‘Any sign of it?’ he asks. He means the other ship. She pauses, and then shakes her head. She is pale in the early-morning sunlight, her skin almost transparent, her clothes stained, her hair salt-stiffened. Her cut ear is reddened by chafing against the damp wool of her hat. He wants to touch it, but doesn’t. He almost laughs as he tries to imagine what she’d say if he did.

The next day the coast reveals itself as jagged green hills skirted by grey stone cliffs and stretches of ochre sand. Clouds are gathered over it and soon it starts to rain again.

‘This way, I think,’ the cog master says, and the cog heels to the west. They sail on, past a spit, and then turn northwards again, across a bay towards another headland.

‘They call Worm’s Head,’ the cog master tells them, nodding at a low point as they sailed past. ‘Is haunted.’

‘Haunted?’

‘By souls of drowned sailors.’

Dafydd and Owen are together at the gunwale, clutching each other and pointing at a bay that opens before them.

‘Is?’ the cog master asks.

‘Home!’ Dafydd shouts. ‘Look! There’s the house.’

He points. There is not much to be seen: a broad sweep of mud, a sandy bank, then low hills and a river emptying from the northwest. Thomas can’t see any cottage. Katherine stares hard, frowning, looking at something else in the sand, but still she says nothing.

‘The next bay is Kidwelly!’ Dafydd says. ‘Just around there.’

The cog master orders the sail reduced and they steer past the headland. Beyond is another river’s mouth.

‘Never seen so much bloody mud,’ Walter mutters. ‘It’s like there are two seas: the watery one we’ve just been on, and now this. Look at it.’

Walter’s sea of mud stretches to the horizon either side of them and all the way ahead to where the land rises in soft-topped green hillocks. Seagulls wheel overhead, calling to one another, playing in the wind, their feathers the only bright accent against the grey clouds above.

‘Not much of a place?’ Thomas suggests.

‘A shithole,’ Walter agrees.

‘Wait till you see the town,’ Dafydd says, but his words have taken on an ambiguous tone. They carry on through the channel in the mud. A man in the bow shouts instructions to the cog master at the tiller and Dafydd points out a low-roofed grey stone house, set among some scrub on the hills.

‘Penallt,’ he says. ‘Where the Dwnns live.’

‘Bloody Dwnns.’ Walter tuts. Thomas can’t help smiling at this, and seeing him, so does Walter.

The cog master puts them down on the deserted quay, a rotting wooden platform half backfilled with rubbish.

‘Happy hunting,’ he says, collecting the balance in coins and giving his crew the order to cast off.