The Halifax Connection (23 page)

It was almost three when Erryn rapped softly on the door of Jonathan Bryce’s house on rue Ste-Catherine. No one answered. After a long time he rapped again, a good deal harder. It was a fine night, but cold. An icy half moon hung high above the river, and the crisp northwest wind had a taste of winter in its teeth. He was glad of his bulky disguise.

A voice came muffled from behind the door. “Who is it?”

“Todd.”

A grumble followed, perhaps an obscenity or two. Bryce did not let him in immediately. He stared through the half-opened door, a pistol held firmly in his hand.

“Be damned, it is you. What the devil do you want?”

“May I come in?”

Silently, Bryce stepped back, latched the door behind them, and lit a small kerosene lamp in the hall. Its one window, Erryn noted, was carefully draped.

He took an envelope from his pocket. “Sorry to trouble you, Jon, but it’s a message for the governor. It should be sent at once.”

The policeman shoved a long rag of hair out of his eyes. He was in a rumpled nightshirt and he looked worn to crumbs.

“You want me to take this to the telegraph office in the middle of the fucking night?”

“Yes,” Erryn said. “I’m sorry.”

“What is it, anyway? One of your hare-brained raids on Johnson’s Island?”

“It’s information I believe the governor should receive immediately.”

“So take it there yourself.”

Erryn was completely spent. It took all his willpower to say nothing, merely to stare as an old Eton master might have done.
Really now, Bryce, really …

“Sorry,” Bryce said. “I’ve had a bloody bastard of a day.” He took the offered envelope, knowing as Erryn did that only a handful of men in British North America could read the gibberish inside: Erryn himself, Matt Calverley, and a few staff officers at Canada’s Government House. “I hope it’s worth it.”

“Thank you,” Erryn murmured, and turned to go.

“Say, Todd …?”

“What?”

“Good luck, eh? Whatever you’ve stuck your nose into, don’t get it chopped off, all right?”

Bryce wasn’t a bad sod, he thought, leaning back in the carriage with his eyes half closed. Not the sharpest tack God ever made, but not a bad sod.
Don’t get your nose chopped off, Todd.

It was all in Daniel Carroll’s hands now, what became of his nose. Would Carroll go to the Canadian authorities? Would he go to Jackson Follett? Would he sit tight and pray for a miracle? Any of these were possible. Other things, too. Things Erryn had never considered, perhaps. Things he did not want to consider.

He was lost in his thoughts when he stepped from the carriage, and so it took a moment before he noticed motion at the side of the hotel, something or someone disappearing into the trees. He saw it so briefly, he was unsure if it had been a grown man, or a street urchin, or even just a dog.

Brownie in the slouch hat, I wonder? At least he’s learning to stay out of sight.

You really were too hard on him, you know.

Ah well, he thought, when the war was over, maybe they would cross paths again and he could buy the poor chap a drink. The
Federal agents were merely doing their job, after all, and whatever Reb shenanigans they could foil on their own, it was all to the good. Besides, in this particular quarrel, he was entirely on their side.

He climbed wearily to his room, pulled off his clothing in slow, uneven motions, like a clockwork toy that was just about to quit. Still, he knew sleep would not come easy. Until tonight his work had always seemed to him something of a game. A dangerous game, admittedly, but nonetheless a game: Alexander MacNab singing gold in my pocket and Jamie Orton singing Bonnie Dundee and some pied piper preacher singing darky come home; an air of nastiness over all of it, but also an air of theatre.

No theatre anymore, no game. He felt as though he had been unceremoniously kicked off the stage and out into the street, with a carriage and four coming at him.
The
Michigan’s
a warship. The lads’ll take her raiding, and there’s nothing on the Lakes that can stop her.

He stared at his ceiling and wondered just how bad it would have been. He wondered what else might be afoot, as dangerous as this, or even worse. He wondered if Carroll would break, and what would happen if he did not.

Without help from England, the Confederacy doesn’t have a hope. They can’t afford to kill Englishmen.

Well, maybe. A prominent, prosperous chap like Daniel Carroll, probably not. A hired spy, on the other hand, a colonial exile with a made-up name, whose friends in high places consisted of an aging militia colonel, a police constable, and a chambermaid, well, that might be different.

He had a day, he thought, perhaps two, before all the military defences were in place and all the diplomatic manoeuvres carefully made. Then Lord Monck would make it public, and it would hit the front page of every newspaper in North America. A day, maybe two, for Carroll to make up his mind. Then Erryn Shaw would be utterly in the clear, or utterly finished as an agent. Possibly dead.
Don’t get your nose chopped off, Todd.

The sun was high before he slept.

A
LL AFTERNOON THE RAIN POURED DOWN
, hammering on roofs and cobblestone streets, a cold rain laced with a bitter wind. Despite the storm, Sylvie found Erryn Shaw waiting as usual near the old sailors’ church—rather like a solitary lamppost, she thought, buffeted but erect, while everything around him was bent over and scurrying for shelter. He was drenched despite his umbrella, but he seemed happy to see her—extraordinarily happy, as though he had feared the storm might keep her away. Clearly, he did not know Madame.

He had a table for them in the little café across the way, he said. Would she join him for
tourtières
, cake, tea, wine, anything at all she might fancy?

“Oh, I’d much rather have a walk,” she said, and then laughed softly as astonishment and dismay and concern all flashed across
his face, each on the heels of the other. “You’re not an easy man to surprise, Erryn Shaw, but there, I think I’ve finally done it.”

He smiled.
“Tourtières
, then?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

The little café truly did have anything she might have fancied. The wine she refused, for Madame would know, but there were pies made with chicken and pork, and with fruits of every description. There were puddings and pieces of iced cake, and tempting, miniature creamy things she had never seen before. Erryn bought recklessly, letting her choose what she wanted and then adding more. “Here, you must have one of these, and yes, one of these too, they’re exquisite, you can take some back with you, Madame can’t possibly object, not to
a pastry …”

He did not eat much. He seemed on edge—as attentive to her as a man could be, and yet on edge.

“Tell me,” he said, “how did we come to like each other so much, when I scarcely know anything about you, and you know even less about me? Does that make it fate, do you suppose?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“I don’t know.” His hair was very wet from the rain, hanging across his forehead in long, pale strings. Beside him, more rain streamed across the window glass, shimmering each time lightning slashed across the sky. “I believe in chance, I suppose. Sometimes things just … happen. Fate seems to imply design, and I have doubts about design.”

“So you’re not the religious sort, then?”

He shot her a sudden, sharp glance, as though he wondered if he might have said the wrong thing. Nevertheless he answered the question freely and, she supposed, honestly.

“Not in the usual sense, no. When I was at Eton College, reading the Greek and Roman classics, I used to think I’d have made a good pagan. I liked our old churches, the really
old
ones, and the old graveyards, and the dark places in the woods—places where it seemed spirits might be. I could see how a man might want to talk
to spirits, or make them an offering, pour wine into the ground or something. Now …” He smiled faintly, made a small, dismissive gesture. “Now I don’t know what I think. All the answers seem too easy. Have you ever heard of Procrustes?”

“No. What are they?”

“He. He was a chap in one of the old stories. He had a very famous bed. It was rather on the short side, apparently, and when people came to visit him, if they were on the long side, like me, he cut their feet off to make them fit. I think a lot of ideas in the world are like Procrustes’ bed—not bad ideas in themselves, maybe, but not long enough, or wide enough, or deep enough. Reality doesn’t quite fit. But when we notice, we don’t stand back and say, ‘All right, we’ve missed something. Our philosophy, our politics, our religion, has to adapt.’ No, we go get the hatchet and start chopping at the world. Sooner or later, alas, the world invariably chops back.” He paused as she nibbled one of the creamy confections. “Is that good?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Tell me about your life.”

“What?”

He put both elbows on the table and leaned his chin against his hands. “I have this deplorable tendency to babble. I’m sure you’ve noticed. My father used to say my mouth was like a mill wheel: once it started, you had to drain the river to make it stop. But if you talk to me, I’ll be quiet and listen. Tell me where you came from.”

It was still day outside, but the heaviness of the storm had darkened the café. The poor light softened his bony features, made him almost handsome, what with his youth and the warmth in his eyes and her own irrepressible admiration. It was glorious to be courted. By anyone, she thought, but especially by a man with so much grace and charm, a man who could make her laugh, a man who knew the world and who could—like Madame, but infinitely more so—open doors to all its marvels. Of course, it was a courtship
without a future. He was a gentleman, rich and cocky like they all were, and used to having his way. He was an actor—oh, he wasn’t
really
, he said, he was only a second-rate amateur; it was
staging
plays that he was good at, as if it made any difference; he knew how to pretend. He could talk the birds down out of the trees and into the cat’s mouth, he was so convincing. He was just acting that he liked her; it was just a game, until he got her into bed, and then he would walk away.

And it was not his getting her into bed that mattered, or even, in the end, his walking away. It was the acting itself. It was the
certainty
that he was acting, that he could not possibly mean the things he said and did, even for a little while. Because no man could.

There was the truth of it, the old truth, older than this temporary wild delight.
Wickerface, wickerface, fly away home, go cut your nose off and make me a comb. God almighty, Bowen, what did the cat look like when it was over?

Tell me where you came from …