The Enterprise of England (7 page)

‘Aye, you were lucky,’ I said, relieved that the bone of the skull was merely grazed and not shattered. ‘It also looks quite clean.’

‘I did my best to wash it.’ His voice came out high-pitched, as if he was still struggling with the pain.

Peter came back with more salves and a bottle of the febrifuge tincture. I dressed the wound and bound it up, then gave Andrew a dose of the tincture.

‘I’m not sure whether or not your hair will grow back, and you will have a nick out of the top of your ear.’

‘My beauty quite spoiled, then?’ He gave me a shaky smile.

‘Oh, it will be quite an heroic wound.’

He smiled again and sank back on to the pallet.

‘Good to see you again, Kit.’

I smiled down at him. ‘And you, Andrew.’

Chapter Four

P
eter and I continued to tend the wounded lying along the left hand wall of the ward until we reached the end. Most of the injuries were bullet wounds. In some cases the bullet had passed through the body or had been clumsily prised out, but I had to extract most of them with a scalpel and forceps. It was difficult to judge which were the more dangerous, those where a bullet had been left in the wound, preventing it from healing, or those where some dirty knife had been used to poke it out, enlarging the wound and filling it with who knew what filth.

In order to work more quickly, I showed Peter how to clean and salve the wound after I had extracted the bullet. He was quick and neat, so that by the time we reached the end of the row we were working to a steady rhythm. There were three cases where the bullet had penetrated more deeply, into chest or stomach. Those cases I left to my father and Dr Stephens, though the likelihood of the men’s survival was small.

As well as bullet wounds there were burns from handling hot cannon and one man with half his face blown away when a Spanish fire arrow had caused an explosion amongst the defenders’ gun powder. Mercifully he died that night, for otherwise he could only have lingered on in unbearable suffering.

When we reached the top of the room, Peter and I both stood up for a moment, to ease our backs.

‘Jesu!’ he said. ‘My knees are on fire! And I suppose we need to start on the next row now.’

I nodded. My own knees hurt from kneeling so long on the stone-flagged floor and I was feeling dizzy, from crouching over the patients or from the horrors of the number of bullets I had extracted from raw flesh. Down by the door of the ward I saw that some of the hospital’s serving women had carried in a great pot of soup and baskets of bread. They were starting to feed the men we had treated, those who were awake.

‘I think we should take some food,’ I said, ‘before we start again. Can you ask the women to give us some soup and bread, Peter?’

He nodded and hurried away down the ward, picking his way between the men on the floor. My father came across to me.

‘I’m afraid we lost the one with a bullet in his chest,’ he said. ‘It had punctured his lung. He died before we could do anything for him.’

I looked at him bleakly.

‘Was all this suffering necessary? Sir Francis says Leicester could have saved them, saved the town of Sluys, but he is all courtly talk, a nobleman’s façade – underneath it he’s as cowardly as a girl. He kept his ships out at sea and did nothing.’

‘A deal more cowardly than one girl I know,’ my father said softly, casting his glance over my blood-stained hands and clothes. ‘You have a smear of blood on your forehead.’

‘Take care no one hears you,’ I said. I dipped a cloth in the bowl of Coventry water and wiped my face. It felt good. ‘Peter is getting us some soup, then we’ll start down this next row.’

‘I think you should go home,’ he said. ‘You’re as white as a bleached sheet.’

I shook my head. ‘How could I go home and leave this? I will do well enough when I have had some soup. You should eat something too. Do you know what time it is?’

‘I heard the church clock strike eleven some while ago.’

‘Then we might as well spend the rest of the night here. We won’t be finished before morning.’

Peter came back with a tray. He had brought a cup of soup for my father too, and some rough-cut slices of the brown bread the hospital makes for our pauper patients. For myself, I think it tastes better than the fine manchet loaves served in the Lopez house. The soup had been made with beef bones and was a rich dark brown with pieces of carrots and leeks in it. I hoped it would not be too rich for men who had been near starvation before, but they were eating it eagerly. When my father had finished his, he walked along the row, warning the soldiers to take the soup slowly and to chew the vegetables carefully. I was not sure whether they heeded him.

As soon as we had eaten, Peter and I began to treat the soldiers lying on one of the rows of pallets which had been laid done the middle of the ward. There was barely space to kneel between them and some of the soldiers were gravely ill. I continued to extract bullets, but there were broken limbs to set as well. Peter fetched splints and we did the best we could, but in some cases the bone was not broken cleanly, so that I had to pick out shattered fragments before strapping the leg or arm into place. It was clear that in some cases, even if the limb mended, it would be left shorter or twisted. There was hardly a man here who would be fully whole again. And all for what? The more I saw of what had happened to these men, the more I cursed Leicester under my breath. In some ways, I held him more guilty than Parma.

We were nearly at the end of the row, and I was looking forward to resting at last, for my father and Dr Stephens had just finished all the other patients. I knelt down beside a young man with a thatch of golden curls who reminded me a little of Simon. Peter was fetching a final supply of our wound salve, while I began to unwind yet another bandage from around a blood-stained leg. The soldier watched me with a despairing look in his eyes.

‘Not much use you trying to treat it, Doctor,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly a month since a Spanish cannon ball smashed into my leg. I know what’s happening.’

As I peeled off the cloth, I understood what he meant. The unmistakable stench of gangrene rose from his body. Revealed to sight, his leg was a mass of festering flesh.

‘I will do what I can to ease your pain,’ I said. ‘But you are right.’ I felt I owed him honesty.

Peter came back and together we cleaned and salved the leg, holding our breath against the stench. The lower part of the leg, from the foot to just below the knee, where the original injury was located, had turned a bluish black colour. I squeezed the toes of the soldier’s foot hard.

‘Can you feel that?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

I tried pressing at various points up his leg. There was no feeling. Even above the knee, where the skin was not yet discoloured, he shook his head every time I pressed, until I was halfway up his thigh.

‘Yes, I can feel that.’ His voice was colourless with despair. I knew that he had abandoned all hope of life.

‘There is only one course,’ I said, hating every word. ‘The leg must be amputated.’

‘Is there any use in that, doctor?’ His voice was so quiet I had to lean closer in order to hear him. ‘Once the gangrene has taken hold, it will reach my heart, won’t it? Even if it don’t kill me, I’ll be maimed, only half a man.’

I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Listen to me. We will save you if we can. If you live, then it is part of God’s purpose that you should live. I know it will be hard, but you must make of your life the best you can.’

I felt ashamed as I spoke, sounding as righteous as a street preacher, I who had my health and strength. What did I know of the life that would lie ahead of a soldier who was left crippled? What could he do? How could he live? Yet I was all the more determined to save him.

‘I will see how quickly we can fetch a surgeon,’ I said. ‘As physicians we are not permitted to carry out amputations, except when there is no other way, as on the battlefield, but there are surgeons we can call in.’

I patted his shoulder and rose to my feet, but he turned his head away and closed his eyes. I saw that tears were seeping from beneath his eyelids.

‘Stay with him,’ I murmured to Peter, and went to look for my father.

He was sitting with Dr Stephens on a bench in the corridor just outside the ward. Seeing them there together, exhausted, I was conscious how old they had both grown. Their skin was grey and slack with fatigue, their bodies somehow collapsed and sunken with the frantic effort of the last hours. The sight chilled me. I depended on these men for their wisdom and guidance, even Dr Stephens, with his old fashioned ideas.

‘I have a patient who needs an urgent amputation,’ I said without preamble. ‘Gangrene in his leg almost up to the knee. Some nerve damage above. How soon can a surgeon be fetched?’

Faced with a practical problem they both straightened and looked at each other.

‘Hawkins?’ said my father.

Dr Stephens pursed his lips. ‘Thompson lives nearer.’

‘Aye, but Hawkins is the better surgeon.’

‘You are right. Though I am not sure he will care to be roused in the middle of the night.’ Dr Stephens turned to me. ‘Can we wait until tomorrow?’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘It must be done at once.’

‘Very well.’ Dr Stephens got stiffly to his feet, grunting a little. He had broken his leg badly the previous year and it still gave him trouble when he was tired. ‘I’ll send one of the servants for him.’ He hobbled away.

‘We’ll prepare the patient,’ I called after him. I looked at my father. ‘I think we should move him out of the ward. The rest of the men are in a poor state already. No need to distress them more.’

‘You are right, but where can we put him? Every corner of the hospital is full.’

‘The governors’ meeting room?’ I said.

He made a face. ‘I don’t think the governors would care for that.’

‘Need they know? Even the assistant superintendant is not here tonight. We can move him back after the surgery.’

He nodded. ‘Very well. We can only be dismissed, after all!’

My father went to arrange the room while I returned to the ward. Peter was talking quietly to the fair haired young man, so I quickly treated the last two patients in the row of pallets, who had only minor injuries, then Peter fetched three of the men servants to help him carry the patient to the governors’ meeting room. Between them they lifted him, pallet and all, and carried it out of the ward.

I walked alongside and took the soldier’s hand. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘It’s William, doctor,’ he said in a resigned voice. ‘William Baker.’

‘Do you have family in
London?’ I had realised that he would need someone to care for him when he left the hospital. If he left it alive. On the other hand, if he did not survive the surgery – and there was every chance that he might not – we would tell his family.

‘I have a sister living in Eastcheap,’ he said. ‘Bess Winterly. Her man is a saddler and leatherworker.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I will go to see her tomorrow. Now, the surgery will be painful, I’ll not lie to you, but we are fetching the best surgeon in London. And we will dose you well with poppy extract to help the pain.’

He gave a slight nod, but I could read his terror in his eyes. I felt sick myself with apprehension, although I knew I had made the right decision. If the leg was not amputated, he would be dead in days. This way, at least he had some chance of life.

Once I had seen William Baker installed on the table in the governors’ room, I went back to the ward. I had given him as much poppy juice as I dared, but I did not wait to watch the butchery when the surgeon arrived. Not for nothing do soldiers call them ‘saw-bones’. Peter stayed to fetch or prepare any medicines the surgeon might need. I supposed my father and Dr Stephens had also stayed. Four of the male servants would hold William down while Surgeon Hawkins sawed off the leg.

The ward was quieter now. After the pain of having their wounds dressed, and the comfort of food, most of the soldiers had fallen into the deep sleep of absolute exhaustion. During the siege, as well as suffering from starvation and thirst, they would barely have been able to sleep for weeks on end. The besiegers would have kept up a constant barrage of cannon fire, rotating their gun crews by day and by night, the purpose as much to undermine the strength and will of the defenders as to demolish the town ramparts. Well,
Parma had succeeded in that. He was famed as the most skilled military commander alive, perhaps as great as Caesar or Alexander. That, I could not judge, but certainly we had no one who could match him. I knew that Walsingham thought well of Sir John Norreys, but even he could not compare to the Duke of Parma. Just because Leicester was the Queen’s favourite courtier, it did not make him even a barely competent commander. Throughout the whole campaign in the Low Countries, he had displayed weakness, indecision and cowardice. In the present case, cowardice above all. Even his last minute deployment of fireships had proved a ridiculous failure, when Parma had turned them back against the English fleet.

I made my way quietly along the rows of sleeping men, stopping now and then to comfort and reassure any who were awake and in pain. Andrew was sleeping and I paused for a moment at the foot of his pallet. Asleep, he looked younger than I remembered from last year, when we had gone spying into the fishing village on the
Sussex coast. Then he had seemed altogether the confident young trooper, cheerfully enjoying our escapade away from the senior men who commanded us. Now he looked no more than a sick boy, his face pale below the bandages, one hand under his head, the other curled loosely on his chest like a child’s. If no infection entered the head wound, I was fairly certain he would make a good recovery. Whether he would ever regain that same carefree enjoyment of life, I was less sure.

After I had checked all the patients, including our regular patients who had already been in the hospital when the soldiers arrived, I sat down on a bench near the door of the ward. There was barely room for my feet, without kicking the patient lying nearest to me on the floor, so I tucked them under the bench and leaned my head back against the wall. I did not mean to close my eyes, but my lids felt as though some irresistible force were dragging them down. There was nothing more I could do for the moment and we were now at that graveyard watch of the night, that time when most souls flee from the body. Yet, curiously, also that time when babies fight their way into the world, as if God were holding up some celestial balance – so many souls out, so many souls in. I half smiled, feeling myself tremble on that border between waking and sleep. Had I discovered some new theological or physical truth? So many souls out, so many souls in.