Despite their injuries, many of them grave, the men were pathetically grateful to have survived not only the siege but also the ending of it. Parma – generous for once – had allowed them to depart in safety, instead of taking them prisoner. Or worse. We all knew of occasions in the past when those surrendering to Spanish troops under a promise of fair treatment were immediately and indiscriminately slaughtered. These men were lucky to reach England alive, despite wounds or severed limbs, festering sores, head injuries or blindness. Perhaps Parma thought they would not survive to fight him again.

For once, Phelippes admitted that my work at the hospital was more important than my work at Seething Lane.

When the men were first brought in, I was in a small ward where we put women who have had difficult births and have been sent to us by the midwife. They were kept here away from the other patients, partly because my father believed that soon after giving birth a woman is vulnerable to infection, and partly because the crying of the babies would disturb the other patients. Dr Stephens poured scorn on the former idea, but supported the latter, having little fondness for squalling infants.

‘You will note,’ my father frequently pointed out to him, in one of their many arguments about my father’s advanced ideas, ‘that when the mothers are kept away from other illnesses, they are much more likely to survive childbirth.’

Dr Stephens would snort in disbelief. ‘If God has ordained that a woman shall die, bringing forth in the pain which is rooted in Eve’s sin, nothing we can do will save her.’

My father would smile and say, ‘You do not really believe that.’

That day, however, they were both occupied in seeing to the new arrivals, so I tended to the women alone. I did not even have the assistance of the young apothecary, Peter Lambert, who was busy with the others preparing salves and poultices in vast quantities. When I had made the last of the women comfortable, I walked back through to the two main wards, which were filling up fast.

It was a scene from a nightmare. I had never seen so many injured men in my life. Instead of two parallel rows of beds, well spaced, arranged along the two long walls of the ward, there were now four rows, the two outer ones infilled with straw pallets on the floor and two more rows of pallets down the centre of the room. Men were still being carried in and deposited on these. I realised that we were fortunate it was summer, for there would not have been enough blankets in the entire hospital to cover them. As it was, there were no pillows or cushions for their heads. They simply lay where they were put down, on the lumpy straw palliasses which the hospital servants had stayed up all night to make.

I walked over to my father, who was talking to the mistress of the nurses. She was a formidable woman of ample girth and iron will, but she was wringing her hands now, with tears in her eyes.

‘Dr Alvarez, we cannot care for so many,’ she said. ‘I have not nurses enough even to wash their faces. If you expect us to change dressings or clean wounds, it cannot be done.’

‘There is nowhere else for them to go, Mistress Higson,’ he said. ‘St Thomas’s is also full. We will all do as much as we can, and we will ask in the neighbourhood whether any of the goodwives can lend assistance.’

‘I cannot have strangers interfering,’ she objected. ‘They will do more harm than good. Of that you may be sure.’

I left them to it and walked down to the far end of the ward to begin checking the patients. It was a sickening business. I had studied under my father since childhood and had worked as his assistant in the hospital for almost four years now, so I was accustomed to the grim sights a physician encounters every day. Yet I had never seen anything like this. It was the stench of festering wounds that struck me first, so that I found myself gagging. And the whole ward was filled with a low moaning, like a storm wind, scarcely human. Occasionally there was a sharp cry of pain and away at the far end of the room one voice babbled on and on as one man raged with fever.

Peter came in with a tray, which he set down on the table just inside the door. It was loaded with fresh pots of salves and jugs of Coventry water.

We looked at each other in dismay, both overwhelmed by what lay about our feet.

‘We’d best make a start,’ I said. ‘We’ll need more bandages.’

‘The sewing women have been put to cutting up all the cloth we have,’ he said, ‘and they’ve sent out for more. Ah, here we are.’

Margaret Jenkins, one of the sewing women I knew well, came into the ward with a large basket of bandage strips, which she placed next to the tray. As she turned and caught sight of the ward, she gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth.

‘Oh, Dr Alvarez,’ she said, ‘how many are there?’

‘I think we have taken in about four hundred,’ I said. ‘The rest have gone to St Thomas’s.’

She shook her head, as though all words had deserted her, and hurried away back to the sewing room. I knelt down beside the first pallet. The soldier was a grizzled man of middle years with half his breeches torn away, his right leg bound up in a filthy bloody cloth.

He attempted a smile. ‘Not a good sight, doctor.’

‘Pass me the scissors, Peter,’ I said, and held out my hand for them. ‘What caused this?’

‘Spanish bullet. Two weeks ago.’ He clamped his mouth shut as I began to cut away the dirty cloth. It was stuck fast to the leg and I could not remove it without hurting him.

‘Is the bullet still there?’

‘No. Got. It. Out. Myself. Oh, Jesu!’

‘I’m sorry, it can’t be helped.’ I looked down at the wound which was badly inflamed. ‘How did you get it out?’

‘Point of my dagger.’

He tapped the sheath attached to his belt. It was probably dirty, but at least I would not have to remove the bullet. Peter knelt on the floor beside me, holding a bowl of Coventry water. He handed me a cloth. I dipped it into the water and began to wipe away the dirt and crusted matter from the wound. The soldier bit down on his lip.

‘I’m afraid this will hurt, but I need to clean it. Then I’ll salve it and bind it up. There’s no sign of gangrene, so you can be thankful for that.’ I was thinking of Sir Philip Sidney, who died from one of Parma’s bullets, followed by gangrene.

He nodded, but did not risk his voice in speaking. When I was satisfied that the wound was as clean as I could get it, Peter handed me the salve, which I smeared generously over the wound and the surrounding skin, then bound the leg with a clean strip of cloth.

‘Now try and rest a while,’ I said. ‘We have to see to all of the injuries first, but later they will bring you food.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ His voice was stronger now, and he managed a weak smile. ‘That salve is making it feel better already.’

‘Good.’ The salve was made with many cooling and antiseptic herbs, pounded in honey, which is one of the best healers God has given us. With luck, the wound would heal. I patted his shoulder and moved with Peter to the next soldier.

By now I could see my father working his way along the opposite wall, while Dr Stevens was directing four of the nursing sisters to care for some of the less serious cases. When the hospital was part of the Priory of St Bartholomew, back before King Henry’s time, the daily care of the sick was carried out by nuns. Now the women who looked after our patients were secular, many of them widows, but the term ‘sister’ had lingered on. The mistress of the nurses, who did not normally care for the patients herself, had rolled up her sleeves and joined them. My father must have pacified her somehow.

The next soldier in the row along the near wall was a young boy, who could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen. He seemed only half conscious but it was clear that the injury was to his right hand, which was invisible inside a crude bundle of cloth. Once again I cut the bloodstained cloth away, to reveal a horribly crushed and mangled hand.