She asks Goodwife Popham for some hot wine.

‘We’ll need plenty of it, in a copper dish, as well as linen and candles and a flask of oil of roses. And the whites of five of your freshest eggs.’

Up in the bedchamber Sir John is awake but only just. His eyes are slots and his tongue is thick. With the treatise by her side, Katherine begins going through Fournier’s instruments, picking out those she will need.

She finds the spongia somnifera, soaked in the anaesthetic Fournier uses to stupefy his patients. There is an inch or so left in the flask, but is that a lot? Or not very much? She will have to wait to see how powerful it is.

After a moment Goodwife Popham brings a large copper dish of steaming red wine. Thomas shuffles in behind her with the horsehair. Behind him come Dafydd and Owen, then Black John, then all the others. Only Walter remains downstairs.

‘You can put the dish on the floor,’ Katherine tells Goodwife Popham. ‘And can you bring some blood-warm water in a ewer? And a dish of salt. And as many candles as you have? And, Geoffrey, will you get those damned dogs out of here.’

While Geoffrey shoos the dogs, she curls the horsehair into the wine and places the instruments on them to hold them down. Then she dips the sponge into the flask. She has no idea what is in it, but the scent is heady, almost overpowering the sweet reek that rises from the sheets whenever Sir John moves. She places the sponge under his nose. He looks at her over it, his eyes like a pug’s.

‘Courage,’ he whispers, placing a damp hand on her wrist. ‘Have courage, Kit. It is God’s will, and He will be at your shoulder, guiding your hand.’

She nods. Sir John’s pupils swell as the fumes take effect. Then the lids come down. His breathing eases. He begins to snore.

Everyone relaxes.

‘Help me roll him, will you?’

Richard and Geoffrey gently rock the old man around so that he lies face down on the side of the bed, his legs hanging over the edge with his knees among the rushes on the boards of the floor. His bulk is impressive.

‘Get a cushion, will you?’ Katherine says. ‘One that is not too valuable. And some rags, and warm water.’

Dafydd goes off in search and comes back with them and the ewer of blood-warm water. They slide the cushion under Sir John’s knees, and then swaddle them with rags. Katherine nods at Richard and he eases the bloodstained braies down past his father’s thighs to reveal a pair of pink buttocks covered in a white furze. Just then he farts, a soft wheeze that ends in a rapid blurt. A splash of dark blood stains his pale calf.

‘You’ll have to spread his legs,’ Katherine says.