Free The Enterprise of England by Ann Swinfen Page A

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