John flips the knife and bangs the decoration on a stone. After a while it breaks off, but now he finds he doesn’t like it any more, so he throws it in the water.

They sit for a bit and watch the other archers going about their business, lifting visors, cutting the leather arming points, stealing rings, weapons, purses, anything. One laughs when another treads in a coil of blue guts that have spilled from a man who’s come off worst against something sharp.

Hugh is sitting a little apart from the rest of them, looking out to sea. His face is the colour of goose fat.

Thomas calls over to him.

‘You all right, Hugh?’

Hugh shakes his head but says nothing, just gestures to the nearest dead body. There are tears in his eyes, vomit on his livery and he is trembling. His arrow bag is full.

‘Once we get to London, it’ll be all over,’ Dafydd says. ‘The King’ll get rid of whoever it is we’re trying to get him to get rid of, and then we’ll all be home for the harvest.’

‘Got to be home for the harvest, anyway,’ Brampton John says. ‘Can’t let my old ma get it in. I hate them fields, though.’

Walter returns with Geoffrey.

‘Back to the ship, you lot,’ Geoffrey calls. ‘Fetch the stuff up. We need to get moving if we’re to find somewhere dry to sleep tonight.’

They pick their way back across the market square, but have to wait by the town gate while prisoners are led down to the harbour. One of them is wearing fine armour, the bevor broken, obviously high-born.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Fuck knows,’ Walter says. ‘Taking him back to Calais, anyway, so that’s where he’ll get his.’

He chops one hand on to the palm of his other to make the noise of an axe falling on a wooden block. The knight hesitates mid-step – he’s no more than a boy really, with clear skin and big frightened eyes – but then an unshaven soldier in Fauconberg’s livery pushes him from behind and on he goes.

By the time they are back aboard the carrack, Johnson is dead. He lies in a pool of blood to one side, the arrow still in his thigh, his head thrown back, lips blue, face as colourless as the moon.

‘Saw he was still moving,’ the master says with a shrug. ‘Thought he was just wounded.’