After the battle of Northampton, when the Earl of March had awarded Thomas the Earl of Shrewsbury’s armour, Thomas had sold it to Richard and the price had included Richard’s old cuisses, greaves and sabatons, and these he now straps on, covering his legs from toe to thigh. Thomas cannot help smiling at the sight of his legs encased in steel, the neat rows of bands that taper across each foot to form a point over his toes. They are almost tolerable to walk in.

After hearing Mass in St Botolph’s next to the priory opposite, Geoffrey hires a litter to carry Sir John down to the bridge, five archers ahead, five behind. Katherine runs alongside, her cap pulled low to hide her ear. They find a barge willing to take them up to Westminster and climb aboard and spread themselves out on the broad planks that span the boat, and they prop their weapons on the gunwale. The oarsmen, half-naked and too old for this sort of thing, take up their oars and the master hauls up his patched ochre sail and sets the craft out into the middle of the river.

There is a light breeze. The sun comes out. The water is green. Thomas and Katherine sit together on the last thwart in the stern and stare back through the arches under the bridge where the water roars, to where the Tower’s battlements are softened by coal smoke.

The oarsmen row against the current up past the wharves, each one backed by a church or a priory or a friary, and Thomas cannot help but recall the pardoner’s words. The church is indeed rich. They row past the square bulk of Baynard’s Castle, dour and uninviting, its water gate firmly boarded, and then on past the city walls, following the river as it meanders past Charing, until before them stands the King’s palace and St Stephen’s Chapel at Westminster.

‘Busy day,’ the barge’s pilot grunts.

The oarsmen lean on their oars and take them upriver while they wait for space on the jetty. A barge pulls away, then another, both heading downstream to London. Thomas thinks he recognises the white-haired old man in the first one, grandly turned out, with a small retinue in red livery. Is it the Earl of Salisbury? Warwick’s father?

Eventually ropes are tossed out and they make fast. Richard speaks to the guards and assures them of their bona fides while Thomas and Geoffrey help Sir John up over the side of the barge and then set him on the shore with tears of pain in his eyes.

‘That bastard Fournier,’ he murmurs. ‘A fee of two marks and he’s only made it worse, may the saints be my witnesses, and I feel as weak as a kitten. Here, help me, Thomas, will you?’

Thomas takes one arm over his shoulder, Geoffrey the other.

‘Not very dignified, but by Christ . . .’