ELEVEN

Lyme Regis, 20 April 1644

THE NEWS THAT PRINCE MAURICE was parading his army outside Lyme’s Town Line reached Jayne as she was lancing yet another carbuncle on the neck of yet another of the Parliamentary garrison’s soldiers. She believed the cause of the outbreak to be a poor diet and general lack of cleanliness, but there was little she could do except lance the painful boils, clean the wounds with brine and urge the men to bathe themselves regularly in the sea.

This advice was greeted with hollow laughter, since none had time for bathing. When the men weren’t manning the Town Line—a six-foot-high earth bank behind a deep trench that had been constructed by the people of Lyme during the preceding twelve months—they were sunk in sleep or searching for food. The Parliamentary town, with its strong Puritan leanings, had been under threat of siege since refusing to surrender to Lord Carnarvon the previous year and, as the ramparts were more than a mile in length, it required a thousand men to defend them, with most sleeping at their replacements’ feet and rarely changing their clothes or eating more than bread and thin soup. Before the war, the population of Lyme had been under a thousand, but now, swollen by Puritans seeking refuge from towns under Royalist control, the number exceeded three thousand, and all were crammed into the confined space between the earth-bank ramparts and the sea.

The trench and ramparts had been constructed under the guidance of Colonel Robert Blake, the commander of the garrison, and Jayne had come to his attention when one of his aides, John Metcalfe, had begged permission to bring Mistress Swift to the town for the purpose of treating his ailing wife. The woman suffered from recurring ague, and Mistress Swift was the only physician who had ever been able to give her relief. Colonel Blake had granted Metcalfe leave to escort Jayne from her home, warning that she would have to depart again before nightfall, but on learning of her skills he decided to keep her another two days. There were too few town physicians to cope with the outbreak of boils amongst the men of the garrison, and he promised Jayne fair remuneration if she would lance the worst of them.

Jayne had been allocated a room in a house overlooking the harbour and began work on the Friday morning, after asking John Metcalfe to send word to Sir Henry that her return would be delayed. She was assisted in her work by two doughty matrons who told her the house had once been a hospital, though it hadn’t been used for more than a year. The women’s nursing skills were limited but Jayne was grateful for their presence when she saw how many men needed treatment; she doubted her nerve would have held had she been obliged to face such a crowd alone. The first day she treated in excess of one hundred men, and began again at dawn on the next when a long queue formed in the street outside.

In the preceding weeks, the news reaching Swyre had concerned only the north and east of Dorset, with skirmishes between Royalists and Parliamentarians being rumoured from Shaftesbury to Poole. Since Lyme was situated in the far west of the county, Sir Henry had been unconcerned about her travelling there, but he’d sent word back to Metcalfe that he must return her to Swyre no later than four hours after noon on the third day of her visit.

The poor man was trembling now as he informed Jayne that Prince Maurice and six thousand Royalist soldiers were gathered outside the town. ‘Your father will never forgive me, ma’am. He’ll have my head for endangering you.’

‘He’s not so savage,’ said Jayne calmly, squeezing pus from the putrid carbuncle into a rag. She nodded to a pile of cloths on a table beside her and gave instructions to one of the matrons. ‘Wet a fresh one in the bowl and then hand it to me, please,’ she said, wondering why neither seemed able to learn that she was following the same routine each time. She discarded the pus-filled rag in a wooden chest for burning and then pressed the brine-sodden cloth against the wound in the sufferer’s neck. ‘Take a stool outside the door and hold the cloth in place until I call you back to put a dressing on the cut,’ she told him before asking how many others were waiting.

‘Only five, ma’am. You’ve treated more than one hundred and twenty already, for I’ve counted them as they came out.’

She smiled. ‘Will you tell them I need just a few moments with Captain Metcalfe? I will not be long.’ She asked the matrons to leave also and then turned to Metcalfe. ‘Will the town surrender?’

‘No. Colonel Blake is committed to the fight. It may be that I can persuade a fisherman to take you out by sea, but the price will be high.’

‘I have but five shillings with me. Will a fisherman do the job on a promise that my father will pay?’

Metcalfe shook his head. ‘Payment will have to be made in advance, ma’am, and I question whether any will agree to desert the town. Our fisherfolk are as dedicated to the defence of Lyme as every volunteer who guards the ramparts.’

Jayne recalled her conversation with William last September about why the unpaid defenders of Dorchester had surrendered. ‘Are they all volunteers?’

‘They are, ma’am. The town has been out of money since we made our stand against Carnarvon. Parliament sends supplies of food by ship, but when the weather’s bad we can go days without eating. The women do their best to stretch the rations, but it’s not easy.’

Jayne nodded. Her father had said several times that Lyme would have been starved into submission if the King hadn’t lost control of the navy.

Metcalfe spoke again, worried that her silence indicated despair. ‘Would you like me to ask my father to pay on your behalf, ma’am? I can’t say for certain that he has the necessary coinage, for there’s been no commerce here these last six months, but I’m sure he will help if he can.’

Jayne smiled. ‘It’s a kind thought, John, but I imagine he would rather keep what he has to ensure the safety of his family and household.’ She pondered for a moment. ‘Who has charge of this hospital?’

‘No one, ma’am. The last incumbent was Doctor Chaffin, but his sympathies were with the King and he left in acrimony after we refused Carnarvon’s terms. The other two physicians prefer to work out of their houses, and the barber surgeon performs his operations wherever his patients are located.’

Jayne was surprised. ‘Did you not tell me there were upwards of a dozen physicians in Lyme the first time you summoned me to tend your wife?’

He nodded. ‘Most have left—three or four out of sympathy for the King, the rest out of recognition that there’s no money to be made from a town under siege. I doubt they’re a great loss, since they only sought custom from the foreign ships that used to dock here. As long as they carried leeches and quicksilver, the credulous sailors believed they could cure anything.’

Jayne was sure he was right, but two physicians and a barber surgeon were hardly sufficient for a population of three thousand. It needed but an outbreak of the flux and all would be infected. With sudden decision, she rolled her sleeves higher up her arms, and leant forward to place her hands on the table at the centre of the room. ‘Would you be willing to ask Colonel Blake if I might have charge of this hospital?’ she asked. ‘I would rather make myself useful than sit in idleness. If there are women with knowledge of nursing and disease, I would have them at my side, and because I have no wish to set myself up as competition to the male physicians and the barber surgeon, I would appreciate a meeting between the four of us. Do you think Colonel Blake will agree to these requests?’

Metcalfe bowed. ‘For certain, ma’am. He has a good understanding of how desperate our situation is likely to become. I’ll return when I’ve spoken with him.’

A half-hour later, when the last of the carbuncles had been lanced and Jayne had had time to compose herself, Captain Metcalfe escorted her to Gaitch’s Fort, one of the middle forts in the Town Line, and led her up the five wooden steps inside. There were four such edifices built into the earth-bank ramparts, at a quarter-mile distance from each other, all housing cannons on their raised floors. From there, the view towards the hills that surrounded Lyme was clear, and Jayne glimpsed Prince Maurice’s army through a slit in the wall as she reached the last step. The sight was intimidating—six thousand infantry and cavalrymen, gathered in serried rows on Uplyme Hill, a steep grass-covered scarp that towered above the town—and her mouth dried with fear. It was one thing to pretend courage in a house overlooking the harbour, quite another to pretend it here.

Fortunately, she wasn’t required to speak for several minutes, giving her time to run her tongue about her mouth to produce some saliva, because Colonel Blake was being berated by two elderly men in Puritan dress. Metcalfe whispered that these were the physicians, while a younger man to the side, less obviously Puritan judging by his tunic and britches, was the barber surgeon. Unsurprisingly, the physicians were arguing that a woman should not be put in charge of the hospital, and their protests became shriller when they saw Jayne. If this was Mistress Swift, she was too young to be given such responsibility. Colonel Blake was misguided if he thought a woman could be a doctor, even more so to think one yet to reach thirty had any medical experience at all.

What was surprising, however, was that the barber surgeon spoke up for her. He looked to be in his mid-forties, some fifteen years younger than the two physicians, and it seemed he was well acquainted with Richard Theale. Many was the time he had ridden to Bridport at Doctor Theale’s request to assist in the setting of bones, and he’d heard the doctor speak of Mistress Swift as the best and most diligent student he’d ever had. In his opinion, Lyme was lucky to have her, and Colonel Blake correct to give her management of the hospital.

He ducked his head to Jayne. ‘I am Alexander Hulme, ma’am, and will assist you in any way I can.’

She smiled, recognising the name immediately as the master barber surgeon that Richard always employed. ‘You’re most kind, sir,’ she said, ‘and be sure Doctor Theale speaks as highly of you. I believe you relocated his shoulder after he fell from his horse three years back. He said your methods were painful but effective.’ Hulme’s pleasant face split in a grin. ‘There was a deal of wrenching involved to force the arm into its rightful place again, ma’am, but he’d have lost the use of it if I hadn’t done what was necessary. Captain Metcalfe tells me you’re looking for women with nursing skills. My wife, Susan, is more practised than most and knows others as able. Shall I ask her to call upon you?’

‘Please do, sir.’

‘And with haste,’ murmured Colonel Blake, staring through another slit. ‘The prince is bringing forward his artillery.’ He turned to the physicians. ‘Will you accept Master Hulme’s recommendation of Mistress Swift, gentlemen, or do you wish to argue further? I hardly need remind you that the Western Army outnumbers the garrison by upwards of five thousand, and the burden of dressing wounds will fall on you if you refuse Mistress Swift’s help. What is your choice?’

Prince Maurice’s assault began the following morning. By then, Jayne and Susan Hulme, with the help of the two matrons, several women and three young maids, had swept the hospital clean of dust, washed and scrubbed the floors, stools and tables, and begged and borrowed fifteen mattresses to lay in the upper and rear chambers. Jayne reserved the downstairs front room for treatment, placing stools around the walls and a solid oak table at its centre. One of the maids asked if the table was to hold medicines, and Jayne shook her head, saying its purpose was to allow a wounded patient to lie on his back.

To this end, she urged Susan to persuade her husband to join them and spread the word that wounded men should be brought to the hospital. ‘We’ll have more success working together than apart,’ she said. ‘I can assist him in the setting of bones, and he can assist me in the cleansing and sewing of wounds. I have catgut and needles in my satchel, but if he has supplies of his own, he should bring them here. Will he agree, do you think?’

Susan chuckled. ‘I doubt I’ll be able to keep him away, ma’am. He’s been saying for months that it’s a crying shame to leave the hospital locked up.’

‘Who locked it?’

‘Doctor Chaffin, who owns it. He swore he’d return once the war was won and sue the town for compensation if he found it had been used. He’s mighty hopeful of a Royalist victory.’ She broke off to listen to the sound of musket fire in the distance. ‘Which might come sooner than he thinks,’ she said wryly, making for the door.

The first day of the assault brought only minor injuries, often self-inflicted through carelessness—such as two broken toes from a keg of gunpowder being dropped—and Jayne began to wonder if she’d imagined war to be worse than it was. They learnt from the injured that the Royalists had tried to take some empty houses outside the Town Line, but the Lyme defenders had retaliated by setting the buildings alight with fire arrows. The resulting smoke had been so dense that it had allowed a band of Royalist infantrymen to crawl into the trench below the earth bank and dig away at a section of the base in order to cause a collapse. Their efforts proved fruitless not only because the bank was too well constructed but also because the Royalist musketeers on the raised slopes of Uplyme Hill—firing indiscriminately—wounded more of their own men in the ditch than the garrison’s defenders.

The next few days followed a similar pattern, enlivened occasionally by the discharge of cannons from both sides of the Line. Injuries remained minor on Lyme’s side despite a bold sortie by two hundred Parliamentarians into enemy territory to seize a battery and some thirty-five prisoners. Colonel Blake’s interrogation of these men suggested Prince Maurice’s troops were suffering worse than his, because a large number had been conscripted against their will and showed little appetite for fighting. To correct their cowardice, mounted dragoons rode behind them, slashing wildly with their swords to keep them moving forward. Out of sympathy, perhaps, Blake allowed the prisoners to desert by creeping along the shoreline at night and vanishing towards Devon.

The assault proper began on the following Sunday, and Jayne realised that the first week had been a mere testing of Lyme’s defences by the Royalists. For the next ten days, the town came under constant bombardment from Prince Maurice’s batteries, with one thousand heavy shot fired upon the town on the first day, and countless more in the days that followed. The noise was continuous, for the cannons in the forts were fired as relentlessly, and Jayne wondered if she would ever get used to the shock of the explosions or the crack of splintering timbers as heavy iron balls carved through roofs and walls.

Throughout, she and Alexander Hulme dealt with a constant stream of wounded. Those who defended the ramparts had bullet injuries to the head, arms and shoulders, since musket fire from the Royalist ranks was as unremitting as battery fire. The lucky were grazed by the lead shot, leaving bloodied burn tracks on their skin; the unlucky required the half-inch balls to be dug from their flesh. In every instance, unless a bone was broken and needed splinting, the men returned to their posts as soon as the wounds were cleansed and bandaged; as indeed did the women, children and elderly who came with injuries caused by falling cannonballs.

Many of the women dressed as men and stood with their husbands and brothers on the steps behind the earth bank to persuade Prince Maurice that the garrison was better supplied with troops than it was, and Jayne wished her father was there to see them. Nothing could be more different from Sir Henry’s descriptions of Puritans as intolerant religious bigots than these open-minded men and women who worked together in defence of their homes.

Jayne found their courage inspiring, and envied the women their tunics and britches. For herself, as everyone else was obliged to do, she spent the eight weeks of the siege in the same plain dark woollen gown in which she’d arrived, since water was precious and the laundering of clothes impossible. Susan Hulme found her a spare apron which she was able to interchange with her own, achieving a semblance of cleanliness by washing each in the sea by turn at the end of the day.

The evening of 6 May saw the fiercest fighting. The town had been shrouded in thick fog all day, and Colonel Blake, fearing the Royalists would use it to advance upon the Town Line, had warned his men to expect an attack. But the attack never came and, as the light began to dim, he allowed one half of his troops to go in search of food. By so doing, he played into the Royalists’ hands, for Prince Maurice had done precisely what Colonel Blake had predicted—sent his infantrymen under cover of the fog to hide in the hedgerows beyond the trench and wait for the command to storm the ramparts. The order was given at seven o’clock, and such was the fury of the assault that savage hand-to-hand fighting ensued, and in places the earth bank was overrun, allowing some one hundred Royalist soldiers to advance into the town.

Jayne would remember that night for the caterwauling of women who used their voices to intimidate the intruders. Her own nerves were quite frayed by the hideous sound, and she would have sworn on oath that the engagement lasted until dawn had she not been told afterwards that it endured a bare two hours once the troops at their supper learnt of the affray. Food was abandoned in their haste to return to their posts, and with double the numbers behind the earth bank, the Royalist attack was repelled. Nevertheless, the injuries were many, and the hospital quickly filled with slashing and stabbing wounds, all needing tourniquets and sutures to stem the flow of blood.

At some stage during the night, Susan Hulme drew Jayne’s attention to the two elderly physicians who stood in the doorway, watching the industry inside. They appeared astonished to see so many working so hard to manage the queue of wounded. In the previous week, Susan had recruited ten mature women willing to learn how to cleanse wounds with brine and then apply dressings. Another ten worked inside the kitchen to create bandages from donated garments, first scrubbing them clean and then immersing them in cauldrons of boiling sea water to purify them. All this was visible to the physicians, as was Jayne and Alexander’s stitching of the worst of the slashes while greybeards held the patients still on the table and children whispered words of comfort in their ears.

‘You’re welcome to join us, sirs,’ said Jayne as she tied the last of the sutures on a five-inch gash in a man’s leg and carefully released the tourniquet. ‘Your help will be much appreciated if you can bring us more catgut and have the knowledge and skill to use it.’ She moved away from the table, leaving Susan to bind the wound with clean strapping. ‘But perhaps you had a different reason for coming?’ she suggested when they didn’t answer.

One, whom Jayne knew to be Doctor Fisher, stepped into the room. ‘Are you charging for your services, Mistress Swift?’

Jayne shook her head. ‘None of us is, sir. We work as volunteers just as every man and woman of Lyme. Are you not doing the same?’

‘We’ve had no patients for a week.’

‘Then join us,’ she urged. ‘Some of these brave men have been waiting a long time to have their wounds cleaned and dressed. We took the most serious first, but even those with lesser wounds are in need of care.’

Doctor Fisher addressed the men sitting on stools. ‘Will any of you accept my treatment over Mistress Swift’s?’

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘What is it she does differently?’

Alexander Hulme spoke when this question also went unanswered. ‘She works quickly and efficiently, sir, and uses brine and boiled dressings to prevent wounds becoming infected. If you need proof of her methods, look to the men whose carbuncles she treated, few of whom have had a recurrence.’

‘I’m one such,’ said a grizzled soldier, nursing his injured left hand in his lap and gesturing to a healed patch of skin on his neck with the other. ‘I’ve had boils before but none went away as quickly as this, and so I’ve told anyone who asks.’

The other physician, Doctor Whiteway, addressed Jayne. ‘What of the four humours, Mistress Swift? If you work quickly, how can you assess which is out of balance?’

Jayne heaved an inward sigh, unwilling to be drawn into an argument about a practice that Richard Theale had taught her was outdated. The theory of humours was that four liquids—blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile—held equal importance in the body, and that an imbalance between them caused disease; yet it was twenty years since William Harvey had demonstrated that blood was pre-eminent because it circulated around the body through the pumping action of the heart. She answered tactfully. ‘The humours relate only to disease, sir, not to wounds caused in battle.’

‘But carbuncles and boils represent disease, do they not? I’m told you were as quick in your lancing as you appear to be in your stitching, which tells me you gave no thought to choler being the cause of the eruptions.’

‘And what would you advise for an imbalance of yellow bile, which is the cause of choler, sir?’

‘To reduce the heat and dryness of the body through regular immersions in cool water.’

Jayne beckoned the soldier forward and asked him to rest his hand on the table. ‘Will you tell this doctor what advice I gave you once I’d lanced your boil, sir?’

‘To bathe daily in the sea for the purpose of cleanliness, ma’am.’ He cast a thoughtful eye towards the physician. ‘And for the cooling of yellow bile, of course.’

Jayne hid a smile as she stooped to examine the man’s palm, which had a gash from side to side where he’d warded off a sword before plunging his own into the enemy’s belly. By keeping his hand half closed, the edges of the wound had begun to knit together beneath a scab, and she was reluctant to break it open again. She asked him if he thought the cut was a deep one and he told her he doubted it, for the scurvy Royalist clearly didn’t believe in sharpening his blade.

‘Then I’d rather leave this as it is, my friend, though you must keep your hand closed until the scab falls away.’ She took some strips of dressing from a basket beneath the table and crumpled them into a ball. ‘Grasp this,’ she instructed him, pressing the ball into his curled palm and then using another strip to bind a figure of eight about his wrist and fingers. ‘You may use your right hand as much as you like, but you’re not to open your left until I give you permission to do so. Should you feel feverish, you must come here immediately, otherwise I shall expect to see you again in four days. Complete healing will take rather longer, but I need to be sure the scab is healthy. Do you understand?’

He nodded. ‘Fever will mean the wound is infected, but a healthy, unbroken scab will mean it’s healing of its own accord. Do you not have enough catgut to stitch it, ma’am?’

‘We could certainly do with more,’ Jayne said wryly, ‘but even stitched you would still have to keep your hand closed for two weeks. To flex it would be to tear the skin around the sutures, and that would do even more damage.’

He nodded again. ‘My brother’s the quartermaster for the town, ma’am, and has responsibility for ordering the supplies that are brought in by ship. With your permission, I’ll ask him to add catgut to the list. It’ll likely be a week before it arrives, but it will free you and Master Hulme to use what you have in the meantime.’

Jayne smiled her thanks, adding that more barrels of salt would also be useful, since sea water wasn’t as clean as brine, and then, as he departed, she turned her attention to the next man in the queue. ‘If you wish to stay, sirs,’ she told the physicians, ‘you will help us greatly by examining the wounded and bringing the most severely injured to the front. If we have some order in the queue, our nurses can clean and dress the minor cuts while we manage those that need stitching.’

She hadn’t expected them to accept the invitation, but perhaps they felt the need to restore their reputations in the eyes of the town. Whatever the reason, they removed their coats and worked as assiduously as everyone else for the next three hours, earning the gratitude and respect of those they helped. By the time the end of the queue was reached, every bed in the hospital was in use, being given to those whose injuries were so severe they were unable to stand or walk. Susan Hulme estimated that, in the five hours since the fighting had started, three physicians, a surgeon and a dozen nurses had treated in excess of one hundred and fifty men, and not one of the patients had died.

Jayne had barely rolled out her mattress in the kitchen and lain her weary body upon it when one of the night nurses ran in and shook her vigorously. ‘Colonel Blake is at the door and requests that you accompany him, ma’am. I’ve said you’re too tired but he won’t take no for an answer.’

Jayne sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘Has he said what he wants?’ ‘No, ma’am, only that you must take medicines and dressings.’ Jayne stifled a groan. ‘You’d better bring him to me, Bridey. I’m quite respectable, having nothing to wear but this gown.’ She reached for the tankard of fresh water she’d placed beside her mattress, first taking a long drink and then wetting a cloth and holding it against her face. She heard boots tramping across the front room. ‘Do you have more wounded for me, Colonel?’ she asked, leaning forward to press the cool fabric against her eyes.

‘I’m afraid so, Mistress Swift.’

‘Then we must send for Master Hulme and the doctors Fisher and Whiteway. I’m too drained to manage on my own.’ She gave her face a last wipe, then folded the cloth in her hands to study him. He was a man of middle age and pleasant features, but she was always surprised by his smallness of stature. He was shorter than she was, and yet the strength of his character made him a compelling leader. ‘You look weary too, Colonel.’

‘I am, ma’am.’ He paused. ‘John Metcalfe assures me you have no allegiance to either side in this war and seek only to bring succour to those who need it. Is that true?’

She nodded.

‘The same cannot be said of the physicians and surgeon, all three of whom have sworn allegiance to Parliament.’

‘Why does that matter when we’re in a Parliamentary town?’

‘The man I need you to treat is a young Royalist captain, Mistress Swift. His name is Francis Blewett and he’s badly wounded. He led his troop into the town with great bravery in order to secure the port for Prince Maurice.’

‘We heard they’d been captured.’

‘Only twenty, ma’am. The rest are dead. Captain Blewett is being cared for by Ann Metcalfe in her husband’s house. She begs your assistance for she is still weakened from the ague and cannot cope with his injuries.’

Jayne pushed herself to her feet and took a moment to steady herself. ‘Am I right to think you know Francis Blewett, sir? Your concern for him seems stronger than mere admiration for a young man’s courage.’

‘I’m his godfather, ma’am. His mother is my cousin, and I stood sponsor for him on the day he was baptised. Both his life and his soul are my responsibility.’

Jayne knew as soon as she saw the pallor of Francis’s face and felt the rapid pulse in his wrist that there was nothing she could do to save him. His eyes were wide open and showed fear and pain in equal measure. Ann Metcalfe had done her best to staunch the blood that seeped from the wound beneath his ribs, but Jayne believed that most of the bleeding was happening inside. She had seen the same symptoms—grey sweaty skin, racing heartbeat and crusted blood on the lips—in a patient of Richard’s who had been stabbed in the chest during an angry fight in the lead-up to war, and the only comfort Richard had been able to offer was relief from pain.

Richard’s patient had died in under an hour but Francis had lingered for upwards of four, and Jayne could only assume that whichever internal organ had been pierced was bleeding more slowly than in Richard’s patient. Ann had propped pillows beneath his back, which she said had allowed him to breathe more easily, but the obvious swelling of his abdomen suggested to Jayne that this was where the blood was collecting. The whimper of pain that issued through his nose when she touched a light finger to the skin beneath his ribs seemed to prove it, though she didn’t think altering his position would make him any more comfortable. In the end, she knew she could do only what Richard had done and ease the poor man’s passing, since the greatest sadness for any physician was to acknowledge how limited his ability really was.

She asked Ann to bring her a small glass of water, heavily sweetened with sugar, and then leant forward to smile into Francis’s eyes. ‘I have some medicine which will free you of pain and allow you to sleep, Francis. It needs to be swallowed, so will you show me that you can open your mouth?’

He tried to do so but his lips were sealed with encrusted blood.

Jayne took a salve from her satchel and smoothed it gently around his mouth to loosen the crusts before dipping a small silver spatula into a bowl of water at his side and inserting it carefully between his lips. Next, she saturated the corner of a cloth and squeezed droplets down the spatula to moisten his tongue. ‘Is that better?’

He nodded. ‘Who are you?’ he managed.

‘I’m Jayne Swift,’ she said, discarding the cloth and filling a silver teaspoon with water. ‘Your godfather asked me to help you, Francis.’ She removed the spatula and dribbled water from the spoon into his mouth.

‘Is he here?’

‘He is, and I will call him to speak with you as soon as the medicine has taken away your pain.’ She nodded to Ann to put the glass of sweetened water on the table. ‘You will find it a little bitter, Francis, but its curative powers are truly marvellous. Its name is laudanum.’

She was speaking for the sake of speaking, but in truth the pain-killing properties of laudanum were astonishing. She had a single small bottle of the remedy and had seen the relief it had brought Richard’s patient some two years previously. From pain, the dying man had moved to a state of euphoria, and when sleep came, it had been peaceful. She uncorked the bottle and poured a teaspoonful of the brown tincture into a larger spoon, adding another of sweetened water, before holding the spoon to Francis’s lips and urging him to take it all. He did so, wincing at the bitter taste, but within minutes his eyes lost their fear and his taut body began to relax.

Jayne rose from her knees and moved to the door of the chamber where Colonel Blake was waiting. ‘Stay at his side until he sleeps, and say all you wish to say,’ she whispered. ‘He will be greatly comforted by your presence.’

She could see from Blake’s expression that he knew the poor boy was dying, for he’d been around battlefields too long to believe that one so pale could survive. Nevertheless, he gave no hint of it as he took Jayne’s place at Francis’s side and praised his godson for his courage and honour. The scene, lit by candlelight, was painfully intimate, and Jayne’s eyes welled with tears to see the affection the two men had for each other. There was no greater tragedy in this hideous war than that differences of allegiance had set loving friends against each other.

She and Ann moved away from the door so as not to intrude on the men’s final moments together. Ann’s fever and shivers had calmed thanks to the infusions of cinnamon and chamomile Jayne had brought when she first came, but she was clearly exhausted by the day’s events and Jayne ordered her to bed. For herself, she sat on a stool in a corner of the anteroom, listening to the murmur of voices from the neighbouring chamber and judging the passage of time by a marked hour-candle on a sideboard. Despite her sadness for Francis, she remained detached enough to record how effective laudanum was in achieving a peaceful death.

Richard Theale had learnt of the remedy through reading the works of Paracelsus, a Swiss physician from the previous century, and his attempts to replicate Paracelsus’s recipe had put him in the way of a young student called Thomas Sydenham. Thomas lived at Wynford Eagle, some seven miles to the north-east of Bridport, and the pair had met by chance at the home of the only merchant in Bridport able to acquire a necessary ingredient of laudanum—opium poppy seed from Asia. A few minutes’ conversation had revealed a shared interest in Paracelsus.

Richard had taken Jayne to meet Thomas some three months before the war started and she admired his practical approach to science and medicine. He accepted what his experiments told him, rejecting anything that couldn’t be proven through results. Since Richard did the same, she was unsurprised that a strong friendship had developed between her elderly tutor and this ardent nineteen-year-old Parliamentarian. By working through different permutations of Paracelsus’s ingredients, Thomas had isolated opium as the reliever of pain and, on Richard’s advice, had ground the seeds to a fine powder and dissolved them in alcohol, thereby producing an infusion, albeit a bitter one, that could be fed by spoon.

The hour-candle showed that nigh on thirty minutes passed before Colonel Blake came to tell Jayne that Francis had died. ‘We had a fine talk,’ he said gruffly. ‘Death held no terror for him. He was clear of mind and free of anxiety until the end.’

‘May I check?’ asked Jayne, rising from her stool. ‘I expected him to sleep for a short while before he passed.’

But it seemed not. Francis had lived and confided his thoughts to his godfather until the moment his heart stopped beating, and the look of serenity on his face was beautiful to see. His eyes were closed and a small smile curved his mouth, and Jayne thought how greatly this contrasted with the fear she’d seen earlier.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘No need to be, ma’am. You gave him a sweeter death than most physicians could have done.’ Colonel Blake nodded to the bottle of laudanum. ‘What manner of medicine is that?’

‘A reliever of pain,’ she said, leaning down to draw a coverlet over Francis’s body and face. ‘I wish I had a hundred more bottles. There were many in the hospital today who would have benefited from it.’

‘Place the order and the ships will bring it.’

‘I wish I could,’ she answered with a sigh, ‘but I’m only one of three people who know how to make it and, in war, the necessary ingredient is unobtainable. Parliament would rather import weapons from Europe than poppy seeds from Asia.’ She replaced the bottle and her silver spoons in her satchel. ‘You said twenty of Francis’s companions were taken prisoner, Colonel. Are any of them wounded?’

‘They’re not your business, Mistress Swift.’

She shook her head apologetically. ‘They are because I choose to make them so, sir. They were your godson’s men and, had he lived, I believe he would have asked me to help them. I regret his passing most deeply and would help his friends if I can.’

Blake smiled slightly. ‘You’re an annoying woman, ma’am. We’ll neither of us be liked for mending Royalists.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘They’re in the town gaol. I’ll escort you there and then summon Master and Mistress Hulme to assist you.’