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if you add bones to the fire you get steel.’
    ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘They say the bones of a virgin make the best steel.’
    ‘That would make sense, I suppose.’
    ‘And virgins are in short supply,’ Douglas said, ‘but your armourers, sire, take care over their steel. They make good breastplates, good helmets, good greaves. So good that they’ll stop a cheap English arrow.’
    The king nodded. He had to admit that the Scotsman was making sense. ‘You think we’re too frightened of English archers?’
    ‘I think, sire, that if you charge the English on horseback then they’ll rip you to shreds. Even cheap arrows will kill a horse. But fight on foot, lord, and the arrows will bounce off well-made steel. They might pierce a shield, but they won’t pierce armour. They might as well throw rocks at us.’
    The king stared at the arrow. At Crécy, he knew, the French had charged on horseback and the horses had been killed in their hundreds, and in the chaos that followed the men-at-arms had died in their hundreds too. And the English had fought on foot. They always fought on foot. They were famous for it. They had been beaten in Scotland, cut down in their hundreds by Scottish pikemen, and that was the last time they had charged on horseback, and the king reflected that his enemies had learned their lesson. So must he, then. French knights believed there was only one way to fight, on horseback. That was the noble way to fight: the magnificent, frightening way, men and metal and horse together; but common sense said that Douglas was right. The horses would be slaughtered by the arrow storm. He fingered the bent arrowhead. So fight on foot? Do what the English did? And then the arrows would fail? ‘I shall think on what you’ve said, my lord,’ he told Douglas, offering the arrow back to the Scotsman, ‘and I thank you for your counsel.’
    ‘Keep the arrow, sire,’ Douglas said, ‘and win this great victory tomorrow.’
    The king abruptly shook his head. ‘Not tomorrow, no! Tomorrow is Sunday. The Truce of God. The cardinals have promised to talk to the prince and persuade him to yield to our demands.’ He glanced north. ‘If the English are still there, of course.’
    The Lord of Douglas restrained himself from ridiculing the idea of keeping a holy truce on a Sunday. So far as he was concerned one day was as good as any other for killing Englishmen, but he sensed he had persuaded the king that the enemy was vulnerable so there was no point in antagonising the man. ‘But when you do win this great victory, sire,’ he said, ‘and take your prisoners back to Paris, then take that arrow too and keep it as a reminder of how the English put their faith in a weapon that doesn’t work.’ He paused, then bowed. ‘I bid you good night, sire.’
    The king said nothing. He was turning the bent arrow over and over in his hands.
    And dreaming of Paris echoing with cheers.
     
    At dawn there was a mist in the trees. Everything was grey. Smoke from a thousand fires thickened the mist through which men in mail coats walked like ghosts. A horse broke from its tether and stamped through the oaks, then down the slope
towards the distant river. The hoofbeats faded in the mist. Archers kept their strings dry by coiling them inside their helmets or in pouches. Men drew stones along the edges of grey blades. No one spoke much. Two servants kicked acorns out of reach of picketed horses. ‘It’s strange,’ Keane said, ‘you can feed acorns to ponies, but not to horses.’
    ‘I hate acorns,’ Thomas said.
    ‘They poison the horses, but not ponies. I’ve never understood that.’
    ‘They taste too bitter.’
    ‘You should soak them in running water,’ Keane said, ‘and when the water runs clear they’ll not be bitter any more.’
    The acorns were thick beneath their feet. Mistletoe hung in the oak branches, though as Thomas and Keane walked to the western edge of the woods the large oaks gave way to chestnut, wild pear, and juniper. ‘They used to say,’ Thomas said, ‘that an arrow made of mistletoe couldn’t miss.’
    ‘How in God’s name would you make an arrow of mistletoe? It’s nothing but a bundle of twigs.’
    ‘It would be a short arrow.’
    The two hounds ranged ahead, noses to the ground. ‘They’ll not go hungry,’ Keane said.
    ‘You feed them?’
    ‘They feed themselves. They’re hunting dogs.’
    They left the trees, crossing a rough strip of grassland to where the hill