The third in the party is a grim-faced bodyguard, slouched in his saddle, who rolls his eyes as they start the ride back up the road to Sir John’s house and Fournier continues a lecture she imagines must have begun in Lincoln.

‘The objective of the patient is to be cured, yes? And to that end he will agree to anything. Once cured, though, his thoughts turn elsewhere and, like as not, he will forget his obligation to pay. The object of the physician, on the other hand, is to obtain his money, so he should insist on taking the money in advance. He must never be satisfied with a promise or a pledge from the patient before the cure is effected. D’you see?’

As they pass the field, the man and his boy are still at work, their plough turning neat lines of glossy black turves, but now seagulls the size of cats have chased away the starlings and they screech like the souls of the damned. On the road ahead the old woman is walking home with her basket of blackberries.

‘Are these all Sir John Fakenham’s lands?’ Fournier asks.

Thomas nods.

‘As far as the eye can see,’ he tells them.

That’ll increase Fournier’s price fivefold, she thinks, and she marvels again how naïve Thomas can be.

In the courtyard Walter is sharpening his knife on a step. He looks up, sees them, and then goes back to his task, saying nothing more.

‘Yes, well,’ Fournier says. ‘Good day to you.’

Geoffrey’s wife, Goodwife Popham, meets them at the door and Fournier asks her to warm some wine.

‘To drink or to use to cleanse your instruments?’ Katherine asks.

Fournier ignores her and she leads the way up the stairs to find Sir John in his chamber lying in the bed, drinking wine from a pewter cup. Two white hounds lie alongside him, ugly animals too, and all three look up at Fournier with fearful, bloodshot eyes.

‘Good day to you, Master Physician,’ Sir John murmurs, his pale lips hardly moving. ‘Has the time come already?’

His face is powdery, and he looks closer to death than life. When he tries to sit up and put the cup aside, the pain is too much, and he subsides.

‘It has, Sir John,’ Fournier answers, sitting on the bed and taking the cup from his fingers. ‘How is the fistula?’

Sir John squeezes his eyes shut. A tear escapes.

‘I cannot walk,’ he says. ‘I cannot shit. I cannot even cough for the pain of it.’

Fournier nods.

‘It is as I thought,’ he says. ‘Your humours are out of balance.’

Katherine groans. Fournier turns on her.

‘You have some new thing to say?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Only that what ails Sir John is not some misalignment of his humours. It is a sore in his backside.’

Fournier stands.

‘Are we to have this again?’