“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.