Lysson looks at the other sailors, as if for permission, then clambers up the ladder to take control of the tiller. He shouts an order that the other two sailors and the Genoese cook start to obey. As they pass the smaller of the two soldiers, the second man aboard, he bares his teeth and growls at them like a dog.

‘Don’t kill any of them unless you absolutely have to, Walter,’ Richard Fakenham calls. ‘We need them to help sail this damned thing.’

Then he turns to his own men.

‘You lot,’ he says, ‘tie the other boat alongside and when that’s done, let’s get my father aboard.’

One of them shouts down into the other boat and a rope is thrown up and caught. Fakenham looks around as if he has forgotten something. Then he sees Thomas sitting and Katherine standing among the bodies.

‘What’s gone on here?’ he asks.

Thomas swallows. He can say nothing. He knows if he tries, he will start to weep again.

Katherine answers for him.

‘They threw our master overboard,’ she says, gesturing towards the ship’s stern. ‘And then they tried to kill us.’

‘So you killed them?’

Katherine nods.

Fakenham raises his eyebrows.

‘But who are you?’ he asks. ‘Why are you on board at all? You aren’t with them, are you?’ He indicates the sailors.

‘No,’ Katherine says. ‘We were his servants.’

‘The dead man’s? Who was he?’

‘His name was Robert Daud. He was a pardoner. Of Lincoln.’

‘Of Lincoln? Wonder if I met him? We’re from Lincoln way. Walter? Did you know a Robert Daud? A pardoner? From home?’

There is an impatient grumble of denial.

‘Well, I’ll ask my father. Though he has no time for such things. Indulgences and so on.’

Fakenham notices the giant’s pollaxe, lying where Thomas has dropped it, glazed with blood. He bends to pick it up.

‘Is this yours?’

Thomas can nod.

‘Nice,’ Fakenham says, and he swings it, checking the balance. ‘Very nice.’

‘We are going to Canterbury,’ Thomas says, as if that explains everything.

Fakenham hardly hears him.

‘Have someone’s eye out with that,’ the man he has called Walter says, appearing at Fakenham’s shoulder and regarding Thomas carefully. He rubs his bristles on his chin and frowns. Then his eyes travel up and down Katherine for longer than is comfortable. There is something about her he does not seem to like.

‘Get shot of these will you, Walter?’ Fakenham asks, indicating the dead bodies. ‘Overboard. And clean the place up a bit, too. Then let’s have some action. We need to get to Calais without attracting any more attention.’