‘A man has to make living,’ the master says with a shrug. He sells them a clay pot of cooked beans, ale in a wooden barrel and a loaf of bread the size of a man’s torso and twice as hard. When they’ve climbed aboard, each finding a nook around the wine tuns, the crew cast off and two small rowing boats tug them out into the fast-flowing channel that has swelled overnight to refill the muddy reach. Soon they are back in the Bristol Channel. Walter and Thomas join Katherine at the stern and peer back towards the harbour mouth, where the spires of the churches and the towers of the castle are hidden behind the converging cliffs of red limestone.

Between them another boat is just putting out, a green sail hoisted.

25

IT IS THEIR second day at sea and the Easterlings know the storm is coming because the birds disappear.

‘Bad one, I think,’ the cog master says.

Then there is an argument. The mate wants to put into port, Thomas guesses, but the cog master wants to ride it out at sea. Eventually the cog master carries it, and the little boat veers out into the emptiness of the western sea, where blue-black clouds boil on the horizon.

The day darkens and the rain starts some time after noon, sharp and cold, stinging like pinpricks. The wind baffles the sail, starts humming through the ratlines, and only gets stronger until it is enough to lift ropes from the deck to stream aside horizontally. The ship ducks and rears and the crew furl the sail and cram it below the deck. The mate ties himself to the mast and shouts at the others to do the same.

Then the sky turns black and sea rises up around them. Thomas is suddenly aware how small the ship really is. It is tossed about, lifted on great scarps of green water, then let go to plummet into frothing troughs. Great slides of water thunder across her deck. Thomas clings to the mast. He prays to God for deliverance. The cog master battles to stay upright. The wine tuns float free. Something falls from the masthead and hits the mate, knocking him either dead or cold, none can tell. He remains tied to the mast, hanging with his hands by his feet, head by his knees, and is thrown back and forth until he surely must be dead.

The cog master bellows all the while: they must bail out; and so they stagger from their perches and set to with anything they can find: buckets, jugs, dishes, an old hat. One of the crew uses a mallet and lever to get the tuns back into place.

The wind rises further, shrieking in the stays, and the sea is battering the cog, breaking her to kindling. Water booms over the gunwales, shoving them aside, its level rising to froth around their knees. The cog feels heavy, unbalanced.