Canada and Ireland, 1847-8

Synopsis

Emer Nugent and her remaining family face new challenges in the hellish Grosse Ile, where the steerage passengers from the coffin ships are simply left to die. Has her lover Dalton Randolph committed the ultimate betrayal, or has he himself been duped by those he trusts most? 

Even when Emer and Dalton are finally reunited, the thunderous tide of revolutionary history threatens to sweep away any chance of happiness they might have. 

Rating: Moderately explicit, outside the context of marriage.

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Chapter One

Though it had nearly broken her heart to leave her dearest love Dalton behind on board the Pegasus in the St Lawrence river, Emer knew the pitiful remnants of her family needed her. The Nugents had always stayed together through thick and thin. Though there were few enough of them left now after the dreadful voyage they had endured from Ireland, Emer was not about to give up hope. Anything she could do for her brother Cormac, her father, and their other comrades who had travelled with her to Canada from Dublin, she would do, no matter what the cost to herself. And at least she had Joe the stowaway and her young brother Cathan to help. 

Emer’s arrival at Grosse Ile on the fourteenth of August marked the beginning of a nightmarish four month sojourn there, during which time her struggle for survival on board the Pegasus faded from memory as she was forced to deal with one crisis after another.

Once Emer, Joe, Cathan, and Emer’s five small nieces and nephews awakened from their brief sleep on the beach, she went up to the square of the tiny village on the island and made enquiries at the third class hotel, the best they could possibly afford under the circumstances. To her horror, she was told that there were no vacancies, and probably wouldn’t be any for at least the next three days, when they hoped another steamer might arrive to take more passengers off the island. 

But Emer was also informed by the girl behind the desk that the steamer service was very irregular, and always unpredictable. 

She and Joe then wandered wearily from place to place on the island, searching for somewhere they could provide shelter for the children away from the contagion which pervaded the island. The stench of death was all around them, and corpses stacked up like cordwood. 

They soon found that nearly all the accommodation set aside for the so-called ‘healthy’ people was so crowded and primitive that Emer couldn’t bring herself to leave the children there, for to do so would mean certain death from infection. 

She and Joe scoured the island for a possible place to live until rooms at the hotel could be secured. Eventually, Emer took note of a huge tree with several parallel branches.

"Emer, you can’t be serious! We can’t live in a tree house!"

"But Joe, we can’t have the children sleeping on the ground, nor can we stay in the other quarters. You saw for yourself, they are dying by the dozens of fever and the flux, and there are all sorts of thieves and desperate people down there. 

"At least here, deep in the woods, we will be on our own, and the children will be safe and far away from infection. We can cook and go to the toilet down here, and there is even a small stream which seems to be running clear. We can find an old bit of sail for a roof. I’m sure we can find some planks of wood to stretch across the branches, and with a few sort of steps up the trunk, it will be just fine," Emer argued persuasively. 

"But the children, they might roll out of it and be killed!"

"We’ll just have to make sure they sleep between the two of us then, and we can put a rail around the edge of it just to make sure."

"I think you are mad. Who ever heard of living in a tree!"

"Well, have you seen any better place? There are those few caves, but they’re damp and cold, and that last one we saw was full of people with consumption. Look, I will go to the hotel every day to ask for a room, but until we get one, can you please help me build us a place to live?"

The next two days were spent trying to arrange things so the children would be safe and secure. Emer and Joe cadged an old sail which they slung across one of the upper branches, and begged some wood and a hammer and nails from one of the coffin makers, who was quite sympathetic when Emer explained what she needed the things for. 

"Surely you can have the things, so long as you make sure you bring the tools back. We have to pay attention to the living. The dead won’t miss a coffin, not where they’re going."

By the end of the second day they had a habitable house, and Emer was grateful for her foresight, for that night a huge storm pelted the island with rain. Emer was sure they would have all become soaked to the skin with the mud and human waste that had washed down to the low lying settlements where the so called healthy people were encamped, polluting their clothes and bedding and creating a breeding ground for disease and insects.

"It’s like a giant cesspool," Joe grunted in disgust the following morning as they returned to small town to begin their search for Emer’s family.

"Horrible, isn’t it. But at least the children are safe. Cathan will look after them and I must just go see if I can find some milk for Saoirse."

"Hadn’t we better find you family first?"

"I wish we could, but we can’t leave Cathan and the children without food. I’ll buy it, you take it back with you, and while you’re gone I’ll carry on looking," Emer proposed.

"Oh no, we’re not splitting up. I’m not having you set upon by robbers or worse. No, we stay together," Joe insisted firmly, taking her arm to lead her away from a drunken brawl that had just broken out in front of one of the tents.

Once in the general store, Emer was dismayed the high cost of the little poor quality food available, and as for medicines, they were virtually non- existent. She bought some bread and cheese for the children’s breakfast and lunch, and milk for Saoirse in a small bottle with a cork in it. She also purchased a small slab of bacon and a jar of baked beans for their supper that night.

Then they walked back to the tree house in the forest, and left the food with Cathan, along with instructions to get the two boys, Oisin and Daig, to look for firewood and not stray too far from their new home, while the girls Ailbhe and Blinne could fetch water and take turns looking after their tiny cousin. 

Returning to town, Joe and Emer then began their long and horrible search to find their family and friends. 

They searched tent after tent, all filled with the dead and dying. Their quest yielded some of the men from Kilbracken, including Mr. O’Reilly, but of her family and other friends there was no sign. Emer fought back her growing sense of fear. Surely they couldn’t all be dead already!

At last Emer spotted Aine Flanagan in an upper bunk in the tenth tent she found

"Thank God you’re still alive. My family. Do you know what happened to them?"

"I think they got taken to the old passenger shed," Aine gasped weakly. 

"I’ll try there, and if I can I’ll come back for you," Emer nodded. 

She and Joe waded through the dead and dying until they eventually found her father lying just inside the open door of the shed, with two other men crushed up against him. Both were raving. 

At the end of the room were Cormac and Ailis. Emer and Joe moved them out of the stinking corner where they lay helplessly. The shed was full of refuse and without any ventilation, so they brought the two patients forward to the open doors of the building.

"Garvan, Oran, where are they?" she asked her brother.

"Try those tents up the back," Cormac pointed feebly.

Garvan and Oran were on opposite sides of one of the makeshift tents made out of old sails. The ground where Garvan lay had become saturated in the deluge the previous night. He was shivering uncontrollably, and Emer and Joe struggled to move him as he began to rave.

"Emer, Emer, stop a minute!" Joe commanded, dropping the raving man’s feet. "Where are you going to put Garvan even if you move him? There’s nowhere! Each place is as bad as the next, and if we take him out into the wild, there are no nurses or anything else. At least if they are here they’re getting regular food and water," Joe pointed as he saw bowls of thin gruel being served to the sick people.

"We need to keep them all together, and I think we should also try to do something for our friends from Kilbracken. The first mate must be here somewhere, and I promised Aine we’d go back for her. Can we see if there is any place in one of the tents with beds?"

"You’ve seen the tents yourself, Emer. It’s chaos inside. We have no place to put them."

"They’re dying by the dozens, Joe. They can’t clear the bodies out fast enough. If there is room in one of the tents due to that, we can put them in there. At least they won’t be laying in the mud and filth," Emer urged.

"All right, you win, but put your handkerchief over your face, and put your gloves on as well. I’m not letting you go back in there without at least those basic precautions," Joe insisted.

Emer and Joe pushed into the tent where they had found the six Kilbracken men, carrying Ailis between them, and managed to find a bed for her that had just been made empty by the death of its previous occupant.

"Just throw her in," the scar faced nurse whom Emer recalled from a few days previously, indicated.

"But the straw is filthy, and the sheets and pillow...." Emer argued.

"You don’t take it, others will," the nurse said rudely, and stalked away.

Emer stripped the straw off the slats impatiently, and then lay her sister down on the bed. Come on, we’ll go get Cormac next. There is just enough room for him as well."

By the end of the following day, Emer had managed to get all her friends and family into the same tent at least, so that she and Joe didn’t have to keep wasting valuable time walking round and round the camp to tend to their needs. Now Emer set about trying to make them more comfortable. She and Joe searched for clean straw, and even managed to find some sheets.

"They were donated by the nuns down river, but we have no beds to put them on," one young priest shrugged. "They get full of filth if they are laid on the bare ground, and no one has much time to do any washing around here."

"My friend and I will help with the washing and cooking," Emer volunteered, but the priest shook his head.

"I know you mean well, child, but it won’t make any difference. They are all dying."

"Father, please let me try."

"There’s no money to even pay you."

"I have to nurse my family anyway. If you find me hot water and soap and a washtub and board, and show me where the kitchens are, Joe and I shall do it."

The priest introduced himself as Father Moylan, and reluctantly agreed, "I’ll speak to Doctor Douglas and see what I can do for you."

The tent was about sixty feet long, with two rows of bunk beds stretching down the length of it. In each bunk, two or sometimes even three people were crammed, of mixed sexes and ages. Emer was appalled to find that the wooden slats were so ill fitting that the bodily wastes from the patients fell between the cracks and onto the poor souls below. 

The dysentery patients were particular cause for concern in this respect, as were the fever patients, since the few basins in the ward were woefully inadequate to keep up with the need as the dozens of patients wretched everywhere.

"If we turn them round, head to toe, it won’t land on their faces," Emer said grimly to Joe, as they moved her father Liam while there was a brief lull in the sickness that rained down from above.

"I never imagined things could be worse than on the ship, but this is appalling," Joe shook his head.

"At least they do get soups, gruel and tea, though poor devils, they can hardly keep it down," Emer sighed.

After they tidied up and fed their patients, Emer and Joe went outside to their new laundry area, where they boiled and scrubbed the sheets and pillowcases in a tin bath over a makeshift fireplace Joe had rigged up with some bricks.

"I only wish we could wash ourselves," Emer remarked as she worked. 

"So do I, but there’s no chance of that around here unless you plan on stripping off naked in front of the entire camp."

"And we can’t even go swimming in that huge lovely river because it’s so damned filthy. Perhaps a hotel room will become available for us soon," Emer hoped.

"Or maybe we can take a trip to the lumber yard they’ve rigged up, and put a wall around this area so no one will see you," Joe joked.

But Emer took him seriously, and asserted, "That’s the best idea I’ve heard in days. Finish that, and let’s go."

Emer’s trip to the lumber mill was an enlightening one in may ways, for she saw many of the emigrants still trapped on the island because of the lack of steamers and money to pay for passage were working for only food to chop down trees and saw the wood into planks for coffins, and into firewood. She could see that some of the men were very highly skilled, and asked one of them, a tall skeletal man called Kevin, if the men could make wooden bowls and cups and sick basins.

"Sure we could, but who would pay for it?"

"How much would you want?" Emer bargained.

"A pound will get you three dozen of each," Kevin said desperately.

"In that case, let me have five batches, and here is the five pounds. When they are ready, deliver them to the first tent in the row on the far left, and make sure you share out the money fairly with the men who help you."

"I will, miss. There’s twenty of us here who’d be happy to help for five shillings each."

After Emer and Joe had brought their wood back to the tent and set up their laundry shed, Emer then went to the healthy emigrant’s settlement in an attempt to find any women who would be willing to help with the washing. Father Moylan had promised that he would earmark a few pence from his Sunday donations to pay for the much needed service and supplies.

Once there, Emer was horrified to encounter several women from Kilbracken who she had assumed were safely in Quebec leading happy new lives.

"We never got there. The launch which took us off the Pegasus that day did nothing but circle the island and dump us here. Mr. Randall may have given us money on the ship, and seemed kind and generous, but I heard the pilot say it was his orders that we were abandoned here." Marion Lacy spat on the ground to express her feelings over the whole affair. "We’ve been dying by the dozen, and there’s no medicine to be had anywhere for love nor money."

Emer was horrified at what she had learnt of the fate of the women on the steamer, and resolved that when she got the opportunity, she would write to Dalton to ask him about the matter. She had up until then been terribly suspicious of Dalton’s father Frederick, but now she began to have uncomfortable doubts about Dalton’s sincerity. 

Could he have been just pretending all that time that he was helping them, in order to lure me off the ship, to use me, treat me like a possession? Emer wondered, her stomach churning. I loved him, but he has done nothing but betray me, betray us all. 

Emer thought she would faint, but Marion caught her tightly by the arm and steadied her. 

Marion Lacy looked at her white face and asked, "Why have you come here, anyway, Emer? You aren’t ill yourself, are you?"

Emer explained about her family, and their circumstances on the island, and then asked, "Will you and some of the others come to clean and scrub? Perhaps I can get you some work in the kitchens if I ask Father Moylan."

"Aye, I will. Anything is better than sitting around waiting to die."

Soon Emer had a small army of women helping around the tent in various capacities, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and distributing food to the any who needed it for a few pence a day.

But conditions continued to deteriorate in the tent, until at the end of the second week, two of her five acquaintances from Kilbracken had died, and the patients were all forced to lie three in a bed as more victims came off the ships still anchored off shore. Emer was just about at the end of her tether, when fate took a hand to assist her.

The scar faced nurse, Miss Temple, had tolerated Joe and Emer’s efforts regarding the laundry, food and wooden vessels made by the carpenters at best. But she had seen their nursing of her family and friends, and various efforts to proffer advice, as interference, and a gross affront to her person. No matter how hard they tried to be friendly towards her, she completely ignored them. 

Emer blamed her lax approach to work and callous attitude to the patients’ sufferings as the primary causes of the high rate of mortality in the other patients in the tent, and wished that by some miracle they might get a better nurse.

Emer got her wish, though not quite in the way she might have hoped. One day, just as Doctor Douglas came in for his daily medical inspection, Miss Temple pitched forward and began to spew violently, and the Doctor laid her out on her pallet in the corner.

"Damn, that’s the fourth nurse today," he muttered.

"Can you get another?" Emer asked. 

The doctor frowned. "No nurse wants to come here. We can pay them only three shillings per day, and there is nothing but filth and risk," he sighed as he bustled through the tent.

"My brother Joe and I will do it, then. Please hire us as the new nurses for this tent. Many of them are my family and friends anyway, and we could use the money to support the younger children in our care."

The doctor’s eyebrows raised, and he began to refuse her offer.

Emer persisted, "But you said yourself that you are short of nurses. Let us take over this tent from Miss Temple."

"I seem to have seen you somewhere before," the doctor said suddenly.

"I’m Miss Emer Nugent. I met you a few weeks ago for the first time. I was with Mr. Randall who gave you a donation, when we came off the Pegasus to look for food. My family are all here in this tent. I’m nursing them anyway, so if you would be willing to pay us I promise we shall do my best for all the sick."

"Very well, Miss Nugent. I’ll fetch you an apron each, and here, you have to wear this pin to show that you are a member of staff when you collect food for the patients from the kitchen tents." He removed the badge from Miss Temple’s apron and handed it to her, 

"Thank you, Doctor Douglas, you won’t regret this."

"No, but you certainly might have cause to, my child."

Thus Joe and Emer became full time nurses, and Emer set about frantically trying to save the people in her charge. She and Joe organised the patients into separate areas for flux, yellow and black fevers, and made sure that every patient got fresh sheets and clean straw. 

With the help of the poor carpenters, whom they paid out of their own meagre wages, they built wooden partitions between the beds to stop the spread of infection. The carpenters and women workers also helped helped set up another three laundry huts, and washed as many of the patients who could stand it as they could, then wrapped them in sheets while they changed their bedding, scrubbed out the tents, and boiled their clothes and dried them. 

It was exhausting and disgusting work, but by the end of their first week nursing, Emer and Joe were convinced that the number of patients dying had actually begun to decrease. They lost old Mr. O’Reilly that day, but all of Emer’s other comrades from the Pegasus, including the first mate Patrick Bradley, were still alive, and actually showing some signs of improvement.

Doctor Douglas was impressed with Emer’s results when he came in at the end of the day to check on things, and saw that the tent was a model of cleanliness, orderliness and care.

He praise Emer and Joe, but warned, "Make sure you don’t overdo things. Remember to make sure you wear your gloves, wash your hands, and watch what you eat and drink. I’ve just come in to warn you, there’s cholera going around now as well." 

Emer and Joe looked at each other gloomily, and knew that despite their efforts it would only be a matter of time before this new enemy swept through the tent.

The children and Cathan were doing well in the tree house, and Emer managed to keep them fed and clean by doing their own wash in the tubs as well, and bringing the children down once a week in the night when it was quieter to have a hot bath. Emer was very relieved when, at the end of their third week, she went to the hotel to enquire rather hopelessly for a room, and was told that one had just become available. 

She and Joe knew from the tell tale stench of sickness that the previous tenant of the room had died, but she was not about to turn it down on that score. They laboured long into the night taking down bed hangings and curtains, and removing the feather mattresses to replace them with straw ones. 

They found clean sheets in the hotel linen cupboard, and even scrubbed the walls with strong soap and hot water to make sure the room was free from contagion. Emer opened the windows wide to air the room, and the following morning she and Joe moved the rest of the family out of the tree house, and put the boys in bed with Joe and the girls in with herself. 

But unlike the tree house, the hotel cost money, and they also charged extra for a tub to wash in whenever Emer and Joe came off their nursing shifts at night. They were forced to pay for cleaning the room and doing their wash as well. Emer began to grow worried about money, for she and Joe together were only earning two guineas a week, while food and lodgings and the essential baths and wash added up to almost ten pounds.

"We started out with ninety five pounds and now we only have sixty left. According to my calculations, and setting aside the money we need to get up to Quebec in the steamer for all of us, we have about another eight weeks left before we have to leave here, and that is assuming neither of us fall ill and lose our jobs, or that they close the hospitals here and clear the island, " Emer said to Joe at the end of September.

"Well, they aren’t going to close this place until all the ships are in from Ireland, and the people of Quebec certainly don’t want this lot contaminating their streets," Joe reassured her. "We will still have jobs so long as we keep well, but you are looking very tired, Emer and I’m sure you’re not eating."

"It’s that yellow meal pudding they give us all the time. I can’t seem to digest it, the maize is so badly milled," Emer shrugged, and looked back at her dwindling supply of coins distractedly.

"All the same, I think you should rest today. You’ll help no one if you’re sick."

"No, Joe, we can’t afford it, and the sickness is past now. I’ll just give Saoirse her bottle, and then we’ll go to the hospital."

Emer had cause to take her mind off her worries and become more optimistic about her whole situation by the end of that day, the start of Emer’s seventh week on Grosse Ile, for some of the patients did show a great deal of improvement, with no more relapses, and were pronounced fit to leave by Doctor Douglas, who was desperate for the beds. 

"There is a steamer coming tomorrow, so clear out these fourteen here, and get the beds ready for more victims."

"Where are they all coming from?" Joe asked exasperatedly.

"There are still more emigrant ships coming up the river, but with any luck, the season will be over soon, and things will settle down."

Emer became hopeful that her father and Ailis were well enough to be amongst the next to get off the hellish island.

"We can’t leave you here all alone with Cormac, not after all you’ve done. We don’t want to spilt up the family," Ailis argued when Emer broached the subject of them going into Quebec on the steamer to try to find a place for them and the children to live, and maybe even to look for work.

"But the hotel is so expensive, and we are too crowded already. We can’t get another room, there simply aren’t any. If you went to a boarding house in Quebec or found a small house and some work, it would have to be cheaper than us all staying here. You could take the children to the mainland, and Joe and I could give up the hotel room to save money."

"Where on earth would you sleep, Emer?" Liam exclaimed.

"The tree house is still there."

"But the nights are growing colder now. You’d die of exposure," Liam shook his head.

"We still have blankets and some other things, Da. We have to think of what’s best for everyone. Please, go to Quebec, find a place, and then send word to us via the general store of you new address. Then we can arrange to send Cathan and the children over to join you."

"I don’t want to leave Cormac," Ailis argued.

"Ailis, you aren’t strong enough yet to nurse him yourself, not after the baby and the fever. Saoirse is your daughter, not mine. Go with the children to Quebec."

"I haven’t seen her for so long, she might as well be your child, Emer," Ailis grumbled.

"I can’t bring her here because of the risk of disease, as well you know. Please, Ailis, when the next steamer comes, you and Da should get on it."

"I heard it will be in a couple of days, so we can stay here until then, and once Doctor Douglas gives us the certificates, we’ll go," Liam decided.

Emer patted him on the back fondly. "Thanks, Da. That’s a great load off my mind."

But disaster struck the following day, when both Liam and Ailis began to complain of raging thirst, diarrhoea, and terrible stomach pains.

"My God, it’s cholera," Joe groaned.

"Where the hell did it come from? We were so careful!" Emer raged as Joe held her in his arms and tried to calm her.

"Some one from the kitchens was bringing around bread. They must have had the infection on their hands," Joe speculated.

"Good God, you didn’t eat any of it, did you?" Emer exclaimed, wide eyed.

"No, did you?" Joe asked quickly.

"No, I wasn’t hungry. I gave my share to Ailis, and now I’ve damn well killed her," Emer wept.

"Don’t talk like that!" Joe shook her. "Some people do recover. We need some opium. Find Doctor Douglas, ask him for some, and whatever else he thinks we need. And you’d better tell him to caution the kitchen staff about their washing habits."

Emer wandered around the camp in a daze trying to locate the doctor, stumbling over the dead and dying who had succumbed to yet another virulent disease. 

When at last she found Dr Douglas, she got the opium, as well as some lead and red pepper, and dosed the patients every four hours until her supplies ran out. 

Once the medicine was gone, all Emer could do was watch and pray. She held Ailis’ hand as her sister in law begged her in a whisper, "Kiss them goodbye for me, and tell them how much I love them all. And thank you. You tried your best to help me, even though I’ve always been so jealous of you, and so cruel. It wasn’t your fault about my brothers or anything else."

"Save your strength, Ailis. Don’t fret yourself over things that can’t be changed," Emer sniffed.

"I know you’ll look after them all as though they were your own. Now I can go to my grave peacefully,"Ailis whispered, and then breathed her last.

Liam lingered for another few hours after his daughter in law, and said to Emer, "I’ve always been so proud of you, my dear. I’m sorry if it seemed I favoured the boys all these years, but you know what its like with fathers and sons.

"You need to think about the children and your own future. Once Cormac dies, leave this terrible place of death. Don’t stay for the others. Look after yourself and just go. You’ve done enough all these months, on board the ship and now here. 

"You’re still young, you deserve some happiness yourself. Find that man from the ship, Dalton Randall. You loved him, I’m sure. Swallow your pride and take his help, if only for the sake of Cathan and the others. I hate to think of you all alone and unprotected in a strange land, with no one to look after you," Liam counselled his daughter.

"I have Joe. He’ll watch out for me. If things get really bad, we can always go find Brona and Michael," Emer lied, knowing full well that the thousand mile journey was impossible so late in the year, even had they the money for transportation, food and warm clothes.

"Good, that sounds like an excellent plan. But whatever you do, be happy, my dearest daughter," Liam urged. 

Then he closed his eyes, never to open them again.