How long he stays in the tower, on his knees below the bell, he is unable say. The life of the priory is disrupted and the observation of the Hours stalled while the canons maintain their stations at the walls and the sisters remain within the nave below.

He thinks about the two sisters. He had only seen the face of one of them: the one who had thrown the bucket. She looked fierce; that is the word that occurs to him. The other sister he would only ever recognise again by her beautiful rosary beads. He’d not dared look too closely at her face. They are the first women he has seen for five Eastertides.

Soon his stomach is like a stone for want of food and he needs to relieve himself. He is about to call out for help when he stops. He has heard something.

What is it? The wind? No. It is a distant and regular drumbeat, coming from the east. He can make nothing out in the mist, but the noise is constant now, and getting louder. It is solidifying into something like – like what? It is a confusion of scratching, shuffling, and grinding.

And then he sees it.

First comes the suggestion that the road is firming, becoming darker and more distinct, but then there comes one of those gaps in the mist as it hurries across the marshland. It slips over the road and with a start Thomas catches the fleeting glimpse of a man on horseback.

No sooner has he seen him than he is gone. He begins to doubt himself.

But no. There he is again. Less distinct, but surely there?

Then the rider emerges from the mist again. This time he is close enough so that Thomas can make him out. On a grey. His coat red. Behind him comes a huge man on a dray horse, then a cart loaded with hay, then another two men riding alongside one another and then more, in pairs, until Thomas cannot judge their numbers, for he cannot see the rear of the line where it vanishes into the mist. It might go on forever.

They all wear the same white livery coat; some carry long spears in their stirrups, others hammers and bills over their shoulders. One is carrying a banner that hangs in frozen swags.

Thomas tries to swallow but his mouth has gone dry. Then he is on his feet. He seizes the clapper of the bell and begins hammering it against the bell’s brass lip.

The Dean appears in the garth.

‘They are without!’ Thomas cries. ‘A host!’

‘How many?’

‘I cannot say. Many hundreds.’