The Halifax Connection (19 page)

“You never went to a boarding school, did you, Matt?”

“No. I never had the misfortune to be born rich.”

“Touché, my friend. Being rich isn’t a misfortune, I admit. Rich means you have enough to eat. You have coal in the wintertime—”

“My point exactly.”

“But being born an aristocrat—that, Constable Calverley,
is
a misfortune. From one point of view you might as well be born a puppet, with strings on your fingers and strings on your toes, and a whole tribe of puppet masters pulling on them, fathers and
grandfathers and uncles and cousins, the lords of the realm and the lords of the Church, every last one of them telling you what to be, and what to do, and what to think. And from another point of view you might as well be born a bandit, because you can get away with anything as long as you pick your targets with a bit of care. When I got older, and stronger, and stopped being a target myself, that was when I really saw it—saw it as a pattern, not just something that was happening to me.”

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the window ledge. “It’s all hollow, the aristocracy. Like an old iron temple in the woods, glittering and hard, with wind blowing through its cracks and a ton of rubbish inside …”

Silence. With Matt, it was always a comfortable silence. “Is that why you changed your name?” he asked after a bit.

“No. Changing my name was a condition of my departure from England. I killed one of my peers. Not at the school. Later, in London. There was no trial, of course. The scandal would have hurt my family, but it would have been a disaster for his—I would have made sure of it. I knew enough about him and the pack he ran with, I could have wrecked them all, socially and politically—hell, odds are even I could have brought down the government. So it was handled as such things often are among my peers: quietly, behind closed doors. I was told to go away somewhere and never come back. My family agreed to send me money for my support, but only if I changed my name and allowed nothing of the matter to be known, even among my relatives and friends.”

“And what did they tell your relatives and friends? As to what became of you, I mean?”

“The usual sort of thing, I suppose. Touring the colonies, chasing the great auk in Timbuktu. I’m sure there were rumours—very quiet and discreet, of course …
Odd about milord’s son, very odd. Daresay there was trouble there …
Anyway, I picked Shaw because it’s a nice, ordinary name. And I picked Erryn because it sounds enough like Herron I can recognize it even when I’m drunk.
Besides, it suits me. If you asked my father, he’d tell you I’ve been errin’ since the day I was born.”

It was the first time he had spoken so frankly of his past. Matt did not seem particularly surprised. Perhaps he had seen violence often enough, and close enough, that nothing surprised him very much.

“The fellow you knocked on the head,” he asked quietly, “did you mean it?”

“I don’t know. He and his pack were responsible for the death of my dearest friend, a young actor who’d never hurt anyone in his life. It was an ugly business. They…. Oh, Christ, never mind. It was unforgivable, that’s all. And I knew the villain would never be prosecuted, because his mates would all say he was somewhere else. He wouldn’t fight me—couldn’t, really. His sight was terrible; he wouldn’t have known his mother at twenty paces. But the worst of it was, he didn’t care, Matt. He said it wasn’t his fault, who could have guessed the little libertine would die? He told me to sit down. He had some capital Madeira, fresh off the ship—or would I prefer a tincture of laudanum, I was looking a bit shaky? I put him through the fourth-storey window.”

“Witnesses?”

“Two. Both of them his mates. It doesn’t matter. They’ve as much reason as anyone to let the matter die—and they have, as far as I know.”

“But they didn’t try to stop you?”

“They didn’t have time.”

“God almighty. You’re dangerous, for a scarecrow.”

Chalk it up to an Eton education.
“Have you ever heard of berserkers, Matt?”

“As in crazy people?”

“No. As in the old stories—the chaps who’d wear bear skins to be stronger and fiercer than ordinary men, and who’d keep fighting with an arm chopped off, or their guts hanging out, and never even notice … It was something like that … that kind of passion.
Not madness. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I remember it well enough. But I think his two friends would have needed knives to stop me. Afterwards, they just stood aside and let me walk out the door.

“So did I mean it? To tell you the truth, I really don’t know. I don’t even know how I feel about it now. Most times I regret it. I wish I hadn’t taken any man’s life. But once in a while … once in a while I think of what he did, and how he’ll never do it again, not to anybody, ever … and then I’m not so sure.

“In any case …” He filled his wineglass and emptied it. “In any case, it’s hardly the sort of thing I should be discussing with a police constable, now, is it?”

Matt shrugged. “Listen, mate, they judged you in England as they saw fit. Far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it. Besides, standing up for a wronged friend ain’t the worst reason for breaking the law, not by a sorry sight.”

“Well.” Erryn raised his glass. “Thank you for that.”

Matt’s return salute was an unspoken promise. He would not judge Erryn Shaw—not on this. Maybe on something else one day, some other bad mistake. But not on this. He settled back in his chair, crossed his boots, picked briefly at a strand of torn upholstery.

“So,” he mused. “You’re a genuine aristocrat, then? A real one? The kind that stand around getting their portraits painted in fur coats and silly wigs?”

“The same.”

“And what would you be if you still … if you still were what you was? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Erryn thought for a bit before he answered.

“Just between us, then? Word of honour? This is not something I want bandied around the taverns.”

“Word of honour, mate. Your secret will die in my stomach.”

“I’m the son of an earl, and an heir to the throne—very far down the line, but an heir nonetheless. Count back through all my great-greats and you’ll eventually find William the Conqueror.”
He took another long, meditative drink. “Just think of it, Matt. If enough people were to keel over and die on the same day, I could be king of England.”

“Now there’s a terrifying thought.”

“Especially to me. Which is why I’m in the absurd position of having to pray often and earnestly for the good health of my kin … quite a few of whom I thoroughly detest.”

“Very sad,” Matt agreed. “And here I thought being born a bastard in a Halifax brothel was bloody hard luck. It’s all relative, isn’t it?”

In the silence that followed, Erryn could hear the rattle of a late night carriage fading down the hill, and the soft, maddening tick of a clock across the room.

“There must be times,” he said finally, “when you’d like to empty a keg of beer on my head and throw me out in a snowbank.”

“No,” Matt said. The smile on his face was warm, affectionate, utterly genuine. “Why should I do that? I’d lose my best friend. And anyways, I was only partly joshing you. I think it really
is
relative, most of it. There’s only so much a body can hurt without dying, doesn’t matter who you are. Bottom is bottom. I’ve been hungrier and colder and scareder than you ever dreamt of, probably, but I’d be a sorry damn fool to say I’d been further down. There’s a whole lot of different handbaskets a man can go to hell in.”

“That’s true. Wooden ones, iron ones, pretty purple paper ones—”

“Oh, Christ, forget I mentioned it.”

They laughed and clinked their glasses, and decided that five-thirty in the morning was far too late to be going to bed and far too early to do anything that might require rational thought and attention; therefore the only sensible thing to do was open another bottle.

Erryn would always remember it as the warmest, most companionable drunk of his life.

T
HE BELLS
of Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours had rung their long, melancholy summons and fallen still. Erryn sat on a rock a small distance away, his arms wrapped around his knees. Memories of Sylvie Bowen whispered across his mind: her rare bits of laughter, her North Country speech, the flash of hunger in her eyes when he offered to take her to the concert; the first shocking image of her face, turned full into the sun. So honest, that gesture, and so brutal, shredding all his fantasies like paper. The pretty sylph he had admired on the street two days ago was gone forever. In her place was a woman close to thirty, wounded and wary.

A woman who still fascinated him. This he reflected on as well: his own fascination, and her remarkable ability to kindle it merely by existing. He wanted to untangle all the contradictions he saw in her: the decorum of the house servant, the toughness that spoke
to him of something rather different—of waterfront taverns, perhaps, or Lancashire’s dark, satanic mills—a toughness not unlike Matt’s, self-contained and unapologetic. He wanted to talk to her for hours, to buy her exquisite dinners and take her to the theatre. He wanted to see her laugh, really laugh, full-hearted and joyous, for the sheer wild wonder of being alive.

He thought of these things, and all the while he thought of them he remembered yesterday at the Morrisons’, the two experiences reflecting off each other like light in mirrors—or, perhaps, like ricocheting billiard balls, veering into unexpected corners as they struck. He was not so naive as to imagine that Sylvie Bowen’s life was a haven of innocence and honesty, and yet, remembering the party, he found himself waiting for her as for a clean summer rain.

Certainly the party had been a success; he had accomplished everything he intended, even a first meeting with the Irish importer Daniel Carroll. Still, an air of unpleasantness remained with him, a deep distaste for some of the men he had encountered there, and equally, a measure of discomfort with his own manipulations and lies. And then there was Edmund Morrison’s collection. It had come just after suppertime, the host at the head of his table, the whole long grace of it shimmering with candles, the taste of superb food and wine still lingering in everyone’s mouth, and Morrison reminding them of the poor Southern refugees, the escaped prisoners, the brave soldiers who longed to return to the battlefield. Money poured into his silver tureen like wine.

English money. A fine fat wad of it from Erryn Shaw’s hand.

This was, of course, a legitimate expenditure for a spy, and indeed a familiar one. All such generosity bought Erryn status, credibility, trust. He was always quick to offer boat tickets, rent money, meals; gifts to ragged men from Johnson’s Island shivering in the cold.
Here, for God’s sake, buy yourself a coat.
He begrudged none of them food or shelter; they were not, after all, the men who had started the war. But he begrudged the Confederacy
every man he helped to send back into its armies, and he begrudged in particular the good English money that paid for it. It was blood money, plain and simple, and more and more he disliked the smell of it on his hands.

So he waited for Sylvie Bowen with impatience—far too much impatience for a sensible, grown-up man. The clamorous rue St-Paul was quieter than usual. Most of its traffic was pedestrian, and most of its shouting came from street vendors selling food: meat pies, fruit, chips in little pockets of newspaper. He noticed a carriole swing by, driven rather too fast, he thought, for a narrow Sunday street, but he paid no particular attention until he heard the crash, and the great stream of shouts and yelps and curses that came after.

A hundred feet away an old cart lay tumbled on its side, its small, bony horse pulled down with it. The vehicle had obviously been overloaded, and its load was now rolling across the cobblestones: turnips and potatoes, hundreds of them, scattering willy-nilly like brown and yellow cricket balls. Dozens of strangers were stopping to gather them; others, equally numerous, stuffed as many as possible into their satchels or their clothing and fled. Curses flew in at least three languages and four directions, and dogs and running children chased after the tumbling vegetables as though it were all a game.

Erryn unwound himself from his rock and went to help, as much from boredom as from any belief that he would be of use. And indeed, all he managed to save was one small turnip and the cart driver’s ruined hat, in return for getting his ribs elbowed and his left foot thoroughly tramped on.

But he did see a carriage some distance back, a very fine carriage, waiting for the street to clear, and he was swept by a sudden, astonishing rush of happiness.

What a fool I will feel if it is someone else.

But it was not. The carriage stopped beside the church and he watched Sylvie Bowen step down with the same easy grace as
before, watched her take the old woman’s arm and lead her slowly to the church steps. Her face was half hidden by her hair, and all her attention was fastened on her companion. She did not look for him. On the contrary, it seemed that she purposefully avoided looking for him. Nor did she come out of the church again for several eternal minutes, and then slowly, idly, as any servant might who had an hour to herself and was wondering how she might spend it.