He falls. He spills his bow and a bag of arrows. A man treads on him, can do nothing else. He is pressed into the mud. Men thunder past. He wrenches himself up, crawls to his knees, and is pushed down again. He hears an oath in his ear; he snatches his bow and then gathers himself and stands and starts running again. He is well back now, but around him men are wavering.

It is the boulders. This is not why they have flocked to the Earl of Warwick’s banner, Thomas thinks, to be torn apart by a stone fired from a wall by French mercenaries.

An archer from another company is writhing on the ground, crying out for his mother. Blood is leaching from a smoking hole in his jack.

The archers around him slow. They are in position now and they fumble with their bows. Thomas pulls an arrow from his belt and nocks it. He looses it and moves forward. He sends another, flitting across the meadow at one of the gunners prancing on the wall. He hits the man, knocking him down in a heap. A fourth gun fires and the stone skips across the marsh and decapitates a man so quickly his body stays upright for a moment. The stone ploughs into the mud under the heels of some billmen who’ve turned to begin back up the hill.

And suddenly there is Walter, seemingly restored, and all is well.

‘Loose and move!’ he is shouting. ‘Loose and move!’

Thomas nocks another and looses it. He is still pulling them to the left.

The billmen are pressing up now, coming through the archers’ ranks in their companies.

Then the fifth gun fires, but instead of the expected crack that follows, this one gives a muffled sigh. Walter pauses and lowers his bow.

‘A misfire,’ he shouts.

Then comes an even softer report as another gun misfires, and smoke billows above the enemy lines. There’s yet another low thud.

Walter starts laughing wildly and pointing to the sky.

‘It’s the rain!’ he shouts. ‘The bloody rain! God is on our side! They can’t light their bloody guns!’

They can see the Burgundians now, throwing their hands up, turning from their guns, trying to run away. One of the King’s men, in full armour, slashes at a Burgundian to stop him retreating, knocking him flat. He raises his sword at another, but a third throws something at him, knocking him down, and there are running men everywhere.

‘Come on!’ Walter bellows. ‘Move up! Move up! We’ve got them now!’

He gestures to a captain of the billmen, a gangly boy in a rusting helmet and greaves he’s probably borrowed from his father. They are still two hundred paces from the wall, coming into range of the enemy archers, and just as the men-at-arms and billmen next to them begin their charge, the sky above darkens with arrows.