They handed back his bow and beckoned the two archers to join them. The Moors became more animated and told their companions to draw and shoot at the targets eighty yards down the butts. The length and breadth of the square targets measured the same as an ash arrow with a bodkin point, a square yard fastened on a straw dummy the size of an average man.

‘He’s got that wrong,’ said Halfpenny. ‘Look how he’s nocking his arrow.’

‘Get that grin off your face, Jack, let’s not make them look more foolish than they are,’ Will said under his breath as the archer let the arrow settle on the wrong side of the bow. ‘I reckon these aren’t archers; they’ve been given these bows and told to learn to shoot.’

Both men were stunned into silence as the archers loosed three arrows in rapid succession, so fast that the action was a blur. All the targets had three arrow shafts sticking in them.’

‘That don’t make no damned sense,’ said Halfpenny.

The Moors stood and waited.

‘Do that again,’ said Will Longdon and then gestured for the nearest man to shoot again. Longdon studied him. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said as the archer loosed another accurately aimed arrow. ‘He uses his thumb instead of his fingers to pull back the cord. I see it now. You understand, Jack?’

Halfpenny shook his head. Will Longdon had gone to war with his bow since he was a boy. He knew how shafts flew in various weather conditions, understood distance and wind and his keen eye had shown him these expert bowmen’s skill and technique. Had they been village idiots back in England and laid their shaft on the wrong side of an English longbow the arrow would have wavered and fluttered away like a broken-winged crow.

‘They rest the shaft on the right-hand side of their bow and when they loose the cord with their thumb, it throws the arrow left. It’s something to do with how the thumb twists the cord.’ He stepped forward and lifted his war bow. ‘Look here, lads, this is how we do it,’ he said, ignoring the fact they didn’t understand him. He waited until the men gathered closely around him and Halfpenny. He pulled an arrow from his belt, gripped the bow and laid the arrow left of the shaft on the top of his curled fist; then he showed them the first three fingers of his right hand, before laying them on the bowstring where the arrow’s notch embraced the cord. The men muttered and grunted as the Englishmen showed their shooting technique. The Moors stepped aside and motioned for him to shoot at the targets. Will Longdon studied the yard-square targets then turned his back and walked towards the distant wall at the far end of the butts.