‘Begging your pardon,’ the seaman said, ‘but there is six of them cavalry-officers sleeping over the stable, in their clothes.’

They set the nervous stable boy at the door, with Woolvey to watch him. ‘Name's Darby, sir, but Janus they call me,’ the seaman said, ‘on account of a surgeon we shipped on the Sophie, a learned bloke and no doubt, saying I saw both ways like some old Roman cut-up by that name; and there I would be still, but my girl in the city losit her mum, and took sick, and her with three, four mouths to feed,’ he added vaguely. Likely it had been not one girl but several.

‘Very good, Janus,’ Laurence said, and gave him a pistol. They put out the lantern swinging by the door, and at a nod from Tharkay the three of them went up the ladder into the loft, swift on bare feet.

The men lay asleep, half sunk into broken-open bales of hay, with their sabres and pistols beside them. One after another Laurence woke them, placing a folded pad of leather over their mouths. Janus pinned their heels and Tharkay held a pistol steady in each face as they were turned over and trussed quickly with straps, and heaved up onto the stack of bales.

The fourth man opened his eyes too soon, and managed to drum his heels as they reached for him. The other two roused sluggishly and groped for their missing swords and pistols, which Tharkay had already collected, three of them thrust into his waistband in piratical fashion. It was a short but brutal struggle, even numbers and with the necessity for silence driving them: Laurence went for his knife and grimly thrust it into the unarmed man's throat as the Frenchman tried to wrestle himself up from the ground. The man sank back limply, staring blindly at the ceiling, blood spilling from his neck to soak into the straw. Laurence took up a sword and killed another, quickly, while Janus held him. Tharkay dispatched the last.

The horses below were stamping again, whickering at the smell of blood. ‘Are you all right?’ Woolvey whispered, putting his head up into the loft, and stopped with his mouth open.

‘Yes,’ Laurence said shortly, his heart still hammering. ‘Go below, and keep that fellow at the door.’

Woolvey made no protest but obeyed in silence, vanishing again below. The trussed men fought and kicked as they were turned over and stripped of their coats and cuirasses, and one of them made a low moan behind the gag as his eyes fell on the dead men. Friends, or brothers, perhaps; Laurence closed his mind to the thought.