“We’ll go to the coast next week,” he tells me. “I have been waiting for months to be well enough to ride.”

I exclaim in pleasure.

“I want to see what Tom Seymour has left of my navy,” he says. “And they say the French are massing in their ports. They are likely to raid. I want to see my castles.”

I am sure he will see the rapid pulse in the hollow of my bare neck at the thought of seeing Thomas. “Is it not dangerous?” I ask. “If the French are coming?”

“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 harbor. 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.”