‘Sangatte,’ Richard replies. He hands him a pass, signed and sealed by Lord Fauconberg, but the sergeant can’t read, so he sends for the castle’s captain, and while they wait, he looks them over.

‘Who are you?’ he asks. ‘Don’t recognise the badge.’

‘My father is Sir John Fakenham,’ Richard tells him. ‘He is Lord Fauconberg’s indentured man and we are his company.’

The sergeant pauses and then smiles, as if he has remembered something.

‘Heard about you,’ he says. ‘You’re the archers, aren’t you? Ha! The archers what can’t shoot arrows.’

The men on the bridge laugh with their sergeant. Walter reaches for his sword, smiles vanish, four bills come down and the point of the pollaxe swings up.

‘Easy, there,’ the sergeant says. ‘If your fighting’s like your shooting you’d best not get into it with us.’

There is the tap of metal against stone and through an aperture in the castle wall Katherine sees a man peering at her over the top of a crossbow.

‘Walter,’ Richard says, ‘step back.’

Geoffrey pulls him back. A moment later the runner returns with the Captain of the Watch.

‘God give you good day, sir,’ he says, taking Richard’s hand. In his dented leg armour and faded livery he looks every inch the old soldier, and Katherine watches Richard covertly studying him.

‘You are garrisoning Sangatte?’

‘We are.’

‘The captain up there. Walden. He’s a drunk. Sleeps all day and roars all night. As a consequence there are no women up there, or boys. You may need to provision yourselves accordingly.’ He nods to the village beyond.

Richard thanks him.

‘I’ll bid you good day, then,’ the captain says and then: ‘Oh. Sorry. Nearly forgot. Wonder if this’ll be any use to you?’

The captain is holding out a boy’s practice bow.

The men of the Watch begin laughing again.

Richard exhales loudly, touches his helmet and nudges his horse on. Across the bridge is a village with two churches and a cobbled marketplace where roads meet: one leads southwest to the French port of Boulogne, the other to the castle at Guisnes. Another, theirs, leads westwards, up on to the headland and the fort at Sangatte.

They follow it through steep banks around the cesspit and then on up towards the high ground where its muddy surface becomes sandy and stands of leafless poplars close around them. They carry on up the hill, sweating now, helping the cart along until at length they emerge from the woods to breast the rise. Sangatte Fort stands on the foreland before them like a solitary tooth in an old man’s jaw and beyond is the sea, clean and grey, vanishing in the distance, and the wind is sharp in their faces.