At Villeneuve-la-Hardie, Archibald the gynour was up early that morning. He had been unable to sleep. Mares had troubled him as he tossed and turned under his blanket. In the end, he had got up and spent the remainder of the night sorting through his stores of powder and shot, testing the barrels for damage or leaks, and sifting powder to ensure all was still dry.

‘You look tired,’ Béatrice said when he returned to the camp late in the morning. There was, he thought, a slight edge of concern to her voice – almost as though she cared for him. He smiled at that thought. She had suffered so much in recent weeks, it would be a miracle if she ever felt able to trust a man again.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he admitted. ‘It was Fripper’s fault, though. He spoke to me about the ships that keep making their way to the harbour to supply the town, and it gave me pause to wonder: will you be safe here, if I go away for a few hours?’

‘I will see to my safety.’

‘See to the boy as well, eh? I wouldn’t wish for the Donkey to be harmed while I am away.’

‘I will guard him too.’

‘Good.’

He left soon after, walking up the north-bearing roadway, turning right, and continuing on to the city walls.

The town of Calais was itself held within a long rectangle of walls. To the north the city looked to the sea but on three other sides, the walls gave onto scrubby land with a miserable grey soil that looked insufficient to support any plants, and yet it brought forth a variety of trees and shrubs, while the fields further east looked productive. However here, near the walls, the land was wretchedly boggy. There was hardly any need to dig a moat. Even the trenches dug by the English were soon filling with water. Yet there was a wide, double moat, too, that curved from the east side along the south, and part-way up the western side.

Along the northern stretch of wall, and then curving slightly before continuing west, was the river that fed the estuary where the harbour lay. There was another moat here, as well as a long dyke. More defences protected the castle at the north-western corner of the town.

Archibald sighed as he took in the sight of the castle. It was tempting to think that he could pound it into dust, but alas, even the most massive gonne he possessed would do no more than scratch that rock. It was impregnable – as were most of the town’s walls. For him to reach the town with his powder and shot was possible, but it would be at the last gasp. In truth, old technology would serve better. Large wooden catapults and stone-throwers would do more damage.

However, there was still work for his machines. This was what his dreams had told him.

To the north, for example, was the Rysbank. There, if he could position his gonnes safely, he would be able to command the entrance to the harbour. True, right now the Rysbank was protected by French defenders, but they could be driven off or into the sea.

It was a thought. Aye, it was a good thought.

‘They’re going to take us. We’ll all be killed,’ Clip whined.

‘Shut up, Clip,’ Jack said.

Dogbreath was eyeing the ship with a glower. ‘There’s no way I’ll be captured by a poxed Genoese son of a whore!’

‘They won’t take us,’ Berenger said. ‘Not while we remain here fighting.’

‘Frip? They’re getting closer,’ Mark Tyler said.

Berenger cast a look over his shoulder. The sea obscured the other vessel for a moment, but then it reappeared, the prow pointing to the heavens as it breasted the wave, and then started the long, gut-churning, swooping dive. It was definitely pursuing them.

‘It’s a fucking galley, Tyler. What do you expect?’ he rasped.

Tyler flicked his lank, straw-coloured hair back from his brow. He was a tall fellow, with dark eyes that looked out of place in his pale face. Berenger had known him only a matter of weeks, but didn’t trust the man at all. He had been involved in plundering a religious house, and Berenger preferred to keep to secular enemies. He saw little need to provoke God Himself.

Berenger glanced about him at the ship, his eyes narrowed against the stinging spray. He was weary after the last hours of rocking to and fro with the planks shifting under his feet, and felt like a man ten years his senior. Every muscle and joint ached, and his bowels felt weak, as though he was suffering from a fever, as well as the vomit that constantly threatened to gush like the spume from the wave-tops.

‘I’ve had enough of this shit,’ he swore, and began to make his way over the treacherous deck to the shipmaster.

A loose coil of rope, slippery planks, the sudden thunder of a fresh wave striking the hull . . . and Berenger was thrown from his feet. On his backside, he slid over the tilting deck and almost slammed into the wall of timbers on the farther side, but before he could do so, a hand grasped his jerkin, and he was drawn to a halt. He shivered as he looked at the sea in front of him. He had been that close to drowning, he knew. Wanting to thank his rescuer, he stared around at his saviour.

‘Glad I’m here now, are you?’ Tyler enquired.

Berenger jerked himself free of Tyler’s hand and clasped a rope, hauling himself upright. ‘Keep off me!’

‘No gratitude?’ Tyler said sarcastically and returned to watching their pursuer.

No, Berenger said to himself, no gratitude, no friendship. Only suspicion and disgust.

Back at Calais, Ed the Donkey stood huddled in a cloak near Archibald’s wagon, grumpily surveying the grey seas.

Ed felt lonely. Twelve years old, he had been orphaned years before. He had come here to France to take his revenge, but the life of a soldier had proved more dangerous than he could have anticipated, and now he stood here staring out towards England and home.

Not that he had a home any more. The only home he knew was the one here, with Béatrice and Archibald the gynour.

At first he had thought the big man was terrifying: he reeked of the Devil. That was the smell Ed associated with Archibald – brimstone, the odour of Hell.

All the other soldiers tried to avoid Archibald: none of them liked the smell that followed him. Men made signs against the Evil One when he had passed, and even after a battle, Archibald found it difficult to acquire food. At Crécy, Ed had seen how Archibald’s great gonnes had ripped into the ranks of French men-at-arms – and had also seen how a mis-prepared gonne could detonate and slaughter all the gynours about it. Archibald had fought with all the zeal of a Christian that day. And recently Ed had grown fond of the old man.

It was not Archibald himself who made him feel more comfortable with his place at the gynour’s side, though. It was the constant presence of Béatrice.

Ed had no sister. His parents died when French pirates appeared and destroyed his town. The young lad saw his father die, and his mother was raped and murdered. Béatrice felt like a mix of the older sister he’d never had and his mother. She was beautiful, and kind, and very understanding. He simply adored her.

He suddenly heard a little sound and his head snapped around. It came from over by a wagon. He stared hard. In the semi-darkness, it was hard to see much, but he was sure he could see a sack moving. It was the bag in which they kept their stores of oats. Not many people liked oats, but Archibald and Berenger had it in their heads that oats were a useful food for the men.

Ed reckoned a dog must have got into their stores. The movement was too large for a rat, surely? A rat that size would be bigger than a cat. He had no wish to confront a giant rat, he told himself. At first he shouted and threw a stick, then a small rock. A yelp came, but it sounded human rather than canine.

Ed hurried to the stores, and found a small boy rubbing his head. He turned wide, terrified eyes to Ed, but then saw how small Ed was. Standing, he was almost Ed’s height.

‘Keep away from our food!’ Ed spat.

‘I’ll take what I need,’ the boy responded truculently.

‘You’ll have to fight me first!’

‘Reckon you can stop me?’

Ed had no desire to fight anyone, but he would rather fight than see Archibald’s food pinched, and some thieving scrote of a vintener’s boy was not going to walk away scot free. ‘Yes!’

The boy was painfully thin. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten in days.

‘You’re French?’ Ed demanded. Ed had lost his family to the French, but in the last two weeks of fighting, he had come to appreciate that not all French were evil, in the same way that not all English soldiers were saints. And this was only a young lad. With the condescension of an older boy for one at least a full year younger, Ed dismissed him as a threat.

‘Yes! This is my land!’ the boy declared.

Ed shrugged. ‘But it’s my food, and you won’t take it without permission. Still, if you’re hungry I have bread. Do you want some?’

The boy eyed the hunk of bread Ed produced with all the ravenous desperation of a cur, then stared up at Ed’s face as though suspecting there to be a trick in this act of generosity.

‘I’ve been hungry, too,’ Ed said gruffly by way of explanation. ‘Come. Eat! What is your name?’

‘Georges,’ his visitor said, edging nearer to the bread.

‘Where are you from?’

‘My family lived in a town. You have destroyed it. We have nothing left, and I have lost my family.’

‘I lost my family years ago,’ Ed said. He held the loaf lower, ducking his head. ‘Come, eat.’

The boy darted forward, snatched the bread and darted away a few yards, stuffing the food into his mouth as quickly as he could. He looked like a squirrel desperately filling its mouth before a predator could arrive.

‘You want some drink?’ Ed asked.

Georges nodded, and Ed fetched him a mazer of wine. The boy drained it in one, coughing at the strength of it. Ed refilled the mazer and the boy took it back, sipping more carefully now.

‘You’ll be safe here,’ Ed said. ‘The men here are kind. They looked after me, too.’

Georges watched him doubtfully, but then nodded. As if by that one action he had passed responsibility for his well-being to Ed, he immediately wrapped himself up in Ed’s blanket, lay down and was soon fast asleep.

Tyler. Bleeding Tyler, Berenger thought to himself.

There were always men like Tyler in any army. The stranger who stood at the outer edge of the men; the man who held the secrets of his past close to his chest; the odd one who wouldn’t join in wholeheartedly. The one whom none of the others trusted entirely. John of Essex was bad enough, but he was predictable and, while dangerous, could be understood. Tyler was another sort of man entirely.

All the men in Berenger’s vintaine had their own secrets. Any group of twenty men would have one or two whose secrets were close-guarded for good reason. In King Edward III’s army, more than a few had been career outlaws and thieves. There were draw-latches, robbers and murderers in every centaine mingling freely with the honest fighters who had been brought by their lords or tempted by the promise of booty.

Many of them were pardoned felons. The King had need of more men to swell the ranks of his archers and infantry, which had been depleted in the short, vicious campaign that had taken the army down to the walls of Paris and back to Calais; therefore any man who could wield a sword or bow was welcome. For every man who could be counted on, who was reliable, there was another who was viewed askance by those who knew him, suspecting that his shifty manner meant he had something to hide.

And Berenger was convinced that Tyler was such a man.

‘You all right, Vintener?’ John of Essex called.

Berenger grunted, his attention returning to the galley behind them. It was gaining far too quickly. ‘Shipman! How long till we reach the port?’ he bellowed.

The ship’s master, a dour old fisherman with a round face framed by grey whiskers and the expression of a man who had bitten by accident into a sloe, curled his lip as he peered over Berenger’s shoulder at their pursuer. ‘If he keeps on like that, us’ll never reach the port, boy.’