They drove at a brisk trot west along King Street, Dora and the twelve-year-old messenger. Fortunately a near full moon provided sufficient light for them to keep to the middle of the wide, rutted street. On either side the houses and shops rose up dark and inhospitable. It was October and there was a chill in the air, but Dora was accustomed to night travel. Her capacious wool shawl was gathered around her, and the lad kindly placed a buffalo-robe over her knees. He said nothing, however, and Dora refrained from probing him for any further information because she knew from experience that those involved in these emergency runs, however peripheral, were anxious and often confused. She would, as usual, wait for her arrival at the scene to assess the situation as she found it.
They turned north up Yonge Street and passed the British-American coffee house, where the eerie moon-shadows now changed shape. At Newgate they swung west again. Dora could smell the stink from the tannery there, and farther along she could see the red glow from a foundry furnace. At Brock Street they turned north. The pony was panting now, exhaling huge skeins of visible breath. The boy brushed him with a whip, and he stepped up the pace once more. Where Brock Street ended at Queen (formerly Lot Street), they met the bush road that led northwest to Spadina. Here they entered the forest, and if it had not been for the moon, they would have had to have moved at a snail’s pace and, even then, have relied on the pony’s instincts to keep them on track.
Soon they began to jounce and lurch as the roadbed roughened, but Dora, who often boasted of it, had been supplied by her Maker with a pair of comfortable rear-side cushions for the sole purpose of absorbing such shocks on missions of mercy in His name. Still, she was glad when, about a quarter-mile from Spadina, they veered to the right onto a washboard path just wide enough to accommodate the buggy. Several bumpy minutes later they rumbled across the log-bridge that spanned the stream used by the miller to power his machinery (Trout Creek the locals called it). They rattled past a distant, shadowy farmstead, then the tall, moonlit mill and the mill-race. Soon they were on open ground, where they had to move at a walk to avoid being upset. Fortunately a straggle of workers’ shanties was soon silhouetted against the northwest sky.
“It’s the first house,” said the boy. “Mr. Thurgood’s.”
“I’ll walk from here, laddie. Here’s a thrupenny piece fer yer good work. May the Lord bless you.”
“Thank you, mum,” the boy said. Then he slumped forward and began sobbing. “Oh, poor, poor Betsy.”
“I’ll see she’s all right,” Dora said, stepping down and reaching back for her bag. “You wait here, will ya? ‘Least fer a little while.”
The boy nodded, wiping his cheek with his sleeve.
She left him there and stepped towards the house, trying not to shudder at what she might be facing.
***
“Oh, thank God you’ve come!” cried Auleen Thurgood as Dora pushed her way into the kitchen. “Betsy’s bad. Real bad.”
“You took yer time, woman,” was Burton Thurgood’s opening remark.
Before saying a word, Dora took a quick look at the Thurgoods. She liked to size up the home situation before she went to the patient, mainly to get a sense of whether they would be a help or a hindrance. Auleen would be of little use, Dora could see right away. She was a scrawny woman with big, frightened eyes who resembled nothing more than a mouse trying to shrivel itself into a corner where it might find a moment’s safety. Pale, almost sickly, she was wringing a pair of bony hands in her filthy apron. Thurgood himself was another matter. He was neither tall nor burly, but rather had the physique of many mill-hands: strong and wiry with outsized hands and bunched muscles – like a lynx preparing to spring. But where many a mill-hand effected the downcast expression of one destined to follow orders, Thurgood had bold, black eyes and a mass of curly, black hair that dared anyone, boss or toff, to knock the chip off his shoulder.
“Where’ the lass?” Dora said to Auleen, brushing by the surprised husband with practised ease.
“In there,” Thurgood snapped.
“Get that fire stirred up, mister. We’re likely to need lots of hot water. And you, ma’am, can find me some clean cloths.”
With that Dora entered the bedroom that Auleen had indicated.
“We can’t pay ya much!” Thurgood shouted after her.
The room was dark, its window being in the north and away from the moonlight. A single tallow-candle, set in a dish on an apple-box, offered the only illumination. Betsy was lying on a pallet on the floor, groaning and twisting about in a delirium of pain. And she was just a girl, Dora thought, as she knelt beside her. Beneath the sweat-smeared shift, her only covering, her breasts were little more than swollen nubs. She had kicked off a ragged quilt in her misery.
“It’s gonna be all right, luv. Missus Cobb is here.”
Betsy’s response was a groan and a clenching of her teeth. Dora placed a hand on the girl’s forehead. The fever was well advanced, yet her skin looked cold and clammy.
“Let’s have a peek down below,” Dora said. She rolled Betsy gently over until she lay fully on her back, then pried the girl’s legs apart.
Betsy shrieked.
“What the hell are you doin’ to her?” Thurgood shouted from the doorway.
“Go out to the well and bring in cold water,” Dora said sharply. “If I can get this bleedin’ stopped, we’ll have to wrap the lass in cold towels to bring the fever down. Hurry! She’s desperate ill.”
Dora heard a muffled curse, but a moment later the front door opened and then shut with a bang. Auleen came in diffidently with a kettle of hot water and several pieces of cotton material.
“We’ll use them later,” Dora said. “I generally start with my own cloths.” Which are certain to be clean, she did not need to add. “Meantime, you can hold that candle up close.” Tenderly but firmly she began to wipe the blood away from Betsy’s thighs and belly. The girl moaned but no longer thrashed and writhed.
“What’s wrong with her?” Auleen whispered beside Dora, as if speaking too loudly might bring further harm down upon her daughter.
“You don’t know?” Dora said, incredulous.
“Well, I . . . we – ”
Dora pointed to a black puddle on the pallet. “That would’ve been a babe if it had stayed in yer girl’s womb, missus.”
“Oh, but we didn’t know, Missus Cobb!” Auleen cried. “I swear. She ain’t been livin’ here! She only come back to see me through the grippe three days ago. And we knew nothin’ of her bein’ with child until tonight when she – she confessed to us that she might be.”
“And you thought Mrs. Trigger might be able to tell you one way or another?”
Auleen was shaking, trying to hold back her tears. In her eyes Dora could see fear, resignation, and something close to despair. She was a woman on the edge. “But she’s a drunk,” she wailed. “I had to beg Burton to send fer you.”
“But it’s midnight,” Dora said, still swabbing at the dried blood and afterbirth.
Betsy groaned and twisted, and flung her arms outward, in supplication or surrender.
Dora stopped her swabbing, reached into her carpetbag and brought out a small vial. “Bring me a cup of water. We gotta do somethin’ about the pain before it kills her.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, Christ!”
“Go, woman!”
Dora took Betty’s right hand in both of hers. “I’m gonna help ya sit up, dearie, and then I’m gonna give ya some medicine that’ll take the pain away. Think you can swallow it? Fer me?”
Betsy opened her eyes, but her stare was glassy, other worldly. She seemed to be staring at some thing or some one over Dora’s shoulder.
Auleen returned with a cup of cold water. Dora poured half of the water out, then put a tablespoon of laudanum into the cup. Both women then moved to raise Betsy to a sitting position. Dora pulled the girl’s jaw down gently, tipped the contents of the cup into her mouth, and closed it up tight. When Betsy swallowed involuntarily Dora levered her back to the pallet.
“That’ll help the pain,” she said to Auleen. “But she’s still bleedin’. I think we should send fer a doctor. Mr. Smollett is the closest physician, I believe.”
“We can’t afford no doctor!” Thurgood was back, filling the doorway.
“I’ll pay fer him myself,” Dora said. “Do you want yer daughter to live?”
“’Course I do, you stupid woman! But this is my house, and I say we ain’t callin’ in no doctor. It’s you we’re payin’ to save my little Betsy!”
“Then make yerself useful. Soak some blankets in that cold water you brung in. We got to deal with this fever.”
Thurgood clumped away, grumbling as he did so.
“You ought not to get Burton riled up,” Auleen said softly. “He don’t take kindly to bein’ ordered about.”
“Don’t you worry about me, missus. I been handlin’ men like him fer ten years. Now help me keep this cloth pressed up against her. I can’t figure out where this fresh blood is comin’ from.”
“She’s gonna live, ain’t she?”
“That’s up to God as much as us. We can only do what we’re able to. No more.”
After a moment, while they were changing cloths, Dora said, “If the girl just told you tonight about bein’ pregnant, how did this miscarriage come about?”
Auleen didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be mulling over the question. Then she said, “She complained of havin’ pains down there. We thought it was her appendix, but when Burton looked her in the eye, she burst into tears and said she might be in the family way.” Auleen began to weep quietly. “She’s but a child, Missus Cobb. She wasn’t sure. So I convinced Burton we needed you.”
“Well, child or not, she’d remember whether any lad had been at her, wouldn’t she?”
This probe brought on a shower of tears, but Dora waited her out. In a voice barely audible, Auleen said, “She confessed she’d been with a man just once. In August.”
From the look of the abortive foetus, Dora guessed it to be about two months old. She had seen dozens like it during her years of service.
“Did she say who?”
More sniffling. “No. She refused. She got very upset but wouldn’t say who. Then she clutched her belly, and the pain really started comin’.”
“Shut up, woman! You shouldn’t be blabbin’ our family secrets to the whole town!” Thurgood was back, and this time he took two steps into the room carrying a water-soaked blanket. He was careful to keep his eyes averted from the pallet.
“I’m not a gossip, sir. And your comments ain’t helpin’.”
Betsy suddenly began to speak, but the words were slurred and jumbled. Nevertheless, there was an urgency behind them.
“She’s tryin’ to tell us somethin’,” Auleen said. “Sounds like a name of some sort.” She leaned over close to Betsy’s ravaged face. “What is it darlin’? You c’n tell Mama. Who did this to you?”
Behind her, Thurgood dropped the blanket and moved up beside his wife.
Betsy’s entire body began to tremble. Beads of cold sweat seemed to burst out of her fevered skin. She opened her mouth and, thick-tongued, pupils dilated, she uttered her final, desperate words:
“Seamus . . . please . . . Seamus.”
A moment later they all stood stunned and listened to her death rattle. Betsy Thurgood, along with her aborted baby, was dead.
***
Dora laid the quilt over the girl’s fifteen-year-old body. In these circumstances she tried to will herself to remain numb, but it was getting harder and harder as time went on and young women kept succumbing in childbirth or its numerous complications. After a single hair-raising cry, Auleen Thurgood had stumbled out into the kitchen, where her steady sobbing could still be heard.
“No use bawlin’, woman. She’s gone. There’s only us now.”
Dora moved quietly into the main room of the shack. “I’m sorry,” she said. “If I’d’ve got here an hour sooner, I might’ve saved her.”
Thurgood glared at her. His initial response to Betsy’s death had been to let out a long, slow breath, then turn and lurch out of the bedroom.
“How much do you expect to be paid?” he snarled, perhaps letting his anger keep him from feeling something he could not bear.
“Nothin’, sir. I did what I could, and it wasn’t much.”
“You c’n help us out by bein’ a witness,” he said, pinning her with a stare that bordered on madness.
“What do you mean?” Dora said, packing her bag calmly so as not to give him the slightest impression that she was intimidated by him. “I witnessed the girl die, didn’t I?” She felt deeply sorry for both the Thurgoods, but always reserved a special sympathy for the husbands and fathers, who seemed unable to vent their grief in appropriate or satisfying ways. Nonetheless, she was rapidly losing patience with Burton Thurgood.
“She named the man who did this to her, didn’t she?” he seethed, digging his fingernails into his palms. “She called out ‘Seamus’ with her dyin’ breath! And we all know who Mr. Seamus is, don’t we?”
“Don’t be absurd, man. Yer girl was in a fever delirium. She didn’t even know we was in the room. And it sounded to me like she was askin’ for him, not accusin’ him.”
“But you heard my wife ask her who the father was, didn’t you?” He stepped towards her menacingly. “And there’s only one Seamus within miles of here – up at Spadina!”
“Please, calm down. You’re terrible upset. You can’t go around accusin’ someone like Mr. Baldwin just because his name’s Seamus. And you’ll see things different in the mornin’. Now I got to go. I’ll let Dr. Smollett know and he’ll come and sign the death certificate.”
“I don’t need no advice from a butcher like you!”
Dora turned to leave. It was just then that she spotted a familiar object lying beside a stool near the door. She picked it up. It was a ladies’ hat, decorated with red and white beads and topped by a garish, green peacock feather. She turned back slowly, hat in hand.
Auleen gave a little cry and slumped back against the dry sink. Thurgood’s eyes widened, his anger draining quickly.
“I’d know this awful bonnet anywheres,” Dora said, her own anger rising. “This is Elsie Trigger’s hat. Elsie’s already been here – and gone, ain’t she?”
“That’s none of yer business,” Thurgood snapped.
“Midwifin’s my business, sir. And I’ll ask you to tell me what that old quack was doin’ here before me. What did she do to Betsy?”
“She – she come just like you did,” Auleen said in a quavering voice. Terror stood straight up in her eyes. “To see if our girl was in the family way.”
“And you left her alone in there with a naïve little girl?”
“It was just fer a few minutes, wasn’t it, Burt?”
“Now I know why the girl bled to death!” Dora said, seething. “What I saw in there was no miscarriage, though it may have started out as such. It was an abortion. And I know how Elsie Trigger goes about it when she’s in a hurry.”
“We know nothin’ about it!” Thurgood said, his defiance ill-masking his fear. “It was between her and the girl.”
“She come out of that room with a bloody needle in one hand and a five-pound note in the other!” Auleen cried with the last of her strength.
“And I’ve never held a five-pound note in my life!” Thurgood said. “The bitch told us Betsy’d had a miscarriage and everythin’ was fine. And she left.”
“You’re sayin’ that Betsy gave five pounds to Elsie Trigger to abort the babe? I don’t believe it.”
“Why not? You heard what the girl said with her last breath. Seamus Baldwin got her with child and Seamus Baldwin give her five pounds to get rid of it.”
“She went to work up at Spadina at the end of July,” Auleen said. Then she added almost plaintively, “And she ain’t been home once till this time. It’s got to be somebody up there, don’t it?”
Dora heaved a Dora-sized sigh. “I gotta report all this to Dr. Withers, the coroner. You can tell him all this malarkey. But you better be careful who you go accusin’ of what. It was Elsie Trigger who killed yer daughter, not the father of the dead babe. And I’m gonna make sure she don’t kill anybody else.”
With that, Dora turned and left the house. Behind her she heard Thurgood yell, “I’m gonna have vengeance fer my little girl! You’ll see!”
Dora kept on walking. In the moonlight ahead she could see the outline of the buggy and pony. The boy was slumped forward, fast asleep. Just as she reached out to wake him, she heard a door slam behind her, and seconds later, as the boy was slowly waking up, there came an eerie sound of wood being chopped in the dark. Dora had just taken the reins when she was brought up short by a huge, anguished, male cry.
What a world, she thought. What a goddamned world.