John flung himself on board one of the craft and looked back as the boat took him from shore. It was impossible to tell friend from enemy; they were alike mud-smeared, knee-deep in water, stabbing and clawing for their own safety as the high dirty waves rolled in. The landing craft crashed abruptly against the side of the Triumph and John reached up to grip the nets hung over the side of the ship. The pressure of the men behind him pushed him up, his weaker leg scrabbling for a foothold but his arms heaving him upwards. He fell over the ship’s side and lay on the deck, panting and sobbing, acutely aware of the blissful hardness of the holystoned wood of the deck under his cheek.

After a moment he pulled himself to his feet and went to where his lord was looking out to the island.

It was a massacre. Almost all the English soldiers behind John had been caught between the sea and the French. They had plunged off the causeway, or tried to escape by running through the treacherous marsh. The cries of the drowning men were like seagulls on a nesting site – loud, demanding, inhuman. Those bobbing in the water or trying to crawl back on to the causeway died quickly, under the French pikes. The French army, who were left dryshod on land before the causeway, had the leisure to reload and to fire easily and accurately into the marshes and the sea, where a few men were striking out for the ship. The front ranks, who had done deadly work off the submerged causeway, were falling back before the sea and stabbing at the bodies of Englishmen who were rolling and tumbling in the incoming waves.

The captain of the Triumph came to Buckingham as he stared, blank with horror, at his army drowning in blood and brine. ‘Shall we set sail?’

Buckingham did not hear him.

The captain turned to John. ‘Do we sail?’

John glanced around. He felt as if everything were underwater, as if he were underwater with the other Englishmen. He could hardly hear the captain speak, the man seemed to swim towards him and recede. He tightened his grip on the balustrade.

‘Is another ship behind us to take off survivors?’ he asked. His lips were numb and his voice was very faint.

‘What survivors?’ the captain demanded.

John looked again. His had been the last landing craft; the men left behind were rolling in the waves, drowned, or shot, or stabbed.

‘Set sail,’ John said. ‘And get my lord away from here.’

Not until the whole fleet was released from the grip of the treacherous mud and waves and was at sea did they count their losses and realise what the battle had cost them. Forty-nine English standards were missing, and four thousand English men and boys, unwillingly conscripted, were dead.