The archers in the top of the fort walk around to watch them taking the huntsman’s directions and disappear under the canopy of the branches. Soon a trumpet is blown.

‘All right, into the butts,’ Walter says. ‘Make it look good for when they come back. Northern Thomas, you stay here. They might stop and talk to us, and the last bloody thing I want is to hear you telling them cutting across the marsh like that was your idea, understand?’

Thomas knows better than to argue, and anyway he values any time away from archery practice.

When the others have gone Thomas sits in the sunshine and oils his new bow. His old one eventually broke in his hands, just as he always said it would, and from his own money Richard bought him a new one from a bowyer in Calais. It was meant as a reward for his part in the skirmish on St George’s Day and, for a day or two, Thomas hid it from Katherine because he was anxious she would take offence at him being credited with the plan. She’d laughed when she found out.

She watches him for a moment, the way his new muscles move as he works. He is much bigger now than he was. It is all that food, and all the work in the butts. He looks like a soldier, almost like one of those hard-faced men who made up the Calais Watch, and he has taken to carrying the pollaxe around with him all the time, hanging it around his shoulders on a long leather strap pinned to the wood. She often sees him staring at the palms of his hands, frowning at them. She wonders what he is thinking when he does so.

Now, though, he looks happy, or at least content, carrying out a soothing task in the sunshine. She smiles to herself and carries on pacing. She has spent more hours on the walkways of Sangatte Fort than she cares to think about, and knows the land all about intimately. From up there she has watched spring give way to summer, watched the woods around them take on a green haze of new leaves, then spread into full dark leaf. She’s also watched the daily skirmishes unfold on the Boulogne road as the Duke of Somerset’s men continue to harass the Staple. She’s seen the carts bringing back the bodies of men killed and wounded.

After a moment she turns and stares across the sea.

‘What do you think he’s doing now?’ she asks.

‘Who?’

‘Riven.’

Thomas looks up.

‘I suppose he is waiting to see what happens next,’ he tells her. He is not good at imagining things.

She nods.