‘Heard old Warwick was wounded?’ the Welshman asks. He is sauntering around the ranks of his archers, checking his men are sorted, his nerves seemingly made of ice.

‘In the thigh,’ Thomas confirms. ‘An arrow. It must have been a glancing thing, though I saw it, and it seemed well stuck.’

‘Probably got the world’s finest physician, hasn’t he, the Earl of Warwick? An Italian gent, I bet, who’s cured the Pope of dropsy.’

‘Does the Pope have dropsy?’ another man interrupts.

‘Not any more,’ the Welshman says, barks a laugh, and goes on his way.

Thomas wishes he could be like that.

There is more shouting from the vintenars and the officers, tough men on good horses, and the men-at-arms begin spreading across the fields to find their places behind the rows of archers.

‘Where’re you from?’ a captain of the men behind them shouts. He touches his visor with the plated knuckles of his hand. He is a boy, sixteen perhaps, gangling in his antique plate. He carries a slim and useless-looking sword, but his men are armed with halberds, glaives and hammers and they wear the same red and white livery.

‘All sorts,’ Thomas replied. ‘Yourselves?’

‘Huntingdon.’

Thomas has never heard of it.

‘North of London,’ the boy says. ‘We could have come up with the Duke of Norfolk, but we came this way instead. Thank God we did. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.’

The boy gives him a smile that is closer to a grimace, and then peers back over his shoulder as if he is expecting someone.

‘Still, he should be here soon,’ he goes on, gabbling with nerves now, his touch flitting from his cheek to his neck to the pommel of his sword and back again. Even in the cold he is sweating. He offers Thomas a drink from his flask.

Thomas takes it gratefully. Wine.

‘Yes, he should be here soon,’ the boy repeats. ‘My father is with him. With the Duke of Norfolk. Coming up from the east. With five thousand men. If not more.’

Thomas hands him back his flask. So they are five thousand men fewer than was thought.

‘Well, God go with you, sir,’ he says, ‘and thanks for my drink.’

‘You too. Perhaps we’ll share another after the battle?’

‘I’d like that.’

They stop and listen to something. It is a low roar, coming and going like the suck of waves on the beach below Sangatte.

‘What’s that?’ the boy asks.

‘I think it must be them,’ Thomas says.

The boy swallows and nods.

Trumpets blow along the lines.