the servery come in with a table groaning with food. They place it at the side of the bed and heap a plate for the king as he points to one dish after another.
‘Eat!’ he commands me, his mouth full. ‘I can’t dine alone.’
I take a small plate and let them serve me. I sit by the fireside on my chair and nibble on a few pieces of pastry. The king is served wine. I take a glass of small ale. I cannot believe that I will see Thomas Seymour within the week.
It is a long two hours before the king has finished with the food and he is sweating and breathing heavily by the time he has eaten several slices of pie, some meats, and half of a lemon pudding.
‘Take it away, I am weary,’ he announces.
Quickly and efficiently they load the table and carry it out of the room.
‘Come to bed,’ he says thickly. ‘I will sleep here with you.’
He tips his head back and belches loudly. I go to my side of the bed and climb in. Before I have the covers spread over us he has let out a loud snore and is fast asleep.
I think I will be wakeful but I lie in the darkness and feel such joy as I think of Thomas. Perhaps he is in Portsmouth, perhaps sleeping on board his ship in his low-ceilinged wooden admiral’s cabin, with the candles rocking gently on their gimbals on the walls. I will see him next week, I think. I may not speak to him, I must not look for him, but at least I will see him, and he will see me.
The dream is so like my waking life that I do not know I am dreaming. I am in my bed and the king is sleeping beside me, snoring, and there is a terrible smell, the smell of his rotting leg, in my bed, and in my room. I slip out of bed, careful not to wake him, and the smell is worse than ever. I think, I must get out of the room, I cannot breathe, I must find the apothecary and get some perfume, I must send the girls out to the garden to pick some herbs. I go as quietly as I can towards the door to the private galleries between his room and mine.
I open the little door and step out, but instead of the wooden floor and scattered rushes and the stone walls of the gallery I am at once on the narrow landing of a stone staircase, a circular staircase, perilously steep. I put one hand on the central column and start to climb upwards. I must get away from this terrible smell of death, but instead it is getting worse, as if there is a corpse or some rotting horror just around the curve of the stair above me.
I put a hand over my mouth and nose to shield me from the smell and then I give a little choke as I realise that it is my hand that smells. It is me that is rotting; and it is my own stink that I am trying to escape. I smell like a dead woman, left to rot. I pause on the stair as I think that all I can do is to fling myself downstairs, headfirst down the stairs, so that this decayed body can complete the task of dying and I am not locked in with death, twinned with death, mated with death, decay in my own body at my fingertips.
I am crying now, raging at the fate that has brought me to this, but as the tears run down my cheeks they are like dust. They are dry as sand when they run into my lips and they taste like dried blood. In my desperation and with all the courage I can find, I turn on the step and face down the steep stone stairs. Then I give one despairing scream as I dive downwards, down the stone staircase, headfirst.
‘Hush, hush, you’re safe!’
I think it is Thomas who has caught me up, and I cling to him, shuddering. I turn to his shoulder and press my face against his warm chest and throat. But it is the king holding me in his arms, and I recoil and cry out again for fear that I have said Thomas’s name in my nightmare and now I am in real danger indeed.
‘Hush, hush,’ he says. ‘Hush, my love. It was a dream. Nothing but a dream. You’re safe now.’ He holds me gently against his fleshy comforting side, soft as a pillow.
‘My God, what a dream! God help me, what a nightmare!’
‘Nothing, it was nothing.’
‘I was so afraid. I dreamed I was dead.’
‘You are safe with me. You are safe with me, beloved.’
‘Did I talk in my sleep?’ I whimper. I am so afraid that I said his name.
‘No, you said no words, you just wept, poor girl. I woke you at once.’
‘It was so terrible!’
‘Poor little love,’ Henry says tenderly, stroking my hair, my bare shoulder. ‘You are safe with me. Do you want something to eat?’
‘No, no,’ I give a shaky laugh. ‘Nothing to eat. Nothing more to eat.’
‘You should have something, for comfort.’
‘No, no, really. I couldn’t.’
‘You are awake now? You know yourself?’
‘Yes, yes, I do.’
‘Was it a dream of foretelling?’ he asks. ‘Did you dream of my ships?’
‘No,’ I say firmly. Two of this man’s wives were accused by him of witchcraft; I’m not going to claim any sort of second sight. ‘It was nothing, it meant nothing. Just a muddle of castle walls and feeling cold and afraid.’
He lies back on the pillows. ‘Can you sleep now?’
‘Yes, I can. Thank you for being so kind to me.’