‘There will be a sanguineous swelling within the orb of the skull, I have no doubt,’ he says. ‘It is usually – always – fatal. It is something to do with the brain. It cannot work with the swelling.’

She cannot bear it.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not Sir John.’ Then she thinks, and asks: ‘How do you treat sanguineous swellings elsewhere on the body?’

‘A leech, sometimes,’ Mayhew says. ‘Or we cut it open and dispose of the blood.’

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘Why? Because. Because we do.’

‘If we cut open the swelling now?’

‘It is – behind the skull,’ Mayhew says. ‘We cannot get to it to cut it.’

‘The bones are broken, I am sure of it.’

Mayhew frowns. He looks down at Sir John.

‘You would have to cut open the scalp,’ he says, ‘which is easy enough, of course, but then you would have to crack the skull if it is not cracked already.’

‘I think it is.’

‘But the swelling might not be where the break is. It might be on the other side of the brain and – no. You do not want to touch a man’s brains.’

‘It is worth a try, surely?’

Sir John looks closer to death than life.

‘It cannot hurt,’ Mayhew says. ‘But let us call a priest first.’

While Mayhew fetches more wine Katherine finds Richard. He is sitting on a step talking to a wounded captain and tearing linen into strips. She touches his shoulder.

‘Richard,’ she says. ‘Your father is here. He will die unless we cut him. But it is not easy and of course the cutting may kill him.’

Richard stands up.

‘Take me to him,’ he says.

Katherine does so and leaves the two together while another man is brought in with a wound in his chest that makes a noise and within a few minutes he is dead. She glances over at Richard and Sir John when she is holding the dying man’s hand and Richard is gently feeling his father’s face, cupping his bearded chin, letting his fingertips play over the nose and eyes and forehead.

‘Will you do it, my lady?’ he asks when the priest is called and she is standing next to him. He is offering her a courtesy, since she knows Sir John.

‘Thank you,’ she says. Mayhew nods and takes a step back.

Richard holds Sir John’s hand and the old man mews in his sleep. She has a blade, taken from the barber surgeon’s bag, which is sharper than anything she has ever seen. She holds it up to the candle that the murmuring friar is holding.

‘Should I shave his head?’ she asks. ‘It will help with the stitching afterwards.’

Mayhew raises his eyebrows.