The king talks to me every night about his ship. He cannot sleep without persuading me that it was the fault of others, fools or villains. He can do no other work. Most of the Privy Council go back to Westminster ahead of us, and Charles Brandon, Henry’s old friend, asks permission to go quietly home with his wife, Catherine.

“He should have warned me,” Henry says. “Of all the people in the world Charles should have warned me.”

“How could he know?” I ask.

“He should never have let her sail if she was overloaded with men,” Henry bursts out in sudden anger, his face blazing, a vein in his temple bulging like a thick worm under his skin. “Why would he not know that she was overloaded? He must have been careless. I shall call him back to court to explain himself. He was commander on land and sea: he has to take responsibility. It was not my plans that were at fault, it was his failure to execute them. I have forgiven him everything, all my life, but I cannot forgive him this.”

But before the messenger summoning Charles back has even left the palace, we hear from the Brandon household that he is ill, and then a horseman thunders up the London road from Guildford and says that he is dead. The king’s greatest and longest-surviving friend is dead.

* * *

It is the last blow of a terrible summer. The king is inconsolable. He locks himself into his room and refuses all service. He even refuses to eat. “Is he sick?” I ask Doctor Butts when they tell me that the monstrous dinner has been sent back.

He shakes his head. “Not in his body, God keep him. But this is a great loss to him. Charles Brandon is the last of his old friends, the only friend from his childhood. It is like losing a brother.”

That night, even though my bedroom is three rooms away from the king’s chamber, I hear a terrible noise. It is a scream like a vixen makes at night, a howl so unearthly that I forget that I despise empty ritual, and I cross myself, and kiss my thumbnail and say, “God bless and keep me!” There is another and another, and I jump out of my bed, snap, “Stay there!” to my companion, and run into my empty presence chamber, through the king’s presence chamber, his privy chamber, his inner chamber, to his bedroom door, where the guard stands impassive. But behind the door I can hear heartbroken sobbing.