The men laugh. Thomas warms to them: to joke about their own deaths. Now the priest has his arms out and those around him kneel. The movement ripples along the army, spreading from the centre and the front ranks, all the way to the flanks and the rear. Men get off their horses and go down with one knee in the snow. Still they can hear little or nothing, but they bend their heads and each man makes his own prayers.

Thomas prays again that he will not be killed, that he will not be wounded, that he will not be left to lie out there and bleed to death, stiffening in the cold, but that if he is, if it is God’s will he should die, then that it will not be painful. He prays that he will find Riven and that when he does, that he will be able to punish Riven for all the evil he has let loose in the world. He prays that Katherine will make her way safely in life, and that Sir John will survive to return to Marton Hall. He prays for Richard. He prays that he will come into whatever is best for him.

In a moment of stillness he hears the priest’s voice.

‘And so we beseech your help, Lord, in ridding this your land of these vile traitors who would destroy our dread liege Edward and those whom he loves. We—’

And the wind snatches the voice away again. Then returns it.

‘Into your hands, O Lord, we commend our souls in the certainty that what we do is right . . .’

But there is something else now. Thomas feels it at his back: a stirring, a restlessness that spreads through the archers, the questioning hum of conversation as men look up from their prayers, and turn their cheeks to feel the wind. They begin looking to the skies, peering up at the pale snow clouds, checking the flags on their poles.

‘Look at that,’ the Welshman says, pointing.

Thomas has seen it. Above the priest’s hat, the herald’s fishtailed battle banner has fallen slack. It hangs there on its beam, as if broken. Others join it, settling down. The ribbons on the Bishop’s hat settle. He removes his hand and it remains in place.

The wind has died.

Thomas can feel the archers holding their breath, not daring to move, not daring to speak, not daring to do anything lest it break the spell. No one moves. Even the priest has stopped his tongue and is looking up, waiting.

The snow still falls from the grey sky, each flake as large as a penny, exquisite and delicate, but they float, they drift. They no longer pitch in Thomas’s eyes.

The archer who has doubted the efficacy of the Bishop’s prayer stands up.

‘Fuck me,’ he says.