She recognised me at once. She had watched me, as I had watched her, every Sunday at Mass. Both of us confined to the poor pews at the back of church. Both of us trapped into shame by the other’s determination.

‘Hannah,’ she called out to me. ‘Hannah!’

‘What is it?’ I shouted irritably. ‘What d’you want with me?’

She showed me her child. ‘Take him!’

At once I remembered the intensity of my vision in church, the first time I had seen her. Then as now there was a screaming and a thundering noise. Then, in my nightmare, she had called out ‘Take him!’ As she cried out the sky suddenly grew dark with a hail of missiles and I ducked into a doorway but on the other side of the street she came on, dodging through the falling rocks. ‘Hannah! Hannah! I need your help.’

‘Go home,’ I shouted unhelpfully. ‘Go to a cellar or somewhere.’

The last of the horses was moving out of the square, we heard the groan of the counterweights as they pulled back the great gates for Lord Robert and his cavalry to charge out, and the great roar of rage as they thundered out to meet the French army.

‘They are leaving us?’ she screamed in horror. ‘Running away?’

‘No, going out to fight. Find yourself a refuge . . .’ I yelled impatiently.

‘God save us, they need not go out to fight them, they are in already! They must turn to fight! The French are here! They are in the town! We are lost!’ Daniel’s woman shouted. ‘It was them . . .’

Her words suddenly penetrated my mind, and I whirled around to look at her again. At once I realised the significance of her black eye and her torn gown. The French were in the city, and they had raped her.

‘They came in through the harbour! Ten minutes ago!’ she screamed at me, and as she shouted the words I saw coming down the street behind her a tide of mounted horsemen, the French cavalry, in the streets and behind my lord, cutting off him and his men from the harbour, their horses foaming at the mouth, their lances down for a charge, their visors fixed so that they seemed to have faces of iron, their spurs tearing blood from their horses’ sides, the scream of hooves on cobbles, the absolute horror of a cavalry charge in an enclosed space. The first rank was on us in a moment, a lance plunging down towards me and without thinking I snatched the dagger from my boot and with the short blade I parried the thrust. The shock of the blow jarred my blade from my hand, but saved my life as it threw me back against the door of the house behind me. I felt it yield and I fell back into the darkness of an unknown house as I heard Daniel’s woman scream: ‘Save my baby! Take him! Take him!’