When they get to Marton Hall Fournier is still there, still at the table, though his boy and his guard have apparently taken his horses and deserted him. Goodwife Popham says he has been drunk by eleven every morning and asleep in his dinner by midday. Sir John pales when he sees him.

‘Why, Master Fournier, good day to you.’

‘And good day to you, Sir John. You do not look to have flourished since our last meeting. It is as well that I delayed my departure, so that we may cut you once more tomorrow, and restore the balance of your humours.’

Richard and Geoffrey help Sir John up to his room, leaving Thomas and Katherine and the others to their supper.

‘Master Fournier,’ Katherine calls down the length of the table, ‘are you familiar with the name John Arderne?’

The physician, who has picked up his cup, pauses.

‘John Arderne? Why yes. A surgeon. Of the last century, a great talent with the knife, but the possessor of dangerous and ungodly theories concerning the production of the laudable pus.’

‘Was he not an expert at curing fistulae?’ Katherine goes on.

Fournier takes a long drink and stares at her over his cup. He puts it down and dries his lips.

‘He had some small success,’ he allows, ‘but the intervention . . . Well. It is highly dangerous. I would not advise it. And do you know that Arderne ignored the need for cautery or purgatives? He recommended a clean sponge pressed against a wound to stop the flow of blood and thereafter nothing but bandages, changed only when dirty, and the wound kept dry? Madness.’

‘You know of his cure for fistulae then?’

‘Of course. Whatever do you take me for?’

‘I had you as a barber. A cutter of hair.’ She does not add ‘a drunk’. All talk has silenced on the table.

‘You doubt my skill to carry out such an operation?’

Katherine chooses her words carefully. ‘I do not doubt your skill. Only your courage.’

Fournier puts down his cup. He is thinking hard.

‘It is not so serious a fistula,’ he says, as if to himself. ‘And there is only one of them. I have the tools required for the operation in my pack.’

For a moment it seems to Katherine that Fournier will conduct the operation.

‘But no,’ he says. ‘I have none of the notes I need, nor sufficient recall of the details of the procedure.’

He returns to his drink with relief.

‘We have his instructions here,’ Katherine says. She nods to Thomas, who fishes the manuscript out of the pardoner’s pack. He is about to pass them along the table, then sees the greasy thumbs that might mark the pages, and so he gets up and delivers them to the physician himself. Fournier looks at them, casually at first, but then a frown gathers.

‘Now you have no excuse,’ Katherine says.