All I knew was that while King Henry VIII was in France, James IV of Scotland had sent his herald RougeCroix south with an insulting challenge to battle. Henry's Queen, the sallow-faced, lanky Catherine of Aragon, pining for her husband and longing to provide him with a lusty heir, accepted the challenge and sent insolent-eyed Surrey north with a huge army. Now old Surrey was a bastard. He drank so much the gout stopped him walking and he rode like a farmer in a cart, his orders being taken by outriders and scouts. A vicious man, Surrey, but a good general. You know, as a young man, he and his father Jack, the 'Jockey of Norfolk', fought for the Usurper Richard at Bosworth. Old Norfolk was killed and Surrey taken prisoner before Henry Tudor.

'You fought against your King!' the Welshman shouted.

Surrey pointed to a fence post.

'If Parliament crowned that fence King, I'd fight for it!' he bellowed back.

The Tudor prince seemed to relish this. Surrey went to the Tower for a while but was soon released because of his qualities as a general. He kept good discipline on that march to Flodden: he built a huge cart which carried a thirty-foot-high gallows, loudly declaring that if anyone committed a breach of camp discipline he would dance at the end of it.

Anyway I went north to meet my destiny. The dust of our great baggage train, stirred up by wheels, feet and hooves, hung above our forest of lances, almost obscuring the late summer's sun which struck bright sparks from halberd, sword and shield. In the front, old Surrey in his cart, his yellow hair now white, his ageing body held straight in its cuirass of steel. Behind him, my goodself among the bowmen in deerskin jacket and iron helmet.

Most of us were pressed men: gaol birds, night hawks, roaring boys. I have never seen so many evil-looking villains together in one place. We were armed with white bows six feet long, cunningly made from yew, ash or elm and strung with hemp, flax or silk.