‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

Riven’s men are just as confused. They are shouting the same question. The horse is screaming. The others are trying to turn their horses, trying to get back to the trees. Thomas raises his head above the grasses. At the far end of the meadow he can see the pale spikes of bows among the thickets of sedge. Another arrow skims through the reed tips. It hits something and there is a cry.

Riven’s men are pulling back. There is a drum of unsteady hooves as they reach the trees and start up the hill, back to Tudor’s army.

But where is the giant? Where is Riven?

Thomas raises his head again. An arrow sighs overhead, missing the horses. He ducks.

‘Come on,’ he says. He takes Katherine’s hand and leads her scrambling back behind the willows. Under the branches it smells sharply of cows. He looks around the rough bark, sees the archers moving up. Three or four empty-saddled horses stand cropping the grass and nearby a man sobs in agony. Reed tops twitch, and an arrow with a broken fletch buzzes noisily overhead in the gloom.

Who are these new men? Where have they come from?

There is a long moment of silence. Then a man shouts in the distance, calling to his own men. Horsemen have arrived from the far end of the marsh and are now cautiously investing the long grasses. They are scurriers perhaps, but whose? Thomas can almost make out their livery, but cannot believe it. Blue and murrey? Isn’t that March’s livery? Or Hastings’s?

‘What badges are they wearing?’

Katherine peers through the willows.

An arrow cracks into the trunk above their heads. She screams and he drags her down again.

There is a sudden drum of hooves and a bellow of pain, then another scream that ends in a crunch of something. Whimpering; more silence. Overhead three ducks pass, their wings wheezing as they beat. A man roars. A scrape of steel and iron, a splash, and then more shouts. An archer appears along the road, keeping to shadows, his head bobbing. He starts when he sees them, raises his bow and draws.

Thomas throws aside the sword and holds his palms up. The archer half relaxes his string.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asks. He sounds like Walter.

Thomas stares at him. He can hardly speak. The archer has the badge of a bull’s head on his tabard. The bull’s head. William Hastings’s badge. He is one of Hastings’s men. Hastings’s archers.

Thomas takes a step towards him and the man tightens his string, but then is distracted by Katherine wearing a lady’s fine cloak, but her hair is short and uncovered, and she is like no lady he can ever have seen.

‘My name is Thomas Everingham,’ Thomas begins. ‘A good friend to William Hastings.’