Katherine can think of nothing to say.

‘It is no reflection on your care,’ he goes on. ‘No man can have wished for a more attentive nurse and Hastings has been boasting of your skills with the knife far and wide.’

‘He’s a kind man, William Hastings,’ she says.

Sir John agrees.

After Sir John leaves she crouches in the tent next to Richard and tries to make sense of it all. She still has no idea what to do. She will have to leave soon, before Thomas can take her before the Prior of All, but she cannot simply abandon Richard. Perhaps this physician will reassure her.

But when Fournier turns up, she is still unsure.

‘Master Dominic Fournier,’ his servant announces, holding open the tent flap as the physician steps in. He is wearing a velvet cloak, greasy at the worn lapels, and a sagging fur hat sprouting an array of damp goose feathers. He is poorly shaved and his dark eyebrows meet in the middle. He looks anxious, as if he might be unmasked at any moment.

‘Do you have wine?’ he asks. ‘Any will do?’

‘None,’ she says.

He nods.

‘Very well. Then let us make this short. Boy, expose the wound.’

The boy looks at Katherine for permission. He is grey-faced with a clipped right ear from which for a moment Katherine cannot take her gaze. She wonders absently how strange it is that one rarely sees men with clipped ears. What happens to the boys? Do only a few live long enough to become men?

She does not want the boy to touch the wound, so she bends and peels back the dressing herself. She hears Fournier suck his teeth. Then sniff the air. The wound is black-lipped, and slightly puckered, the skin around it rosy and delicate, fine as silk. Something glistens between its lips. Katherine knows that the wound is healing and she is pleased – no, astonished by what she has managed.

‘Yes, yes,’ Fournier says. ‘It is as I feared. The wound has cured from the outside in. It has sealed in the hot wet humour. It needs cauterising. We’ll need a fire.’

Katherine stands.

‘You are going to burn him?’ Panic makes her voice high.

‘It is the only way,’ Fournier says. ‘We must clean the wound from within, with fire, then we shall bleed him. Such a wound, particularly in such a place, unbalances the humours. We need to make a small incision between the fingers, there.’ He points at Richard’s limp hand with the long point of his patten. ‘It is connected to the functions of the liver. And the moon is in an auspicious quarter for cutting.’