The Halifax Connection (42 page)

City hall took up half of the same stone building that housed the police station, but it was decidedly the better half. Among its many well-furnished offices was that of City Marshal Gabriel
Hauser. It was there, sometime after eleven, that Matt was ordered to report, along with Constables Grover and Neary. They found the county sheriff already there. Both men looked extraordinarily pleased with themselves.

“Gentlemen,” Hauser said. “Do sit down.” He was well into his fifties, with a face like a prizefighter and thin red hair turning slowly grey. He was, in Matt’s considered opinion, much more a politician than he was a peace officer.

“Sheriff Cobb and I have just returned from a meeting with Mayor Bond and officials of the provincial government. You’ll be happy to know that a satisfactory agreement has been reached with the Americans.”

From the beginning, Matt had expected this. He was surprised now to find himself overwhelmed with relief.

“That’s bloody good news, sir.”

“Yes. They’re turning the
Chesapeake
over to us. It will be up to the Admiralty Court to decide what becomes of it, whether the former owners in Boston are to have it back or whether the Confederates will have it as a prize of war. And at one o’clock this afternoon, the three prisoners will be brought to Queen’s Wharf and turned over to us as well. Which is where you men come in.” Hauser puttered briefly with his papers. “Two of those prisoners, as everybody knows, are local lads, who went out to the
Chesapeake
three days ago to hire on as engineers. They’re obviously guilty of nothing whatever, and will be unconditionally freed. The other, however, is one of Captain Braine’s men. George Wade. He’s the one the Yankees found sleeping on the coaling schooner. They say he shot the
Chesapeake’s
engineer, and they’ve asked that he be extradited to the States to face charges of piracy and murder. The lieutenant-governor agreed, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.”

Ah
, Matt thought.
So we’re both being reasonable, thank God.

“But there’s a catch,” the marshal went on. “The Yankee consul’s lawyer picked up on it right away. It seems, if Wade goes
straight from their hands to ours, he might have to be released on the grounds that he was arrested unlawfully in Sambro—as of course he was. So he’s to be turned loose on the wharf and allowed to walk around for a couple of minutes before we pick him up.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Neary protested. “He’ll just bolt into the crowd, and we’ll not see hair or hide of him again!”

“There won’t be any crowd. The lieutenant-governor has ordered troops to the waterfront. Nobody is getting onto Queen’s Wharf, or off it, without passing through a cordon of infantry. One thing everyone is determined on, gentlemen, and Mayor Bond most of all—this matter is going to be resolved quietly. We damn near had a riot on the wharf yesterday, when it got out to the public who the prisoners were. The Americans going back and forth to their ships had to pass under armed guard. This is
not
going to happen again.

“So. Sheriff Cobb, you will take the men down just before one, so as to attract the least possible attention. Take custody of the prisoners, release them, rearrest Wade after a couple of minutes, and bring him in. In the meantime, nothing of this matter is to be discussed with anyone. With a bit of luck it’ll be over and done with before anyone knows it’s happening.”

There was indeed a cordon of infantry around Queen’s Wharf that afternoon—such an excellent cordon of infantry that Matt was inside it before he saw them, the whole benighted pack of them: MacNab, Orton, Collier, Strange, and the rest. He scanned the wharf with growing astonishment and anger. Some government officials had come down, including the solicitor general and the provincial secretary. The United States consul was there with his attorney, and so were a handful of other people who had, or might have had, official business. The rest of the crowd of fifty or so were members of the Halifax elite, most of them Grey Tories.

It’ll be over and done with before anyone knows it’s happening …

Sheriff Cobb seemed not to notice anything amiss, not even when Matt demanded of him bitterly, “What are those sons of bitches doing here?”

“Who?”

“Orton and his lot! I thought this was all supposed to be kept quiet! How the devil do they know about it? And why were they let in?”

“Oh, now really, Calverley. The order was to keep the riff-raff out. Those gentlemen aren’t the sort to start a riot.”

“They’re Rebel supporters. They’re damn well the sort to start something.”

Cobb looked at him and looked away, with a small shake of his head. Matt could readily guess what he was thinking. Cobb had always been a man with an overly high opinion of respectability—not rank as such, but respectability. His background was almost as destitute as Matt’s, but his family had been law-abiding and decent, indeed heroically so. He was therefore convinced that those who made up the low-life of a community were inherently different from those who did not. It was not poverty or bad luck that took them down; it was heredity, or some other essential flaw. They were—so he had said more than once—the detritus of society. They could be helped occasionally; he was all for supporting the City Mission and the SPC. But such people would never really be like decent folk.

To Cobb, the streets below the Citadel were as low as the low-life got, and hiring the likes of Matt Calverley as a peace officer had appalled him: this was bringing Barrack Street back to city hall to live. It made no difference that years of honest work and quiet living stood between the street arab and the aspiring police constable. Young Calverley was still a whore’s brat; a vicious, dirty fighter, a long-time petty thief who would have ended up in Rockhead except he was always too smart to get caught. What the devil did the Halifax constabulary want with a man like that?

“Well,” François Dufours supposedly had said, “maybe we want a man who knows how it all works, up by the Hill. All I can ever do, most times, is guess.”

Perhaps the city officials of the day agreed, but Matt always suspected that a shortage of candidates had been the real reason he was hired. The constabulary was undermanned, dismally paid, and routinely exposed to every sort of weather and every sort of insult, including violence. Men were not exactly lining up in droves for the job.

Now, twelve years later, not even Cobb could seriously doubt Matt’s effectiveness as a peace officer. But the sheriff would always doubt him as a man. The sheriff would always believe that, somewhere inside, Matt carried a flawed identity that would never be eradicated, and that might show itself at any moment, like hereditary madness or disease. He did not trust Matt’s judgment on anything, least of all on the subject of his betters.

You have such a grudge against Orton
, he said once,
you could see him rocking a baby and you’d think it was plot.

There was a fragment of truth to the accusation. Matt was generally inclined to believe the worst of an enemy. This was a fault with some practical value in the streets—it had saved his life a time or two—but it was a fault nonetheless, a prejudice. He reminded himself of it now, and warned himself to be careful.
If something starts here, Matt old boy, you damn well don’t want to be the one to start it.

Quarters were close on the wharf. The Grey Tories clustered loosely at one side and talked among themselves. Matt watched them relentlessly, but he sensed nothing of the edgy hostility that usually built up in groups of men when they were contemplating violence.

“What do you suppose they’re about?” he muttered to Constable Grover.

“Nothing much. Showing the colours, likely. Making sure their poor Mr. Wade knows he’s got friends here.”

Matt said nothing. His common sense confirmed Grover’s words; his instincts still resisted, bitterly.

“I think Cobb’s right, mate,” Grover went on. “This is the sort of thing gets fought out in a courtroom. And God knows the buggers might win there, too. The Yankee consul closed one loophole on them; they’ll do their damnedest to find another.”

So they’ll be watching like hawks for any misstep on our part.

This made sense, especially coming from Grover. The man was experienced, and on the subject of the American war he was as close to a genuinely neutral observer as Matt had met.

Matt scanned the wharf again and then looked out to sea, to the five American vessels anchored in the channel. The harbour looked as it did on most any winter afternoon, with clusters of vessels anchored all along the waterfront. The Dartmouth ferry was heading out; a few fishing boats were drifting in. None of this held Matt’s attention for longer than a second—only the launch from the
Ella and Annie
, approaching fast. Orton’s people were watching with attention now, but otherwise quiet. Behind him, Matt knew the military cordon was solid. Unless several of them had been suborned—not one of them, but several—no one was getting George Wade through.

The launch docked quietly.

“We won’t crowd them,” Matt said softly. He did not believe that a legal definition of George Wade’s freedom depended on how much room he had to walk around in, but he had heard some very strange arguments raised in courtrooms from time to time. So, fine, he thought, the pirate could have his two minutes of liberty undisturbed. He could talk with his Grey Tory friends, with Jamie Orton, who was already stepping forward to shake his hand.

Sheriff Cobb drew aside to give them room for their courtesies. The men were milling a little now, and laughing. Wade took Orton’s outstretched hand, leaned forward a little to listen to something he was saying, then, between a breath and a breath, stepped over the side of the jetty and disappeared.

“Bloody damned hell!”

It was almost too quick to be comprehended. Matt lunged forward, using elbows and shoulders on everything in his path, including Cobb, who was staring vacantly like a fish who had been whacked on the head. Matt plowed through to the edge of the pier and cursed savagely. A skiff was pulling fast away, with Wade hunkered down in it and two men on the oars, rowing like very demons. Matt cursed again, for he knew them: John Elworth Payne and Harry Gallagher, rowing champions for the entire province of Nova Scotia.

“Stop!” he shouted. “That man is under arrest!” Even as he shouted, he drew his pistol, knowing they would not heed him. “I’m a policeman! God damn you, Gallagher, stop or I’ll shoot!”

One warning shot over their heads, and then Wade …

The warning shot tore into the grey sky as Jamie Orton’s big hand knotted over the gun.

“You’ll nae be killing anyone today, you damned Yankee hireling!”

Orton had height on him, and reach, and seventy-five pounds. It made no difference. Matt spun in his grip like a cat and rammed his knee into the man’s crotch. Astonishingly, even as Orton buckled with a cry of pure anguish, he managed to keep his hold on the gun. For a moment they grappled, the weapon pinned perilously between them. Another second or two and Matt would have wrenched it free. Then the full weight of a man’s body slammed into his back and a wiry arm closed around his throat. The voice was Robert Collier’s, almost pleading, “Let go, God damn it, let go!”

“Bastard!” Matt spat, and slammed his elbow backward and up, hitting something, he did not care what. By then Jack Murray was on him as well, grabbing at his arms and his clothing. They were not trying to fight, only to hold him, but they were strong, and he was mad as a bitten cat. He struggled savagely, cursing them with the ugliest words he knew, words he never used in ordinary anger, not buggers and bastards and God damns, but the worst gutter
talk of the brothel. The gun clattered onto the wharf and someone kicked it into the water, but now, like men who had taken hold of a wolverine, they dared not let go, until finally all four were tumbled to the timbers in a snarling, dishevelled heap.

Constable Grover and various Grey Tories rushed over, peeling the men off one by one, helping them to their feet. Matt was on the bottom.

“Keep your bloody hands off me,” he snapped. They did, but two of them stayed resolutely between him and Jamie Orton, a fact he noted with quiet scorn. He rubbed his wrist. It hurt cruelly from being twisted, but otherwise the Grey Tories were far more damaged than he was. Collier’s nose was streaming blood and Jack Murray was holding his stomach and hobbling on one foot. Not that it mattered; they had won. The skiff was well out of range. Even as Matt stared after it, the fugitive waved, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Thank you, boys, and God save the Queen!”

The Grey Tories cheered. Matt pointedly ignored them. Despite what Sheriff Cobb or anyone else believed, he was not a man who carried grudges. He valued his small, stubbornly acquired place in the world too much to wager it for the sake of malice or revenge.

The Grey Tories milled around him, all of them very pleased with themselves, MacNab laughing and slapping Jack Murray on the back, Orton still grey-faced but nonetheless smiling. There would be many a toast raised in the Waverley tonight, and in the Halifax Club.