Hastings’s knife is beautifully wrought and perhaps twice as sharp as Geoffrey’s. She puts the back of the blade against the arrow. The wound is bleeding freely now. She blows the hair from her eyes, then slowly forces the knife down into Richard’s flesh. Blood wells from the wound and pools against the torn cloth of Richard’s shirt. The meat under the blade is resilient. She imagined it might part easily, but no. Richard shudders.

‘Hold him still,’ she says.

The four men press down on Richard, pinning him to the grass. He moans. She feels the knife tip touch against the barb.

‘It’s there,’ she says. She cuts away from the arrow a few tugs of the blade; the grain of Richard’s flesh parts a little with each pass.

When she has repeated the process on the other side of the shaft she hands the knife back to Hastings, who takes it gingerly and goes to wash it in the trough.

‘Shall I pull?’ she asks. Geoffrey nods. She takes the arrow with both hands, gripping it just below its feathered fletch, then slowly eases it out. Blood fills the wound, dark and free-flowing.

‘I pray the head does not come away from the shaft,’ Geoffrey says.

‘These are well-made arrows,’ Hastings objects.

The arrow comes free with a tiny suck and a well of blood.

‘We must stop the bleeding,’ she says. ‘Cut his shirt into strips, will you?’

While Geoffrey cuts the cloth, Thomas takes the arrow and joins Hastings at the trough. It can still be used.

‘Thomas,’ she calls. ‘Fetch the salve.’

He turns and looks at her blankly. She is about to remind him it is in the pardoner’s pack when she recalls that it is supposed to be his pack. She gives him the monastic sign for an old man, and then the sign for bag. She notices the prick of interest in the cleric, who leans forward to look at her more closely, and she feels her stomach turn. She flushes and busies herself by pressing one of the linen pads against the puckered mouth of Richard’s wound.

He stiffens under the pressure and gasps with the pain. He is coming to. She presses gently down. The linen soaks up the blood quickly. She puts another fold of it over the first and holds it down again. She will not look at the cleric.

When Thomas returns she spreads some of the gritty salve over a clean pad and begins blotting the wound.

‘What is that?’ the cleric asked.

‘A salve,’ she says as if she knows, roughening and deepening her voice.

‘And what is its purpose?’

‘It is to prevent putrefaction.’

‘And does it work?’

‘I hope so.’

The cleric grunts.

‘Is he still alive?’ Hastings asks. ‘Is he still breathing?’

‘I don’t know.’

She stops the pressure and blood fills the wound in small rises. She presses the linen back.