by Ann Birch
Of late, she has had to serve too many teas and rum punches to Governor Hunter who has replaced Peter as administrator of Upper Canada. Governor Big Wig, as she privately calls him, meets her brother here in their house day after day after day while his own residence west of the garrison is being built. It puts her in a pet to see how Big Wig relies on her brother even though Peter no longer has the official honours as administrator. Often Chief Justice Elmsley joins them for tea. Eliza can scarce be polite to these guests, and the effort is wearing her down.
There is much she cannot tell her brother, not wanting to distress him. Though he must surely have noticed the stink of Big Wig, perhaps he has not linked the smell with the man’s frequent trips upstairs to use the chamber pot near her bed. And for the last few days, she has had trouble with Peggy who now refuses to empty the pot.
“Look at that,” the servant said to her last week, coming out of the house to push the chamber pot under her nose while she was stitching a new frock in a comfortable chair on the lawn. Well, for certain it was a mess—loose bowels in a bloody swill—but what was she to do?
“Take it away, woman,” she had said. “Do not bother me with it.”
But Peggy, always uppity, refused. She put the pot down on the lawn, splashing some of its contents onto the grass, and marched off. Eliza, too, had gone back into the house, leaving the stinking mess behind her. When she looked down later from her bedchamber window, she saw Job carrying the pot away. That put her into a pet. Job has more than enough to do without the added chore of emptying chamber pots. And what is she to do about Peggy? She must soon have a set-to with that bad-tempered slut.
Today, however, she will try to enjoy herself with her brother and Mr. White, and she hopes to be the better for a rest from the trials and tribulations of dealing with Big Wig and his bowels.
She looks out the front window to see dear Peter and Mr. White coming up the front walk. And yes, alas, they have Cousin Willcocks with them. Well, he won’t try anything with Peter around.
As the men come into the withdrawing room, Eliza settles herself in her wing chair, mixes the tea leaves, and pours the boiling water over them. Soon they are deep into a good tongue-wag about Governor Big Wig.
“He has gone to Quebec,” Peter says, “and I have no idea when he will be back. He is commander of the forces in both Upper and Lower Canada, and I fear that the real needs of York will necessarily be set aside for who knows how long.”
“Are you to be left with all the responsibilities of this town without the title? Is that what the Colonial Office considers fair play?” Cousin Willcocks’s indignation does not seem to interfere with his appetite. He spreads a huge dollop of butter on his bun as he says this.
“I am commanded to deal only with routine business,” Peter says. He unfolds a letter that he takes from his waistcoat. “Here’s how the Grand Poobah describes his role. ‘I must have sole authority to govern upon the principles which my own judgment suggests.’”
“Balderdash and bunkum,” Willcocks says, wiping crumbs from his waistcoat.
Mr. White refuses a second cup of tea and leaves his bun half eaten. “That damned Elmsley appears to be in the Poobah’s charmed circle.”
“Do not fear Elmsley, my friend. Who can understand a thing the man says anyway? And if he dares to give me any advice in plain English, I will spit in his eye.”
Eliza is mighty pleased to see Mr. White laughing. She knows he has been in a pet since his wife and Ellen have left, and she has not known how to offer him comfort. “I do not think Governor Big Wig will last long,” she says. “He has bad health, I wager.”
“You have noticed that, sister? Dysentery and biliousness, by all accounts. It may explain why he is so prone to angry outbursts at our meetings here.” Peter smiles. “Followed by all those trips upstairs . . . “
So brother does know about the chamberpot. Thank the Lord. Perhaps he will now be able to give me some advice about how to deal with Peggy.
“No doubt you have noticed that I have my own set of problems,” Cousin Willcocks says, helping himself to another bun and holding out his cup for more tea. “I have, in fact, been a social pariah in this town since I refused to celebrate the victory of Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. The wife keeps yapping at me to fall in line with the Brits, but I have no intention of pandering to them.”
“The town’s need for a postmaster will trump any deficiency of respect for our great British traditions, surely,” Peter says, uttering a great belch as he says the phrase “great British traditions.”
“You had some windows broken, did you not? Have they been fixed yet?” Mr. White asks.
“Every last one of them was broken by those roustabouts at the garrison, and every last one of them is now fixed—at an expense I can scarce afford.”
“It was undoubtedly the same roustabouts, as you call them, who caused my wife to fall into such grievous straits the night of that damnable shivaree.” White picks up his bun again, looks at it, then sets it back on his plate.
The minutes pass. Eliza’s brother and his cousin are now deep in conversation. She sees Mr. White turn his head to speak to her directly. “I no longer blame Marianne for my woes, Miss Russell. My miseries have come from many sources and have settled like the rock on Sisyphus’s shoulders. But I must thank you for your concern for Ellen. The one thing that gave her comfort on that wretched trip to Quebec was the reticule you made with her . . . and the Scotch pebble necklace she found inside it.”
Eliza wipes her eyes with the little lace-edged handkerchief she pulls from her bodice. “I have been in such a pet lately about losing your little girl from my life. And about my dear brother’s loss of promotion.” She sighs. “I, too have had a rock on my shoulders. But I feel the better for this tongue-wag, Mr. White.”
She feels Cousin Willcocks’s large boot press against her foot. The moment she has shared with her friend shatters. She swings her legs away from the brute, and almost hits the tea table with her left knee.
Chapter Forty-Three
October 1799
Susannah Page is a simple woman who gives John White one of the few comforts he now has in his life. They snatch their time together in White’s bedchamber while William and Charles are at school and while Susannah’s girls have their afternoon nap in their log cabin at the foot of the garden of White’s park lot. They sometimes also meet in the octagonal summer house beyond the cabin in the woods at the rear of the lot. They have only to keep an ear for the children, but so boisterous are they, he and Susannah can always hear them coming. Then Susannah adjusts her dress and emerges from the summer house with her tray, saying in a loud voice, “Sir, I hope my sweets today are to your liking.” How he laughs.
He has told her she must stop calling him “sir” or “master” during these moments, and she has agreed to “Susannah,” rather than “Cook” or “Mrs. Page.” But in spite of their increased intimacy, she has told him very little about her life before she came to his house. Only that her husband was a clerk, “a good man, he died of gunshot wounds during a set-to with a neighbour.” Well, that is enough to know. What matters to him is the warmth she offers him, the uncomplicated kindness of their day-to-day life together.
She seems happiest when she pulls her fresh bread from the bake oven or when she heaps the boys’ plates with the cutlets and gravy they like so much. He is glad he incurred the necessary expense for the bake oven though he has no idea how he will pay for it. As for the cutlets, fortunately most of them come from the Russells’ farm to the north where one of their hands kills, cuts, and cures the meat. How could he cope without his friends’ bounty?
He has started to spend a good deal of time at the garrison, now that Marianne is no longer here to nag him about wasted evenings and heavy drinking. There’s a certain cachet in socializing at the garrison. Civilians are allowed only if, in the opinion of the officers, they are on the same class level as officers. So the garrison gives him a chance to e
scape from the court louts who delight in torturing prisoners or the tradesmen to whom he owes money. Over cups of rum punch and tankards of beer, he has met people like those he consorted with at Fort Niagara.
This evening, however, he hesitates to leave his house. William, now eight years old, seems ill. Two days ago, he declined second helpings of Susannah’s pork cutlets and a couple of hours later, he vomited everything up. Then he complained of pain in his joints and a headache. Tonight the child seems somewhat better though he has sweats and chills in rapid succession.
The German immigrant Berczy, coming earlier in the day to make a final adjustment to the front door of Mrs. Page’s cabin in the woods, diagnosed the boy’s illness as the ague. “Give him alcohol,” he suggested. “Spirituous liquors are always good. Drinking the raw water in this place causes trouble.”
Miss Russell has also diagnosed it as ague. “It’s from those accursed insects in the swamp the lad is always a-going to,” she tells White. “These long hot fall days be making our lives a misery. I’ve told my brother to put away that microscope the lad is so fond of looking into. Keep him in bed, and I’ll send over some bark tea.”
But White has been reluctant to give little William either alcohol or the tea. Miss Russell’s remedy sits unused in the pine cupboard in his kitchen. He remembers all too well the night that her daughter Mary died, how early in the evening the girl sat at the kitchen table puking up the bark tea his friend had made. Mary’s last hours had certainly not been improved by drinking Miss Russell’s concoction. If only there was a doctor in York that he could trust . . .
“Go to the garrison tonight if you wish, sir,” Mrs. Page says as she serves supper to him and Charles. “I shall be here to keep an eye on William. Surely he cannot become worse in a few short hours.”
So he sits in the Officers’ Mess with one of his new acquaintances, a German officer, Frederick Baron de Hoen. Baron de Hoen once served with a German regiment, helping British forces quell the revolt of the thirteen American colonies. He is a military man to the core, and since he finds it difficult to adjust to his new life as a farmer, he too spends a good deal of time drinking at the garrison and swapping tales with the soldiers.
Upright in stature and sharp of speech, Baron de Hoen carries about with him an ornamental sword that he lays on the table while he talks to White. The weapon disturbs White, but he decides to say nothing about it. The Baron’s stories are set in a world that lies outside the courtroom and the legislature, and while listening to him, White begins to see the injustice the man has suffered and to understand the fears that afflict him.
“I met a Mennonite man, name of Reesor, on the Rouge River Trail,” Baron de Hoen tells him this evening after they have downed several tankards of beer in the Officers’ Mess. “He had ridden all the way from Pennsylvania. He told me he wanted to settle in the area, and I had two hundred acres I wanted to get rid of. So I say to the man, ‘I’ll swap my land for your horse and saddle.’ It was a fine large steed, see, full of vigour, even after that long journey.
“‘Done,’ says Reesor, and we shake hands.
“So he brings the horse to me with a saddle upon its back, but no bridle.
“‘Where’s the bridle?’ I ask him.
“‘Not part of the deal,’ Reesor tells me. ‘We negotiated for horse and saddle only.’ Then the lout turns around and heads back to Pennsylvania to get his family.”
“And what happened to the bridle?” White asks.
“Carried it on his back all the way home to Yankee-land, from what I hear.”
At this point, a young man on a stool nearby the bar starts to laugh. “I wager he had one huge, bleeding sore on his shoulders.”
“That would be small punishment,” Baron de Hoen says, joining in the laughter. “I wanted to challenge him to a duel—I have a set of fine duelling pistols—but my wife, who was with me at the time, gave a tug on my topcoat and I knew what that gesture meant. Wives do not need words to convey messages.”
More laughter, and the young man leaves his stool and joins them at their table. “I’m William Warren Baldwin, newly arrived in York,” he tells them. “I’m a doctor so I know all about bleeding sores, though I doubt I’d want to preside over a fatal duelling wound.”
White and the Baron introduce themselves in turn, and White says, “Are you old enough to be a medical man?” Baldwin could not be more than twenty-five, a good-looking young man with a long, straight nose, abundant blond hair, and low brows set over piercing blue eyes.
“Graduated from the University of Edinburgh last year,” Baldwin says. “I’m almost twenty-six, but I wager I have much more to offer people than the old quacks I’ve met on this side of the Atlantic. You don’t need jowls and a red nose to be a medical man, do you?”
“You’re settling in this town?” White asks. He keeps the question short as he tries to avoid a belch that threatens to erupt.
“Yes. At the moment I’m staying with William Willcocks—he’s a distant relative—but I intend to move on to my own quarters when I have established a practice. So far, though, I need patients. Seems we might, God forbid, need an epidemic here to give me a boost.”
“What are your views on purging and blood-letting?” Too many questions, but I’ve drunk so much I can’t manage much else. And in spite of his muddle, White is beginning to see an opportunity opening up, but he wants to do his own research first before he takes chances.
“Damned quackery,” Baldwin says, his cheeks turning pink with indignation. “I spent a few days in Niagara before coming here, and I met an idiot who tried to sell me the idea of purging with calomel. Calomel, can you believe that?”
“Dr. Kerr, was it?”
“None other.”
Baron de Hoen rises. “Back to the farm now,” he says, putting his hand into the back pocket of his redingote, undoubtedly to withdraw a coin to pay for his drinks. There’s a tinkling sound.
“What on earth is that noise?” Baldwin asks, looking about the room.
De Hoen shows him the flap of his pocket which is trimmed with tiny ornamental bells. “They discourage pickpockets. Good idea, wouldn’t you say?” He puts a coin on the table, retrieves his sword, shakes hands with his companions, and departs.
“A quick diagnosis here,” Baldwin says, smiling. “That sword on the table, the mention of the duelling pistols, and those tinkling bells to ward off pickpockets: delusions of persecution, wouldn’t you say?”
This may be the man I need. “Now that we’re alone,” White says, struggling to clear his head to form a coherent sentence, “I want to tell you about a possible first patient.”
Chapter Forty-Four
October 1799, later the same evening
Dr. Baldwin makes a quick stop at Willcocks’s place to pick up his medical kit, then he and White head for White’s house. They have just turned up the path leading to the front door when Mrs. Page comes running towards them, tugging up her skirt so that she can move faster. Charles is at her heels, crying “Papa, Papa.”
“Sir,” she says, wringing her hands, “I have been watching from the front window these last few minutes. Oh, please come quickly.”
They run into the front hall, up the staircase, and into the boys’ bedchamber. William lies on his back on top of the quilt on the narrow four-poster bed. He usually sleeps in the trundle bed which they pull out nightly, but because of his illness he has taken Charles’s space.
There is no response from the boy to their arrival. His face is pale and his eyes, closed. Sleeping. Or dead? Suddenly completely sober, White moans and falls onto his knees beside the bed, grabbing one of William’s hands.
Dr. Baldwin has whipped from his waistcoat a magnifying glass. He holds it close to the boy’s nostrils.
At the same time, William opens his eyes, looks around him, his small face contorted in pain or confusion, and then seeing the familiar faces of his brother, father, and Mrs. Page, he smiles. But the smile fades as he looks at B
aldwin who, fortunately, has had the good sense to put the glass back in his waistcoat. “Papa, Papa, why is that man here?”
“It’s Dr. Baldwin, son. He’s going to see what’s wrong with you and get you better.”
“No leeches, no leeches! Please, please, no leeches!” White remembers his son’s sorrow over the death of one of his school friends. He, William, and Charles had gone to the child’s home to offer their respects to the parents. They looked down at the little grey-white face in the rough pine box on a low table in the parlour. That moment had been bad enough, but as they looked, a leech had inched out of the child’s abundant brown hair and wormed its way onto his forehead. William and Charles had immediately started to sob, their faces pale with horror, and the mother, thinking it was grief that fuelled their tears, went into the kitchen to get wine. In her absence, White was able to reach into the box and pull off the slug. He’d held it tight in one hand, and they had all refused the wine when it came, wanting only one thing—escape. Out in the open air, he’d thrown the leech onto the ground. Then he’d looked at his hand. Smears of the child’s blood lay on his palm. He’d swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. A father must always be strong for his children. But why the devil had the women who washed the child’s body not found the slug?
“No leeches, lad,” Dr. Baldwin is saying now as he puts his hand on William’s forehead. “I am going to have a look at what’s wrong here, and then I’ll have a remedy that will make you feel better. It may taste bad, but it won’t be leeches. Guaranteed.”