Minor Corruption (6 page)

“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.

Marc was the last to arrive for the meeting in
Robert’s chamber. Already there and seated were Robert; Francis
Hincks, Robert’s good friend and next door neighbour; Robert
Baldwin Sullivan, his law partner and cousin; and Dr. William
Baldwin, his father. Marc said his ‘good mornings’ and slipped into
his customary chair. This was to be a political strategy meeting,
one in which final plans were to be made for bringing those
Reformers in the south-western part of the province up to speed on
the proposed merger of the radical French and English parties.
Recent correspondence indicated that there were several holdouts
and at least two naysayers among the leading Reformers down there,
and a decision had to be made soon as to how this possible
impediment to their plans might be dealt with.