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
