More wounded are brought to the doors: a boy in blue with an arrowhead in his stomach, the broken shaft emerging from a rip in his jack. He is carried on a web of cloaks by his mates, five of them, and his face is also very pale, like alabaster, or ivory, and his lips very red. Once again Mayhew appears. He looks at the boy and shakes his head almost imperceptibly. Together they guide the men to a space on the ground near the fire where they lay him with unexpected gentleness.

‘You’ll be all right, son,’ one says, and Katherine sees from their likeness that he is indeed the father talking to the son. ‘Surgeon’ll soon have you fixed up and we can go back to Mam, hey? Good as new, with a fat purse apiece.’

Tears break from his eyelids though, and he turns away with a final shake of the boy’s hand. His mates take their cloaks, sliding them from under the boy’s body, and they cluster around the older man, guiding him away, back to the field.

There is a lull as the evening comes on. The friars have more bread and ale and they sleep by the fire. She shares a blanket with Richard and in the middle of the night he sits up, but does not move. It is as if he is staring at the moon. She says nothing.

In the morning they come again. It is all arrow wounds. Not a single blade injury. Katherine washes them, and occasionally cuts an arrowhead free when she knows where she is cutting, usually deferring to Mayhew, who’s only ever been an assistant but seems to have a rare gift for his craft.

‘Where are those other bloody surgeons?’ he asks. He has a spray of blood over his freckles now, and his leather apron resembles that of a butcher. ‘Taking their leave until the nobs get involved, I dare say,’ he answers his own question.

A priest has come from Pontefract and is moving quietly among the wounded, guided by one of the friars, and now more friars have come and they begin taking the bodies of men out of the barn as well as bringing them in. The men are mostly archers, brought in by their friends, but now and again a few men-at-arms appear, brought on horses by their squires and servants, who linger to help remove the plate armour, and who try to get them preferential treatment – ‘My master is a personal friend of Sir Humphrey Stafford,’ one will say – and always Katherine ignores them in favour of the most needy, thinking of Thomas and who might bring him in if he were wounded.