‘He hasn’t stirred all night,’ Richard says. ‘And now I hear Fournier has skipped off.’

Katherine nods.

‘Richard,’ she says. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘What do you mean?’

She holds out the manuscript. Richard takes it and flinches.

‘Dear God,’ he breathes. ‘You can’t mean to cut it out?’

Katherine nods. Richard turns to his father. Just then the old man twitches as if in pain, and a grimace tightens his face. Richard passes back the manuscript.

‘Are you certain you can do it?’ he asks. ‘It is more than removing an arrow, you know? More than binding a wound like Thomas’s.’

‘I feel certain. I don’t know why.’

Richard strokes the hair from his father’s forehead.

‘Leave me to think on it,’ he says. ‘I will give you an answer soon.’

Katherine nods. She is just going when he calls out.

‘I trust you though, Kit. I know you can do it if you say you can.’

After their breakfast Katherine follows the others to the butts behind the church, bringing the manuscript with her. They loose their arrows, sending the shafts thumping into the earth banks at the far end of the clearing. They nock and loose, nock and loose. An hour, two hours. By the end of it Thomas is rubbing his shoulder and they are all grimy with sweat.

‘Let’s do it again,’ Brampton John says.

‘What’s got into you?’

‘Just the thought of twenty thousand northern bastards coming this way. I’ve got a wife now, you know?’

‘Have you? I thought that was your ma,’ Dafydd says and for once a fight doesn’t break out.

Later Richard comes down to the butts. He calls them away and into the church. They leave their bows at the door and assemble in the nave.

‘I’ve paid the priest to say Mass.’

‘To what end?’ Walter asks.

‘Kit is going to cut open my father’s fistula.’

Dafydd opens his mouth to swear but realises he is in the house of God. In the dappled light from the glass window their faces are discoloured, and Katherine feels a distance yawn between herself and the others, as if she is becoming something different, something to be feared. The curious thing is that they look to Thomas for their lead. It is as if because he is Kit’s friend, he has some special insight.

‘He can do it,’ Thomas says with a shrug.

Mass is swiftly delivered by a priest impatient to be elsewhere, but the prayers the men send up are heartfelt. Afterwards they troop silently back through the village to the hall. The atmosphere seems to have thickened, and every movement, every gesture is charged with added significance, as before a punishment.

‘Thomas,’ she says. ‘Will you pluck some hair from the tail of your horse? About twenty strands perhaps. As long as you can find them, good and strong and not likely to break.’