‘I need you for words like that,’ Buckingham whispered. ‘No-one else can tell me such things and make me believe them. I need your faith in me, John, especially when I have no faith in myself.’

‘I never saw you show a moment’s fear,’ John said earnestly. ‘I never saw you hesitate or fail. You were the Lord High Admiral for every minute. No man could say less. No man did more.’

Buckingham straightened up and John saw the set of his shoulders and the lift of his chin. ‘I shall hold those words to me,’ he said. ‘Whatever else befalls me today. I shall know that you were there, you witnessed everything, and you say this. You have been here with me and I have your love. You are a man whose judgement is trusted, and you are my man – what did you say? – heart and soul.’

‘Till death.’

‘Swear it.’ Buckingham turned and held John’s shoulders with sudden passionate intensity. He took John’s face roughly in his cupped hands. ‘Swear that you are mine till death.’

John did not hesitate. ‘I swear on all that I hold sacred that I am your man, and none other’s. I will follow you and serve you till death,’ he promised. It was a mighty oath but John did not feel the weight of it. Instead he had a great sense of joy at being committed, at last, to another person without restraint, as if all the years with Elizabeth had been only a circling of another, a moving towards intimacy which could never be truly found. Elizabeth’s femininity, her faith, her every difference from John, had meant that he could never reach her. Always between them were the dividing fissures of opinion, of taste, of style.

But Buckingham had been in John’s heart, had penetrated deep inside him. There was nothing which could part them now. It was not a love between a man and a woman which always founders on difference, which always struggles with difference. It was a passion between men who start as equals and fight their way through to mutual desire and mutual satisfaction as equals.

The tension left Buckingham’s shoulders. ‘I needed to hear that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It is like a chain of command, the old king needed me and called me his dog, took me like a dog too. Now I need you, and you shall be my dog.’

The noises on deck grew more urgent, they could hear the sailors shouting to the barges for tow ropes, and then came the gentle bump as the ship dropped her sails and was taken in tow.

‘Fetch hot water,’ Buckingham said. ‘I must shave.’