Then I saw my lord. I would have recognised him in any crowd. He was walking, broadsword in one hand, helmet in the other, trailing his feet like a defeated man. Behind him came a train of men limping, bleeding, heads bowed. He led them to the ship and stood aside as they went up the gangplank and threw themselves down with a clatter of dented armour on the deck.

‘That’s enough, sir,’ the sailor said to him quietly when we were fully loaded and my lord looked up, like a man newly wakened from sleep, and said: ‘But we have to take the rest. I promised they would serve me and I would take them to victory. I can’t leave them here now.’

‘We’ll come back for them,’ the sailor said gently. He put one strong arm around my lord’s shoulders and drew him firmly up the gangplank. Lord Robert went slowly, like a sleepwalker, his eyes open but seeing nothing.

‘Or they’ll get another passage. Cast off!’ the sailor shouted to the man at the stern rope. The man flung the rope on shore and the others unfurled the sails. Slowly we moved from the quayside.

‘I can’t leave them!’ Robert, suddenly fully alert, turned to the widening gulf of water between ship and land. ‘I can’t leave them here.’

The men left ashore let out a pitiful cry. ‘A Dudley! A Dudley!’

The sailor caught up Lord Robert in a great bear hug, holding him away from the rail of the ship, preventing him jumping ashore.

‘We’ll come back for them,’ he assured him. ‘They’ll get safe passage in other ships, and if the worst comes to the worst then the French will ransom them.’

‘I can’t leave them!’ Robert Dudley fought to be free. ‘Hey! You! Sailors! Turn for port. Get to the quayside again!’

The wind was catching the sails, they flapped and then as they trimmed the ropes, the sails went taut and started to pull. Behind us in Calais there was a resounding crash as the doors of the citadel yielded and the French army spilled into the very centre of English power in France. Robert turned, anguished, towards the land. ‘We should regroup!’ he cried. ‘We are about to lose Calais if we go now. Think of it! Calais! We have to go back and regroup and fight.’

Still the sailor did not release him, but now his hold was less to restrain the young lord and more to hold him in his grief. ‘We’ll come back,’ he said and rocked him from one foot to another. ‘We’ll come back for the rest of them and then we’ll retake Calais. Never doubt it, sir. Never doubt it.’

Lord Robert went to the stern of the boat, scanning the harbour, seeing the disorderly retreat. We could smell the smoke drifting in a pall across the water from the burning buildings. We could hear people screaming, the French were avenging the insult of the starving burghers of Calais who had surrendered to the English all that long time ago. Lord Robert looked half-minded to throw himself in the water and swim back to take charge of the evacuation of the harbour, but even he, in his rage, could see that it was hopeless. We had lost, the English had lost. It was as simple and as brutal as that and the path of a true man was not to risk his life in some mummer’s piece of overacting, but to consider how to win the next battle.