‘Then let me shake you by the hand,’ Warwick says, swinging his leg forward over his horse and descending lightly to the ground. ‘I have heard of your actions from my cousin the Earl of March.’

‘It was no more than my duty, my lord,’ Richard counters, shaking his hand.

‘Nonsense, nonsense. You and your men are the talk of the town. I have brought his grace Bishop Coppini all the way from Milan to meet you.’

Richard kisses the Bishop’s hand, who ignores him and keeps up a lively stream of chatter aimed at the large snowy-haired fat man sitting on the horse next to him. At first Katherine thinks this might be Sir John Fakenham come to see them from Calais, but where Sir John Fakenham’s face is open and cheerful despite his pain, this old man looks sour-tempered.

‘That’s the Earl of Salisbury,’ Walter mutters. ‘Warwick’s father. Right bastard.’

Salisbury takes Richard’s proffered hand in a half-hearted squeeze and drops it quickly. Warwick ostentatiously steps back to stand with his hands on his hips and survey the fort and the men who are gathered at its battlements. He pretends it is a fine sight.

‘So that is the famous Earl of Warwick, is it?’ Dafydd asks, staring back down.

‘Quite small, isn’t he?’ Red John says.

‘No, he’s not,’ Little John Willingham snaps. A couple of them laugh.

‘They say he never sleeps, you know? Not ever.’

‘They say he never sits down, either.’

‘And that he has his hair cut three times a week.’

‘A peacock,’ Owen says in his thick voice. Warwick is dressed in a deep purple, extravagantly puffed hunting coat that stops at his waist. His hose are lapis and his boots so pointed in the toe so that it is a wonder he can ride in them at all.

‘To think he’s our only chance of getting out of this shithole and going home.’

Warwick is asking something of Richard, who gestures to the other side of the fort where the huntsman with his dog paces impatiently through the long grass. A third man, whom none of them recognises, leans forward, both hands cupped on his saddle. Katherine thinks he looks slightly out of place, but she cannot say why.

‘Who is that?’ she asks.

‘Hastings,’ Walter says.

‘Lord Hastings?’

‘No. Just Hastings. William Hastings.’

‘Stupid name if you aren’t lord of the manor.’

‘Supposed to be a good man, though. Good to his men and so on. Their wives.’

Katherine cannot tell what he means. She can see Richard is smiling at something this Hastings has said, nodding his head and then hurrying back through the gate.

‘Geoffrey! Geoffrey there!’

Geoffrey has the horse saddled already. Richard is quickly on to it and he joins the party as they ride around the fort to find the huntsman.

‘He loves his hunting, doesn’t he?’ Walter says. ‘Misses those hawks of his.’