‘Get his armour off,’ she orders. The man-at-arms bends and cuts through the leather laces and the straps. He frees the plate and tosses it aside. The arrow has broken through the rings of the mail skirt and lodged itself in the meat of Warwick’s thigh, just below the groin.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ Warwick mutters. ‘Do something.’

Warwick’s hose is soaked with blood but there is not too much. She cuts through the material and rolls it down to his knee. The arrow is in the soft part of his thigh, lodged in the muscles at the back of his leg. Great God he is lucky.

‘Have you the rest of the arrow?’ she asks.

The man-at-arms looks at her as if she is a fool.

‘Can we have someone here who is not a juggler or a clown?’ he says. ‘This is my lord the Earl of Warwick, for the love of Jesu, not some nameless peasant. Get on and cure him.’

She returns to the wound. This is difficult. How far has the arrow gone in? She collects one of the silver-snouted needles, a long one, rinses it in a jar of warm wine and then probes the wound beside the shaft, inserting the sliver of metal into the lips of the wound and letting it trace the path of the barb. Warwick grimaces.

‘Wine,’ he demands.

She shakes her head.

‘We need it for other purposes.’

He is unused to being denied anything he requires and he looks at her properly for the first time.

‘The devil are you?’ he asks.

Instead of answering she presses the needle farther in. She wants to distract him with the pain, and it works. Her fingers are in the wound now. It means the arrow is deep and it will be easier to push it through, just as she has seen Mayhew do earlier. She withdraws the needle and wishes Mayhew were not suddenly so shy.

She will have to make a short shunt with the heel of her hand on the broken shaft and hope that she can force it out in one move. But what about the wound on the other side? She has an idea, looks up. A crowd has gathered, nine or ten men including a herald in the quartered livery of the King. All are in plate armour and the man-at-arms is on his knees. He is wearing thick leather gloves.

‘Give him the wine,’ she orders the friar.

The friar holds the jug of wine to the Earl’s lips.

‘Wait,’ Katherine says, and she leans forward and swirls the surgeon’s knife in the jug.

‘All right,’ she says, removing the blade. ‘He can drink it now.’

They watch as Warwick drains the wine. He grimaces and spits something out.

‘Roll him on to his left side, will you?’

The friar and the man-at-arms take him and move him, complaining, on to his left side.