Thomas turns and stares back at the line where Warwick’s banner still flies. Though the line has given, though it has taken a pace back, it has not broken. They have held it, saved the flank. Men still hurry from the rear to stiffen it, but the job is done for the moment. The crisis has passed.

And just as he thinks this, there is a further great shout of dismay and a shrinking of the line, as if peeling back, and Thomas feels the thunder of a thousand hooves through the soles of his boots. From the stand of trees to the west, half hidden in the mist and swirling snow, hundreds of horsemen are thundering up the slope towards Warwick’s position. For a moment Thomas can only think they are on King Edward’s side, but no, it is an ambush, such as they tried that day at Newnham.

The horsemen are a bowshot away from where Thomas stands. They ride with their fifteen-foot lances and their hammers, two hundred perhaps, more even, and in their path Warwick’s men can do nothing other than break.

Seeing this, the ale woman throws down her jug and runs for the seat of the wagon. Her man throws aside the turnip he is eating and jumps to his feet. He begins thrashing the oxen with stinging slashes of his whip. The wheels of the cart pull free of the mud with a jerk and the cart rolls down the hill. And suddenly the prickers and the sergeants are back among them, shouting and screaming and forcing men back in the line. Trumpets blare and messengers set off.

‘You! In! Now! Go! On! ON!’

The horsemen come in a wedge. They crash into the fleeing remnants of Warwick’s left flank, scattering them, using their spears, riding men down, killing them with hammer blows. The shock of the ambush travels down the line, and just when they are most needed, there are no archers to hand, no one to knock the riders from their horses, no one to kill their horses under them.

A sergeant is there. A big man with a red face. He thumps Thomas with a staff, screaming at him, pushing him back up the field. Thomas has no weapon but it hardly matters. The line is breaking. They need numbers.

New companies come running from the village.

‘A Warwick! A Warwick!’

Thomas finds himself pinched between those falling back and those coming up. The men running back are wild-eyed and slack-mouthed and there is no way to hold them. They’ve cast away their weapons and torn off their armour.

Thomas can do nothing other than join the rest moving up to brace the line. He snatches up a bill with a bloodstained shaft.