‘The Earl of Warwick has sailed for Ireland,’ he says, throwing his helmet through the doorway of the tent and on to a pile of sheepskins. ‘Gone to see his grace the Duke of York. Means we’ll be stuck here awhile.’

Geoffrey groans. Walter spits a fob of white mucus into the fire.

‘Still, at least we’ll be able to prepare ourselves,’ Richard continues. He sits on the pile of sheepskins and unties the spurs from his boots. ‘The boys haven’t loosed an arrow in a week.’

Walter nods.

‘Where is Sir John?’ Geoffrey asks. ‘Is he lodged in town?’

‘He is. With old Lord Fauconberg. They were in France together, and you know how it is with them. He’ll take supper and sleep there, I suppose.’

‘Is that soup ready?’

After they have eaten dinner, Walter leads the company through the sprawl of tents to the butts. Thomas and Katherine follow along, a step or two behind, not yet accepted.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Let’s get busy.’

The men begin unfastening their bows, shaking out their arrows on the mud. They nock their strings and begin stretching their arms and shoulders, limbering up ready to shoot.

‘You ever use a bow?’ Walter asks Thomas.

‘Not for a few years,’ Thomas says. ‘Not since—’

He stops. He has not used a bow since he joined the priory. Until then he had spent every Sunday after Mass with the other villagers on the butts behind the church, sending sheaf after sheaf of arrows into the sky. He had been thought a promising bowman, and when Walter passes him a spare bow, the weight and balance of it bring his childhood back.

‘Take a cord,’ Walter says. ‘Nock it.’

Thomas loops the string around one of the horn nocks and then places it against the side of his foot to help bend the bow and loop the other end over. It is a big bow, fat and long, witch hazel, but old and tired, and probably never a really good one.

‘Seen better days.’ Walter nods at it.

There are dark pricks in the wood and signs of cracking from long use. Yet with the string nocked it comes alive in his hands and he itches to find an arrow to put it to use.