by Ann Swinfen
‘You’re sure?’
‘Aye, there’s nothing to fear here.’
I did not watch them leave, but the shadows vanished from the doorway and I saw the child Teresa relax a little. The boy continued to sit without moving.
‘Do you have a lamp?’ I asked. ‘Or a candle? I need to see what Mama needs.’
‘There is a lamp.’ She got to her feet and fumbled about on a small table near the little boy. I heard her struggling with the flint and tinder but did not interfere. It was better for her to have something to do. At last she had the lamp lit, a rough pottery cruse with a wick floating in cheap oil, but it would serve. She handed it to me and I found a ledge for it above where the woman lay. I saw she was not directly on the floor but lay on a thin palliasse, not much more than two fingers thick.
‘Now, Teresa, can you find me some water, and a cloth? Then I want you to bathe Mama’s face and give her a drink. See how hot and tired she is? And I will see if the baby is ready to come.’
Once given something to do, the child stopped crying. She brought a bucket of water and a crude wooden cup and a cloth. While she tenderly bathed her mother’s face and lifted her head so she could drink, I turned back the woman’s skirt, which was soaking, and checked to see how far she was dilated. The baby was nearly ready to come, but it was clear the woman was almost at the end of her strength. I had feared that the baby might have been badly presented, but its head was in place. The woman lay inert and flaccid. Perhaps she was already dead. I was afraid I might have to cut the baby free, and I could not do that in front of the child.
Then the woman’s body gave a convulsive shudder. It was still suffering contractions, though the woman seemed barely conscious.
‘When did you last have something to eat?’ I asked.
‘Before the bad men came,’ the girl said.
‘Have you nothing? Something to drink? If we could give Mama some ale or some wine, it would make her feel better.’
‘Paolo might have some.’
‘Paolo?’ I looked around. There was surely no one else in the cottage, which had only this one room, with a ladder to a loft above.
‘Next door.’
She scrambled to her feet and darted out of the cottage. The woman arched her back and gave another low moan.
In a few minutes the child was back, carefully carrying another wooden cup in her two hands. ‘Paolo gave me this.’
‘He is your neighbour? He is coming?’
‘He can’t walk. The bad men beat him. But he says the wine is good. He had it hidden.’
It was a dark red. I dipped my finger in the cup and licked it. It had a fierce kick, but it should give the woman a little strength. With some difficulty I managed to get my arm under her shoulders and lift her enough so that she could drink. Her eyes flickered and she fixed them on Teresa, who knelt beside the palliasse, watching anxiously.
‘You must drink, Mama. The doctor says so. Paolo sent you the wine.’
She drank, then. Some of it dribbled from the corners of her mouth down the front of her dress, but most of it went down her throat, in small gulps. She coughed a few times, but I could see it reviving her.
After that, everything happened very quickly. The woman had already borne two children, probably more, given the difference in age between the two here. The baby was ready to come and she had a little strength now, at least for a short time, to respond to the rhythmic convulsions of her body. It cannot have been more than half an hour later that the baby slithered into my hands, a girl. Healthy enough, though small. Teresa found a piece of torn blanket and I let her wrap the baby in it and hand her new sister to her mother.
When I had finished tending the woman, I got stiffly to my feet, after kneeling all this time on the earth floor, and gave Teresa a hug. ‘You see, you are almost a doctor yourself. Now you must help Mama look after the baby. I will send you food.’
She smiled up at me, the smile transforming the pinched dirty face. ‘You are good man, Doctor Christoval.’
‘My friends,’ I said, ‘call me Kit.’
I packed up my satchel and swung it on to my shoulder.
‘It is late now, and you must all sleep, but in the morning I will bring you food.’
As I ducked out under the low lintel of the door, I found Dr Nuñez sitting on a quayside bollard opposite the cottage. He looked tired, but alert.
‘You should not have waited for me,’ I said, stretching my arms above my head and flinching as my shirt caught the half healed burn on my shoulder.
‘Oh, I have not been here all the time. I have been back to the Victory, and dined, and come ashore again. It was a woman in labour, was it?’
‘Aye. Babies do not know to wait when a town is destroyed in battle and a siege is under way. Their midwife has been killed. By our soldiers. The child was terrified and the woman at the end of her strength. Is this how we make war?’
I felt bitter, feeling that I was tainted by association with this wicked violence.
He rose to his feet and we turned together to where we could board a boat to take us out to the Victory. After the incessant din of the daylight hours, the silence and the clear air felt like a blessing. The wind was still blowing from the west, bringing with it the fresh scent of the ocean. A few lights shone from some of the ships, with their reflections dancing in the waters of the harbour. Overhead the sky was blue-black and clear of cloud, so that the stars sparkled as vividly as the jewels on a monarch’s robes of state.
‘I care for this no more than you do,’ Dr Nuñez said, ‘but there is little we can do, we are in other men’s hands.’
We climbed down into one of the skiffs moored at the end of the quay and a sleepy boatman began to row us out to the ship.
‘One thing I can do,’ I said, ‘is to take that little family some food tomorrow. The child said they had eaten nothing since the bad men came. I thought we were supposed to be taking the food stockpiled for the Spanish navy, not leaving civilian children to starve. There was no sign of a father. I suppose he is either dead or escaped from the town.’
‘Or joined the garrison.’
‘Perhaps. But I think he was nothing but a poor fisherman. Probably dead. There is a man next door who has been so badly beaten by our soldiers that he cannot walk. I will visit him as well.’
‘Have a care, Kit. You must ask for permission before you begin to act on your own.’
‘I will ask the Dom himself, then. Let us see whether he has the compassion a ruler should possess.’
That night I slept in luxury in my tiny cabin. After so many uncomfortable nights on deck, the strenuous journey through the town to the English camp below the walls of the citadel, and delivering the baby in the fisherman’s cottage, I fell into a deep restoring sleep free of dreams and woke late to find Dr Nuñez already gone from his cabin. After a hasty breakfast at the table where the ship’s officers and gentlemen passengers took their meals, I sought out the Dom.
I found him on the forecastle, in conference with Ruy Lopez and Captain Oliver. Dr Nuñez was nowhere to be seen. I had to wait until I could interrupt them, but the Dom bent a condescending smile on me.
‘Dr Nuñez has told us that you have done valiant work caring for our injured soldiers.’
I bowed my head slightly in acknowledgement.
‘They are suffering a good deal, but so too are the few civilians left in the town, with whom – surely? – we have no quarrel.’
‘I understand you assisted at a birth,’ he said.
‘Aye, a woman in one of the fisher cottages along the shore. It seems our men have murdered the town’s midwife.’
He had the grace to look somewhat ashamed at this, so I pressed home my request.
‘If you are agreeable, Your Grace, I should like to take food to the woman and her small children. And I am told there is a badly injured man in the next cottage, injured also by our soldiers. It was too late last night, but I should like to see if I can help him, or
any others of the poor folk who are still left in the town.’
He considered for a moment, then gave a nod. ‘I see no reason why you should not. It will demonstrate that our quarrel is not with the common people of Spain, who may be our friends in future. Our quarrel is with the overreacher Philip and his army.’
This was delivered in ringing tones, as if he saw himself already upon the throne and addressing the Cortes. That the desolation of the town was mostly the work of our own ungovernable army, I did not mention. I did, however, draw attention to another problem.
‘Your Grace, there are many bodies lying unburied in the streets of the town. Some have been dead for several days now. If we are to remain here any longer, we ourselves risk disease from them. A burial party should be mustered to deal with the dead. It is not merely common humanity. It is an urgent necessity.’
Ruy Lopez eagerly supported me. He was well aware, as I was, what dangers could arise from the noxious fumes given off by the unburied dead. The Dom turned to the captain.
‘Can you arrange it?’
‘I will speak to Sir John,’ he said.
I left them to their discussions and went in search of supplies to take on shore.
In the fisherman’s cottage I found the woman propped up, with her back against the wall, nursing the baby, who looked the strongest of the family. Someone, probably Teresa, had washed and tidied the boy and cleaned the bed place, removing the bloodied covering of the palliasse and replacing it with another, threadbare but clean. I gave her a parcel of food to set out on the table while I examined the woman, who was in a better state than I had feared. She thanked me, stumbling over the words and clutching the baby tightly, but she was interrupted by Teresa exclaiming over the food.
‘Fresh bread, Mama, see! And cheese and sausage and – what is this?’ She held up a greasy packet.
‘Some cooked meat,’ I said. ‘Mutton. I was not sure whether you would be able to cook fresh meat.’
‘I can cook,’ she said proudly. She was a different child now the fears of the night were over. I could see that she was well able to care for her mother.
‘There are olives as well,’ I said, ‘and some dried plums. And here is a flask of small ale.’
Her eyes glowed as she held up the food for her mother to see. Even the little boy seemed more animated than before.
‘Before you eat, Teresa,’ I said, ‘will you take me to Paolo? I want to see whether there is anything I can do for him.’
She looked longingly at the food, but led me willingly to the cottage next door, which was another almost identical, though even more bare of possessions.
‘Paolo,’ she said, ‘this is the doctor who helped Mama. He says he can help you.’
I saw a big man seated on a stool beside the far wall, where he could lean against it for support. He clutched a heavy stick in his hand which I suspected he might have used to club me if I had tried to come here without Teresa. There was a dirty cloth wound round his head as a bandage, one of his cheeks was cut and bruised, the eye above it surrounded by blackened and yellow flesh. The stick, I guessed, was to help him walk, for his left leg, bare below his workman’s tunic, was deeply slashed, almost certainly by a sword. The torn flesh was crawling with flies.
At a nod from me, Teresa slipped away and I drew cautiously nearer to the man.
‘I am Dr Christoval Alvarez,’ I said. ‘Thank you for the wine last night. It gave Teresa’s mother enough strength for the final effort.’
He grunted. ‘The babe will survive?’
‘Aye, she’s strong and healthy.’
‘So were we all before you came.’
‘I am no part of what has been happening here.’
‘You’re Portuguese,’ he said. ‘I can tell from the way you speak.’
‘I was. I live in London now, where my father and I serve at a hospital for the poor.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I’m a physician, as I said, and I would like to help you if I may. Has anyone looked at those injuries?’
‘Not likely, is it? If you want, you can.’
He leaned his stick against the wall and began to unwind the dirty cloth from his head.
For the next hour we exchanged few words as I cleansed and treated his wounds. The head injury was unpleasant, but relatively clean. The sword slash needed stitching. The black eye and the cut cheek, once salved, could be left to heal. Through it all he endured the pain stoically, only grunting a few times.
When I had finished, I unloaded the rest of my basket, for I had kept some of the food for the injured man. He merely nodded his thanks, but I saw the gleam of hunger in his eyes. As he fell upon the bread, tearing off great chunks and stuffing them into his mouth, I packed up my satchel and spoke casually, not looking at him.
‘Do you know of a tailor in the town, by the name of Titus?’
It was a risk, but I would have to take risks if I was to find Walsingham’s man.
He considered, chewing the bread, then breaking off a piece of cooked mutton and studying it, before it followed the bread into his mouth.
‘No tailors in this part of town.’ He spoke through the food. ‘Folk down here, the women make their clothes. Men like me, who don’t have a woman, buy from the market stalls or trade with a neighbour.’
‘But there are tailors?’
‘Up there.’ He jerked his head, indicating the higher parts of the town. ‘Where the rich folk live.’
His expression showed his opinion of rich folk.
‘Not living safe inside the walls, not if he’s a tailor, you may be sure. But just outside. There’s a street of tailors’ shops near the wall of the old town. So the great folk need not soil their satin shoes by walking far to place their orders.’ He leered at me, so I could see the fragments of meat and bread sticking to his strong teeth. ‘Though for all I know, those people may summon the tailors to their houses and not stir a step. There’s likely no one left there now.’
He threw a handful of olives into his mouth, then spat the stones, one by one, on to the dirt of the floor. ‘Portuguese like you, is he? Titus an’t a Spanish name.’
‘I know very little about him,’ I said cautiously.
He considered a moment. ‘I did hear, two-three weeks ago, some craftsmen were sent for to up to the citadel. Carpenters and such. Don’t know if they wanted tailors.’
There was a note of contempt in his voice. To a working fisherman, a man who plied a needle could hardly be called a man.
I left the basket and the remains of food with him, and made my way to the top of the lower town, just below the walls, to the quarter where he said I would have found the tailors before the town was ransacked. There was still occasional firing from the citadel, but it seemed they were saving their gunpowder for the next assault by the English troops. Nevertheless, I did my best to keep walls and buildings, such as were still standing, between me and the line of fire. As far as I could see, our own troops were lying low as well, for it was nearing the heat of midday, when it would be exhausting to make an attack. They would probably wait until the cool of the late afternoon.
The lower town, however, was not deserted. Burying parties had been sent into the streets, so the captain must have spoken to Sir John about the danger from unburied corpses. The men appeared to be some of the untrained soldiers, under the command of experienced officers. All of them had cloths tied around their faces as some small protection from stench and disease. They had good reason, for the merciless sun was turning the town into a charnel house.
I was sweating profusely by the time I reached the quarter where Paolo said the tailors had their premises. This street was not so badly damaged as some. Like the English camp, it was protected by an out-thrust spur of rock from the cannon fire. Nor had it been much troubled by our looting soldiers. Most of the food and drink would have been down near the harbour, either in the naval warehouses or the town market. There would have been few portable valuables
to be found here either. Churches had gold and silver candlesticks and crosses and church plate. Wealthy houses, if the soldiers had managed to find any, would have yielded all manner of small, rich items. Here in this street there was little but the tools of the tailors’ trade, and I could not imagine one of the looters carrying off a heavy bolt of cloth when he could pocket a gold and silver pyx worth a hundred times its value.
The shops were mostly intact, but deserted. I went from door to door, knocking and calling out in Spanish, but got no reply. I was near to giving up when I met an old woman stumbling up the steep street with a string of onions. When she saw me, she clutched them to her breast like a precious child. I held up my hands, palm out, conciliating.
‘I mean you no harm, Señora,’ I said. ‘I am looking for a man called Titus. Someone told me he lived near here.’
She glared at me suspiciously, as if she did not believe me, but when I made no move to steal her onions, her face eased a little.
‘Señor Titus, aye, he lived here until a few weeks ago. He’s with the garrison, lucky bastard. Sent for to make new uniforms before the foul heretics came.’
‘He’s up in the citadel now?’
‘He will be, unless he ran away, like every able-bodied man in this part of the town, the cowards. They left those of us who couldn’t run to fend for ourselves.’
There was no answer for that.
‘Do you think I could gain admission to the citadel?’
‘I don’t see why you should.’ She was looking suspicious again. ‘None of us can, the poor townsfolk. It’s only the rich folk up there. Who are you, anyway?’
‘I’m a physician, and I have a message for Titus, but I could offer my services to aid their wounded.’ I paused, thinking fast. ‘Do you know the name of the commander?’
‘Why should I?’ She shrugged. ‘No concern of mine. A crowd of cowards, that garrison, just like the men who ran from the town. They went dashing for the citadel the moment they saw El Dracque’s flag, like a flock of sheep running from a wolf, leaving the rest of us to face the heretics and die.’
