‘And what about when he saw this messenger?’

They’d shaken hands warmly, hadn’t they? As if Warwick had recognised him, and yet the stranger had said that he wouldn’t know him by name. So here is a mystery, but it is not one that will be solved just now, because a trumpet sounds, and the men look up. This is it.

Thomas downs the last of his ale and returns the cup to his pack. He helps Richard back to the tent. Katherine is there, helping load the cart. She is to stay with Richard and Sir John and to keep an eye on the baggage train.

‘Good luck,’ she says.

‘You too. I’m glad you’re not coming with us,’ he adds. ‘Walter says it is suicide.’

There is a long moment.

‘He will be there this time, Thomas,’ she says. ‘I know it. I don’t know why. I just do.’

Thomas swings the pollaxe behind him.

‘I thought it would be different,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d meet him alone somewhere and it would be fair. But this?’ He gestures to the army around him: the men sharpening swords, packing arrows, testing strings, honing blades. Men of all sizes, shapes, ages, experience. Thousands upon thousands of them. How will he ever find Riven among such a crowd? How will he ever find the time and space to fight him?

‘It may not be as either of us imagines it,’ she supposes. ‘But surely it is God’s will that it should happen?’

Thomas nods again. He knows she is testing him, half in jest, half serious. He knows she no longer believes in God’s will. But Thomas does, and if God wills it, he will find Riven and that giant of his.

‘And then it will all be over,’ he says.

She looks at him steadily and he cannot help smiling. She is so slight, yet so fierce. She breaks into a smile too.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘All over.’

He turns as once again the shouting begins and the army starts to form up, each body of men trying to find the right banner under which to gather.

‘I must go,’ he says.

She nods.

‘God go with you,’ she says and she clutches his hand.

‘You too, Kit,’ he says.

And he watches her as she steps back out of the way and her place is taken by a column of archers in fire-scale steel helmets.

19

‘ARCHERS, TO THE front! Archers to the front! Get over there, God damn you, man!’

‘A Fauconberg! Where is Fauconberg?’

‘Stafford! John Stafford to me!’

‘Where are William Hastings’s men?’