Katherine sits on Margaret’s bag, holding her hands over the slowly resuscitating coal fire in the middle of the hall. The innkeeper steps behind the screen and begins shouting at someone in his own language. Thomas meanwhile begins rummaging through Katherine’s bag. There is a stained white shirt, a pair of braies, a length of cloth, two old-fashioned woollen hoods and a leather strap, but it has been so cold she’s been wearing everything else she owns, and now all that is sodden, clinging to her.

Thomas’s eye falls on Margaret’s bag. In it are the blue cloak, those dresses, the linen underthings, the fine-gauge hose. A thought strikes him.

‘Kit,’ he says, half from habit now, even though they are alone. ‘You’ll have to become a girl again.’

She looks at him and he sees her eyes are bright and feverish.

Dear God, he thinks, she cannot die on me too. Not Katherine. Not her.

‘Come on,’ he says, and he takes her by the hand and leads her to a corner of the hall where the fire is yet to cast much light, and he begins taking off her clothes. She starts to struggle, pulling away from him, but he is too strong, she too weak.

‘Come on, Kit,’ he murmurs. ‘Come on. It’s all right. It is just me. It’s Thomas. I’m helping you. You have to get out of these wet clothes. We have to get you dry. Come on.’

He coaxes her out of her wet jack, her woollen pilch, her rosary, Alice’s rosary, her linen shirt. Her breasts are no bigger than kneecaps, and she is so thin he could have played a tune on her ribs, but dear God! What is this?

All over her back is a fretwork of tiny scars from her shoulder to the hollows above her waist. He stares at it, horrified, then rubs the thickened skin gently with the dry cloth, trying to work some life back into flesh as pallid as goose fat. Next he rummages in Margaret’s bags and finds a shift of thick linen. He spreads it out and pulls it over her head. It falls to her knees. Then he bends and yanks off her hose and her braies, which gather in rolls around her sodden boots. He lifts one skinny shank and hoicks the roll of cloth down around her ankle, removing the boot with a sucking sound and the smell of river water. Then the other boot.

Katherine stands half comprehending, half helpful, mute. He finds a pair of braies in Margaret’s bag and lays them on the floor for Katherine to step into. When she’s done so, he pulls them up and ties them as best he can under the linen shift.