“They shan’t come closer,” the king declares. “I won’t have them in English waters. I forbid them to come anywhere near English land. I am the king! Are they going to challenge me on my own land? In my own castle? I am afraid of nothing. I am always completely fearless.”

I see that Charles Brandon does not look at me, as if it is better not to note the king’s vainglorious boast. I look around for Doctor Butts and I find his pale face at the back of the court. I nod to him and he draws closer.

“His Majesty is overexcited,” I observe.

He watches as Henry shouts for a page to help him limp painfully from one side of the tower to the other, as he leans out over the walls and claps a gunner on the back. He is acting like a man taking the battle to the heart of a weak enemy, certain of victory. He is shouting threats as if they can hear him, as if he can make any difference. He is acting as if his fury and his rage against the French can prevail against the silent approach of their thousands of ships and the steady beat—which now we can hear—of the drums from their galleys, keeping the time of the inexorable oars.

“There is no containing him now,” Doctor Butts says.

I know that we are about to see something terrible. The French fleet comes on and onward, and the little English ships bob out of harbor and cannot get themselves into any formation, the harbor barges fruitlessly pulling them forward, trying to catch the wind. A few ships spread their sails and move swiftly away from shore, and some of them try to come about to get their guns trained on the low French galleys. Mercilessly the French come on, the galleys before, the great ships behind.

“Now you’ll see it! Now you’ll see something,” the king predicts. He hobbles down to the outermost point on the castle wall, turns his head, and shouts back to me, but his words are drowned in the roar of cannon as the first English ships come within range of the French guns.

The English cannon respond. We can see the black squares open up on the sides of the ships as the gun doors open and the cannon are rolled out, then a puff of smoke as each cannon fires and rebounds into the ship for reloading.

“Mary Rose!” Henry yells, like a boy naming his favorite champion in a joust. “Henry Grace à Dieu!”