FOURTEEN

JAYNE WAS ON HER KNEES, lacing Jack Young’s boot onto Colonel Blake’s foot, when steps sounded on the wooden stairs behind her.

‘Warwick sends his respects, Robert,’ said William’s familiar voice. ‘He hopes to share a brandy with you when this fight is over.’

Blake looked up with a surprised laugh. ‘Is that you, William? By God, I’m glad to see you, sir. I was beginning to fear no one would make it ashore.’

William walked forward to clasp Blake’s hand in both of his. ‘The prince certainly isn’t making it easy for us,’ he agreed. ‘I came in by skiff two hours before dawn and met with Jeremiah Fullerton to assess what’s left of the supply barges. Was it his idea or yours to use women to pull those that weren’t sunk into the lee of the eastern wall of the Cobb?’

‘His. He’s a fine harbourmaster and saw the sense of moving them out of range under cover of darkness, though he told me it was his wife who mustered the women. They’d have salvaged more if the bombardment hadn’t begun again at dawn. Did you see that we’ve taken men off the ramparts to rebuild the five least-damaged boats?’

William nodded. ‘They’re not far off completion. All being well, we should be able to start unloading men and munitions this night.’ Even as he spoke, he was reaching down to assist Jayne to her feet. ‘Excuse me while I greet Mistress Swift, Robert. She and I have a long acquaintanceship.’ He raised her fingers to his lips, his eyes creasing in an amiable smile. ‘I trust I find you well, Jayne. Lord Warwick knows of your presence here and has asked me to thank you for your work on Lyme’s behalf.’

He retained hold of her hand longer than he needed to, and Jayne felt an unwanted blush colour her cheeks. She had hoped they would meet in a more private place, for she had no idea how to address him in front of Colonel Blake. So many falsehoods peppered their history—particularly those involving Prince Maurice—that she feared misspeaking and arousing the colonel’s curiosity. William’s use of her Christian name suggested she could respond in kind, though she was hard pressed to understand why he was on such familiar terms with both the Admiral of the Fleet and the commander of the Lyme garrison.

She withdrew her fingers and took a moment to smooth her apron, which was stained with Maggie’s dried blood. ‘Thank you, William,’ she said then. ‘I’m both well and extremely flattered by Lord Warwick’s interest, though I question why he’s so knowledgeable about my movements.’

‘He received conflicting reports about you—one from the surveyor of the western ports and the other from Colonel Blake. He asked my advice on the matter, and I was pleased to lend my weight to Robert’s assessment.’

‘Morecott’s a damn fool,’ said Blake contemptuously. ‘He seems to think good physicians come two a penny in a town under siege.’ He ducked his head to Jayne. ‘You have my gratitude, ma’am. Had I summoned Fisher or Whiteway in your stead, they would still be discussing whether it was black or yellow bile that had caused a musket ball to lodge in my foot. Allow John to escort you back to the hospital. I’d hate to be held to blame for keeping you from your work.’

The dismissal was clear and Jayne accepted it without demur, though it grieved her that her conversation with William had been so brief. She had hoped he might have news of her family or be willing to carry news of her to them, but it seemed this meeting must end, as all their meetings did, with more unsaid than said.

Over the next two nights, and without lanterns to betray their positions, the supply barges ferried in thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, munitions, food and, most welcome of all, thirty pairs of boots and one hundred pairs of shoes which had been donated by the sailors on the ships for the men on the ramparts. On the third night, following another day’s relentless Royalist bombardment of the town and several frontal attacks along the Town Line which came close to succeeding, Lord Warwick reinforced the garrison with three hundred sailors from the fleet.

Jayne watched with Alexander and Susan as they came ashore, and despite the darkness she was certain she saw William marshalling the throng before marching them four abreast to the Town Line. The Hulmes were encouraged by the sight of so many coming to the garrison’s aid, but Jayne was secretly dismayed at the thought of yet more patients to treat. The stream of those injured in the intense close-quarter battles on the ramparts was never-ending, while the shortage of everything necessary to treat them was nigh on disastrous. There was no catgut for stitching, precious little salt for the making of brine and such a dearth of old clothes to tear into dressings that Jayne had instructed her nurses to retrieve old dressings from patients who had healed. The washing and boiling of them was arduous, for she insisted that no blood traces should remain, but the matrons in charge of doing it never complained.

Even so, Jayne doubted Lyme or the hospital could sustain this level of effort for more than a couple of days. She was certain she could not. Her body and brain were so tired from lack of food and sleep that at times she could barely stand.

The following day, the artillery fell eerily silent and the anticipated assault against the Town Line began. Yet the strangest aspect of the morning was the scarcity of patients. Alexander drew a morose interpretation from this, suggesting the battle was so severe that men were fighting to the death and dropping where they died.

‘Then we’re in the wrong place,’ said Jayne. ‘We should position ourselves close to the Line.’ She turned to Susan. ‘Do you agree?’ Susan nodded. ‘I do. We’ll be a great deal more useful there than here.’ She instructed the nurses to bag up every clean dressing they could find and bring as many flagons of water as they could carry. ‘I suggest Alexander and I take half the nurses to Davy’s Fort and you take the rest to Gaitch’s, ma’am. Women will bring the wounded to us once word spreads of where we are.’

By choosing the two middle forts, each group was able to cover one half of the Town Line. Jayne chose to work outside where the air was cleaner and was greatly helped by the mothers, wives and sisters who were gathered outside the fort, ready and willing to assist in any way they could. She dispatched them first to find stools and tables, and then sent them along the Line to the west to support or carry men in need of treatment to the makeshift surgery. She discovered very quickly that the only workable treatment in most cases was the application of a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood down a man’s arm and then a thick, tight dressing to absorb any new flows. There was no holding a sword or pike when the hands were slippery with gore, yet few thought their injuries so bad that they weren’t prepared to return to their posts afterwards. The women worked unceasingly, collecting rope and strong wooden pegs for the fashioning of the tourniquets, supplying Jayne and her nurses with constant fresh water, and fashioning stretchers to carry the most severely wounded to Fisher and Whiteway.

Some two hours after noon, Jayne was summoned into the fort to tend the officer in command. He was blind in one eye from blood that was pouring from a diagonal slash across his forehead but, like his men, was refusing to leave his post. Jayne removed her apron and laid it over the filth on the floor, instructing him to lie down with his head upon it. She then turned his face to the side so that the blood dripped onto the fabric before using a full flagon of water to sluice the scabs and debris from his eye. Without catgut to close the wound, she could only place a thick pad across it to absorb the blood and use a crisscross pattern of dressings about his head to hold it in place. As she helped him to his feet, she told him his sight would be bleary for upwards of an hour and warned him he wouldn’t be able to judge distance until it cleared.

He moved to look out along the earth bank. ‘I’ve no trouble seeing the lines of Royalists waiting to storm the Line,’ he said grimly.

‘But you’ll not see the sword tip that’s within inches of your heart,’ said Jayne, retying her saturated apron. ‘Be wise and avoid hand-to-hand fighting until your vision is restored.’

‘I doubt that’s possible,’ he murmured, beckoning her forward. ‘We can’t withstand another hour of this.’

Jayne wished afterwards that she’d made an excuse to leave, because she could never forget the brutality of what she witnessed or the dread she felt to see Royalists moving in waves towards the bank. Their numbers were vastly superior to the garrison’s, and she understood suddenly how sheltered she’d been in the hospital, treating wounds when they arrived but never seeing how they were made.

In places, the bank was falling away under pressure from boots, hands and bodies, and to prevent the Royalists clambering through the gaps, Parliamentarians were dropping into the trench and fighting them there. As far as Jayne’s eyes could see, soldiers were chopping and stabbing each other, quite careless of the tumbled corpses that lay sprawled at their feet. Every man was splattered with blood—whether his own or someone else’s—and Jayne had no way of telling a Parliamentarian from a Royalist. If there had ever been emblems on their dress to distinguish one side from the other, months of rough living had torn them away.

Behind every Royalist was another to take his place, while the men of the garrison had only women to support them, and for the first time Jayne picked a side. There was no justice on earth or in heaven if the bravery of Lyme’s people came to nought. She thought of how hard they had toiled to defend their homes, and her eyes filled with tears to think they might lose them now.

Perhaps the officer thought her concern was for herself, because he made a gesture of apology. ‘Forgive me, ma’am. I was wrong to show you this.’

‘No, sir, you were right,’ she answered, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her gown. ‘It’s past time I saw the true awfulness of war. The courage our people show in the hospital is nothing to the courage I see here.’

As if to prove her wrong, shouts arose some fifty yards from the fort as men on the Lyme side of the earth bank began to retreat and scatter. What began as a handful quickly became a stampede and, cursing profanely, the officer ordered one of his subalterns to alert Colonel Blake to a breach in the line.

‘It’s those lily-livered mariners,’ he growled, drawing his sword and instructing the other subaltern to accompany him. ‘I knew they’d run.’ He nodded to Jayne before heading down the steps. ‘Get yourself back to the hospital while you still can, Mistress Swift. There’s no safety for you here.’

But Jayne remained where she was. She told herself she wanted to see what happened to the officer, but in truth her attention was entirely fixed on the mariners. She was searching for a figure she recognised, but it was impossible to make out individuals amongst the melee. The fleeing sailors appeared to be fighting their comrades in their eagerness to escape, and the confusion grew worse as Royalists streamed towards the breach and began to clamber over the bank. On either side of the rapidly crumbling structure, the weary soldiers of the garrison did their best to stem the flow, but their efforts were fruitless. The fear of the men at the centre of the breach was so infectious that those at the margins began to pull away too, creating an ever-widening gap for the Royalists to exploit.

Jayne learnt later that none of the mariners had been involved in such close-quarter fighting before, being more accustomed to firing cannons at a distance than looking into a man’s eyes as he killed him, but, watching them scatter, she cursed their cowardice as roundly as the officer had done. Were they so lacking in spirit that they couldn’t stand their ground for an hour, when the poorly fed, barefoot men of the garrison had stood theirs for nigh on two months? She knew she should warn her nurses and the women outside of the impending danger, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Yet it wasn’t fear she felt so much as a deep despair at Lyme’s imminent defeat, for she had little doubt that Prince Maurice would loot the town of everything of value before setting it ablaze. And what would become of her people then?

Her eyes welled with tears again at the utter hopelessness of it all when a single sailor advanced towards the place where the rout had begun. In his left hand he carried the Earl of Warwick’s colours, in his right a sword, which he levelled at the Royalists forcing their way through the bank. His deep-throated roars of encouragement to his fellow mariners resounded loudly along the line, and within seconds flight transformed into unity. A tall figure, easily recognisable as William, thrust through the crush on the eastern side of the breach, bringing twenty uniformed sailors with him, while a dozen Lyme defenders, led by the half-blind officer, surged forward from the west.

Garrison gossip said afterwards that the Royalists never retreated faster than when the reinforcements joined shoulder to shoulder with the mariner, but Jayne couldn’t attest to the truth of this because she left before the confrontation began. She was too afraid to see what happened next, for she doubted her heart could withstand the sight of William being killed.

Jayne took her nurses back to the hospital as soon as it became clear that the tide of the battle had turned in Lyme’s favour. She left word at the fort that all men with still-bleeding wounds should present themselves urgently for treatment, but she hadn’t anticipated that her first patient would be Edward Moizer, the courageous mariner who had raised Lord Warwick’s colours and rallied his comrades. He was cradling his left hand inside his jacket front, and the two friends who accompanied him refused to let anyone but Mistress Swift examine him.

Edward was a sturdily built man of middle years with a weathered face and bright blue eyes, and he remained remarkably cheerful despite having lost two of his fingers. It seemed Royalist musketeers had begun firing from Uplyme Hill when Prince Maurice saw that his troops were being beaten back from the breach, and a chance shot had hit Edward’s hand where it clasped the colours.

‘Was the prince not worried about killing his own people?’ Jayne asked as she cleaned the stumps to see how much damage had been done.

Edward grinned. ‘Put it this way, ma’am: I’d not want to be fighting for him. He’s more careless of his own troops’ lives than he is of ours.’

One of his companions stirred. ‘Sir William says it’s because his need to win makes him reckless.’

Sir William? Jayne asked Edward to put his hand in a bowl of brine while she laid dressings on the table. ‘You’re fortunate it was your last two fingers that were taken and that both sheared at the bottom joint,’ she told him. ‘Your grip won’t be as strong but you should still be able to raise Lord Warwick’s colours when the need arises.’ She smiled. ‘Was it Sir William who sent you to me?’

‘It was, ma’am. He said you’re the best physician in Dorset.’

‘I believe I saw him come to your aid at the breach. Is he well?’

‘He’d be here himself if he wasn’t, ma’am. He speaks most highly of your skills.’

Jayne pressed on his hand to keep it submerged. ‘We’ve met once or twice in the past, but with all the excitement of the day I’ve quite forgotten his surname.’

‘Harrier, ma’am.’

‘And am I right that his family home is in Winterborne Stickland, to the north of Dorset?’

Edward Moizer shook his head to express ignorance. ‘I heard tell his father encumbered the family estates with debt, which is why Sir William went to fight in the European wars, but I can’t say if there’s any truth to the story. He’s a fine commander is all I know.’

‘Indeed.’ Jayne dried his hand and then applied a salve of calendula and St John’s wort flowers to the stumps before dressing each individually and enclosing them in a secure diagonal bandage across his palm and around his wrist. ‘To avoid infection, you must keep this in place for a week,’ she told him, tying off the ends. ‘Try to use your hand as little as possible and do not immerse it in water until the stumps are healed. Are your orders to return to your ship or to remain in Lyme? If the latter, you may come here in three days so that I can check your progress.’

Edward’s companion spoke. ‘Sir William says we’ll stay till the siege is over if the Royalists keep attacking the Town Line.’

‘Is that what will happen?’

The man shrugged. ‘It depends on whether the King sends a relief force, ma’am. Prince Maurice lost vastly more men than we did this day. We counted upwards of a hundred corpses in the ditch beneath our short stretch.’

‘Will they be removed?’

He nodded. ‘Colonel Blake has offered an hour’s truce this evening for that purpose. The wind is blowing off the sea, so Prince Maurice is sure to accept. It’ll not help his troops’ confidence if they start to smell the odour of death.’

The following days saw more taunting than attacking. The Parliamentarians favoured sexual expressions such as ‘cowardly limp-cocks’ for the Royalist foot soldiers, ‘foppish coxcombs’ for the cavaliers and ‘German arse-worm’ for Prince Maurice. In return, the Royalists’ slurs related to the low class and noxious religion of their adversaries. When they weren’t ‘dung shovellers’ or ‘fish-gut pickers’, the defenders of Lyme were ‘miserable Puritans’ or ‘godless heathens’.

As a form of war, it was preferable to constant bombardment and frontal attack, but Jayne wearied of it after a while. ‘Why do they bother?’ she asked Alexander.

‘A taunt is like a battle cry, ma’am. Each side is looking to intimidate the other.’

‘But it’s all so pointless.’

‘Almost as pointless as this siege, wouldn’t you say, ma’am?’

She smiled. ‘Have I converted you to neutrality, Alexander?’

‘You’re not far off, Mistress Swift. There’s precious little merit in two months of fighting which results in a multitude of deaths but gains not a yard of ground for either side.’

On the third day of June, the Royalists made a fresh attempt to burn the town with fire darts and arrows. The weather had been unusually hot for more than a week and the dry thatch caught alight easily. As before, it was the women who fought the blazes, and though they succeeded in preventing the whole town going up in flames, upwards of thirty more houses were destroyed. The Earl of Warwick sent messages of hope to bolster the defenders’ spirits, saying that a Parliamentary relief force was on its way, but such promises had been made from the outset of the siege without ever being realised.

There was more hope to be had from the confessions of two Royalist foot soldiers who deserted the prince’s ranks on the night of 10 June. They approached the West Gate under a flag of surrender, expressing a desire to change sides, and upon being taken to Colonel Blake they revealed all they knew about Prince Maurice’s army. It was in a state of disarray, with more dead from besieging Lyme than at Bristol, and rumour was rife that the prince’s requests for reinforcements had been denied.

Jayne learnt all this from John Metcalfe when she paid one of her regular visits to his wife the following afternoon. Being of a similar age and background, the women had become close friends these last two months, and the Metcalfes’ house was the only place where Jayne could kick off her boots, unhook her bodice and recline for an hour in contented peace. With John present, this wasn’t possible, but Jayne found his words to be as good as a rest.

If the two deserters were to be believed, the Royalists were close to abandoning the siege. Not only had they sustained a huge number of casualties, but word had reached them that the Earl of Essex was leading a large Parliamentary force into Dorset from the north. If true, Prince Maurice would find himself trapped between Warwick’s fleet and the garrison below, and a marauding army above.

Colonel Blake had been worried that the prince had sent the deserters to spread misinformation on the promise of payment, but Sir William Harrier had dispelled these fears by interrogating the two soldiers about their reasons for enlisting. They told him they’d had none, for they’d been quite ignorant about why war was necessary until they’d been press-ganged from their homes in Sidford in Devon as the Western Army marched towards Lyme. Neither was a willing recruit. They admitted to having been tempted by the assurance of plunder, but Lyme’s resistance had shown them that their regular wages as farm labourers were more desirable than empty promises. Their ambition (said between sobs) was to make their way home to Sidford once the Royalists left, and never again allow themselves to be conscripted into the army of either side.

‘None of us doubted they spoke the truth,’ said John. ‘Sir William’s a clever man and he’d have tripped them up if they’d been spies. But you know this, of course, Mistress Swift. I understand you and he are well acquainted.’

‘Well enough to know that he’s clever,’ Jayne agreed, ‘but not so well that I can claim any great knowledge of him. We met two years ago at Lady Stickland’s house in Dorchester, and our paths have crossed once or twice since, but I’ve never conversed with him long enough to discover anything about his family or where he comes from.’

‘The family had estates outside Blandford until his father forfeited them through non-payment of mortgages. It was a messy business. He hanged himself shortly afterwards, leaving his son penniless. I believe Sir William was twelve at the time.’

‘Does he have brothers or sisters?’

John shook his head. ‘His mother died a day after birthing him and his father never remarried.’

Jayne wondered how much of this to believe. It was a convenient story to account for why William had a title but no property to support it. ‘Poor man,’ she murmured. ‘He seems to have had his share of tragedy.’

‘His situation would have been worse if Lady Stickland hadn’t taken up his cause.’

‘How so?’

‘His father’s estate neighboured her husband’s, and when she learnt that Lady Harrier had died and Sir Ralph was absent from the house, she made herself responsible for the baby. I’m told it was three months before Sir Ralph came looking for him, and Lady Stickland only agreed to release him on condition that Sir Ralph appointed her as an equal guardian. Without her interest, Sir William would have been sadly neglected.’

Jayne eyed him thoughtfully. ‘How do you know so much about him, John? Was it Sir William who told you?’

He shook his head. ‘My father took the trouble to acquaint himself with the family’s history. Sir Ralph swindled him out of two hundred pounds worth of goods, and he was never able to collect payment or even serve him with a writ. Sir Ralph lived most of the time in London, first squandering his family fortune and then using charm and trickery to relieve honest Dorset merchants of their earnings. He favoured those in the west of the county because he knew the local magistrates wouldn’t pursue him once he was outside their jurisdictions.’

‘What did he do with the goods?’

‘Sold them to merchants in London and kept the money for himself.’ John smiled wryly. ‘It’s twenty years since he killed himself but Father hasn’t forgotten him. When he heard that Sir William was in Lyme, he told me the story and warned me not to trust him. He puts great store by the adage that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’

‘And you think it applies to Sir William?’

John shook his head. ‘Not from what I’ve seen of him, ma’am. He learnt his soldiering in the European wars and, other than Colonel Blake, there’s not a man I’d rather have at my side. Were we on closer terms, I’d advise him to change his name. It can’t be easy living with the sins of his father.’

Jayne was tempted to say that William took different identities whenever the situation demanded it, and, moreover, was as adept at deception as his father had been, but she had no wish to plant doubts in John’s mind. Instead, she turned the conversation back to the Royalists and when they might leave, and took heart from John’s optimism that they would be gone before the week was out.

They left during the night of 14 June, although no one believed it until the sun rose the following morning and all could see that Uplyme Hill was bare. The siege had been lifted without fanfare, and Prince Maurice’s army had vanished. Nevertheless, there was little celebration in the town at this sudden change of fortune. Stories abounded that it was a ploy: Prince Maurice had simply moved his troops and artillery to the other side of the hill in order to persuade Lord Warwick and his fleet to leave, and Lyme would be subjected to an even fiercer attack once the mariners had been withdrawn from the garrison.

A young soldier presented himself at the hospital at around eleven o’clock, bearing a note from Colonel Blake to Mistress Swift. It was brief and to the point: I’m reminded that you’re not of Lyme, Mistress Swift. Please inform me when you wish to leave.

The words were so peremptory that Jayne took them more as an order than an invitation. She smiled to hide her hurt and showed the note to Alexander, begging him to take her answer to the fort. ‘Please tell the colonel that I’m happy to leave now, Alexander. I have a great longing to see my family again, and since my mare is lodged in John Metcalfe’s stable, I can be with them by evening if I depart before noon.’

Alexander had come to know Jayne very well in the last eight weeks. ‘Don’t read more into this than is there, Mistress Swift,’ he said gently. ‘I’m guessing John Metcalfe reminded the colonel that you have no obligation to remain, and he’s releasing you in the only way he knows how. Would you rather I ask that he sends word to your father to come for you?’

Jayne gave a small laugh. ‘By no means. I’m hoping to persuade Papa I was never in danger, but he’ll not believe me if he sees how much damage has been done to the town. It’s better I reach home before he hears that the siege has been lifted. Do you think John Metcalfe will agree to escort me?’

Alexander reached for his jacket. ‘I’m sure of it, ma’am.’

Jayne spent the time he was away sorting through the hospital’s implements, liniments and medicines with Susan. Her personal remedies had been exhausted within the first two weeks of her arrival and, though fresh supplies had come in regularly by sea, nothing was in such surplus that she felt justified in taking what was there to replenish her own stocks. After a few moments of consideration, she also donated three of her finer blades and a small pair of pincers to the hospital—being the best for extracting bullets and slivers of wood from flesh—telling Susan she would order replacements for herself upon her return to Swyre.

‘But only at a price, ma’am,’ said Susan with a sigh. ‘Your stay amongst us has cost you dear, I think. With the town so bankrupt, you’ll not even receive the reward Colonel Blake promised you for treating the garrison’s carbuncles.’

Jayne smiled. ‘It’s of no matter. I abandoned all thoughts of payment when I heard that Prince Maurice was at the gates. It’s reward enough that we’re alive and the hospital still stands. You and Alexander will make fine custodians of it, Susan.’

Susan lifted the hem of her apron to her eyes. ‘I’m a rough sort of person, ma’am, and not given to fine speeches, but I do thank you most heartily for placing such trust in my husband. He’s stood by me these last ten years despite my barrenness, and it gladdens my heart that your faith in his ability has given him new-found confidence.’

Jayne drew her into a close embrace. She had known from the beginning that the Hulmes were childless for, unlike the nurses, they never used the excuse of little ones to absent themselves from duty. ‘It’s having you at his side that gives him confidence,’ she said. ‘Myself also. We only managed as well as we did because you brought calm and order to the running of the hospital. I dread to think of the chaos we would have faced had anyone less accomplished been in charge.’

Susan returned the hug for the briefest moment and then stepped away. ‘You’ll have me weeping,’ she said fiercely before continuing her sorting of the medicines.

Alexander came a few minutes later with instructions for Jayne to present herself at the West Gate within the half-hour. This meant there was no time for goodbyes if she was to retrieve her mare from John Metcalfe’s stable, and her departure from the place she’d called home for eight weeks was quiet and unobtrusive. It was how she wanted it to be, for she was no better at farewells than Susan. Or Alexander either, it seemed. He accompanied her to the Metcalfes’ house, where John was waiting with her mare and his horse, already saddled, and then took his leave with a simple bow and a heartfelt wish that God would go with her.

As he walked away, Jayne asked John to lead both horses to the gate while she made her way separately on foot. ‘If I’m seen with my mare, people will be curious,’ she said, ‘and I truly can’t bear to have any more partings.’

Metcalfe stood for a moment in indecision. ‘There’s many will want to thank you for what you’ve done for them, Mistress Swift. All Lyme understands the debt of gratitude we owe you.’

‘But I do so hate fuss,’ she said, heading purposefully towards a side street.