Beyond the tents, there’s a whole other band of folk at work building a field kitchen. There’s reason in it, I suppose. If you’re to have a feast out-of-doors, you need a place to cook. There’s fire pits already dug, and folk are setting spits above them for roasting meat. A wagon full of cauldrons, grates, and flesh-hooks sits nearby for when the kitchen’s done, and stacks of noisy crates hold ducks, rabbits, chickens, and pigeons to be slaughtered. A bit farther off, a herdsman shows off his sheep to one of the castle butchers. One sheep has already been hung up to bleed out. The kitchen builders and tent raisers need to eat too.

Much farther off in the field I see the lone back of a man. Pissing. Looks as if the jakes haven’t yet been dug. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to finish my assay.

One messenger sits with his back against my house snoring in the sun when I get home. His foot jiggles along with his dream. I kick a small stone at the dreamer, but he doesn’t rouse. I come close and stand so my shadow covers his face. He starts. ‘Never did! Never did!’ It takes a moment for him to recollect where he is and why he’s come. ‘Eating for Sorrel Beckworth on the Foundry Lane by the river,’ he finally says.

Foundries must need water if they’re by the river, but entering Foundry Lane, it seems all heat and fire.

Two benches have been moved outside the shop where the man died. Inside, three men stand along a wall, leather aprons across their fronts. A body covered by another apron is laid out on the earthen floor. One muscled arm is un-covered, its skin reflecting the yellow flames of the forge.

‘Coffin’s coming,’ says a great bull of a man when I step in. ‘Isn’t it?’

A younger man, most like an apprentice, nods his head. ‘Bart said he’d be by with it shortly.’

‘Don’t we have nothing to put him up on?’ the bull man says suddenly. ‘Get the trestle.’ He waves at the apprentice.

‘’S gone, Fitz,’ says the third man. ‘Won’t mean nothing to Sorrel now.’

The Bull wipes his brow leaving a line of dark soot across his skin. ‘We’re too small a workshop to be making cannon. Told the Queen’s man we were too small.’

There’s no food I can see, let alone a stool.

The Bull seems to think the same thought. ‘Where’s the . . .? Get the . . .!’ the Bull cries at the apprentice. The young man hurries to a bundle on top of a sack of sand. He unwraps bread, cream, salt, garlic, and a skinny leek. He turns with them, then pauses, not knowing where to put them down.