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 Baldwin 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.”
Perhaps it’s the man’s youthful face, his gentle voice, and smiling demeanour that reassure William. In a moment, the lad is spilling details about his sweats, chills, and headaches.
Dr. Baldwin pulls at his hair with his fingers. It seems to be a gesture that accompanies thought. In a moment or two, he turns to White, “He has all the symptoms of ague.”
“Miss Russell says it’s ague, doctor.”
“And how did the lady come to that conclusion?”
“I think it was the sweats that alerted her first. She’s had them herself over the years. And then, of course, she knows both my lads are regular visitors to the bay and the swamps.”
“Ah, the swamps. That clinches it. These hot days—Indian summer, isn’t it called here?—mean those bloody mosquitoes are still about.” The man runs his fingers through his hair again. “So now we have to find a remedy.” He looks back at William. “I’ll just talk to your father in the hall for a moment while we discuss what we can do for you. But no leeches, remember that, my boy.”
Once outside the door of the bedchamber, Mrs. Page moves down the hallway and Charles descends to the kitchen. Baldwin puts his hand on White’s shoulder and speaks quietly. “There are the opiates—”
“Never.” White raises his voice. “Never.”
“Let me finish, sir. There are the opiates, but I’ll have no part of them even though the quacks of this world recommend them as a cure-all. I spent a few months in the marshy fens of eastern England where every farmer in the countryside grows opium poppies and where every shop in the place sells pills and penny sticks. I saw those opium-eating children, some of them no older than your lad here, caved in and wizened, shrunken into little monkeys. No opiates for William.”
“What, then? Berczy—he’s a German who did some building for me—suggested liquor, but . . .”
“There’s far too much liquor drunk in this backwater.” Baldwin stops with that sentence, but the look he gives White speaks volumes. Again his fingers tear at his hair. “Bark tea, that should work. But where to get it in this place? I haven’t been here long enough to scout out sources.”
Relief floods through White. “Miss Russell, she has some. She used to get it from a merchant in Queenston who brought it in from somewhere, I’ve forgotten where.”
“Ah, this Miss Russell of yours is quite the physician. I must talk to her.” Dr. Baldwin pulls out his pocket watch. “It’s midnight. Hardly the time to disturb the lady in order to get the tea. But it’s urgent. Perhaps we should try—”
Susannah hovers nearby. “We still have the jar Miss Russell left, sir. It’s in the pine cupboard in the kitchen, remember?”
The stress of this evening, coupled with the beer he drank at the garrison, have so befuddled him that he’d completely forgotten.
In a minute, Susannah has measured the powdered bark according to Dr. Baldwin’s instructions and poured boiling water over it. Charles, thank God, is already asleep in the rocking chair by the hearth and does not have to see what comes next.
Back to the bedchamber the three of them go. White raises his son into a sitting position and puts a couple of pillows behind his head to hold him upright. “Now then, William,” he says, “you must drink this tea.”
Dr. Baldwin sits on the bed close to the boy and pushes the steaming cup of tea towards him. “It’s vile,” he says, “but it will make you better.”
William tries a sip and retches.
“Try pinching your nose, lad,” the doctor says. “That way you won’t be able to smell it, and you can get it down.”
It works. Bit by bit, it all goes down.
Dr. Baldwin stands up. “One cup every two hours all night. You should notice a marked improvement in twenty-four hours. I’ll stop by to see how he is tomorrow afternoon.” He moves into the hallway, down the stairs, out the front door, and disappears into the darkness.
White picks Charles up from the rocking chair in the kitchen and carries him along the hall and upstairs to his bedchamber. Best to keep him away from William. He goes back into the kitchen where Susannah has stirred up the fire in the hearth and set a kettle of water to boil.
“Go to bed now,” she says. “I’ll keep watch over the boy until three o’clock, then I shall call you to take my place.”
* * *
Two days later, William sits up in bed, rosy-faced and ready to eat the chops which Susannah has cut up into small pieces for him. After he has devoured them, along with a slice of his favourite bread pudding, White brings in Noah Webster’s spelling book and sits down beside the child’s bed.
“Time now to get caught up with some of the work you have been missing at school.”
“Oh Papa,” William says, “I feel so sweaty.” He puts a small hand on his forehead. “My headache is so bad. I have pains in my—”
“Very well, my boy, we’ll let you have more time. But the day after tomorrow, you must start your schoolwork again.”
White takes the speller and the dirty plates down to the kitchen where Susannah, her two little girls, and Charles are just finishing their supper.
“Why are you smiling, Papa?” Charles asks.
“Because William has completely recovered.”