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then spoke in English again. ‘Cords, Simon?’
    ‘Whole sack of them.’
    ‘Good,’ Thomas said, ‘but only thirty-four barrels?’ One of his constant worries was the supply of arrows for his feared longbowmen. He could provide new bows in Castillon d’Arbizon because the local yew trees were good enough to be fashioned into the long war staves, and Thomas, like a half-dozen of his men, was a proficient enough bowyer, but no one knew how to make English arrows. They looked simple enough: an ashwood shaft tipped by a steel head and flighted by the feathers of a goose; but there were no pollarded ash trees near the town, and the smiths could not fashion the needle-sharp bodkin heads that could pierce armour, and no one knew how to bind and glue the feathers. A good archer could shoot fifteen shafts in a minute, and in any skirmish Thomas’s men could loose ten thousand in ten minutes, and though some arrows could be reused, many were destroyed by fighting, and so Thomas was forced to buy replacements from the hundreds of thousands that were shipped from Southampton to Bordeaux and then distributed to the English garrisons that protected King Edward’s lands in Gascony. Thomas put the lid back on the barrel. ‘This lot should last us a couple of months,’ he said, ‘but God knows we’ll need more.’ He looked at the rider. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘My name is Roland de Verrec,’ the man said. He spoke French with a Gascon accent.
    ‘I’ve heard of you,’ Thomas said, which was hardly surprising because Roland de Verrec’s name was spoken with awe throughout Europe. There was no finer tournament fighter. And, of course, there was the legend of his virginity, imposed by a vision of the Virgin Mary. ‘You want to join the Hellequin?’ Thomas asked.
    ‘I have been given a mission by the Count of Labrouillade …’ Roland began.
    ‘The fat bastard will very probably cheat you,’ Thomas interrupted, ‘and if you want to talk to me, Verrec, take that goddamned pot off your head.’
    ‘My lord the count orders me …’ Roland began.
    ‘I said take the goddamned pot off your head,’ Thomas interrupted again. He had climbed on the wagon bed to inspect the arrows, but also because the bed’s height meant he could look down on the mounted man. It was always uncomfortable to confront a horseman on foot, but the discomfort now belonged to Roland. A score of Thomas’s men, made curious by the presence of the strangers, had come from the open castle gate. Genevieve was among them, holding Hugh’s hand.
    ‘You will see my face,’ Roland said, ‘when you accept my challenge.’
    ‘Sam?’ Thomas shouted up to the gatehouse rampart. ‘See this idiot?’ He pointed at Roland. ‘Be ready to put an arrow through his head.’
    Sam grinned, put an arrow on his cord and half drew the bow. Roland, not understanding what had been said, looked up to where Thomas had shouted. He had to crane his head to see the threat through his helmet’s eye-slits.
    ‘That’s an arrow of English ash,’ Thomas said, ‘with a scarfed oak tip at the head and a steel bodkin sharp as a needle. It will slice through that helmet of yours, make a neat hole in your skull and come to rest in the open space where your brain ought to be. So either give Sam some target practice or else take the damned helmet off.’
    The helmet came off. Thomas’s first impression was of an angelic face, calm and blue-eyed, framed by fair hair that had been compressed and shaped by the helmet’s liner so that the crown was tight against his skull like a cap, while the fringes jutted out in stubborn curls. It looked so strange that Thomas could not resist laughing. His men were laughing too. ‘He looks like a juggler I saw at Towcester Fair,’ one said.
    Roland, not understanding why men laughed, frowned. ‘Why do they mock me?’ he asked indignantly.
    ‘They think you’re a juggler,’ Thomas said.
    ‘You know who I am,’ Roland said grandly, ‘and I am here to challenge you.’
    Thomas shook his head. ‘We don’t hold tournaments here,’ he said. ‘When we fight, we fight for real.’
    ‘Trust me,’ Roland said, ‘so do I.’ He kicked his horse closer to the wagon, perhaps hoping he might intimidate Thomas. ‘My lord of Labrouillade demands that you return his wife,’ he said.
    ‘The scriptures teach us that the dog goes back to its vomit,’ Thomas said, ‘so your master’s bitch is free to return to him whenever she wants.