“Why in hell’s name should I forgive them? They were coming against me, against the King of England. Armed and hoping to overthrow me.”

I bow my head under his fury and know that the court is watching Henry’s rage.

“But the ones that I execute in London will die as pirates do,” he says with sudden harsh relish. His temper vanishes, he beams at me.

I shake my head. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say wearily. “What have your advisors been telling you now?”

“They’ve been telling me how pirates are punished,” he says with a cruel joy. “And this is how I will have these men killed. I will have them tied down by St. Katherine’s Wharf at Wapping. They are traitors and they came against me by sea. I shall find them guilty of piracy and they will be tied down and the tide will come in and slowly, slowly, creep over them, lapping up their feet and their legs till it splashes into their mouths and they will drown inch by inch in a foot of water. D’you think that will teach the people of England what happens to rebels? Do you think that will teach the people of England not to defy me? Never to come against a Tudor?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I am trying to catch my breath as if it is me staked out on the beach with the rising tide splashing against my closed lips, wetting my face, slowly rising. “I hope so.”

Days later, when Henry is gone again on his restless patrolling of the Midlands, we hear that the boy has landed in Ireland and set siege to Waterford Castle. The Irish are flocking to his standard and Henry’s rule in Ireland is utterly overthrown.

I rest in the afternoons; this baby is sitting heavily on my belly and makes me too weary to walk. Margaret sits with me, sewing at my side, and whispers to me that Ireland has become ungovernable, the rule of the English is overthrown, everyone is declaring for the boy. Her husband, Sir Richard, will have to go to that most dangerous island; Henry has commanded him to take troops to fight the boy and his adoring allies. But before Sir Richard has even ordered the ships to transport his troops, the siege is lifted without warning, and the elusive boy is gone.

“Where is he now?” I ask Henry as he prepares to ride out, his yeomen of the guard behind him, armed and helmeted as if they are on campaign, as if he expects an attack on the highways of his own country.

His face is dark. “I don’t know,” he says shortly. “Ireland is a bog of treachery. He is hiding in the wetlands, he is hiding in the mountains. My man in Ireland, Poynings, has no command, he has lost all control, he knows nothing. The boy is like a ghost, we hear of him but we never see him. We know they are hiding him but we don’t know where.”