‘Thank you,’ Nicholas replies. But he can’t help adding, ‘It’s a pity you didn’t bring back some of those Spaniards who survived the wrecking of their ship. I might have been able to keep them alive. They might have told us what they were about.’
‘Oh, I know what they were about,’ Henshawe laughs. ‘They were intending to parley with the rebels, to contrive a landing in support of Tyrone. They made an attempt last year. Only the weather saved us.’ He gives Nicholas a sickly smile of assumed brotherhood. ‘I know you have sworn an oath to do no harm, but God never meant that to apply to the Spanish.’
Nicholas has noticed Edmund Spenser growing increasingly agitated, particularly when he’s around Oliver Henshawe. Mayor Skiddy has instigated regular conferences to order the regulation of the town: allocate rations, organize watch patrols, address weaknesses in the walls. Throughout – when he’s not restating his opinion that only the Earl of Essex can set things right in Ireland – Spenser sits in the corner of Skiddy’s apartments in the King’s Tower on Tuckey’s Quay, looking like a man awaiting the verdict of a jury in a capital trial. This discomfort is most visible whenever Henshawe is around.
Why is Spenser so afraid of him? Nicholas wonders again. After what he witnessed at the shipwreck, especially if he was there while the killing was taking place, it makes every sense that Spenser should fear such innate brutality. But hadn’t Spenser told him that Henshawe was Robert Devereux’s man in Ireland? He can recall the poet’s words exactly: Whatever happens on this island, the Earl of Essex hears of it first from Henshawe… Be very cautious in what you say when that man is present…
So if Spenser believes Essex is the best man to defeat the rebellion – and if Essex is Spenser’s patron and friend – why does he fear Henshawe so?
A week later Henshawe returns from chasing off a band of rebels attempting to sack a plantation at Ballinahina, to the north. He brings with him a soldier whose thigh has been badly gashed by a lucky strike from a poleaxe. Nicholas follows the man’s comrades as they carry the casualty to the temporary hospital down by the Watergate. He is a rake-thin lad of barely sixteen, with a pitted grey face and darting, frightened eyes. His pain has pitched him into delirium. He cries out in anguish, a jumbled, plaintive wail of misery: he is damned for all eternity… he has defied God’s will by taking innocent lives… he has profaned, and now he faces judgement… the Virgin Mary has come down from heaven to punish him. The poor boy only falls silent when Bianca takes his hand and walks with him beside the litter.
The hospital is dark and quiet when they carry the lad in. Someone calls in a hoarse, pain-racked voice, ‘Whose company? Is he from Sir Henry Norris’s regiment? My brother is with Sir Henry.’
The only answer he gets is a muttered, ‘No one gives a shit for your brother, Tib Kelly. Pipe down and let us sleep.’
‘Lay him down here, by the door,’ says Nicholas, indicating a clear space on the bed of fresh reeds.
The light spilling in from the entrance is pale and sickly. Nicholas calls for a horn lantern to work by – he will allow no candles in the warehouse, a blazing hospital being somewhat prejudicial to the chances of a patient’s recovery. When he cuts away the bloody, mud-stained woollen leggings, Nicholas sees the Devil’s purple lips smiling back at him. Surrounded by dried blood, they leer in corrupt invitation. He leans closer, expecting to catch the stink of putrefaction. But all he can smell is blood and the cold scent of damp wool and sweat from the boy’s dirty hose.
Nicholas knows he will have to work quickly. If the wound is neat and he can prevent it becoming diseased, the boy has a chance. But if there is extensive damage to the surrounding flesh, tendons and muscle, perhaps even to the bone, he will have consider amputating the limb. That, he thinks, is almost as likely to kill the patient as the infection.
Nicholas has always considered himself competent with a saw. His success rate – around six out of every ten amputations resulting in the survival of the patient – is acceptable by any measure that the College of Physicians cares to impose. But it’s been a while since he performed the procedure. He calls for a jug of potcheen and a jar of honey. The spirit will help cleanse the wound and the honey will soothe and delay any infection. The potcheen will have the added benefit of dulling the lad’s senses if Nicholas needs to amputate. In the Low Countries he could take off a limb inside the first three verses of ‘We Be Soldiers Three’. As he cleans the wound, he sings it to himself, to get the speed of the saw fixed against the rhythm of the song, should he need to:
Now that the wound is cleansed, Nicholas can see that the boy has been luckier than he knows. The blade must have been well honed. It has carried deep into the muscle, but brought with it only a few strands of woollen hose, and it has missed the femoral artery by less than a finger’s width. Remembering the boy’s ravings, he says, ‘You were wrong, my lad. The Virgin Mary was on your side, not the rebels’.’
He stitches the wound with animal gut and anoints it with the honey. Then he wraps it tightly in a warm poultice that Bianca has prepared. Now the boy’s fate is up to God or, more likely, luck – because Nicholas has observed that when it comes to healing, God’s attention too often seems occupied elsewhere.
Over the following days he is relieved to see the lad recover. Within the week his patient is able to hobble on his good leg. His appetite is restored, though no one in the town can rely upon the prospect of a full belly. On the eighth day after he was brought in, Nicholas sits beside the lad and tells him how lucky he is. There is every chance he will make a full recovery. Only one thing has not healed: the lad’s certainty that he is damned.
‘War makes men behave like beasts,’ he laments to Nicholas. ‘I had not thought to see such things. I had not thought to do such things.’
Nicholas wonders if the lad was with Henshawe at the wreck site. But when he asks, he receives only blank incomprehension.
‘No, this was no shipwreck – this was at Ballinahina. We hanged a whole rebel family,’ he says sadly. ‘Children an’ all. We should not have done that. The husband went silently to his maker, with naught but hatred in his heart for us. But the woman cried out that the Virgin Mary had risen out of the sea to protect Ireland from our cruelty, and that our work that day was blasphemous and against God. She cursed us to hell.’ He lays his hand on his bandages. ‘Very next day, I caught this.’
Nicholas knows from his experience in the Low Countries that a man’s worst wounds are not always the visible ones. When the boy has talked himself into silence, he says,
‘If you want me to, I’ll tell Sir Oliver that your wound has made you unfit for further service. You’ll be back in Surrey before you know it, the bold hero – setting all the village maids’ hearts a-flutter.’
The lad gives him a bewildered look. ‘Surrey, sir? Where in Ireland is Surrey?’
‘Surrey, in England.’
‘They’ll not send me to England, will they?’ the lad asks, a plaintive look clouding his young, thin face.
‘Don’t you want to go home?’
‘Aye, sir – but not to England. My home is in Leinster. My father came over to work land at Rathcoffey, before I was born.’