‘No,’ he says. She cannot tell if he believes her, but there is a curious, almost tender look in his eye. He raises his hand as if to touch her, then drops it. He shakes his head.

‘Well, count yourself lucky,’ Katherine tells him, ‘in more ways than one.’

The crowds pat them as they pass, and wine flows and everywhere men and women are laughing. Thomas stops to buy some reeds and ink from an inkseller. She tells him he has paid too much, but what does either of them know? Then they are through the city gates again and out across the fields. The old road is dead straight, heading west where clouds threaten more rain. News spreads up and down the column that the Archbishop of Canterbury has thrown his lot in with the Earls of March and Warwick, and that he will be riding with them.

‘Coppini says it is all his doing,’ Sir John laughs from the back of his cart. ‘Typical bloody Frenchy.’

Richard is sitting up. He is pale, very thin, still not talking much, just staring back at the cathedral’s spires as the town drops away behind them. There are dark circles under his eyes and his skin is like that of a drowned man, but he no longer smells of contagion, or of the grave, and Katherine is sure he is on the mend. For his sake later that morning they let Katherine ride with them, but she is conscious that she remains under a shadow. Sir John ignores her, though she sometimes catches him staring at her with an expression she cannot read. Is it regret? Anxiety? Now and again he leans forward to try to see her wound, but she has it well hidden under her cap.

The cart creaks along, its wheels spinning through the long troughs of mud, jarring over the loose stones. Here and there the road has slipped away into the verge and the men behind must steady it as she rolls, or they must put their shoulders to the wheels when it becomes stuck. The threatened rain begins to fall. She covers Richard in a travelling cloak and places a straw hat on his head and after a while she is sure he is asleep and she watches out for Thomas, walking behind with the others, a head taller than most of them. He smiles at her and rolls his eyes, and a smile breaks her own lips, and she feels a small thrill alike to that one feels with the first scent of spring.