Thomas returns to the front. He looks at his own hands. They are shaking again and he clenches them around his bow. Christ, how he yearns for more wine. Or ale. They all do. Thomas catches the Welshman’s glance. The Welshman nods. Here we go, he thinks. Fauconberg’s officers are riding up and down the line, shouting instructions to the sergeants and the vintenars. Above them their flags flap briskly. One of them stops before Thomas’s company. It is Grylle, in his distinctive helmet, his armour still too big. Grylle pretends not to recognise Thomas.

‘The top of the hill flattens out,’ he shouts, gesturing behind him. ‘Then there is plateau, a stretch of flat land rising slightly. Lancaster’s men are there, at the far end.’

Thomas cannot imagine missing them, even in this snow.

‘They will be two bowshots away,’ Grylle goes on, ‘and they will be above us, on the rise.’

No one says a word but Grylle knows. They all know.

‘We cannot choose everything,’ he says. ‘We must fight the enemy where we find them.’

One of the archers behind Thomas spits noisily.

‘Are there many?’ someone shouts.

Grylle is silent for a telling moment and the sound of shouting comes again, washing over them from the north. If he had not been wearing a gorget Thomas imagines he would have seen Grylle swallow.

‘God is with us!’ Grylle reminds them. ‘God is with us, not those usurping northern bastards.’

He nods, and then rides on to deliver his message down the line. Thomas lets his eye run along the ranks. The front stretches four hundred, five hundred paces away from the road, the same again the other side. There must be thousands of archers alone, and twice that number of men-at-arms. And yet the enemy has more? It does not seem possible.

The snow lightens and a priest on a horse appears ahead, away near the road in the centre of the army. He is backed by three or four heralds and a handful of men in plate. Is it Coppini? Has the Legate ridden all this way with them? He is too far away for Thomas to be certain.

The Bishop – if it is him – dismounts, holding his headgear in place, and hands his horse to a squire. The heralds’ banners, unreadable at this distance, flap heavily in the wind, and the Bishop holds up his hands and begins saying something.

‘Speak up, for the love of St Ives,’ someone shouts, and, ‘What’s he saying?’

‘A prayer,’ Thomas tells them.

‘A prayer? What sort of prayer?’

‘One that’ll help us win.’

‘What? He’s praying for the wind to back around and those northern bastards to come off their bloody hill?’

‘Something like that.’