Читать книгу 47 Sorrows - Janet Kellough - Страница 10

The lake began to spill into the St. Lawrence River as they passed Amherst Island, and before long they could see the buildings of Kingston in the distance. As they drew closer to the shore in preparation for docking at the commercial wharves that were clustered along the city’s harbour, they passed a smaller set of docks that had been built to accommodate the brewery on the western outskirts of the town’s limits. The docks were stacked with cordwood, as had been the case at Port Darlington, but lolling on top of these piles of wood was a ragged mass of humanity. Here and there children clambered over the logs; the rest of the people merely perched or, in some cases, were stretched out full-length in what seemed to be abject misery.

“Emigrant sheds,” Luke said, and pointed them out to his father. “There were sheds like that in every port along the lake.”

“Oh my,” Thaddeus said, “I’d have to be in a bad way to find shelter there.”

“I think they are in a bad way,” Luke said. “Besides, what choice do they have?”

Kingston’s public wharves were lined up along one side of the harbour, at the mouth of the Cataraqui River. Across the stretch of water were the shipyards that formed an essential part of the city’s commerce. Beyond that was Fort Henry, overlooking the bay that was used by the navy.

As they disembarked, Thaddeus drew Luke’s attention to Wolfe Island, which lay across the river from the city. “That’s where I went through the ice that time, when I was chasing Francis.”

“Yes, I know,” Luke said. “You’ve told the story a dozen times, you know.”

“Well, I learned a very important lesson that day.”

“What was that?”

Luke expected to hear an impromptu sermonette on the evils of hasty judgment or the importance of trusting in God, but his father’s response surprised him. “Always wear a scarf in the wintertime. It was Francis’s scarf that saved me really.”

Luke laughed. “Have you told him that?”

“Of course not. He’s grown too used to being the hero.”

As they walked away from the waterfront, they passed Kingston’s new city hall. Luke was stunned by the size and appearance of the building. This was a far larger and more imposing edifice than anything he had ever seen before, even in Toronto.

Thaddeus noticed his awe. “Don’t forget, Kingston was once the capital of the United Canadas, if only for a short time. They built a hall to house a government.”

The decision in 1841 to pronounce Kingston the capital of the newly formed Province of Canada had met with the approval of no one but the residents of Kingston. Small, provincial, and too close to the American border were the chief complaints. There was not even anywhere for the Legislative Assembly to meet, although accommodation was eventually made for them at the local hospital. The larger Canadian cities were vocal in their dissatisfaction, so it wasn’t surprising that the decision was soon reversed. In 1844, the capital moved to Montreal.

In the hope that they might somehow change everyone’s minds about the suitability of Kingston, the city fathers went ahead with their plans for a building fit for a legislature. It was all to no avail, and now the building housed various businesses and offices, including the Board of Trade, the Custom House, a saloon, the Mechanics’ Institute, the Orange Order, and a dry goods store.

Still, the hall was breathtaking with its dome and porches and portico. A market battery had been laid out in front of the edifice to replace the old shambles with its wooden stalls and constant danger of fire. Farmers now hawked their pigs and parsnips to the city’s residents under the noses of the exalted personages within the hall.

Today, more than half of the stalls were empty, however. Thaddeus stopped for a moment, looking around with a puzzled expression. “It’s July. These stalls should be heaped up with produce,” he said. “Where are all the farmers?”

Not only were the farmers absent, but also missing were the neatly dressed maids and prosperous-looking housewives who picked through the vegetables and sniffed the fish in their daily haggles over dinner fixings. Nor were there the usual throngs of businessmen on their way to important appointments and their wives riding to festive social occasions. Instead the streets were filled with ragged children and scrofulous beggars. Luke and Thaddeus had to push their way past a knot of grimy men who stood on the corner eyeing a garishly dressed girl across the street.

Their destination was the courthouse on King Street, a block away from City Hall. It was easy to find with the gaol stretching behind it. Once inside, Thaddeus had no difficulty finding a clerk to file the documents McFaul had sent with him.

This business occupied them for only a few minutes, but as it was already late in the afternoon, Thaddeus judged that they should complete the rest of their business the following day. “First we’ll find a place for the night and then why don’t we see if we can find this priest that McFaul is so anxious about.”

They walked along a curving road that led them to Brock Street, where Thaddeus stopped outside the Bay of Quinte Hotel. “I’ve found this pleasant on previous trips to Kingston,” he said.

“A hotel? Is it expensive?”

Thaddeus waved away his objections. “Mr. McFaul is paying,” he said, “and this is a Temperance House, so I have no objections to staying here.”

There was a room available, they were told. “In fact, you could have separate rooms if you prefer,” the innkeeper said. Business was apparently at a standstill in the city of Kingston.

Thaddeus indicated that one room was sufficient, and they stowed their bags in it before they set off for the harbour. Thaddeus hoped they might find the priest’s name on a passenger list somewhere, but just as they were leaving the hotel, Luke thought to ask the innkeeper if he knew where else they might look.

“An Irishman you say? None of the steamers carrying emigrants are allowed to dock at the public wharves. They’re all being sent down to the dock by the brewery.” He waved his arm in a westerly direction. “You can just follow the road that leads along the shore. That’ll take you past the hospital, and you might check there if you think he’s gone down with fever. Although, if he’s a priest and he’s ill, he’s most likely been taken to the nuns.”

“The nuns? You mean a convent or something?” Luke asked.

“No, the other hospital, Hôtel Dieu, just up the street here. It’s run by Catholic nuns. It’s not really finished yet, but they’re using it anyway. It’s full of emigrants. At the rate they’re being shipped over here, we’ll all be down with fever before it’s done. Either that or destitute.”

He walked away muttering imprecations against disease, the Irish, Catholics, and life in general.

As it was by far the closest, they decided to ask at Hôtel Dieu first. They had no need to ask for confirmation that they had reached the hospital. A chorus of moans and groans, punctuated by the occasional wail, told them that they had arrived at a place of suffering. It was a building that was indeed not yet finished — Thaddeus could see from the street that part of the structure was still missing its roof. Nevertheless, it was apparent that even the unfinished section was being used to house patients.

No one took any notice of them as they entered, although there were plenty of people scurrying here and there, bustling into the rooms off the corridor or tending to patients who had been bedded down in the passageways. With difficulty, they edged down the crowded hall, stepping around those who lay whimpering on the floor.

The hospital was crowded beyond belief. Each room was stuffed with patients, two to a cot, others lying on the floor with only a thin blanket to cushion them. The stench from unwashed bodies and unemptied slop pails was a miasmic fog that threatened to overwhelm them. It was like a descent into the lower levels of hell, Thaddeus thought, where the brimstone had long since burned away and all that remained was decaying flesh and the filth it spawned. Surely no demons of Hades could inflict torment worse than this.

As they stood in the middle of the hall wondering who they should talk to, they were passed by a rather stern-faced nun. She appeared to be in a great hurry to get by, but Luke stopped her.

“’Ow can I ’elp you?” she asked. “Are you ’ere from the Benevolent Society?” She spoke with a heavy French accent. As the name of their hospital signalled, this Order must have originated in Quebec.

Her face softened when they said they were looking for Father Higgins. “No, ’e is not ill,” she said, “but ’e is a great blessing to those who are. ’E is assisting Sister Bourbonnière this afternoon, and I believe they are at the English ’ospital.” And with that she swept away from them.

They retraced their steps to the market, and a man selling eggs at one of the stalls directed them to follow King Street, which would take them past the artillery parade ground. West of this, they were told, they would find the general hospital.

They soon left behind the brick walls of the market and the huddle of close-built houses. The hospital was located near the outskirts of the town, but as they passed the parade ground and turned onto King Street, they encountered a boardwalk, something that Thaddeus would have appreciated under ordinary circumstances as it was easier for him to walk on than the rutted road.

The scene that unfolded along this route was anything but ordinary, however. The parade ground, the lake shore, and the entire area around the hospital and the sheds that stood near it was covered with a sea of people. The boardwalk itself was awash with filth. Rats scuttled away from their feet. A number of people, both men and women, were clustered around a bucket in various states of undress, sluicing themselves in an attempt to get clean. Behind a tree, a man was openly fondling a woman.

As soon as Luke and Thaddeus were spotted, they were besieged with a cacophony of whining requests from beggars, pushing to get closer, their hands held out. They were gaunt and emaciated, their cheekbones jutting out, their arms thin and skeletal, and they were clad in rags that barely covered them. Hardest for Thaddeus to ignore were the children who crowded around, most of them with a lilt in their voices that betrayed their Irish homeland.

“A penny, sir, for the love of God …”

“Have you food, sir? I’m starvin’ …”

“Please, sir, my mam is sinking fast …”

Luke fished three coppers out of his pocket and shoved the money into the hands of three of the smallest children.

“Bless you, sir,” one of them said, but the others merely clutched the pennies fiercely and ran before someone bigger and stronger could wrest their treasure away from them.

This generosity set off a melee as others crowded around. As gently as they could, Luke and Thaddeus pushed past the importuning children, but they were forced to be more aggressive as some of the men and older boys shoved the little ones away and stood in their path.

“That’s all I’ve got right now,” Luke said.

“Please, sir …”

“Give us somethin’ …”

“I haven’t eaten for two days …”

They crowded closer, causing Luke to take a step back and bump against those standing behind him. He held his hands out, showing them to be empty. The gesture did nothing to make them move.

But Thaddeus wasn’t prepared to be intimidated by such a ragtag mob.

“Out of the way!” he thundered. Startled, the beggars stepped back and he strode forward, Luke scrambling to follow.

The hospital was just a little farther down the street. It was an imposing limestone edifice, a dignified repository for the sick during normal times, but wooden sheds some ninety feet long had been built around it. As they drew closer, the stench was nearly unbearable. A number of makeshift privies had been erected nearby, but they appeared to be in dire need of a cleanout.

When they mounted the front steps of the hospital to make inquiries regarding the presence of McFaul’s priest, their ears were again assaulted by sounds of misery and the stench intensified in the enclosed, airless space. As at Hôtel Dieu, it appeared that the general hospital was caring for many more patients than it had been designed to accommodate.

They were followed into the building by a well-dressed woman carrying a wicker basket. “Father Higgins?” the woman said when they explained their mission. “He’s in the far shed with Sister Bourbonnière.”

They retraced their steps and entered the shed she indicated, prepared to encounter even more misery, but they discovered that the smell was not nearly as overpowering as it had been in the hospitals. The open-sided construction allowed the ever-present breeze from nearby Lake Ontario to blow the worst of the stench away, although Thaddeus wondered how comfortable the patients would be on those rainy days when the cold and damp crept through the entire town.

Comfort had not been much of a consideration for the builders, he could see. A long line of wooden bunks stretched along the length of the shed, maximizing its capacity, but making medical ministrations difficult, the top tier difficult to reach, the bottom uncomfortably low. The structure had not been built with sickness in mind, he realized. The design had been intended to provide temporary shelter for healthy emigrants, who would spend only a few nights there before continuing their journeys or finding other accommodation.

One man, obviously a doctor, was examining a patient three beds along, while five people clustered around him, all of them asking questions at once. A nun moved down the row with a pail and a dipper, dribbling liquid into the open mouths of fevered patients, while another scurried in the opposite direction with a slops bucket. This nun stopped when she reached them, her eyebrows arched in enquiry.

“We’re looking for Father Higgins,” Lewis said. “We were told he might be here.”

“I believe he is down at the end with Sister Bourbonnière,” the nun replied. “Excuse me, I must hurry with this.” And she bustled out the door, leaving them standing agape.

They finally located their elusive priest near a stack of wooden barrels that comprised a wall of sorts at the far end of the building. He, too, was carrying slops, but had paused to talk with a distinguished-looking man with an enormous pair of side-whiskers. Higgins, in contrast, was clean-shaven, a shock of wavy chestnut hair sweeping back from a wide brow.

“Father Higgins?” Thaddeus asked when the conversation appeared to be at an end and the gentleman departed.

“Yes, I’m Father Higgins. What could I do for you, sir? I sincerely hope you’ve come to help and not just to gawk at the misery.”

“Not to gawk at it, but to take you away from it. Mr. McFaul sent me.”

The priest’s face fell. “I suppose he expected me some days ago?”

“Yes. He thought perhaps you’d fallen ill.”

“I appear to be the only Irishman who hasn’t. Come outside where the air is fresher and I’ll tell you my story.”

Luke and Thaddeus were only too happy to oblige, although several people nearby called for water, for a blanket, for a word of comfort.

“I’ll be back shortly,” the priest said. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you.”

They walked down by the shore of the lake. From where they stood, Thaddeus could see the buildings clustered around the harbour, and he realized how far away from the centre of the town the emigrants were being kept. The priest looked out at the water for a time before he spoke. Thaddeus waited patiently.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about the state of things in Ireland,” he began.

“Only that the potato crop has failed, resulting in great hardship for the people,” Thaddeus said. “The news we get comes only from the papers.”

“Hardship is scarcely the word to describe it,” Higgins said. “The poor in Ireland live chiefly on the potato. The farms are so small, you see, some of them no more than a couple of acres, but two or three acres planted in potatoes is enough to feed a whole family.”

“That small?” Luke said. “That’s nothing more than a kitchen garden here.” Canadians were used to holdings of a hundred acres, two hundred acres, or more. Fifty was considered scarcely enough land to be called a farm. Two or three as a means to a living was unthinkable.

“So you see the problem,” the priest said. “Without the potato, there’s nothing else that can be planted that is so efficient.” He sighed. “People are trying to live on nettle tops and seaweed. And they can’t. Children are dying by the side of the road. Whole families have been found starved to death in their huts.”

“Surely the government is doing something?” Thaddeus said. “Is there no charity that will take care of them?”

“Our charity consists of thin gruel and workhouses, eviction and indifference,” Higgins said. “It’s little wonder that so many are willing to risk death by coming to Canada. I boarded a ship in Limerick. I was one of the lucky ones — I had cabin passage, thanks to your Mr. McFaul. But the poor creatures who huddled in the hold sat in a sea of fever and filth. I buried ten on the voyage over. I left thirty more at Quebec, twenty at Montreal. And when I arrived in Kingston, I realized that half my parish was in hospital or cowering in the sheds.” He turned and looked at them. “That was when I decided that I wasn’t going any farther. I will stay here and do what I can and I will stay until I see no more sick being tossed off the steamers. Tell Mr. McFaul that his well-fed schoolchildren will have to wait.”

This was said with a challenge, and there was a long moment while Thaddeus digested what the priest had told him. They had all read about the suffering in Ireland, but the problem seemed remote and irrelevant until you saw the matchstick arms of a begging child. He thought of the times when he had put his own considerations aside to help in a crisis, and he knew that were he in the priest’s place he would do the same.

“Yes, I’ll tell Mr. McFaul,” he said, “and I’ll make him understand.”

The room the Lewises had been given at the Bay of Quinte Hotel was clean enough and the bed was soft, but Thaddeus was aware that Luke tossed and turned for most of the night. The next morning they set off to find the warehouse that no longer belonged to the unfortunate man in the timber trade. As Thaddeus took note of the details of McFaul’s new possession, he found that Luke was absent-minded and unfocused on the business at hand. As a result, he was of little help.

Even so, Thaddeus made short work of the task at hand.

“I’ll be finished by the end of the morning tomorrow,” he said. “All that will be left then is to change the locks. I’ll be on my way in the afternoon.”

“What do you think Mr. McFaul will make of his truant priest?” Luke asked.

“I can explain it to him. I don’t think it will be of much concern. Mr. McFaul is a very practical man.”

“I’ve been thinking about the situation here.”

“It’s a dreadful mess, isn’t it?” Thaddeus said. “Before this is finished there will be more sick emigrants than there are people in all of Kingston. It’s difficult to see how they can all be looked after.”

“I’m wondering if I should stay too.”

“Rather than go on to Montreal?”

“I’d learn a great deal of medicine here, I expect. And they could certainly use another volunteer.”

Thaddeus was unsurprised by this announcement. He had already known what Luke was considering. He took a long appraising look at this son before he spoke.

“Yes, you could learn a great deal here, but it will also be far more dangerous for you. Surgery and physicking and leeching is a mild enough enterprise when you’re sitting in a lecture hall with a professor. It’s another thing entirely to dive into a mess and be up to your elbows in blood and filth.”

“You’ve done it.”

“Yes, I have,” Thaddeus said, “when circumstances dictated. It’s hard to turn your back when men are screaming in pain. But that was in battle, and their wounds were no threat to me. These people have a malignant fever. It’s no contagion to shrug off with a poultice or a posset. You’d be taking a great risk.”

“I can’t in all conscience do anything else,” Luke said. “Not after what I saw yesterday.”

“Ah, the Lewis conscience. It makes itself apparent at the most awkward of times, doesn’t it? Well, you’re a grown man, Luke. I haven’t made your decisions for you for quite a long time now. If you’ve truly considered the possible consequences, all I can say is that you have my blessing, and I have to admit that if I were a younger man I would do the same.”

“Thank you.”

“I would stay even so,” Thaddeus said, “except that my duty lies with your mother now. That’s a decision I made when she fell so ill.”

“I know that,” Luke replied. “And your decision makes mine all the easier. Besides, you’ve done more than your share over the years. Time to pass the banner on.”

Thaddeus smiled. “At least I feel that I’m passing it to worthy hands.” He felt a tremendous pride that his youngest son had such a profound sense of responsibility. But he had never before felt so old.