Tonight I had yet another burden of responsibility placed upon my shoulders. Catrìona knows she is going to die. How could she not? I had just wrapped up her children in a blanket and stroked their heads until they fell asleep. I turned to find her watching me with big, sad eyes. She reached out to grasp my wrist and whispered, ‘My grandmother always told me that if you save a life you are responsible for it.’ She coughed mucus and sputum into her sheet and took a moment to collect herself. ‘When I’m gone, my baby is yours to care for. My children, too. Do what you can, Sime. There’s no one else.’
I am only eighteen years old. But how could I say no?
*
Yesterday, we slid three more bodies over the rail. All formalities have been dispensed with by now, although I always whisper Calum’s farewell to my father. Even if no one else hears it, I am sure that God is listening.
The weather has improved these last days, and we have been making better speed. I lingered on deck for a while after the burials, and I heard someone shout ‘Land!’ With others, I ran to the rail on the port side and strained to see beyond the swell of the sea. And there in the distance I saw a small group of islands breaking the horizon. A crewman at my shoulder said, ‘Thank God for that. We’ll arrive tomorrow or the day after.’
I felt such a sense of relief I wanted to shout out loud and punch the air. I wanted to be there now. I just wanted all this to end. It is strange how it is possible to hold yourself together when you know there is still a distance to go. But as soon as the end is in sight, somehow all your resolve vanishes and you can barely stagger to the finish.
However, my happiness was short-lived. The crewman said, ‘Don’t get yourself all worked up, son. They’ll not let us through to Quebec City just yet. We’ll be stopped at Grosse Île first. And if you thought this was bad …’ His voice tailed away.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘What’s Grosse Île?’
‘It’s hell on earth, son. An island in the St Lawrence river, just a few miles downstream from the city. We’ll be held in quarantine there. The sick will be treated, and probably die. And the rest of us will be held until they’re sure we’re not sick. Only then will they let us go on.’
I could have wept.
*
It seemed extraordinary to see land on both horizons when we sailed into the mouth of the St Lawrence earlier today. But the opposing banks of it are so distant that they barely blur the line between water and sky. I had no idea a river could be this big.
Everyone who could, crowded on deck to watch our progress upriver, banks drawing in on either side. This was the great continent of North America.
But of the 269 passengers who left Glasgow in steerage, twenty-nine are dead and only 240 of us remain.
It was almost dusk when we sailed past a string of dark islands that loomed out of the stream of the river, to drop anchor finally at Grosse Île. There were eight or ten other tall ships anchored there in the bay, all flying the yellow jack of quarantine. It seems that we have brought all our diseases with us to this new world.
Onshore I could see a collection of long sheds, and woods rising up on the hill behind them. From the wooden pier a long boat set out towards us, water from its oars catching the dying light as it dropped, like liquid silver, back into the stream of the river.
A man came aboard in coat tails and boots and heavy trousers. He wore a hat above a gaunt face with sunken cheeks. One of the crew said to me, ‘That’s the doctor.’
‘Anyone speak English?’ the doctor said.
After a moment I raised my hand. ‘I do, sir.’
‘What language do these people speak?’
‘Gaelic.’
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Our Gaelic translator died two days ago. You’ll have to do it.’ He took several strides towards me and gave me a good looking at. Then opened my shirt and examined my chest. ‘You look healthy enough for the moment.’ He spoke a strange, nasal drawling sort of English. ‘I’m going to have to examine these folk to see who’s sick and needs treatment. The rest of you will be kept in the Lazarettos at the top end of the island.’
‘Lazarettos?’
‘Just huts, son.’ He looked around. ‘I guess the sick are still below deck.’
*
They finally got us all ashore. Ferried on longboats and gathered together on the pier in the dark, lanterns held above us on poles. A collection of miserable souls, dressed in rags, filthy hair long and unkempt, beards tangling on cadaverous faces. Not a single person wore shoes. One man was dressed in a woman’s petticoat, given him by the captain’s wife to hide his modesty. His humiliation was acute.