The Taming of the Queen

SOUTHSEA CASTLE, PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR, SUMMER 1545

It is a most delightful day, like a painting of a summer day, the sun bright on the blue waters of the Solent, the brisk wind scuffing little white caps on the waves. We have climbed to the top of one of the defensive towers overlooking the harbour and, now that they have hauled the king up the stone stairs and he can see everything, he is delighted with the world, standing astride at the sea wall, hands on his hips, as if he were an admiral on his own ship, the court around him abuzz with excitement and anxiety.

I cannot believe that everyone is joyous, as if we were about to watch a joust on a summer day, as if this were the legendary Field of the Cloth of Gold – a struggle between France and England to be the most glamorous, the most graceful, the most cultured and the most sporting. Surely everyone knows that it is nothing like that today? This is not playing at war but the hours before a real battle. There can be nothing to celebrate and everything to fear.

Looking behind me, over the open fields of Southsea Common, I see that though the court is putting a brave face on it, I am not the only one to be anxious. The yeomen of the guard are already prepared for the worst, their horses saddled and held on tight reins by their pages, ready for mounting and galloping away. The guardsmen are already in armour, with only their helmets to put on. Behind them, the great baggage train that always follows the royal court everywhere – petitioners, beggars, lawyers, thieves and fools – is slowly dragging itself away – the baggage train always knows which side will win – and the people of Portsmouth are fleeing their own town, some of them walking under a burden of household goods, some riding, and some loading up carts. If the French defeat our fleet they will sack Portsmouth and probably fire it as well. The king’s court seem to be the only ones who expect triumph and are looking forward to a battle.

The many bells of the town churches are tolling as our ships get ready to sail out of the harbour, the hundreds of noisy peals scaring the gulls, who circle and cry over the sea. There are about eighty ships, the greatest fleet England has ever assembled, some on the far side loading crew and weapons, some ready to go. I can see them unfurling their sails to our right, deeper in the harbour, the rowing boats and the galleys busy about them, taking ropes and preparing to haul them out of port to the sea.

‘The greatest navy ever mustered,’ the king declares to Anthony Browne at his side. ‘And ready to fight the French in the new way. It will be the greatest battle we have ever seen.’

‘Thank God we are here to see it!’ replies Sir Anthony. ‘What a great chance. I have commissioned a picture to show our victory.’

The painter, hurrying with his sketch book to record the sailing from the harbour, gives a low bow to the king and starts to outline the view before us, the tower where we are standing, the harbour to our right, the ships slowly emerging, the sea before us, the fluttering pennants, the cannon rolled out at the ready.

‘I’m glad that my husband is not on board one of the ships,’ Catherine Brandon remarks quietly.

I look at her pale face and see a reflection of my own unease. This is not a masque, this is not one of the expensive spectacles that the court loves; this is going to be a genuine sea battle fought between our ships and the French in sight of land. I will see what Thomas faces. I will have to watch as his ship is bombarded.

‘Do you know who is commanding which ship?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘Some new admirals were named last night at dinner,’ she says. ‘The king has honoured his friends with commands so that they can take part in the battle. My husband wasn’t very happy at new men being put in command the night before they have to fight. But he is overall commander of land and sea, and, thank God, he stays on land.’

‘Why, are you afraid of the sea?’

‘I am afraid of all deep water,’ she confesses. ‘I can’t swim. But then nobody in armour can swim. Few sailors know how and none of the soldiers would be able to stay afloat in their heavy jackets.’

I stop her with a small gesture. ‘Perhaps nobody will have to swim.’

There is a ragged cheer from the quayside as the king’s newly-refitted ship Mary Rose spreads her beautiful square sails and throws out ropes to the galleys to drag her out to sea.

‘Oh, there she goes. Who is her commander?’

‘Tom Seymour, God bless him,’ Catherine says.

I nod and raise my hand to my forehead, as if to shield my eyes from the sunshine. I think, I can’t bear to watch him sail out to battle, and chirrup like one of my songbirds, as meaningless and as stupid as they. ‘It’s quite windy,’ I remark. ‘Is that good?’

‘It’s a benefit for us,’ Uncle Parr reassures me. He is standing with my ladies, his hands shading his eyes, staring out to sea. ‘They have fighting galleys that can get amongst our ships in flat calm. They can row wherever they like. But on a day like today, when we can cram on sail, we can burst out of the harbour and bombard them. We can come down on them like the wind, with the wind behind us.’

Everyone falls back as the king comes to stand beside me, his head high, gulping in the sea air. ‘It’s certainly a beautiful sight,’ I remark as one by one his ships are dragged out of port, raising their sails and being set free, like flying doves, like seagulls out to sea. The court cheers as each ship, the Peter, and the Henry Grace à Dieu, and the ships we have stolen from the Scots, the Salamander and the Unicorn, go past our vantage point. Then suddenly, as if a cloud has passed over the sun, we fall silent.

‘What is it?’ I ask Henry.

For the first time he is not looking out to sea, his face bright; he is not striking a pose, hands on hips for the artist that is sketching him. He looks behind him, as if to see that his guard is ready to cover his retreat, and then he looks back to where the dark blue mass of the Isle of Wight looms on the horizon. Before the island, in the channel, the French fleet has suddenly silently appeared, sailing in, row upon row of them. If it were land it would be a cavalry charge of huge coursers, ridden knee to knee, one row after another in a great bank of brute strength. But here there is no sound, and it is somehow more terrifying for this. The ships move easily through the water, their sails spread, all on the same tack, and there seem to be hundreds, thousands of them. I cannot see the sea, not between them nor beyond them. It is like a forest of sails on the move. They are like a wall of sail.

And before them, in their vanguard, is another fleet. These are galleys, each one moving with an aggressive thrust through the water, each one keeping time with the other, row after row leaping forward with each blow of the oars into the sea. Even from here, even from our brave pretty little turret on Southsea Common, I can see the dark mouth of the single cannon that is mounted in the prow of each low barge as it looks hungrily towards our ships, our few ships, our little ships, as they tumble out of the safety of harbour to defend our coast, and I know that on his flagship, the Mary Rose, Thomas Seymour will be beside the steersman, looking out and seeing that he is massively outnumbered.

‘God help us,’ I whisper.

The king looks down at me, sees my white face, and pulls the hat off his thinning hair. He waves it in the air. ‘For God! For Harry! And for Saint George!’ he bellows, and his court, and then the people all crowding around us, take up the cry so that they may even hear it over the sea: English sailors may even hear it as they look up and see death sailing towards them with thousands of sails spread wide.

The king is thrilled by the challenge. ‘We’re outnumbered but I think they are outgunned,’ he shouts. He takes Charles Brandon by the shoulder. ‘Don’t you think so, Charles? I think so! Don’t you think so?’

‘They’re outgunned,’ Charles says certainly. ‘But they’re double our number.’

‘You’ve got Portsmouth fortified,’ the king confirms.

‘I’ve got cannon on every point, including here,’ Charles says grimly. ‘If they come any closer you can fire the gun yourself.’

‘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 harbour and cannot get themselves into any formation, the harbour 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 favourite champion in a joust. ‘Henry Grace à Dieu!’

I can see the Mary Rose getting ready to engage, her gun doors wide open. It seems like there are hundreds of them, stacked in rows from her upper deck to the waterline. I can see men on the upper deck: the master of the ship and the boatswain at the wheel, and a figure – I suppose it is Thomas; I suppose that small still figure in the bold red cape is the man I adore – standing behind them.

‘God keep him. Oh, God keep him,’ is all I whisper.

I can see the two fighting castles at prow and stern, built high, crowded with men. The sun is shining on their helmets and I see them raise their pikes as they wait for their chance to grapple and board the enemy ships. Thomas will lead them when the charge comes. He will have to jump from one ship to another and bellow for them to follow him. Below the fighting castles, over the middle of the open deck, there are nets stretched from side to side. They are the boarding nets, so that no-one can jump on board in a rival attack, and take our precious ship. I can see the ranked soldiers underneath the nets. When they get close enough to a French ship they will be released and swarm out.

‘Fire!’ Henry shouts, as if they can hear him from the castle. ‘Fire! Fire! I command it!’

A barge comes towards the beautiful wallowing English ship, the oars like the legs of an insect crawling through the water. A cloud of black smoke suddenly spits from the prow. Now we can smell the stink of gunpowder, drifting over the water.

The cannon of the Mary Rose roll forward to every open gunport so that she is bristling with weapons, all of them moving as one. She turns and fires from her left-hand guns and there is a simultaneous roar. It is beautifully done, and powerful as a move in a chess game. At once, we see one of the galleys struggling in the water, going down. The king’s great plan, Thomas’s strategy, is showing its power to the astounded enemy. Ship is engaging with ship, and the soldiers have nothing to do yet but cheer in their fighting castles and raise their swords in threat. The great ship is coming about, turning in the water, so that she can fire her starboard guns while the port guns reload.

A sudden gust makes all the standards snap with a noise like tearing silk. ‘Fire! Come about and fire!’ Henry shouts, but the wind is too loud for anyone to hear him. I hold my hat and Anne Seymour loses her cap, which goes sailing from the walls of the castle and out to sea.

Someone laughs at her mishap and it is then that we realise something is going wrong. The Mary Rose was reefing her sails and turning against the wind to get her starboard guns to bear on the French just as the gust of wind caught her. She heels over in the sea, dangerously low, her sails dipping towards the waves, her beautiful square sails no longer proudly upright above her arched decks, but now at an angle, odd and ugly.

‘What are you doing?’ the king bellows, as if anyone can answer him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

She is like a horse that has taken a curve too tight. You can see a horse with his legs going from under him, running harder and faster, and yet everything happens very slowly, but with a terrible inexorability.

‘Right her!’ Henry howls like a dog, and now everyone is beside him at the castle wall, leaning out as if they will ever hear us shouting instructions. Someone is screaming ‘No! No! No!’ as the beautiful proud ship, her standards still rippling, goes further and further over on her side and then we see her slowly lie on her side like a fallen bird, half in, half out of the scudding waves.

We can’t hear them scream. The sailors are trapped below decks as the water rushes in through the open gunports, and they cannot climb up the narrow ladders in the waist of the ship. They drown in their own coffin as she takes them gently, softly down. We can hear the men on the upper deck. They are clinging to the boarding nets, which are now entrapping them, trying to slash them away. Some of the fighting men jump down from the ship’s turrets and stab with their pikes at the ropes or hack with their swords at the thick net. But they can’t get the men free, can’t open the nets. Our soldiers and sailors die like netted mackerel, struggling to breathe against the mesh.

The free men on top tumble off the castles like so many toy soldiers, like the little lead men that Edward plays with, and their leather jackets drag them down in moments. Those who have helmets feel them fill with cold sea water before they can untie the straps. Thick boots drag their owners down, heavy plate armour strapped on knee and breast plunges men in a rush to the bottom. I can hear a voice crying: ‘No, no, no.’

It feels like a long hour of agony, but perhaps it is only minutes. It feels timeless. The side of the ship seems to rest on the water like a sleepy bird, moving with the sea as a handful of men, no more, fling themselves from the rigging and disappear into the smoke-drenched waves. The roar of the cannon goes on, the battle itself goes on. Nobody but us has frozen in horror to watch as the keel rolls a little more to the sky, as the sails fill with water, not wind, and billow and swell in their strange submerged beauty, and then drag the ship down to the green depths.

I can hear someone weeping: ‘No, no, no.’