“Can’t say as I’m taken with the view,” Lawrence said ruminatively. “You’d think they’d have provided us with a decent room. I’ve a good mind to complain.”

“We could always ask to be moved,” Hawkwood said.

Lawrence sniffed. “I doubt it’d be much of an improvement. There’d still be bloody bars in the way.” Turning away from the cell window, he shoved his hands down into his coat pockets. “Mind you, it’s a damn sight better than some barracks I’ve been in.”

That was probably true, Hawkwood thought. The cell measured ten paces by ten paces; encasing two hard wooden cots and a bucket in the corner. A thin mattress on each bed and an equally thin blanket to go with it. Not that dissimilar to his last gaol: L’Abbaye, the military prison on the Place Sainte-Marguerite in Paris. The only difference being that this place didn’t smell as bad and the guards spoke English.

Hawkwood was surprised they’d been housed together. Maybe there was a shortage of cells. The noises that permeated the building did seem to indicate an unusual number of occupants, given what he’d seen of the place. In fact, the sounds that were audible were interesting in themselves, because prisons in his experience were quiet places, the inmates usually having been cowed into silence either by the confining grimness of their surroundings or by the men placed in charge of them. Any human utterances tended to be the vocalization of despair or as a result of mistreatment, whether it be punishment for rule-breaking to bloody disputes between individuals over some personal infringement.

The rarest human sound in a prison was laughter, but Hawkwood’s ears had picked up the echoes of laughter on several occasions. It seemed an odd juxtaposition, though not one worth dwelling upon.

Lawrence lowered himself on to his cot, gazed about him, and sighed despondently. “Well at least we tried.”

Hawkwood, stretched out, laced his hands behind his head. “We’re not dead yet, Major.”

“You have a plan?”

“No.”

“Damn.” Lawrence smiled. “You do know how to dash a fellow’s hopes.”

“But I have been thinking,” Hawkwood said.

“About what?”

“Those batteaux.”

Lawrence regarded him quietly for a second. “Aye, I’ve been thinking about them, too. If I were a betting man, I’d say young Renner hit the nail on the head when he said there was something brewing.”

“They weren’t off-loading the boats, they were loading them.”

“Indeed. But for what?”

“There’s only one thing it could be.”

Lawrence looked sceptical.

“It would explain the number of craft, the ordnance, the stores, and the troops – everything,” Hawkwood said.

“They could just be preparing the boats for winter.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.”