The Burying Ground

by Janet Kellough

  After rounds finished, Luke approached Professor Brown and indicated that he might be interested in applying for the position. And then he promptly wrote to his father seeking his opinion on the matter.

  “Able to shoulder the more onerous duties?” Thaddeus had written back. “In other words, you’d be a drudge. On the other hand, I can think of no more expeditious way for you to enter the profession you have chosen. You might be wise to consider this.”

  His father was also familiar with the village called Yorkville, as Luke had known he would be.

  “Although it’s true that it’s a small place right now, it can’t be any more than two or three miles to Toronto,” Thaddeus wrote. “In a few years, it’s entirely likely that the city’s limits will have stretched to encompass the entire area. By the time your elderly doctor is ready to hand over the reins, you could well find yourself with a city practice after all.”

  Armed with this knowledge, Luke wrote to offer his services.

  When he arrived in Yorkville, he found a sleepy little village on Yonge Street, which — according to Christie, who seemed to have an extensive knowledge of the history and events of the area — had sprung up around a tollgate and a tavern, The Red Lion Inn. This public house was famous as a rallying point for the rebels of 1837.

  “Brigands, all of them,” the doctor said. “Should have been sent straight off to the hangman.”

  A small stream to the northeast had attracted the attention of Joseph Bloor, who built a brewery beside it in the early ’30s, and then of John Severn, who did the same. The two breweries, along with the brickworks that produced a distinctive yellow product from local clay, were, Christie said, the major industries of the village.

  “You won’t see many grand estates here. It’s mostly small houses and cottages for the local workers, more’s the pity. I could do with a few clients who don’t have to be hounded for payment.”

  To Luke, it seemed like a very self-sufficient little community, but he could see signs that his father might well be correct about Yorkville’s future. Just south of the village, the area between the Tollgate Road and Queen Street was designated by Toronto as part of its liberties — not really city, not really county — but a legislative distinction that cleared the legalities for future annexation. City factories, once too far away for the workers of Yorkville to reach every day on foot, were now serviced by omnibuses. And the Strangers’ Burying Ground, a cemetery on the corner of Yonge Street and the concession line, once considered on the verge of wilderness, now formed a barrier to the ever-expanding sprawl of houses in the village. Yorkville would probably always be a small town, Luke figured, but by the time Dr. Christie finally packed it in, its fresher air and slower pace might well have attracted a more well-heeled population.

  In the meantime, as junior partner, Luke was relegated to the tasks that entailed the most work. This arrangement meant that he handled the cases that required walking any great distance. Dr. Christie’s definition of “any great distance” was narrow in the extreme, as the older man was disinclined to indulge in any sort of effort and much preferred that his patients come to him. Few patients ever did this. As a rule they attended to their gumboils and bunions themselves, and when a more serious ailment presented itself, they expected a physician to treat them in their own homes. This meant that Luke would be handling virtually all of the calls. That was fine, as far as he was concerned — every time he was called out it meant that he could leave the office and the sneering skeleton behind.

  When a small boy pounded on the door the day after his arrival, Luke eagerly grabbed the scuffed leather satchel that contained his potions and instruments and followed the child down Yonge Street and into a side alley that led through a cluster of modest cottages.

  “Hurry,” the boy said, “Pa’s bleeding something fierce.”

  Luke’s patient was still in his back dooryard where he had been splitting firewood. The axe had sliced through the man’s boot and embedded itself in the big toe of his left foot. The man had not attempted to remove either the axe or the boot, instead slumping to the ground to await the doctor’s arrival. He was not suffering in silence, however, and his yells and moans had drawn a crowd of his neighbours, who hung over the garden fence to watch the drama.

  “You’ll be all right now, Holden,” one of them said when he saw Luke. “The doctor’s here.”

  “He’ll probably have to remove the leg, you know,” another offered, resulting in a further, and louder, round of moaning from the injured man.

  “Shush!” a woman said to the man who had spoken. “You’re scaring him!”

  “That was what I was hoping to do.”

  “Well, stop!”

  Luke ignored them all and lowered himself to one knee in order to assess the injury. Sometimes these wounds could be nasty, the laceration rarely clean, the edges of the wound ragged and shredded, depending on the sharpness of the axe.

  After a moment, he turned to the boy. “Can you find me some clean rags?” he asked. “Freshly washed ones, that haven’t been used for anything else?”

  The boy nodded and disappeared into the house.

  Luke untied the boot, removing the laces entirely in preparation for taking it off. There was a great deal of blood spilling out from the slash in the toe. He would have to move quickly once he’d withdrawn the axe.

  The boy returned, wordlessly holding out a wad of rags. They looked reasonably unstained. They will have to do, Luke thought. I can only hope they’re truly clean.

  He looked around at the gaggle of onlookers at the fence.

  “Could you give me a hand?” he asked. “You,” he said pointing at the man who was hoping for an amputation. The woman who had shushed him pushed him toward the garden gate. The man approached Luke reluctantly.

  “I need you to pull the axe out while I take his boot off.”

  The man paled, his jokes forgotten, but he reached for the wooden handle.

  “Not until I tell you, mind. And pull it straight up and out.”

  Luke grasped the edges of the boot, then said “Now.”

  As soon as the axe head was freed, he slid the boot off in one smooth motion, then grabbed the bundle of rags and jammed a wad of them into the wound as blood spurted out. His patient screamed.

  It had only taken a few seconds to accomplish, but it had been long enough for Luke to see that the toe was almost entirely severed, attached to the foot by only a small piece of bone and a flap of skin. He would have to remove it.

  He would have preferred to get the man inside and away from the prying eyes of the onlookers, but that would take too long — the sooner the severed digit was out the way, the sooner Luke could stop the bleeding.

  He looked up at the man who was still standing with the axe in his hands.

  “The toe’s gone,” he said. “It’s hanging by a shred. I need to finish the job, but I’ll need you to hold while I cut. Do you think you can manage that?”

  “What? Oh, my toe, my toe,” the injured man wailed.

  Luke ignored him.

  The standing man gulped. “All right, I guess.”

  “Put the axe down and kneel down, on the other side of the foot.”

  The man complied.

  “Now, when I take the rags away, you need to grab the toe by the end and pull it taut so I can see where I have to cut.”

  “Nooooooo!” screamed the injured man.

  “I haven’t actually done anything yet,” Luke pointed out to him. “Save your screams for when I do.” And then he looked at the other man. “Now.”

  He held his scalpel ready with one hand and pulled the cloth away with the other. His unwilling helper gingerly grabbed the toe and lifted it away from the foot. Luke sliced. The toe detached and both his patient and his helper fainted, the latter still holding the severed digit like a purple, blood-spattered trophy.

  The bleeding was easing off a bit, Luke could see, the wound starting to clot on its own. There was enough skin le
ft, he judged, that he could suture it closed around the jutting piece of bone. He fished a needle and a length of catgut out of his bag and began coaxing the skin up around the wound, sewing it in place wherever he could find undamaged flesh.

  He was halfway through the task when the man holding the toe came to again. He took one look at the grisly relic in his hand and promptly fainted again.

  When he was satisfied with his handiwork, Luke enlisted the aid of a beefy neighbour, and together they carried the patient into his kitchen, where they laid him on the small bed in the corner. Luke sluiced himself off at the kitchen pump.

  When he emerged into the dooryard again, the swooning assistant was gone. He had left the toe where it fell, in the middle of the yard. Luke retrieved it, wrapped it in an unused rag, and handed it to the boy.

  “Bury this under a bush somewhere,” he said. “That way your Pa’s foot won’t itch so badly. I’ll check on him tomorrow.”

  Satisfied with his morning’s work, he tipped his hat and left by the garden gate, suddenly feeling quite optimistic about his decision to come to Yorkville. The village was still small enough that word of his backyard surgery would spread, especially since no account of the operation would fail to include a grisly description of the toe, or the information that a grown man had fainted at the sight of it. The next time a mishap occurred, few would insist on waiting for “the old doctor” instead of accepting Luke’s attendance. The fees he brought in to the practice wouldn’t be exactly lucrative, as his old schoolmates so seemed to desire, but they would be steady and help to solidify his position as the junior partner. In spite of Dr. Christie’s unsettling office skeleton, Luke was starting to feel quite cheerful about his future prospects.

  He was lost in these pleasant thoughts as he made his way back to the Christie house, so it took him a moment to realize that a voice from somewhere behind him was calling his name.

  “Mr. Lewis?” the voice said again. “Is that you?”

  Luke turned to discover that he had been hailed by a scrawny little man whom he was quite sure he had never seen before.

  “Yes, I’m Mr. Lewis. Well … Doctor Lewis, actually.” It still seemed odd to use the title. “Could I help you?”

  But the little man had a puzzled expression on his face. “I’m sorry, I’ve mistaken you for someone else. I was sure you were someone I once knew, but now that I’m closer I can see that you couldn’t possibly be him.” His brow wrinkled. “And yet you say your name is Lewis?”

  “Yes. Luke Lewis. And you are…?”

  “Morgan Spicer. Pleased to meet you.” Then the worry lines on his brow cleared away. “Luke Lewis? You’re Thaddeus’s son then.”

  Luke sincerely hoped that his father’s reputation as a solver of crimes had not reached Yorkville. He had been forced to recount the stories of Thaddeus’s adventures far too many times. It had all happened a long time ago, though, and with any luck the memory of them had faded. His own adventure with his father, on the other hand, was known to only a handful of people. There had been none of the public acclaim that had attended the other two crimes. And then, from somewhere deep down in his mind, something stirred in his memory. Morgan Spicer. Where did he know that name from?

  “I met you once,” Morgan said. “A long time ago. In Demorestville. You were about to travel west with your brother.”

  And then it came to him. Spicer was a sorry little stray who had tagged along with Thaddeus on the Hallowell Circuit, in Prince Edward County. He had wanted to be a preacher, Luke recalled, but Thaddeus determined that he needed to learn how to read and write first, and offered to teach him as they rode. It was a propitious decision on his father’s part — Spicer had been instrumental in the apprehension of the murderer Isaac Simms.

  “Mr. Spicer. Of course.” Luke held his hand out for Morgan to shake. “I do recall our meeting.”

  “I’m sorry about the mistaken identity, but you must realize how much you look like your father.”

  “Not so much these days, I’m afraid. My father has aged since my mother died.”

  Spicer’s face fell. “She’s dead? Oh dear. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. She was a nice lady.”

  “She was. We all miss her sorely. But what about you? Are you a minister here?”

  “No. I’m not a minister. My application was never approved.” It was obviously a sore subject, Luke realized, for Spicer quickly went on. “So where is your father now?”

  “Here as well. More or less. He’s gone back to the preaching business, at least on a temporary basis.”

  Spicer seemed excited by this intelligence. “Here? On Yonge Street? I would like very much to see him, and not only to renew our acquaintance. I have a difficulty I would appreciate his advice on.”

  “I’ll tell him I met you,” Luke said. “He will have completed his circuit in a few days, I expect and then he’ll come back here. Could I give him any indication of the nature of your difficulty?”

  He had no idea if his father would be happy to see Morgan Spicer or not, especially if the man required advice. Although, he supposed, that was what a preacher was for, really.

  “It’s to do with the Strangers’ Burying Ground,” Spicer said. “There has been a very odd occurrence there, and I can make no sense of it. I’d like to ask Mr. Lewis what he thinks. Tell him he can find me at the Keeper’s Lodge by the front gates.”

  Luke’s first thought was that Spicer must be referring to ghosts or hauntings or some other nonsense that people associate with graveyards. He knew that his father would be quick to dismiss anything of this nature as a trick of the imagination, but then Spicer peered up at him anxiously. “Tell him it’s important. Tell him it’s a puzzle.”

  No request would bring his father running faster, Luke figured, whether he was personally interested in seeing Spicer again or not. Thaddeus loved a puzzle.

  “I’ll tell him,” Luke said, and then he tipped his hat and went on his way, wondering if anything that happened in a graveyard could possibly be any stranger than a skeleton whose finger followed you around the room.

  Chapter 3

  Thaddeus Lewis had given up horseback riding, and now made his rounds in a hired trap pulled by a rib-thin pony. The provision of a horse and cart was one of the conditions that he had insisted upon when he’d been approached by Philander Smith to take temporary charge of the Yonge Street Circuit. He was too old to ride, he pointed out to the bishop, and his aching joints plagued him too badly.

  He was reluctant at first to agree to do even that much. He was settled into a comfortable routine in Wellington, after he’d got over the initial shock of his wife Betsy’s death. His son Luke kept him distracted for a while. Luke called upon him to unravel a mystery that had arrived on Canada’s shores with the great influx of sick and starving Irish three or so years before. They chased up and down the shore of Lake Ontario from Kingston to Toronto and back again and eventually found the truth of the affair. But at the conclusion of the excitement, Luke went on to Montreal to study medicine, and Thaddeus was faced with the unappealing prospect of returning to his small cabin behind the Temperance Hotel where he spent his days alternately helping out with the routine drudgery of looking after guests and assisting one of Wellington’s leading citizens, Archibald McFaul, with his complicated business affairs.

  It was enough — only just enough — to keep his loneliness at bay, although he still felt a pang of loss every time he returned to the cabin at the end of the day. He never really became used to the idea of Betsy’s death, but he seldom let this be known. He kept his sorrow to himself and mumbled over it late at night when he had nothing else to distract him. It became a treasure of sorts that he guarded jealously and shared with no one.

  And then his routine began to fall apart. Business dwindled to a standstill in Canada West. Britain’s Free Trade policies had destroyed Canada’s markets and there were now no ready buyers for the timber that grew so plentifully or the wheat that sprouted out of the ground
. Mr. McFaul’s affairs were not as complicated as they had once been. He had less business to conduct and less correspondence to see to. The businessman reluctantly informed Thaddeus that his services were no longer needed. He had hopes, McFaul said, that economic times might improve in the future, especially if trade continued to grow with the United States, but for the time being, financial prospects were dim.

  “If some of these railways they’re proposing actually mater-ialize, that will help,” McFaul said. “But in the meantime my business has contracted along with everyone else’s. I’m sorry, Thaddeus, but there just isn’t enough work to keep you on.”

  Things changed at the hotel as well. Custom fell off. There was still plenty of work to get through every day — especially since Sophie, the genius in the kitchen, was once again expecting, and after several disappointments hoped this time to complete the process of birthing a child. Her brother, Martin, though, was let go from the Wellington planing mill, and he was immediately, and quite rightly, offered a place at Temperance House. The hotel belonged, after all, to his mother.

  Martin was young, and far more help than Thaddeus had ever been. Nothing was said, no hints were dropped, but it was clear that the hotel was trying to support far too many people, even with Thaddeus working for nothing more than room and board.

  He was far more receptive to the notion of being a preacher again when Bishop Smith returned a second time and repeated his urgent request that Thaddeus ride Yonge Street in the name of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

  The decision was made easier for him by the arrival of Luke’s letter, with the news that he was considering a situation in Yorkville. Thaddeus hoped that the advice he gave his son was based on Luke’s best interests and not his own, but it was extraordinarily convenient all the same. When he was tired of congregational hospitality, of lumpy mattresses and kitchen beds, when he had completed his circuit and needed dry socks and a clean shirt, he could go to Luke’s. He wrote to Bishop Smith at once to accept the appointment.