Walter pays the pilot while the others stare downstream to where the green-sailed boat stands off in mid-channel before dropping her sail and diverting, as if after some discussion, to the river’s far bank. Without the sail she is quickly lost in the forest of masts.

‘Did you make it out?’ Walter asks.

Katherine shakes her head.

‘We’ve come too far down the river to cross now,’ Walter carries on. ‘We’ll have to find a ship to take us to this bloody place. Christ, I hope to hell all this is worth it.’

‘Just wait till you see Kidwelly,’ Dafydd assures them. ‘You’ll never want to leave it again.’

After some enquiries with the revenue men and one of the harbour master’s assistants they find a cog, a single-masted vessel, captained by a man whose accent they can hardly understand.

‘He’s an Easterling, or something,’ Walter says. ‘Or he’s from somewhere, anyhow.’

The Easterling is intending to sail to Wexford, in Ireland, with a cargo of Gascony wine in barrels, and he is prepared to carry them, though he cannot manage their horses.

‘Where you want go?’

Once again they explain.

‘Kid Velly?’

‘It’s on the sea,’ Dafydd keeps repeating.

‘When you look at sea, does sun shine on face or on side of face, or on back?’

‘Hardly ever shines,’ Dafydd admits.

‘Face!’ Owen shouts. ‘On face.’

The cog master blinks, and begins to move away as if idiocy might be contagious.

‘Is good,’ he admits. ‘Is south coast you want.’

‘You’ll recognise it when you see it, won’t you, Dafydd?’

Dafydd looks none too sure. They pay the Easterling a share of the fee he demands. Walter shakes his head as he counts out the coins from the purse Sir John has given him.

‘We have missed tide,’ the cog master announces, gesturing at the mud behind him. ‘We sail tomorrow. First light.’

They sell their horses at a stable that smells of river mud. The dealer can hardly believe Thomas’s horse, and has to send a boy to borrow more money so that he can cover even half of its real value. Then instead of buying provisions for the journey they pay a boatman to take them across the river where they spend until nightfall looking for the green-sailed boat, but with no luck.

The next morning the cog master and his crew meet them on the foreshore with a large supply of foodstuffs and supplies for the journey, some of which they are prepared to sell to Walter – at a price.