Over her shoulder the sea has turned green in the rain, and comes right up so that there is now no mud to be seen in the bay. They can hear the waves on the shore from all this way, and even the river below them is full.

She is peering westwards, shielding her eyes from the rain. When she hears him she turns, and then turns back and points. Thomas stares. Away beyond the headland to the west there is the suggestion of something, a long trail in the sky.

‘What is it?’ he asks.

‘Smoke, I think.’

‘Have you told Dwnn?’

She shakes her head.

‘He is at Mass.’

Thomas rouses the boy with a vigorous shake. He babbles something, still half asleep, so Thomas takes him by the arm and points out the smoke. The boy babbles more, excitedly, and then disappears through the door. They can hear him running down the spiral steps. A moment later they see him threading his way through the outer ward, shouting something as he goes. Thomas recognises the word Tudor. Behind him the women and children come scrambling out from under their shelters. They stare up at the tower. Thomas turns back to Katherine.

‘Is it this Jasper Tudor? Has his army come ashore?’

‘It must be,’ she supposes.

Thomas feels nauseous. An army of men coming this way. He is not sure he can endure anything like that afternoon outside Northampton again. A moment later he hears feet on the steps and Dwnn and Walter join them.

‘That’s it,’ Dwnn tells them. ‘Tudor’s ships’re here, full of bloody French and Irish mercenaries. Christ! We’d best get ourselves set.’

They begin clattering back down the steps.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Walter is saying. ‘Why’ve they come now? It’s the middle of bloody winter. Where are they going to get their fodder? Where are they going to sleep? Just doesn’t make sense.’

‘Tudor was always a bit like that,’ Dwnn admits. ‘You know his grandfather thought he was made of glass? Can you believe it? King of France, he was.’

‘And because of this his son is bringing an army here to unseat the Duke of York?’ Katherine asks.

Dwnn shrugs.

‘Seems that way,’ he says. ‘No soft spot for the Duke of York, after what happened to his brother, and he can’t have liked the Act of Accord, can he? His own nephew disinherited.’

Thomas shakes his head.

‘But he probably hasn’t ever met his own nephew,’ he says. ‘Why would he care so much as to – to invade his own country with foreign soldiers?’

Dwnn looks at him as if he is simple.