‘It is a picture of something,’ she says.

Sir John hobbles over and grips the ship’s side.

‘Of course it is a picture,’ he barks. ‘Of what though?’

Katherine cannot be sure. The boats plough towards one another, dipping in the green waters so that the flags flap and buckle. Then the banner stretches and looks to be some sort of creature, and she remembers the bear she saw in Boston.

‘Could it be a bear?’ she asks. ‘Gripping something?’

‘A stump?’

‘A tree stump? Perhaps.’

‘You’re sure?’ Sir John asks.

She nods.

‘Ha!’ Sir John claps her on the shoulder, nearly driving her to her knees. Then he cups his hands and tries to shout across to the other ship. ‘A Warwick!’ he cries. ‘A Warwick!’

The archers groan with relief but then hurry to the ship’s side to join the shouting, and soon across the dipping waters they hear the same cry returned. There is the sound of men sighing with relief. Soon the other vessel is alongside. The men across the water are almost identically dressed, in red coats and jackets, and they watch as their captain climbs the ship’s rail, one hand raised in salute.

‘Where are you bound?’ he shouts.

‘Calais!’ Richard shouts back. ‘We are the company of Sir John Fakenham!’

Even at such a distance Katherine can see this means nothing to the other man.

‘Godspeed!’ he calls. ‘And keep you safe!’

Their sail shudders as the carrack passes and takes their wind, and then it is gone, away into the mist, southwestwards on a soft air.

‘All right,’ Walter begins, ‘excitement’s over, let’s get everything put away.’

‘God gave you good eyes, Kit,’ Sir John says. Katherine flushes and hides herself in fiddling with the handle of the bucket. The old man hobbles back to his cabin.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asks Geoffrey.

‘Fistula,’ Geoffrey says. ‘Spent too long sitting on his horse in the rain, see, wearing heavy armour and looking for a Frenchman who’d give him a fight.’

The archers begin unstringing their bows and putting their swords and bucklers back into their packs. Only Richard looks anything but relieved.

‘He’s yet to be blooded,’ Geoffrey says quietly. ‘And it weighs on him more heavily than on the rest of them.’ He nods towards the others, who are teasing one another, elated now that the danger has passed. ‘You nearly shat your pants, Dafydd, when you thought they’d fire a gun at you.’

‘No, I never,’ the Welshman replies in his impossible accent. ‘Been in tighter spots than that, haven’t we, Owen? Being shot at by a couple of drunken sailors from England, I don’t know.’