It is Mayhew. He has put on a blacksmith’s apron and he crouches over the boy and feels along his leg, rolling the sliced hose down to his knee.

‘Hmmm,’ he says. ‘Hmmm.’

‘Will you pull it?’ she asks. She remembers cutting out Richard’s arrow in France.

‘More likely to pull the shaft from the head,’ he says. ‘Seen that happen a thousand times.’

He measures the arrow, or the amount of it that protrudes from the leg. Then he sits back on his heels and looks at the boy’s thigh from another angle. He nods to himself.

‘Only one thing for it,’ he says. He stands up.

‘Ready?’ he asks the boy with a smile. The boy looks up at him with complete fear. His mouth opens and closes but before he says anything, Mayhew crouches again, grasps the arrow with both hands and leans his shoulder on the notch, forcing it through the leg and out the other side with a rush of blood and splitting flesh. The boy screams. He bucks and levers himself up to punch Mayhew.

‘Hold him!’ Mayhew cries. Katherine throws herself on the boy, trying to pin him down. One of the friars hurries over. Mayhew girds himself and breaks the arrow shaft just above the wound while the boy gasps and thrashes on the ground. There is blood all over the place, mixing with the straw and the mud and whatever else. Mayhew runs his fingers over the break in the arrow to remove any splinters, pours a little of the urine he has in the clay pot on to the wound and then asks the friar to lift the boy’s leg.

The black bodkin arrowhead protrudes just below the boy’s buttock, where the blood flows in a thick line. Mayhew takes it between his fingers, rolls it, and then eases it through the wound and out. A sudden rush of blood makes him frown. He nods at a wad of linen soaked with still warm urine.

‘Press it hard,’ he says.

Katherine holds the pad to the wound. The archer has fainted. After a moment the bleeding slows, and Mayhew nods with satisfaction.

‘Hah!’ the friar exclaims. ‘Nicely done.’

Mayhew stands and inspects the tip of the arrow. There is a small cluster of woollen threads, viscous with blood. Again he nods with satisfaction and tosses the arrow on the fire.

‘More fun than couching for cataracts, hey?’ he says. ‘And if we bind him now, I think he’ll live to fight another day.’

The boy is very pale and sweat beads his forehead. Katherine washes the two wounds and binds them with linen strips. Every day: a lesson.