by Ann Swinfen
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.
I woke with a jerk and a shooting pain in my neck, as the door beside me was pushed open and four of the hospital servants carried in William Baker on his pallet, one to each corner. In the flickering light from the sconce on the wall above me, I could see that the leg was gone. William was in a dead swoon and the pallet was soaking with blood. I turned to Peter, who had followed them in. He was looking very green and his hands were shaking.
‘Peter, he must have fresh bedding. He cannot lie on that. Are there any more pallets to be had?’
‘I’ll see what I can find.’ He turned away, clearly glad of an excuse to escape.
‘And blankets,’ I said. ‘He will be cold from the shock. The mistress of the nurses should have some.’ Suddenly aware that it was not yet dawn, I added, ‘If she is still awake.’
‘I think I know where they are kept,’ he said. ‘If not, I will wake her.’
‘Brave man,’ I said, and he gave me a shaky smile.
‘I could dare anything, after that.’
‘Was it as bad as I suppose?’
‘Worse. I thought the poor bugger was going to die of the pain under our eyes.’
‘I gave him as much poppy as I dared.’
‘I know. I don’t think a barrelful would have helped. It was terrible, Kit.’
I nodded. ‘Once you have found some bedding and helped me make him comfortable, you should go to bed.’
‘Little point now,’ he said, gesturing towards the window, which had changed from black to the first lighter tinge of grey while we had been speaking
.
The servants had deposited William in the empty space where he had lain before. There was nowhere else to put him. As soon as it was light I was determined to turn Goodman Watkins out of his bed and send him home, so William could have his bed. It would be too cruel to keep an amputee lying on the floor. I stood looking down at him. Unlike Andrew, he looked older, his face ashen with pain, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones as though it had somehow shrunk. He had bitten his lips till they bled, so while I waited for Peter, I bathed his face and spread a little honey on his ravaged mouth. He did not even stir. It was the best thing for him. While the mind is deep asleep, the body can take its chance to mend itself.
When Peter returned, we struggled to lift William on to the clean pallet. The servants had retreated as soon as they had deposited him on the floor and there was very little room to move. In the end we managed to shift the men on either side a little way, so that we could lay the fresh pallet next to him. Then I took his shoulders and Peter – with nervous hesitation – took his remaining leg. We managed to lift him across. Then Peter removed the old pallet, which was so sodden it dripped blood along the floor as he carried it away. I tucked the two blankets around the soldier, taking care to avoid the stump, which had been cauterised and bound tightly to stop any further bleeding. Peter had even managed to find a small cushion, which I eased under William’s head. He moaned as I did so, and his eyelids fluttered, but did not open.
When I stood up, I saw that my father had returned with Peter and stood talking quietly to him near the door, so I went to join them.
‘Dr Stephens has gone home,’ my father said. ‘One of us at least should get some sleep.’
‘I’ve told Peter to do the same,’ I said. I turned to him. ‘You have a room in the hospital, don’t you?’
Peter was an orphan, with no family that he knew of. When he had come to St Bartholomew’s as a young servant, one of the licensed apothecaries, James Weatherby, had noticed his skill and intelligence, and took him on as an apprentice. I knew he had a room somewhere up in the attics.
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but will I not be needed here?’
My father shook his head. ‘Master Weatherby is still here. He has said you may go.’
With that, Peter nodded to us and went off toward the staircase which led to the attics. Instead of his usual brisk step he plodded like an old man, hardly able to put one foot in front of another.
‘You should go home as well, Kit,’ my father said.
I shook my head. ‘I am so tired that I’m no longer tired. I feel like a swimmer come up for air.’
Even as I said it, I had a sudden flash of memory. My sister Isabel and my brother Felipe and I, swimming in the stream that ran beside the meadow at my grandfather’s solar, his estate in the foothills some miles above Coimbra. We used to dare each other to stay under water as long as we could, but we would pop up at last, breaking the surface like corks, gasping and laughing.
‘Caterina?’ My father was looking at me oddly, for I must have seemed far away.
‘Ssh!’ I said, glancing over my shoulder. There was no one near but the sleeping soldiers. That was twice tonight he had risked giving me away. Fatigue was making him incautious. ‘Be careful, Father.’
He passed a tired hand over his face. ‘I am sorry, Kit. It has been a long and weary night.’
‘It has. If anyone should go home, it is you.’
‘No, no. We will both stay on until Dr Stephens returns in the morning. Though I don’t think we will be needed. They are mostly asleep. Thomas Derby will be back in the morning.’
Thomas was Dr Stephens’s assistant, as I was my father’s. He had been away for three days, fetching a shipment of supplies from Dover.
‘I am going to watch over William Baker,’ I said.
‘Who?’ My father had not caught the name before.
‘The amputee. And there was that one soldier with the high fever, up at the top end of the ward. He may need more febrifuge tincture.’
‘Aye, you are right. I will sit up there, in case he wakes.’
Although the first fading of the night had shown in the window, the rest of the time seemed to drag sluggishly on to dawn. I found a stool which I could fit between the rows of men beside William Baker and sat there, willing myself to stay awake. I knew if I sat where I could lean against the wall, I would fall asleep again. Even so, several times my head fell forward till my chin hit my chest and a sharp stab in my spine woke me just as I drifted into sleep. I could make out my father dimly at the far end of the ward, seated, as I had been before, with his back propped against the wall. I hoped he would be able to doze a little, for he was showing his age, and was a little frail these days, however he tried to put on a brave face.
At last the long rectangles of the windows grew a paler grey, then gradually took on a tinge of pink, about the same time as I heard some of the town roosters beginning to greet the day. I wasn’t often awake as early as this. I could see, in the growing light, that my father was asleep. I was stiff with sitting so long on the hard stool, so I stood up and stretched, then slipped out of the ward and out of the hospital itself. In the courtyard the air smelled wonderfully fresh after the stench of so many sick and wounded bodies crowded together, and I drew in deep lungfuls of it. One of the hospital cats, kept to chase away any rats and mice from the storerooms, was washing himself in a pale yellow patch of morning sun, licking first one hind leg and then the other with meticulous care. Catching sight of me, he strolled over with the nonchalant benevolence of a monarch and rubbed against my leg. I tickled him behind the ears and was rewarded with a throaty rumble. When he stalked off on business of his own, I returned to the hospital, where the nursing sisters were just coming to take up their duties. Tonight we must make sure that some stayed in the wards over night, for the extra numbers we had taken in were going to need care and feeding.
When I reached the ward, I saw that my father was awake and so were some of the patients. Together, we got Goodman Watson out of his bed and dressed, and told him firmly that he was quite well enough to go home, despite his peevish protests. Then we sent for some of the men servants to lift William Baker into the vacated bed. He was still unconscious, but there was no bleeding from the stump of his leg. We could only pray that the surgeon had operated in time and that the gangrene would not spread any further.
The serving women brought porridge and small ale for the patients and we went round the ward, deciding whether any of the men were able to leave. Very few were well enough. Even those with less serious injuries were so weak from starvation that their recovery would be slow, so in the end we only sent three away, all of them with homes in London. When I came to Andrew, I saw that his fever had abated somewhat, but his skin was still dry and hot.
‘How do you find yourself this morning?’ I asked.
‘Better,’ he said. ‘Last night it felt as though a blacksmith was hammering on the inside of my skull. Now it’s just a tinsmith.’
He grinned at me and I smiled back. This was more like the old Andrew.
‘Well, once there’s only a sparrow pecking there, we’ll let you go home and try to grow your hair over that groove in your skull.’
‘Aye, I noticed you chopped away my locks last night.’
‘You wouldn’t want them sticking to the wound, I promise you. Where is your home?’
‘Gloucestershire. But I won’t go home, I’ll go back to my barracks in Dover.’
‘You won’t be fit for duty yet awhile.’
‘Tell my commander that.’
‘If it is the same commander as last year, he seemed a sensible man.’
‘No, he has been transferred to the Low Countries. We have a regular Tartar of a fellow now.’
‘Then we will send a letter with you, saying that you are not fit for work for another three weeks. Three weeks after we release you.’
‘You make the hospital sound like prison.’
‘You’d not be fed so
well in any prison I’ve heard of. It is one of the provisions of Barts, to feed the patients well. Make the most of it. Here is your breakfast coming. I’m off home myself soon, but I will see you later today.’
He looked at me seriously for the first time. ‘I thank you for your care, Kit. You had a terrible night of it last night. How is that poor lad, William?’
I didn’t realise he had been aware of what had happened.
‘So far, he seems well enough. It’s a bad shock to the body, an amputation.’
‘It’s a fearful thing. The army will turn him away and forget that he lost his leg serving his country. It’s a cruel world out there for a one-legged man.’
‘I know. I am going to find his sister today and tell her what has happened.’ It was a task I was not looking forward to.
‘Well, it is good he has a sister. I hope she is a loving one.’ There was a touch of bitterness in his tone, but I did not probe him.
‘Eat your breakfast and then rest. Sleep is the best healer.’
‘It isn’t easy on this b’yer lady floor,’ he said, moving his shoulders irritably. I realised his dislocated shoulder would still be giving him pain, as well as the injury to his head.
‘I know, but we weren’t expecting four hundred extra patients. Now eat. I will come to see you later.’
Dr Stephens was talking to my father, who gestured to me that we should leave. I checked once more on William Baker, but he had not woken. However, his sleep seemed more natural now. I found myself yawning as if my jaw would break. Time to go home and to bed myself.
When I woke in my own bed I was momentarily confused by the broad swathe of light falling across the room. Then I remembered why I was still abed so late. I threw back the covers and rubbed my eyes. Although I had slept well, I still felt the exhaustion and horrors of the night before. I knew that when I returned to the hospital I would find that some of the soldiers had died while I was away, and others would be in a worse state than yesterday, not better.
I dressed slowly, my fingers fumbling with garters and buttons. Even in this warm summer weather I wore a doublet, for it was the best garment for concealing my shape and keeping up my pretence. I was still thin and flat-chested, though my breasts were beginning to swell. The time might come when I would need to bind them.
