Instead there is a rippling fluency of precisely delivered and shockingly powerful blows. Hammer flukes crash down and blades are thrown up. For every attack there is a defence and for every defence an attack, and the noise is one long percussive roll, like the beating of a drum, and to watch it, it is even elegant in its way, like a dance, save the men are so monstrous in their armour and the price of missing a step is a dagger point in the eye or the groin or the armpit.

And in the middle of it all, under his banner, King Edward is supreme. None can match him. His height and range are immense and he scatters all before him, throws them back, clears them out. He wades into the crowd and swings his axe, crushing hands, helmets, heads and faces, knocking weapons aside and driving on. He kills a horse with a single blow and despatches its rider with the return swing of his axe.

Beside him his men are a blur of calculated speed, defending his flanks, darting forward to finish off anyone on the ground so that he will not be stabbed from below. Thomas watches as a man in plate falls under the King’s hammer and lies stunned for a moment too long. His visor is ripped off and a dagger is punched into his face and that is that.

But no man can fight like that all day, and soon even King Edward is forced to retire, exhausted by his efforts and the heat trapped within his armour. His space is taken up first by his household men and then a succession of lesser knights until, suddenly, Thomas is back in the line again, fighting for his life once more, swinging and thrusting at the pale faces of other men. His arms are burning, his ears are ringing and his hip throbs. But on it goes, the endless furious flurry of steel, until his strength flees again.

Thomas turns and forces his way through the throng. Blood is running freely from a wound on his scalp as he limps back towards the ale wagon by the road. At the sight of the crowd of men gathered there waiting for ale he almost weeps.

But eventually he gets some, poured into his stained and dented helmet. He doesn’t care about the taste, only the fact of it. It is wonderfully strong. He sits in the snow by the side of the road and drinks it down and then rests his head in his arms and tears fill his eyes and he cannot suppress a sob though he does not know for what or whom.