The soldiers were thanked and dismissed and went away in gloomy silence, for Sir Edward was a popular man with the troops, less severe in discipline than his brother. Sir John himself stayed, handing us what we asked for like an assistant apothecary, saying never a word until we had done all we could – salved and bound the injury and laid the patient down on his bed. The gash could not be stitched, for there is little enough skin and flesh on that part of the skull and that little had been torn and damaged.

‘Will he live?’ Norreys’s voice was harsh and I realised that he cared deeply for this younger brother of his, despite the rigid control of his face.

Dr Nuñez was washing the blood from his hands in a basin that a servant had brought. We were both blood-bespattered.

‘At this stage, I cannot tell,’ he said gravely. ‘The wound has been treated as soon as possible, that is in his favour. But it is very deep. He may live, but still suffer from its effects.’

It was his way of avoiding the issue. Sir John was not misled.

‘You mean he may be mad or childish hereafter? His mind affected?’

Dr Nuñez winced. ‘We will pray not, Sir John. The next few days will be crucial. If he does not take a fever . . . he is a strong healthy man.’

Norreys did not look reassured, but he thanked us both warmly and saw us on to his private pinnace to be taken back to the Victory.

We visited Sir Edward several times a day after this. He regained consciousness on the second day and gradually began to recover, although he suffered acute pain. It was so severe we could only partially relieve it with poppy juice. Had we given him enough to defeat the pain, it would have ended all his pain for ever. He was very weak, but his brain did not appear to be impaired. However, he had no memory of how the accident had happened. It was only from those who had been nearby that we heard how, in scrambling amongst the rocks and fallen masonry below the citadel walls, he had tripped over the pike he was carrying. Like Sir John he did not order his men to go where he would not go himself. He faced the same dangers and had suffered for it. Perhaps now, I thought, Norreys would abandon this pointless siege.

‘It seems a kind of emblem of our whole venture,’ I said to Dr Nuñez. ‘It is descending into disaster and farce. Sir Edward’s injury came not from the enemy but from his own weapon.’

He shrugged. There was no need to answer. More and more, events spoke for themselves. As matters had become more catastrophic, he had begun to spend more time in my company and to avoid Dr Lopez and the Dom.

‘We can do nothing but endure in patience, Kit,’ he said.

Another tragedy soon followed. Our troops had finally succeeded in making a major breach in the walls of the citadel, and continued to throw themselves at it with immense courage, in the face of the defenders’ cannon fire. During one of these charges a mass of loosened masonry fell outwards, crushing Captain Sydenham. He was not killed outright, but was pinned to the ground by four huge boulders lying on top of his legs and lower body.

I heard the story later from one of the soldiers on our ship. Originally, he had been amongst the new recruits, but, different from so many of the others, he was a responsible man, prepared to do his duty as a soldier, as faithfully as the regular troops from the Low Countries. Unlike some of the men who were present at the disaster, he had survived, although he had been shot through the shoulder with a crossbow and I dressed it.

Afterwards he sat wearily on the deck, too exhausted even to drink the ale which stood in a tankard at his side.

‘He was a decent man,’ he said, ‘Captain Sydenham. He knew it was hopeless, what we was trying to do, up there, take their damned citadel. Still he had his orders. And he always led the lads from the front.’

‘Drink your ale,’ I said. ‘You’ve had a bad time.’

He looked at the ale as if he had not seen it before, swallowed a mouthful, then put it down again.

‘We went in where there’s a partial breach, see. Getting bigger. The wall is broken. God’s bones, I don’t know how we done it without cannon. Torn half the stones down with out own bleeding hands.’

I could see that he meant this literally.

‘Anyways, the wall was beginning to collapse, see, then suddenly a whole section came away when we wasn’t expecting it. Came down like a landslide, and there was Captain Syndenham underneath it. All of him, from the waist down, pinned under these b’yer lady great rocks.’

He wiped his face with both hands.

‘We wasn’t going to desert him. Most of the lads there was the troops who fought the Spanish under him in the Low Countries and they wasn’t going to leave him to die under the rocks and that sun like a firebrand, on some stinking Spanish hillside. Nor was I. He treated me decent, even if I wasn’t one of his regular lads.’

He looked vaguely at the ale, then drank the rest of it down.

‘Over and over we made sorties under cannon shot and crossbow fire to try to rescue him. The Spanish just sat up there and picked us off. Would they stop long enough for us to rescue an injured man? Like Hell they would. Over and over they picked us off, them filthy misbegotten Spaniards. Before he died this morning, a dozen more of the lads was killed trying to save him. Dunno how many was injured like me. Jesu, I hate the bastards!’

Alone in my dark cubbyhole that night I wept for Captain Sydenham and a dozen other men and all the useless slaughter of this terrible futile siege of Coruña.

 

Chapter Ten

At last, after two weeks of unnecessary death and injury, it became clear even to the leaders of the expedition that we had not the means to overpower the citadel with our puny artillery. Their minds were further persuaded by a fortunate change in the wind, which began to blow in our favour from the northeast, the very wind to carry us down the coast of Portugal. The soldiers were ordered back to the ships, loading what provisions they could and destroying what little was left in the town. It would be a long time before Coruña recovered. There were a good many wounded men amongst those who had served in the attacks against the citadel, including even some of the recruits who had finally been forced into service. Along with the provisions, the injured were loaded on to the ships, to survive or die while we sailed south, as Fate should decree.

Before we left, I paid a final visit to Teresa and her family, and to Paolo, whom I had kept supplied with food all the while we had remained in the harbour.

‘You are leaving, Dr Kit?’ Teresa asked. She was a different child now from the terrified creature I had first seen. The cottage was kept as clean and neat as anyone could contrive, given its dirt floor and the sand that blew in from the foreshore. Probably Teresa had been hard at work. I had persuaded one of the ship’s carpenters to replace the door and to make some repairs to Paolo’s house.

‘Aye, we are leaving,’ I said, ‘and you will be glad to see us go.’

‘Nay,’ she protested, ‘you have been kind. Without you the baby would have died, and Mama too. And we would have had nothing to eat.’

Her mother was still weak, but she was growing stronger. Nevertheless, it was always Teresa who was in charge and who did most of the talking.