He marks out Riven’s badge in the thin snow on the mud by his feet.

‘Black on white.’

Perers nods.

‘On our side?’

‘Theirs.’

A knot of men on horseback is gathered on the hillside directing the companies to their positions. The wind whips the horses’ manes and tails. It plucks at the hems of their clothing, dashes the snow in their faces.

‘You lot, over there,’ one shouts. He gestures and they step off the road, following other companies across furlongs where the earth has been left in frozen furrows by the passing of autumn ploughs. Below them, down the slope, filtering in vast numbers through the village, come the men-at-arms, the billmen, the naked men. They make up the mass of the army, roughly organised in companies, gathering in the fields around the village, each one following three or four horsemen under their lord’s flag.

There must be ten thousand, fifteen thousand. It is impossible to guess. They are uncountable. Boys are leading strings of horses away, back to the rear, and all around them men are manoeuvring up the slope into position.

They stop when they reach a company already in place.

They are in the middle of the field. They turn and face up the slope to where a solitary tree crowns the ridge. Thomas spreads his men out, the usual harrow formation, as more companies filter into the line around them, and they stand seven men deep across a broad front.

‘I can smell them,’ one of the men says. He is a bitter, bitten old man with grey whiskers. He fiddles with his strings, licking his lips, his gnarled hands shaking.

No one says anything.

‘I can smell them,’ he goes on. ‘I can smell men who’ve slept under roofs by fires. Men who’ve had their bellyful of meat and ale.’

Still no one says anything.

‘I can smell men with the wind at their backs,’ he adds.

‘Oh shut up,’ the Welshman snaps. ‘For the love of the virgin Mary, for the sake of her seven bloody sorrows, will you just shut your bloody mouth.’

There is silence for a long moment. The wind hums and buzzes and the snow softens and starts to fall as fat flakes. The tree on the ridge top is lost to view. Behind them in the village there is a commotion of drums and trumpets. A party of horsemen come slowly through the throng and up the road, heralds clearing their way, three or four of the long-tailed banners above their heads.

‘Must be King Edward,’ the Welshman mutters.

Behind the King’s party come the Earl of Warwick and his men in red, and then Fauconberg, with his own retinue in blue and white. Thomas wonders again where Sir John might be and whether Katherine is safe.