They gather their gear and between them they carry Johnson’s body in a hammock down the makeshift gangplank. They load it on to a cart. There are no oxen to be had so they have to wheel it themselves through the town. Once they are through they find a burial party at work with spades and mattocks in a field. Three priests and two heralds are counting the bodies. They unload Johnson, distribute his valuables, and swing him into the trench.

Beyond the graveyard is the common ground where Fauconberg is making camp. More men with shovels are throwing up earthworks while others cut stakes from the nearby woods. A fire is being lit near a red bell-shaped tent with yellow trim, and a man is erecting Fauconberg’s banner on a spear. Others in unfamiliar liveries are milling about, each waiting to speak to his heralds.

‘See?’ Simon says. ‘Men’re flocking to our colours now.’

They put up the tent in a corner of the camp and then scavenge some wood from a barn for their fire. They sit on their helmets by the flames and watch as men queue to join Fauconberg’s army. There is every sort of soldier, from swineherds with rough iron bills and glaives all the way up to knights with liveried retinues. Some of the soldiers they’ve been fighting only that day are returning to join up. Companies and contingents bring with them carts laden with barrels and sacks and their women and children, and as evening descends the army has already doubled its size.

‘Be invincible soon,’ Dafydd laughs.

‘Wait till we get to Canterbury before you say that,’ Walter says. ‘That’s the first real test.’

Canterbury. Even mention of it hurts Thomas. He looks around for Katherine, but then remembers.

‘How far is it?’ he asks.

‘A day?’ Geoffrey guesses. ‘Not far.’

Rain sets in. They retreat into the tent and stand peering out as the fires hiss and are slowly extinguished.

It doesn’t stop for the next two days, and by the third the camp is a stinking quagmire. Men slip and fall; horses slip and fall. Armour and weapons rust; Thomas’s jack doubles its weight. Men relieve themselves from the earthwork walls.

They are waiting on the Earl of Warwick, still in Calais.

‘Why doesn’t he just hurry up?’ Dafydd asks. ‘Seems I’ve spent half my life waiting for the bloody Earl of Warwick and a favourable bloody wind.’

‘Favourable wind,’ Owen repeats, rolling on to one buttock and farting.

It is still raining the next morning when the ships come in. Thomas is drinking ale with Geoffrey under the sodden straw awning of an alewife’s house. She is looking at them because together they take up most of the space and there is little room for any other customers. They are talking about Hugh.