The next day brought five more steamers to the brewery dock and over a hundred new patients to the hospitals. Even though there were twelve bodies waiting to be buried, Sister Bourbonnière directed the carters to concentrate on moving fever patients from the wharf to the hospitals and sheds, although she confessed to Luke that she had no idea where they were going to put them all.
When Luke arrived at the wharf, the emigration agent was in a great state of agitation over the numbers of emigrants that had arrived. Again, Luke witnessed the inspection process, with a doctor separating those who were supposedly healthy from those who showed signs of typhus. The ill were taken to the wagons for transport. The healthy, rather than being shepherded toward the nearby sheds, where in the past they would have been fed and allowed to rest for a time, were instead funnelled onto a waiting lake steamer. The agent appeared to be moving as many along as quickly as he possibly could, but the hollow-eyed and exhausted passengers were protesting. With good reason, Luke thought. They had already travelled long miles and had been sitting for hours in the hot sun. It was a long journey to the next port, and in the meantime they had likely had nothing to eat and little opportunity to sleep. But Kingston could accommodate no more. The sheds were full, the hospitals bursting, and the city’s resources strained to the breaking point.
Some of the patients were so sick that they were unable to walk. Luke helped to carry them on stretchers to the wagons, and as soon as they had crammed in as many as they safely could, the wagon would pull away, to an accompanying wail from relatives left behind.
They had nearly filled the fifth wagon when he heard shouting.
“I demand to know where you’re taking my brother,” yelled a large black-haired man who was attempting to push past the agent.
“You’ll have to get back on the steamer,” he was told.
“I will not!”
“Unless you have friends or family in Kingston, you’ll have to go on to the next port.” The agent held the man by the arm and tried to pull him away from the gangplank.
Then a man on the shore stepped forward. “I’m his brother. He can come with me.”
This man, too, had dark hair, but there the resemblance ended. Whereas the first, under ordinary circumstances and not half starved to death, would have been a tall and handsome specimen, the second was tiny and monkey-like, with a thin, wrinkled face and protuberant ears. Luke found it hard to believe that the two men were related. The agent obviously didn’t believe it either, for he maintained his grip on the first man’s arm.
The man had stopped struggling, however. Now his face opened in an incredulous grin. “Flea! I thought never to see you again, boy!”
“Pierce! Dia duit!”
At this, the emigration officer let go, and the man named Pierce rushed down to the dock to embrace the monkey-like man. It wasn’t so much an embrace, Luke thought, as a lift. The smaller man’s feet left the wooden planking below him and dangled in the air as his brother spun him around.
The agent shrugged and turned to the next emigrant.
Suddenly, Luke realized where he had seen the dark little man before. He was the wagon driver from Toronto wharf, the man who had handed the constable a paper packet and then driven off with the wagonload of women. Flea. There was no mistaking the name. But what was a Toronto carter doing in Kingston?
Pierce released his brother from his smothering embrace and set him down again on the dock. Flea scanned the crowd. “Where’s Dermot?” Luke heard him ask.
“They’ve taken him off to hospital. He’s not looking too well. It may be the malignant fever, I don’t know. I need to make sure he’s being looked after.”
“We both will, and let’s hope for the best, eh? We’ll go and find him by and by, but first you can help us load up some barrels.”
Together they walked around to the far side of the brewery.
The doctor had not yet begun his inspection of the second of the steamers. Luke would not be needed for a few minutes. Curious, he followed the two men.
There was another dock at the western end of the building, sheltered in a small cove and out of sight of the main wharves and the entrance to the brewery itself. It had obviously never been built for anything as large as a steamer; nevertheless, a steamer was tied to it. As Luke watched, a man rolled four barrels along the planks and onto the ship. Luke knew that they were empty from the ease with which the man could handle them.
“That’s it then, Mr. Bellwood. I’ll have more for you in a couple of weeks.”
“You’d better,” a man growled in return. Luke could only assume that he was Bellwood. “Hans don’t like it when there’s mistakes.” Flea and Pierce scrambled aboard as the lines were cast off and the steamer prepared to chug away. “There you are, Flea,” Bellwood said. “And who’s this sad-lookin’ pup you’ve got with you?”
“This is my brother, Pierce,” Flea replied. “Recently arrived from Ireland, he is, but ready and able to assist us. There was another brother with him, but he’s been hauled off to the hospital.”
“That’s all I need is another lazy Mullen. Never mind, with any luck the third will die and we won’t have to bother with him.”
“We thought we’d go and find out what happened to him after we dock at Kingston wharf.”
“As long as you’re back in the morning. We take another load of dogans up the lake tomorrow.”
Just as the steamer pulled away, the man called Flea happened to look up. He saw Luke standing by the edge of the building. He stared for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. He turned to say something to Bellwood, but whatever he said was blown away by the wind.
Luke walked slowly back to the main wharf, unsure of what he had just seen, and unsure of why he was even interested, except that it had struck him as so odd to see the man called Flea in Kingston. What was the last name he had heard? Mullen? And there had been another name as well. “Who else are you going to deal with if it’s not Hans?” Flea had said to the constable in Toronto. “Hans doesn’t like it when there are mistakes,” Bellwood had said to the man loading barrels. Who was Hans, and why did he have such influence? And why did it niggle at Luke, when he had so many more pressing matters to attend to?
His speculations were soon shoved to the back of his mind as he returned to his duties as the sorting of emigrants continued. To his dismay, and to everyone else’s, he was sure, there were far more sent to the wagons than were loaded onto the boats.
Late that afternoon, as Luke followed the last of the wagons toward the hospital, he met Father Higgins, who was going in the other direction.
“That’s all of them,” Luke said. “For today anyway.”
“I’m looking for one in particular,” Higgins said. “A brother of one who was taken to the sheds. I was told that he stayed behind.”
“There’s only a handful of the healthy ones who were allowed ashore. They all claimed to have family here. Whatever the truth of that may be, they left the wharf as soon as they could so they wouldn’t be forced back on a boat.”
“Well,” Higgins seemed a little nonplussed at this information, “I guess I’ll just have to tell Dermot Mullen that his brother has gone on.”
“Dermot Mullen?” Luke said. “Is his brother’s name Pierce?”
The priest nodded. “How do you know the Mullens?”
“I don’t,” Luke said, “but Pierce made a fuss, and then another brother stepped forward to claim him. I think his name was Flea, although it seems an odd name for a man.”
“Florence Mullen is in Kingston? How strange. Do you know where they went?”
“They boarded a steamer that was loading barrels. I think they were headed to the public wharves at the harbour.” For some reason, Luke didn’t tell Higgins that he, too, found it odd that Flea, or Florence as his name apparently was, had turned up in Kingston.
The priest turned around to fall in step beside Luke. “It’s off to the wharves we go then.”
“How do you know the Mullen family?” Luke asked.
“They’re from my parish. Troublesome bunch, actually, with Flea the ringleader and the other two just following along. Nevertheless, I’ll do what I can to reunite the wild brothers. At least then we’ll know where they all are.”
“Wild in what way?”
“Oh, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? It doesn’t matter who anyone was in Ireland, they’re all in the same boat now. Or off it, I suppose, for Dermot and anyone else who’s being held in quarantine.”
They parted at the general hospital, where the wagons had deposited the dying and were now lumbering off to collect the dead.
As the afternoon wore on, Luke began to realize that Higgins had been gone for a long time, longer than it should have taken to make his inquiries. When the priest did return, he was boiling with anger.
“These steamer captains should be brought up on charges,” he fumed. “The conditions on board the boats are bad enough, but the attitude of the crew is unacceptable.”
“What happened?” Luke asked.
“I was manhandled. I was obstructed. I was the subject of foul language and insult. I was treated with contempt. They act as if my presence is the greatest imposition.”
“Perhaps you should lodge a complaint,” Luke said. He could think of nothing else to suggest. The local authorities might do something, but in all probability they wouldn’t. Resources of all kinds were stretched as thin as a strand of spider silk, and no one was likely to take notice of a disgruntled priest.
“Am I being unreasonable?” Higgins asked, although Luke was relatively sure that he expected no answer. “Do I not have the right to inquire about any one of the thousands of people they transport? It’s not as if they’re over careful about keeping track themselves. And the conditions are deplorable. There should be an investigation.”
“Did you find the Mullens?”
Luke could see that Higgins had almost forgotten his original errand in the heat of his anger, but now that he was reminded of it, he began to calm down.
“No, I didn’t. And you’re right, much as I hate to admit it. But I’ll go to the town hall only as a last resort. I’m going to go back and talk to the captains. I shouldn’t have to put up with such foul-mouthed invective when I’m making a simple inquiry. Come with me, Luke, to back me up and tell me which steamer the Mullens were on.”
Luke agreed to accompany the priest. He would have done anything Higgins asked him to do, even though he couldn’t fathom how his unprepossessing form could be any sort of backup to anyone.
The harbour was its usual sea of masts, and to Luke’s eye all of the sailing steamers looked the same, but he was sure that the name of the steamer had been a play on its captain’s name — Bellwind or Bellwater maybe. He tried to bring the name to mind by visualizing the scene beside the brewery. Bellweather. That was it.
“It’s that one,” Luke said. The steamer was tied up with four other vessels at the public wharf. A very dirty and dishevelled-looking man was coiling a length of rope on the deck. Higgins hailed him.
“I told you before, priest, the captain is in his cabin and he’ll not see you,” the man said. “You’re not to step foot aboard this vessel.”
Higgins stepped closer. “Excuse me, but we would like to hear that from the captain himself.”
“Oh you would, would you?” The man spat over the rail, the wad landing on the dock a few inches in front of them. “Well you can like whatever you like, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.”
Just then a man emerged from the cabin. Luke recognized him as Bellwood.
“What’s the trouble here, Neddy?”
“This papist and his friend want to hear you speak. They think I’m lying to them.”
Now that Luke was closer to the man, he realized that Captain Bellwood was every bit as dishevelled and quite a lot dirtier than the man he had addressed as Neddy.
“I believe I have the right to inquire after a passenger,” Father Higgins began.
“You have no rights here at all,” the captain replied. “This is my ship, and what I say goes.”
“The man we’re looking for is Pierce Mullen. He’s believed to be aboard your ship. He met up with his brother Flea earlier today.”
“Those are heathenish names. Can’t say I’ve ever run across ’em before.”
“Nevertheless,” Father Higgins continued, “their brother Dermot is in one of the hospital sheds. He has the fever, and he’d like his brother to know where he is.”
Bellwood shrugged. “What’s that to do with me?”
“Could we come aboard and look for him?” Higgins said.
“Are you calling me a liar? I’m tellin’ you, he’s not here, and you will not set foot on my boat.”
The captain was yelling now, and his loud shouts had begun to attract a crowd. These were the usual sorts who hung around the docks — hands from the other vessels, some of them, but a goodly number of time-wasters and drunks as well.
“Let ’em aboard!” one of them shouted. “He’s only looking for someone.”
“He will not set foot on this ship!” the captain shouted again.
Father Higgins had had enough. “I really don’t wish to involve the law, but if I must, I must. We’ll see what the constable has to say about this.” And with that he turned and walked away.
Luke scrambled to keep up with the irate priest. “Is this really necessary?” he asked.
The priest was white-lipped. “This is not the first time I’ve been denied access by the steamer captains. I know for a fact that people have died while I stood arguing on the dock.”
Luke knew very little about the Roman Catholic faith, but understood that it was, for some reason, vitally important that a priest be present at the moment of death. He understood this man’s frustration — he was duty bound to ease a follower’s passage into the afterlife, and yet was being denied his purpose.
“Why won’t they let you on the ship?” he asked.
“Because of the conditions on board, I expect. The poor souls are crowded as badly as on the ocean-going vessels. There’s filth everywhere, the water is bad, the food is non-existent, and if one of the passengers dies, they’re left where they fall, no matter that the still-healthy are sitting beside them. It’s a wonder the fever sheds aren’t twice as full as they are now.”
“Lies! Those are all lies!” Bellwood was not content to let them carry their tale to the constable without extenuation on his part. He was following a few feet behind them, spewing invective as he walked.
“You and your Papist horde can all rot in hell as far as I’m concerned,” he shouted at them. “Filthy Irish Catholics don’t deserve any better treatment, and you know it as well as I do. They live like animals, so I’ll treat them like the beasts they are.” He had obviously overheard Higgins’s rant about steamer conditions.
Luke spun around to face him. “You’re making good coin carting filthy Irish up and down the lake,” he said. “How much of the money you’re given for decent food and water have you skimmed off along the way? I’m no Catholic, but I wouldn’t do to any animal what you do to your passengers.”
“Slander! Defamation! I’ll see you in court over this.”
Father Higgins pulled Luke away, and from then on he maintained his silence until they reached the gaol at the rear of the courthouse.
The constable, when they found him in a small office on the second floor, seemed loathe to get involved.
“Now, now,” he said, “I think everyone should just calm down.”
“No,” Father Higgins replied, “I would like to register an official complaint against this captain.”
The constable sighed and pulled a sheaf of papers toward him. He began to laboriously take down the details of the complaint while the captain muttered and grumbled. Luke occupied himself by admiring the view from the window, which encompassed an excellent vista of the harbour, with Garden Island beyond it and Wolfe Island in the distance. From this vantage point he could see what an excellent harbour it was, and why Kingston had always been strategically important. There was abundant shelter here for ships, and from the heights overlooking the scene, it would be possible to see, and therefore control, any traffic approaching the river where it narrowed on its exit from Lake Ontario. His admiration of the location was interrupted when he noticed a knot of people on the dock. The ships seemed small from here, and hard to identify, but it seemed to him that the crowd was gathered around the steamer that belonged to the rude captain standing behind him. He nudged Father Higgins, who followed his gaze to the scene below.
“Sir?” The constable was still wrestling with writing down what he had been told so far and seemed disinclined to brook an interruption.
Luke raised his voice. “Sir? There seems to be some altercation down on the wharf.”
This gained the captain’s attention. “Bloody hell, my boat!” he yelled and in an instant he was out the door and on his way back to his vessel.
His departure finally got the constable’s attention. He rose and looked out the window, then turned and ran after the captain. Luke and Father Higgins scrambled down the stairs after him.
It was only a short distance from the courthouse to the wharf, but both the constable and Bellwood were wheezing and gasping as they ran, and Luke and Father Higgins very shortly caught up with them. And then they all stopped, aghast at what was transpiring in front of them.
News of Father Higgins’s difficulties must have spread like wildfire through the town. There were at least fifty people, by Luke’s reckoning, gathered around the steamer yelling at Neddy, the first mate, who was yelling back. His words, however, were lost in the uproar from the crowd. And then a rock, thrown by someone on the dock, hit him squarely on the chest. He abruptly closed his mouth and awkwardly fell back.
More rocks flew then. Luke could see Flea Mullen cowering behind the shelter of the wheelhouse. The shouting from the crowd grew louder, and then they surged forward, scrambling onto the deck of the steamer. Two stout men picked Neddy up by the arms and legs and threw him onto the dock. Flea was apparently unwilling to wait for similar treatment. He jumped into the water. Luke could only hope that he knew how to swim, for his abrupt departure was unnoticed by anyone else.
One of the stout men was apparently the leader of the mob, for he now stepped forward and addressed the captain. “You have infringed upon the rights of a rightfully ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church,” he bellowed. “And you have denied fellow human beings any comfort in death. You’ll not recover your ship, sir, until you undertake to remedy the situation.”
The captain shifted from foot to foot uneasily. “Bloody dogans,” he muttered under his breath. Father Higgins merely looked stunned by the turn of events.
“I think we can all agree that Father Higgins has a right to search out lost relatives, but this isn’t the way to assure that right.” The voice came from behind Luke, and he turned. But by then even more people had gathered, whether from curiosity or because they wished to join the fray, and he had no way of telling who had spoken, although he recognized several members of the Board of Health, several other steamer captains, and a handful of ministers of various faiths.
The captain had also turned at the sound of the voice. “Now we’ll get some satisfaction,” he said. “Mayor Kirkpatrick, you can see for yourself that these ruffians have seized my vessel. What are you going to do about it?”
Just then a rather large number of uniformed soldiers came marching down the street. The mayor had called in the army.
These were well-disciplined troops from nearby Fort Henry. As soon as they reached the wharf they fanned out to enclose both the wharf and the ship, bayonets fixed and pointed menacingly at the crowd.
“Any man who disperses now will be allowed to proceed peacefully,” Mayor Kirkpatrick announced. “I promise you that this incident will be investigated fully, and a solution found. But in the meantime, you all need to go about your business.”
Luke noticed that two of the ministers moved up to stand beside Kirkpatrick, as if to lend support to this statement. Several gentlemen, businessmen from their appearance, followed suit. One of the steamer captains spat noisily onto the dock.
The crowd who had seized the ship stood stock still for a moment, as if weighing their options, and then slowly three of them moved to the gangplank and descended to the dock. It was enough to galvanize their compatriots, and one by one they left the ship and melted away through the forest of bayonets. The last to leave was the stout man who had addressed the captain. The spectators on the wharf departed, as well. Neddy, the first mate, lay groaning on the dock, but no one paid him any mind, least of all his captain.
“I want satisfaction for this.” Again, the captain addressed Kirkpatrick directly, and Luke wondered if there was a prior acquaintanceship that would impact on the consequences of this melee.
“That’s a shame, because you’re not likely to get it,” Kirkpatrick said. Whatever claim the captain thought he might have was to be denied him.
Instead Kirkpatrick turned to the constable. “I’ll leave you to sort this out,” he said. “Sit the captains and the Father down and come up with some sort of a solution that will suffice for the future. I don’t want to hear any more of it.”
“And the men who seized the boat?” the constable asked.
“I gave a promise of impunity, and I mean to keep it. This town is like a tinderbox as it is. The last thing we need is to deliberately ignite it with heavy-handed retribution.”
“Help! Help me!” The cry was punctuated by noisy splashing. Flea could not swim after all, apparently. Luke rushed to the side of the wharf. Mullen was clinging to the bow of the ship, but was unable to gain a secure handhold, so was at intervals bobbing beneath the surface of the water. The captain, who had re-boarded his ship, ambled over and threw a barrel into the water. Luke made to help pull him in, but the captain stopped him. “He can paddle himself to shore, the cowardly bastard. He’s unlikely to drown as long as he has something to hang on to.”
Flea clung to the barrel, but seemed confused about what to do next.
“Kick your feet!” Luke called. “Go between the docks and you can get ashore.”
Mullen finally seemed to understand that he needed to propel himself to where the shore sloped down to meet the water. As he kicked away from the ship, he nearly lost his grip on his lifeline as it bobbed up and down and slowly began to turn. Luke was able to read only ILLERIES, TORONTO before Flea clutched the barrel more firmly and steered his way to land.
Father Higgins had by then entered into what appeared to be a very earnest discussion with the mayor and the constable, and Luke judged that his small part in the drama was at an end. It was time he returned to the sheds anyway. With all the new arrivals that afternoon, the Sisters would be struggling to keep up with the work.
As he left the wharf he realized that the crowd that had gathered had well and truly dispersed, frightened no doubt by the presence of the soldiers. Kirkpatrick’s quick action had effectively prevented a riot, but it was a reflection, Luke supposed, of the tensions that had arisen from the influx of so many poor and sick newcomers. He was not sure how many had passed through Kingston’s sheds, but he guessed that it must number in the thousands, the tally rivalling the number of people in the town itself. And Kingston was but one port. How many fevered thousands could Canada be expected to minister to?
As it turned out, Father Higgins’s inquiries had been a wasted effort. When Luke entered the shed where Dermot Mullen had been bedded down, in a space at the end of the bunks, there stood the man who Luke knew to be Pierce Mullen. Higgins returned a few minutes later.
“Pierce! I’ve been looking for you!” The priest greeted Mullen with a grin. They were obviously old friends.
“Father Higgins! Oh, now I know Dermot’s in good hands, with you here.”
“Dermot is in God’s hands, as is every other poor soul in here,” said the priest. “But, yes, I’ll do my best by him.”
“You could start by finding him a real bed. I thought he was being taken to a hospital, not a cattle shed.”
“The hospitals are full. Everywhere is full. No one expected this, and no one was ready for it. I hear you’ve found Florence, though, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? You can help each other out. A new start in a new country for the three of you, eh?”
There was a puzzled expression on Pierce’s face, as if he was trying to work out how Father Higgins knew that the brothers had been reunited.
For some reason, Luke hoped that Higgins wouldn’t let slip the source of his information. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he had interrupted, either on the Toronto waterfront or at the brewery. But Luke was sure that Flea hadn’t been pleased with his appearance at either.
He noticed that the buckets beside the stove were empty again, so he decided to haul some water and leave speculation about the Mullen brothers for another time. Besides, he felt awkward overhearing the conversation between the priest and Mullen, as though he were intruding in some way. The exchange had been full of implication and innuendo.
It was so crowded in the shed that he had to tiptoe over Dermot and shoulder past Pierce and Higgins in order to get to the buckets. Pierce turned right around in order to get out of his way, and then he seemed to freeze. Luke realized that he was staring at a patient a few rows away. It was John Porter, who stared back wide-eyed for a moment, then turned over and drew his blanket closer around him.