The Halifax Connection (45 page)

“Oh, come on, Aggie. Why would I tell anyone what we might talk about, the little time we ever have to talk by ourselves?”

“Ordinarily, I expect you wouldn’t. But I need you to promise anyway.”

“All right, I promise. So what is it?”

“Would you help the Union, if you could?”

“Help …?” She tried to frame an answer that would not be rude.
Me? Help the Union? When I’m up to my neck in chamber pots and it’s a bleeding thousand miles away? God almighty, Aggie Breault, where did you find the key to the wine cellar?

But even as the words were taking shape, she thought about Aggie tucking her letter away so quickly. Aggie, smart and well schooled as she was, taking work here at the Den when she could surely have got something better. Aggie telling her about the
Southerners in Halifax:
They’re Confederate agents, most of them … spies, weapons buyers, couriers … out-and-out plotters, too … they’ve all got their noses into something.

If the Rebels had agents all over town, and if the Federals were not incompetent or sound asleep, then …? Then there were Federal agents here too. Maybe even at the Den. Maybe right in this room.

“What do you mean, help?”

“Just little things. And just once in a while.”

“Yes, but what?”

“You’re the chambermaid. You can go into their rooms, and you can … well … snoop. Me, I got no business upstairs. If someone even sees me in a hallway, they’ll wonder right off what I’m doing there, and my being a Yankee won’t make them wonder less. They see you there, you’re just doing your job.”

“Miss Susan finds out, she’ll put me out on my ear.”

“You’re sharp, Sylvie. Whatever you do, I expect you can do it quick and cover your tracks. Anyway, we can pay a little. To make up for the risk.”

“We?”
Sylvie whispered.

“I didn’t dream this up all by myself, you know.”

“Good Lord.”

Sylvie rubbed a bruise on her hand, stealing little glances at Aggie Breault as she did so. Such an uncomplicated soul, the housemaid was … or seemed. A sentimental widow who never stopped remembering her Charlie. A sturdy farm woman, still shy, at the age of forty, about her big ears. A good worker, respected by everyone.

A foreign agent.

No point mincing the words, Sylvie thought. She was a foreign agent on British soil.

So, likely as not, were some of the people to whom she served dinner every day. Some of the people whose beds Sylvie made up every morning. And they came here first. They came looking
for a way to spread the war. Aggie told her the local Rebels might be spies, but no one had to tell her they wanted a bigger war; for that, she needed only to read the papers, listen to people talking, look at the posters on the street.
Why the South Deserves Our Aid. Christianity and the Great Confederate Cause. Free the
Chesapeake
Heroes.
Et cetera, et cetera. If this lot had their way, there would be blood and fire running through the streets of Halifax tomorrow.

“What sort of …
snooping …
did you have in mind, Aggie?”

“That fellow who came on Wednesday, calls himself Theodore Manley? Can you see what he might have with him—documents, messages, things like that? You might not have time to copy anything in detail. Just take notes or, better still, memorize it if you can. And look for anything what might hint at his real name—a personal letter, a prayer book, engraved jewellery, that sort of thing. They often have secret pockets in their clothes or their cases. Look as thoroughly as you can, but don’t undo anything you can’t fix. And always have an explanation for why you’re in the room.”

“You’ve been doing this for a while.” Aggie merely shrugged, and Sylvie went on,
“A
spy wouldn’t do that, would he? Use a false name and then carry around something with his real one?”

“A
lot of them are green,” Aggie said. “There’s things they just never think of. And it’s a good thing, too, because we’re about as green as they are. Did you know General Washington had a huge network of spies, in the Revolution? Your Lord Wellington too, so I’ve been told—he turned it into an art. These days, a lot of folks look down on the very notion. It’s dishonourable, they say, a relic from the old corrupt states of the Continent, completely beneath the dignity of a white, Anglo-Saxon gentleman.”

“Well,” Sylvie said wryly, “the dignity of gentlemen really ain’t something we need to worry about, is it?”

She thought she would be frightened, going through Mr. Manley’s belongings, and perhaps she was, at the very outset. But in a matter of moments the intensity of the search absorbed all of her attention. According to Aggie, he had mentioned at the breakfast table that he was going over to Dartmouth for the morning. This was reassuring, but only slightly. He might change his mind and return. Or Miss Susan might come into the room for some reason. Sylvie worked very quickly.

There was indeed a false bottom in his portmanteau, but all she found beneath it was money, almost a hundred dollars in United States paper, which she left exactly as she found it. But in the desk drawer was a pouch of pipe tobacco, and nestled at the bottom, under the tobacco, was a small key.

There was nothing it seemed to fit—nothing in the case or in the dresser; nothing under his mattress; nothing in the closet. Whatever it was, she supposed he had taken it with him, which did not make a great deal of sense. One might leave a box and take the key, but why would anyone do the opposite?

All around the room, as she scanned it, were various spots where a small item could be tucked out of sight. She noted them and rejected them in turn: they were all places she cleaned every day. Except for one. Beside the hearth was the coal bin—the coal bin she kept so carefully supplied that it was never, ever, empty.

She put everything she had moved back in its place, fetched an empty bucket, and emptied out the coal—and there it was, a small metal box to which the key fit perfectly. Inside the box was a single piece of paper. The message was simple and was probably in code.

She scribbled it onto a piece of notepaper, replaced it, and fled to her regular work, taking a long moment to check that she had, in fact, left no traces of her search.

She had done well, she thought; in a part of herself she felt quite triumphant. And in another part of herself she felt more and more uneasy. The message was simple enough to be memorized and destroyed; why would the man keep it? Why would he leave his money in the portmanteau, even under a false bottom, when there was plenty of room for it in a locked and well-hidden box? And why did he not keep the key on his person?

A lot of them were green, Aggie said. Well, maybe. Only this one did not strike her as green, just very, very peculiar. She slid her own little slip of paper under Aggie’s pillow moments before the others came in to bed, wondering if the American woman would ever tell her what she made of it all.

Friday came wrapped in fog. Not just a bit of fog, the sort one expected along the coast in the wintertime, but great, drowning blankets of fog, so thick you could not see across the street. Now and then as she worked, Sylvie glanced at the windows, hoping it would clear as the sun rose higher. It seemed rather to thicken instead. Last week Erryn had promised to rent a small boat on the first fine Friday afternoon they had, and take her out to George’s Island or down around the Point. It would not be today.

She was finishing the kitchen stairs when Aggie Breault found her. Aggie looked quickly in both directions before she spoke. No one was in the hallway above; in the kitchen, Sanders was making enough noise with her chopper to drown out an army.

“I’m going downstairs,” Aggie murmured. “Come with me for a minute.”

“Going downstairs” was proper talk for using the toilets. She followed Aggie into the basement, where the water closets were discreetly tucked away. Instead of entering one of them, Aggie turned to face her.

“You did good yesterday,” she said. “I’m impressed. Tell me, how long did it take you to find the key?”

“The key? I found the key right off. It were the box I couldn’t—oh, rot it, anyway!” She stared at Aggie in the dim light, running the search through her mind in a moment, its implications clear now that she considered them. “That stuff were all … it were all bait, weren’t it? You put it there yourself! You just wanted to see if I could find it!”

“Well, partly,” Aggie said. “Mostly I wanted to see if you were careful. If you didn’t leave signs. And if you were—no offence, please, but we have to be sure—if you were honest.”

“And poor Mr. Manley?”

“A
good, loyal American who was willing to do me a favour.”

“What if I’d bolted with all his money?”

Aggie shrugged. “It wasn’t his. It’s … operating money.”

“Well, bloody damned hell.”

“It’s a serious business, Sylvie. It’s not a game.”

“I never thought it were.”

“I didn’t figure so. But a friend of mine got stung real bad last year, trusting someone he shouldn’t have. So I try to be careful.” She smiled then, warm enough to burn the fog from the streets. “Are we still friends?”

“Course,” Sylvie said. “You gave me a turn, that’s all. I ain’t mad. Comes right down to it”—here she offered a quiet smile of her own—“I’d a lot sooner work with someone who’s careful.”

“Good. You’re off to Madame’s now, I guess? Jonathan’s brought her carriage. He’s in the foyer, waiting for you.”

Madame had sent her carriage? Sylvie was astonished at the old woman’s kindness. She was a rare one, Madame Mallette.

“Is it him, then?” Aggie asked her.

“What?”

“Your follower. Is it Jonathan? It was clear as day at her birthday dinner that he fancied you.”

“Jonathan fancies me?” Sylvie whispered. “Go on.”

“Well, of course. Are you telling me you didn’t know?”

“You’re imagining things.”

Aggie laughed softly. “You’re a right smart girl, Sylvie Bowen, but you don’t read men very well.”

Was it so? She went over the matter many times on the long ride to South Park Road. It was almost impossible to see. On Barrington, the few carriages abroad were lit as though it were night. Pedestrians picked their way carefully along the boardwalk, many carrying lanterns in their hands. Back in England, Sylvie recalled—back in the mill country—a fog like this would mix with factory smoke and turn the air to poison. Here it rolled in clean from the sea, eerie and dangerous, but clean.

She settled back in the carriage, watching bits of Halifax come and go, stone buildings turned to spectres, appearing and disappearing in a breath. Were men so strange to her, so mysterious? She thought not. She had lived and worked among them all her life.

But she had never been courted, at least not by anyone she trusted enough to accept his courtship—never until Erryn Shaw. And perhaps to that degree Aggie Breault was right. Perhaps she did not read those particular signs very well. Did Jonathan Boyd fancy her? The notion had never crossed her mind. Now, when they reached Madame’s house, he thoughtfully held out his arm for her as she stepped from the carriage. She could not resist looking into his face then, trying to read it. He had always been kind to her, but he was mostly kind to everyone, so she had thought nothing of it.

“Careful, lass,” he said. “There’s a bit of ice underfoot.”

His eyes gave nothing away—nothing she could read—but they lingered on her, just a little, and so did his steadying hand. He was older than she was, well past forty, she thought, and sturdy as an oak. She judged him a man who had lived a bit and knew what he wanted. Was it possible that he wanted her?

She hoped it was not so, for his sake, and yet she could not help but be pleased. It was, after all, so very rare.