The Enterprise of England (6 page)

For once, Phelippes admitted that my work at the hospital was more important than my work at
Seething Lane.

When the men were first brought in, I was in a small ward where we put women who have had difficult births and have been sent to us by the midwife. They were kept here away from the other patients, partly because my father believed that soon after giving birth a woman is vulnerable to infection, and partly because the crying of the babies would disturb the other patients. Dr Stephens poured scorn on the former idea, but supported the latter, having little fondness for squalling infants.

‘You will note,’ my father frequently pointed out to him, in one of their many arguments about my father’s advanced ideas, ‘that when the mothers are kept away from other illnesses, they are much more likely to survive childbirth.’

Dr Stephens would snort in disbelief. ‘If God has ordained that a woman shall die, bringing forth in the pain which is rooted in Eve’s sin, nothing we can do will save her.’

My father would smile and say, ‘You do not really believe that.’

That day, however, they were both occupied in seeing to the new arrivals, so I tended to the women alone. I did not even have the assistance of the young apothecary, Peter Lambert, who was busy with the others preparing salves and poultices in vast quantities. When I had made the last of the women comfortable, I walked back through to the two main wards, which were filling up fast.

It was a scene from a nightmare. I had never seen so many injured men in my life. Instead of two parallel rows of beds, well spaced, arranged along the two long walls of the ward, there were now four rows, the two outer ones infilled with straw pallets on the floor and two more rows of pallets down the centre of the room. Men were still being carried in and deposited on these. I realised that we were fortunate it was summer, for there would not have been enough blankets in the entire hospital to cover them. As it was, there were no pillows or cushions for their heads. They simply lay where they were put down, on the lumpy straw palliasses which the hospital servants had stayed up all night to make.

I walked over to my father, who was talking to the mistress of the nurses. She was a formidable woman of ample girth and iron will, but she was wringing her hands now, with tears in her eyes.

‘Dr Alvarez, we cannot care for so many,’ she said. ‘I have not nurses enough even to wash their faces. If you expect us to change dressings or clean wounds, it cannot be done.’

‘There is nowhere else for them to go, Mistress Higson,’ he said. ‘St Thomas’s is also full. We will all do as much as we can, and we will ask in the neighbourhood whether any of the goodwives can lend assistance.’

‘I cannot have strangers interfering,’ she objected. ‘They will do more harm than good. Of that you may be sure.’

I left them to it and walked down to the far end of the ward to begin checking the patients. It was a sickening business. I had studied under my father since childhood and had worked as his assistant in the hospital for almost four years now, so I was accustomed to the grim sights a physician encounters every day. Yet I had never seen anything like this. It was the stench of festering wounds that struck me first, so that I found myself gagging. And the whole ward was filled with a low moaning, like a storm wind, scarcely human. Occasionally there was a sharp cry of pain and away at the far end of the room one voice babbled on and on as one man raged with fever.

Peter came in with a tray, which he set down on the table just inside the door. It was loaded with fresh pots of salves and jugs of
Coventry water.

We looked at each other in dismay, both overwhelmed by what lay about our feet.

‘We’d best make a start,’ I said. ‘We’ll need more bandages.’

‘The sewing women have been put to cutting up all the cloth we have,’ he said, ‘and they’ve sent out for more. Ah, here we are.’

Margaret Jenkins, one of the sewing women I knew well, came into the ward with a large basket of bandage strips, which she placed next to the tray. As she turned and caught sight of the ward, she gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth.

‘Oh, Dr Alvarez,’ she said, ‘how many are there?’

‘I think we have taken in about four hundred,’ I said. ‘The rest have gone to St Thomas’s.’

She shook her head, as though all words had deserted her, and hurried away back to the sewing room. I knelt down beside the first pallet. The soldier was a grizzled man of middle years with half his breeches torn away, his right leg bound up in a filthy bloody cloth.

He attempted a smile. ‘Not a good sight, doctor.’

‘Pass me the scissors, Peter,’ I said, and held out my hand for them. ‘What caused this?’

‘Spanish bullet. Two weeks ago.’ He clamped his mouth shut as I began to cut away the dirty cloth. It was stuck fast to the leg and I could not remove it without hurting him.

‘Is the bullet still there?’

‘No. Got. It. Out. Myself. Oh, Jesu!’

‘I’m sorry, it can’t be helped.’ I looked down at the wound which was badly inflamed. ‘How did you get it out?’

‘Point of my dagger.’

He tapped the sheath attached to his belt. It was probably dirty, but at least I would not have to remove the bullet. Peter knelt on the floor beside me, holding a bowl of
Coventry water. He handed me a cloth. I dipped it into the water and began to wipe away the dirt and crusted matter from the wound. The soldier bit down on his lip.

‘I’m afraid this will hurt, but I need to clean it. Then I’ll salve it and bind it up. There’s no sign of gangrene, so you can be thankful for that.’ I was thinking of Sir Philip Sidney, who died from one of
Parma’s bullets, followed by gangrene.

He nodded, but did not risk his voice in speaking. When I was satisfied that the wound was as clean as I could get it, Peter handed me the salve, which I smeared generously over the wound and the surrounding skin, then bound the leg with a clean strip of cloth.

‘Now try and rest a while,’ I said. ‘We have to see to all of the injuries first, but later they will bring you food.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ His voice was stronger now, and he managed a weak smile. ‘That salve is making it feel better already.’

‘Good.’ The salve was made with many cooling and antiseptic herbs, pounded in honey, which is one of the best healers God has given us. With luck, the wound would heal. I patted his shoulder and moved with Peter to the next soldier.

By now I could see my father working his way along the opposite wall, while Dr Stevens was directing four of the nursing sisters to care for some of the less serious cases. When the hospital was part of the Priory of St Bartholomew, back before King Henry’s time, the daily care of the sick was carried out by nuns. Now the women who looked after our patients were secular, many of them widows, but the term ‘sister’ had lingered on. The mistress of the nurses, who did not normally care for the patients herself, had rolled up her sleeves and joined them. My father must have pacified her somehow.

The next soldier in the row along the near wall was a young boy, who could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen. He seemed only half conscious but it was clear that the injury was to his right hand, which was invisible inside a crude bundle of cloth. Once again I cut the bloodstained cloth away, to reveal a horribly crushed and mangled hand.

Peter looked at me and shook his head. I shrugged. It might be possible to save it, but I was doubtful. I took so long cleaning the hand and setting each finger in tiny splints that Dr Stephens came and stood over me, watching what I was doing. It made me nervous, for I knew he had a low opinion of me. Unlike him, I had not studied at the
Medical School in Oxford. I had not even studied at a Portuguese university. I had learned my medicine at my father’s side, like an apprentice, and I had read widely and carefully in his medical texts, but for Dr Stephens that was not a rigorous physician’s training. I had not attended lectures on the great Greek physician Galen and I subscribed to the strange modern views of the infidel Arabs.

However, he was gracious enough to nod when I was finished. ‘At neat job,’ he said, as he turned away. From Dr Stephens, that was an accolade.

Peter grinned at me and winked.

As I finished, the boy half woke and moaned with pain. I felt a wrench at my heart, for he must have been suffering terribly for days, and he was so young. I called over one of the sisters.

‘Bring me half a cup of small ale,’ I said.

When she returned, I added a small amount of poppy syrup from the phial I kept in my satchel of medicines.

‘Help me to lift him up,’ I said to Peter.

One on either side, we eased the boy into a sitting position and I held the cup to his lips. They were cracked and blackened. Like all the soldiers he had starved during the siege and nearly died from lack of water. His eyes opened once we had him upright, but they wandered, unfocused.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘here’s is some ale for you. Drink it slowly and it will help the pain.’

Some of it dribbled down his shirt, but he managed to drink most of it. As soon as we lowered him down on to the pallet again he dropped into a deep sleep.

‘That acted quickly,’ Peter said.

‘I think his body is so exhausted he would have slept anyway, but it will ease his pain, I hope.’

Gradually Peter and I worked our way along the row of soldiers, stopping from time to time to reassure some of our other patients who were already occupying the beds, for the sight of so many wounded men brought in amongst them was causing them distress. One aggressive fellow, who had no more wrong with him than over-indulgence in eating and drinking which had made him bilious, demanded that the soldiers should be moved out of the ward, for the noise made it impossible for him to sleep.

‘Better, I think, Goodman Watkins,’ I said, ‘that you should go home and give up your bed to one of these wounded soldiers. Your wife can look after you now.’

I knew that his wife was a shrewish scold, who would not tolerate his malingering.

‘Oh, no,’ he said, rubbing his stomach and rolling his eyes, ‘I am in a vast amount of pain. I have not the strength even to step out of this bed.’ With that he rolled over and closed his eyes.

Peter shrugged. ‘We’ll send him home tomorrow. Only this morning Dr Stephens said he should go.’

We were perhaps a little more than halfway along the row when we reached a soldier with a heavily bandaged head and one arm strapped in a sling. I had noticed his eyes following me as I moved nearer to him. There was something familiar about him, but I could not put my finger on it. Kneeling down beside the pallet, I saw that, unlike so many of the men, he was fully awake and alert. Two bright eyes looked out at me from below the bandage which was wound around his head and one ear.

‘Well, Kit Alvarez, I did not expect to meet you again in such a manner as this.’

I knew the face, knew the voice.

‘Andrew!’ I said. ‘What are you doing here? These are foot soldiers. Surely you are a trooper?’

‘Aye, I’m still a trooper, but a few of us were sent over to Sluys with the infantry. I have been working with the gunners this year and it was thought my experience would be of some use to those poor buggers. But there’s not much use having guns when you run out
of gunpowder. And there might have been need of a galloper to carry messages, but we never had the chance. The only messages sent out from the town were carried by cunning local lads who knew where to slip through the enemy lines.’

I saw that he was sweating slightly and realised that the brightness of his eyes was partly due to fever.

‘Peter,’ I said, ‘will you fetch me some of the febrifuge tincture? And we are going to need more of the salve.’

Peter, who had been listening to this exchange with interest, nodded and got to his feet.

‘Trooper Andrew Joplyn and I worked together last year.’ I felt I must satisfy his curiosity. ‘When I was in Sussex with Master Phelippes.’

Peter nodded. ‘I remember.’ He picked up his tray and headed off to the hospital still room.

‘That was a night.’ Andrew lay down with a sigh. ‘Back last year. I thought those fishermen were going to catch us.’

‘Because of my stupidity,’ I said.

‘Anyone could have had an accident in the dark,’ he said. ‘Still it was a fine race we had, back to Rye. Did they catch those men?’

‘Aye. They were . . .’ I paused, ‘dealt with.’

‘So you really are a physician. I’m not sure I believed you.’

‘I know you didn’t. Now, what is amiss with you?’

‘Dislocated my shoulder. A couple of the lads pulled it straight for me. It’s something we learn how to do. You can easily dislocate a shoulder, falling off a horse. The sling is just to give me some ease.’

‘And your head?’

‘Ah, well, that is nastier. I had a lucky escape. A bullet grazed my head just above the ear, but it didn’t penetrate. Hit the poor bugger behind me and killed him. Still, it’s sore.’

I began to unwind the bandage around his head. Like so many of the dressings I had already removed, this one was caked with dried blood and would not come away easily. Peter had left a bowl of
Coventry water on the floor beside me, so I soaked the bandage until I could peel it away, revealing a deep gash in the side of Andrew’s head, as broad as two fingers. The bullet had also torn away the tip of his ear. While I was working, Andrew said nothing, but bit down on his lower lip. Beads of sweat trickled down the side of his face.