After he has said his prayers, he lies awake, crouched with cold, listening to the soft sound of the men around him: the occasional snore, the whispers, the prayers, the little movements in the dark. This is when they are at their most honest, he supposes, when they are skinless, and when you learn what sorts of men they are, and they learn what sort of man you are.

He must have fallen asleep for he wakes shuddering before first light, his hair stiff with ice. Outside the horizon is growing pale, the first birds are starting to sing, and the land is beginning to emerge indistinctly from the milk-grey morning light. Still there is nothing to eat, and one of the sentries tells him that Fauconberg is supposed to be in a little village called Lead, away to the west. His lances and mounted archers caught the Flower of Craven in the dark, in a little valley farther north, a dint in the dale, the messenger says, and killed every last one of them.

‘They weren’t looking for that,’ the messenger laughs. He’d been there, he says, and taken part in the ambush, and shows Thomas a little gold ring; its design is that dragon with the curled tail. His face is grey with fatigue, and there is a ring of blood around his nostril where he’s picked his nose with a bloody finger.

‘Give it to you for a loaf of bread?’ he asks.

‘You’ll be lucky.’

‘What about a coat?’

Thomas laughs. The bells of the church ring and they both instinctively look up. Behind the church’s tower pale snow clouds move south.

‘Palm Sunday,’ the messenger mutters, tucking the ring away. ‘Easter next week. Probably never live to see it.’

‘Now don’t talk like that,’ the Welshman says, appearing at Thomas’s side. ‘Bad for morale, that is.’

‘You seen how many men old Henry of Lancaster’s got?’ the messenger says. ‘No? Well, I have. Went up to the ridge last night. Must be thousands and thousands of ’em. Northern bastards. And I’ll tell you what: they’ve got all the quality. All the lords, the nobles, all the men who can fight. Not like us. Who’ve we got?’

‘The King. We’ve got him.’

The messenger looks at the Welshman for a long moment.

‘Do we?’ he asks. ‘Do we really?’

‘And God.’

Now the messenger spits.

‘We’ve got Warwick,’ Thomas says.

‘Warwick,’ the archer allows. ‘Though I hear he’s wounded.’

They hear the slow squeal of cartwheels on the road to the south and everyone gets to their feet and they move to meet the carts.

Arrows. Eight wagonloads of them.

‘No bloody food? No bloody ale? How’re we supposed to fight like this? Can’t draw a bloody bowstring with no food in your belly.’

‘Kill the oxen,’ someone recommends. ‘Cook them on their own carts.’