Katherine approaches. Gwen is inside, on the ground, her skirts pulled up, her heavy thighs marble-white in the gloom, a pattern of blood smeared across each one, the nub of her forearm burned black in a fire still winking. Katherine gags and claps her hand to her mouth as her insides come scorching upwards.

She staggers out and vomits. When she finishes, she starts again until she is retching bile. Thomas comes back. His hands have fallen to his sides and his mouth is opening and closing silently. She forgets her own nausea.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

He gestures. Flaps a hand.

Walter goes over. Katherine follows, her footsteps slow. She does not want to see this.

In among all the shit and the feathers of the goose pen is Owen, thrown on his back, both hands clutching an arrow in his throat. The blood is diluted in the drizzle. More is pooled in the divots in the mud in the pen, in what she now sees are the prints of large bare feet.

‘Oh dear God,’ she breathes.

She can hardly believe it. She feels numb. Owen. She cannot stop a sob racking her. Walter puts his arm around her.

‘It’s all right, Girly. It’s all right.’

But it’s not, and his voice cracks too. Thomas stands by Owen. He is holding the broken arrow from the first dead body, inspecting its fletch.

‘Ours,’ he says, showing it to Walter.

‘At least he got one of them,’ Walter says.

Margaret appears. She has run out of patience waiting and has ridden down the hill, but she sees the body and stops before she reaches the orchard.

The dog keeps barking.

‘Where’s that bloody dog?’ Walter asks.

‘Where’s Dafydd?’ Katherine asks.

They look at one another and then follow the sound of the dog, coming from the hovel, around the back of the cottage. There is more wood stored here, carefully cut and stacked in neat piles: logs, faggots, pimps. Another man is lying face down in a leather coat, and then another, lying on his back, his eyes open, arms thrown back, an arrow in his chest. They can smell blood and shit.

Walter steps over them.

Thomas stops.

‘Look,’ he says.

The arrow sticks from a filthy white tabard and on the chest is a dark badge.

A raven.

She sees Thomas’s shoulders sag as he breathes out.

‘He’s here,’ he says.

She nods. She feels cold. Fear grips her.

The dog yips.

Ahead Walter swears.