John did not attend the council of war. He was in disgrace. His barrier had failed and the fort, so near to surrender, was eating better than the besieging English soldiers. While Buckingham took advice from his officers John walked away from the fort, away from the fleet, deep into the island, watching his feet for rare plants, his face knitted up in a scowl. The same pressures would still be working on the duke as before, but the situation was worse than ever. The fort was revictualled, the weather was deteriorating, and on one of the ships there were two cases of gaol fever. The cold weather would bring sickness and agues, and the men were underfed. They had the choice of sleeping in the open under pitiful shelters of bent twigs and stretched cloth and risking ague and rheums, or inside the ships packed like herrings in a barrel, risking fevers from the close quarters.

John knew that they must withdraw before the winter storms; and feared that they were mad enough to stay. He turned in his walk and went back towards the fort. One of the French sentries on the castle walls saw him and shouted a cheerful yell of abuse. John hesitated, then the message became clear. The sentry hauled up a pike with a huge joint of meat on the tip, to demonstrate their new wealth.

‘Voulez-vous, Anglais?’ he yelled cheerfully. ‘Avez vous faim?’

John turned and trudged back to the ill-named Triumph.

Buckingham was certain what they should do. ‘We must attack,’ he said simply.

John gasped in horror and looked around the duke’s cabin. No-one else seemed in the least perturbed. They were nodding as if this were the obvious course.

‘But my lord …’ John started.

Buckingham looked across at him.

‘They are better fed than us, they have almost limitless cannon and powder, they are mending the defences and we know that the citadel is strong.’

Buckingham no longer laughed at John’s fears. ‘I know all that,’ he said bitterly. ‘Tell me something that I have not thought of, John, or keep your peace.’

‘Have you thought of going home?’ John asked.

‘Yes,’ Buckingham said precisely. ‘And if I go now, with nothing to show for it, I can’t even be sure that I will have a home to go to.’ He glanced around the cabin. ‘There are men still waiting to impeach me for treason,’ he said bluntly. ‘If I have to die I’d rather do it here leading an attack than on the block outside the Tower.’

John fell silent It was a measure of the duke’s desperation that he spoke so frankly before them all.