He rubs his chin. What next? He rummages in the bag, his blunt fingers among the fine-spun wool. A coif. He places it over her head, then rolls back the seams in imitation of women he’s seen. He finds a heavy linen kirtle, dull brown, that he drops over her head and laces up at the front. He ties off the strings just above her breast and then steps back. The effect is eerie, but not yet right. She still looks half dressed. What is missing? A proper dress. He finds the pale blue one Margaret had been wearing the day they first saw her, slips it over Katherine’s head, pulls it down and then thrusts her arms into the narrow sleeves.

All the while he talks to her, his voice low and reassuring. She sways when he is not holding her, but otherwise cooperates willingly enough. He wonders if it is the effect of the cold. He’s never known her so biddable.

He finds a long leather belt in Margaret’s bag and wraps it twice around Katherine’s waist. Then he finds a hood with a long tail that he places over her head and tucks into the belt. All that remains are the hose and the shoes, which have never been worn outside, let alone seen mud. He bends and picks up Katherine’s foot and slips a leg of hose up over her calf. It reaches mid-thigh and hangs loose and there does not seem any way to stop it falling straight back down around her ankle again. It will have to do. He does the same with the other one, and then slips her bony feet into the leather shoes, fastening the buckle just as the innkeeper returns.

The man stops still, a ewer of ale in his hand.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Well I never. I took you for a boy, mistress.’

She is – there is no other word for it – striking.

Still Katherine says nothing. She looks at the way the cloth grips her forearms and then she pulls at the coif against her neck. She runs fingers down to the front of her dress, feeling the lacings, which he now sees he’s tied poorly, and then she runs both hands down her hips and Thomas can feel his face flush. He does not know where to look and is reminded in a flash of what he had felt the previous night, before Margaret had died.

‘So strange,’ Katherine says at last. ‘So strange.’