‘Reckon it must have saved his life,’ the archer says, exploring the hole with his finger.

Katherine can say nothing for a moment.

‘Come on,’ the archer says. ‘You can have it if you fix me up. Stop it hurting. Make sure it doesn’t go bad.’

‘Sit by the fire,’ she says.

She hurries to get Richard, who is sitting over his father.

‘There is an archer by the fire’, she whispers, ‘who has Thomas’s ledger.’

‘Have you asked him where he got it?’

‘No. He can only have stolen it.’

Richard nods.

‘Take me to him,’ he says, ‘and get Mayhew.’

Katherine waves Mayhew over and together they lead Richard to the archer’s side.

The archer glances up as Richard sits next to him.

‘What’s this?’ he asks.

‘I’m blind,’ Richard says. ‘But I have a good sense of smell.’

‘Really.’

The archer goes back to staring at the fire. He is clutching his foot.

‘Yes,’ Richard goes on. ‘And I can smell a thief.’

Now the archer looks up. He has been in situations like this before, that much is clear.

‘A thief is it, blind man?’

Suddenly there is a knife in his hand, but Mayhew kicks his wrist and the knife flies across the stone floor of the nave. And now Mayhew has his own knife out, and he threatens the archer with it, though he looks confused. Then Katherine steps on the archer’s wounded foot.

He cries out.

‘What is this? What’re you doing?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘John. John Perers. County of Kent.’

‘Where did you get that book?’ Katherine asks.

Perers looks mutinous. Katherine applies some pressure.

‘On the field,’ he says. ‘All right? I took it from a bloke.’

‘Which bloke?’

‘Just some bloke.’

‘Is he dead or alive?’

‘I don’t know. Dead, for God’s sake. Probably. Everybody is up there.’

‘Take me to him.’

‘What? No. Don’t be so stupid. I’m not going back up there.’

‘If you do not get treatment for that wound you’ll die. Death will take you bit by bit, starting with the foot, which a surgeon will have to cut off, with a saw, but that will not stop the putrefaction. The surgeon will have to take more off your leg, piece by piece, and each time the saw bites, it will feel as if you are being roasted by the fires of hell.’

Perers is pale with all he’s been through, and now the pain is great, and here is this woman, a blind man and physician’s assistant trying to force him back up to the field.

He moves to leave. He’ll find another surgeon, easy, with all the money he’s picked up.

Richard moves like a ferret and his hands are suddenly on the archer’s neck. The archer tries to scream and lash out, but Richard’s thumbs dig into his throat.

‘Take us, now,’ he says.