The Halifax Connection (50 page)

“I’ll stay a bit, captain, sir—iffen you don’t mind.”

“Very well. But we’re raising anchor before dawn. I’ll be riled if I have to come and fetch you.”

“He’ll make it back, captain,” Erryn said. “I’ll see to it.” He held out his hand, wishing the captain luck, and then turned back to his companion. “I didn’t know you were sailing tomorrow. In that case, let me treat you to a drink or two.”

This suggestion received no argument whatever.

The Waverley Hotel was one of the best in Halifax. It was not luxurious by the standards of either the English or the American upper class, but it was large and well furnished. The bar had a fine piano, around which a body of men were now gathered, singing
a mix of sailors’ songs and Scots ballads. It had a great, roaring stove, but all the tables near it were taken, occupied by consumptive-looking regulars who had probably been there since lunch. Unfortunately for Taber Hague, it also had a door that opened to the street. Customers kept coming and going, and with each of them a little bit of winter entered.

The pilot picked his way to a corner as far from the door as possible. He pulled his jacket and scarf close around him. He was not in the best of health, Erryn suspected, and all that liquor did not make him warmer.

“I don’t want to say anything against your fair city,” he said. “I mean, really, I don’t, but I wish to hell I was in Nassau.”

“Couldn’t you have stayed if you wanted to?”

“I suppose. But it’s war, after all, and Captain Fallon asked for me special.”

“So it’s no shipload of silks and caviar you’re taking, then.”

“Not in one of our own ships, not likely, sir. Captain says there ain’t an ounce of fripperies in her, ’cept he brought himself a novel to read while we’re waiting on the moon.”

Erryn took a small, gentle sip of port. “I got the impression once or twice tonight that Captain Fallon doesn’t especially admire the … ah … commercial runners.”

“Well, maybe he don’t, sort of. And maybe I don’t either, sort of. They bring in too much stuff that nobody really needs, just fripperies, like the captain says. And they charge what the trade will bear. But that’s how the world works, ain’t it? Captain Ross, now, you know what he makes on a run? What the owners in England pay him? Six thousand Yankee dollars for a round trip, or as much in gold or sterling.”

“I can hardly believe that.”

“Believe it. They paid me three thousand.” He raised his glass again, unsteadily. “Think about it, Mr. Shaw. I got four years of book learning, that’s all. I spent my whole life piloting boats for hire, and I ain’t never owned but one good suit. I never owned a
slave. I got more money now than I ever had in my life. That make any sense to you?”

“You have a rare and valuable skill in a desperate and critical time. I suppose that’s the sense it makes.”

“You use words real nice, Mr. Shaw. But you got it all wrong. It’s folks getting other folks between a rock and a hard place, nothing more. Captain Ross said it plain. The whole world is eat or be eaten. Says it’s all in a new book by some Englishman—Darren, Dolan, I forget now—”

“Darwin?”

“Yeah, that was it. Darwin. Survival of the strongest, something like that. Ross says—Well, damn it and speak of the devil. Here he comes.”

Erryn looked up and his whole body went rigid with shock, like a skater on a frozen lake hearing the ice begin to crack. A man was moving through the barroom, casually yet imperiously, nodding to this one and that one, smiling the bland smile Erryn had come to know so well in important men, the smile that never reached their eyes. He wore a frock coat of impeccable cut, with trousers to match, all in the finest grey worsted; a white linen shirt with gold and diamond cufflinks; knee boots of gleaming leather—gleaming so beautifully he might have used them for mirrors—and a gold watch fob and three gold rings. All of this, however, Erryn noticed only later, for his gaze was riveted on the man’s face: a round face, pale and somewhat plump, with small, watery eyes. All the Ambersons had those eyes. Slimy little pig’s peepers, Erryn had called them in one of his meaner moments, and then decided he was being cruel to pigs.

It was too late to run, and useless, no doubt, to slide drunk beneath the table; Taber Hague would thoughtfully haul him up again. He could only wait, cursing silently and pointlessly like a small boy kicking at a stump.
Not that bastard, oh damn it to bloody hell, not him, not now, oh, damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN!

Ross paused beside their table. “So, Hague, I see you’re being well taken care of.”

“Yes, sir. This is Mr. Shaw. Erryn Shaw. Captain William Ross. He’s English too.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Shaw.”

They shook hands, Erryn responding with a pleasantry he could not afterwards remember. He was actor enough to be satisfied that his face betrayed nothing, neither his first moments of sheer icy panic nor his drowning relief as it became apparent that Ross did not recognize him.

He certainly recognized Ross. Or, more correctly, Lieutenant Hailey Bryce Amberson, Jr., of Her Majesty’s frigate
Lancaster;
not, as far as he had heard, on half pay, and therefore on leave. On leave, and captaining a blockade-runner for six thousand Yankee dollars a run, under an assumed name, against a country with whom Her Majesty’s government was at peace.

Well, Erryn reflected bitterly, why should he be surprised? Since the start of the war Englishmen in official positions had been violating their government’s neutrality for personal gain. Most everyone in power knew it, and they cared to precisely the degree by which it might embarrass the government. A naval officer engaged in blockade-running would be well beyond the pale—unless, of course, he used an alias and could pass himself off as just another private entrepreneur …

Yes indeed, Erryn thought, the Amberson clan was running true to form.

“You were much discussed at supper tonight, captain,” he said.

“Not too unfavourably, I hope?”

“Not at all, sir. Quite the opposite.”

“Have a good voyage, Hague,” Ross said amiably. “Mr. Shaw.” Then he was gone, like a king through his court, collecting homage.

Erryn settled back into his chair, more shaken than he wanted to admit. Yes, this was the other side of the Atlantic, and more
than a decade had come and gone. His dangerously familiar first name, in the mouth of the Carolinian, had dissolved into a soft, unrecognizable purr: “E’hn.” Still, Bryce Amberson had met him a dozen times at least. Bryce Amberson had married his first cousin.

“Snotty bastard, isn’t he?” Hague murmured. “Bet he thinks he pisses rosewater.”

“Yes.” And that, Erryn supposed, was a considerable part of it. Ross had not recognized his kinsman because he had not really seen him. All he had seen was a backwoods pilot and some colonial he happened to be drinking with. Useful people—or at least the pilot was—and so he would make the proper gestures of politeness. But he would not really
look.
Otherwise … well, otherwise he might have noticed.

Even in an empire the sun never sets on, there aren’t likely to be two of me.

B
ACK IN HIS ROOM
in Gideon Winslow’s house, Erryn lit a candle and opened his trunk, rummaging wearily till he found what he wanted: a long, black, clerical soutane. It was one of three costumes that had not burned to ashes with the Grafton Street Theatre because, two days earlier, he had brought them home to mend. He pulled it on, fitted the stiff priest’s collar around his neck, and added a hideous black bowler hat. A hand-held mirror confirmed his expectations: he made an entirely believable clergyman—tall and austere, almost cadaverous, with an air of raw exhaustion that was absolutely genuine.

Just don’t breathe port all over anyone.

It was well after midnight. He had sent the hack away, of course, and now he had to walk back to Barrington, perhaps all the way to the Waverley, to hire another. He wondered if ruffians
would attack a priest, and decided not to think about it. He had to see Matt in person. So far, since he returned from Montreal, his communications had been mostly routine, and he had left them in a letter drop near Cheapside. Tonight that simply would not do. He checked his pistol and slipped it into the pocket of his cloak, looked wistfully at his neglected bed, and went out into the cold.

It was, in truth, a miserable night, ugly enough to make most any man wish he were in Nassau. Even the ruffians appeared to be staying in. He kept himself alert as he walked, and watched the streets all around, but once he was inside a carriage again, he gave himself over to gentler thoughts, to the memory of Sylvie’s body naked in the firelight, to her rare, beautiful laughter and the soft hunger in her eyes. He had wanted her so desperately, and yet desire had only been part of it. The other part had been … something else. He was not at all sure what to call it: an attempt to bewitch her, perhaps—or even, if he chose to look darkly on it, a sort of manipulation.
If we are close enough, if we are promised, if she loves me utterly, she won’t turn on me when she learns the truth.

To what extent he had bewitched her, he had no clear idea. But he had certainly bewitched himself; opened a door he had scarcely known was there, out of which had spilled a flood of hunger and tenderness and dreams, one dream fiercer and more driven than all the others: to give her a life. To stand between her and everything she had so far known, brute hands and scrub pails and those dark, deadly mills. To wipe it all away, as with a spell, and hold out to her a world of music and books and soft, warm beds.

That he loved her he had known for some time. Or rather, he had imagined that he knew it when it really had been nothing more than possibility. Now it was knowledge. Now he could scarcely imagine an alternative. If he lost her, it would not simply grieve him; it would wreck him forever. Leave him, he thought, as a cripple, with half his body gone and half his soul, walking through a world of empty streets and empty rooms, looking for the pieces.

Matt’s rooming house was a forbidding old monster—also, at this ungodly hour, absolutely dark. Erryn let himself in with a backdoor key Matt had given him and picked his way to the stairwell. The building was made entirely of wood; the stairs and hallways groaned with every step. An advantage of sorts, he reflected: no one was likely to sneak up on Constable Calverley in his sleep.

The constable did not answer his first gentle rapping, so Erryn rapped again. A voice spoke from somewhere beside the door, Matt’s voice, very soft and very flat. “What do you want?”

“It’s Canby.”

The door opened quickly and was eased shut and bolted behind him. Only then did Matt strike a match and light the small kerosene lamp on the cabinet beside his bed. He turned, shoving tangles of black hair out of his eyes, and smiled.

“Damn, but it’s good to see you, mate.”

“Likewise, my friend.”

He was not surprised at the warmth in Matt’s eyes, only, perhaps, by the intensity of it. Mostly he was surprised at himself, at his sudden powerful wish to put an end to this lunacy he was living in. It was months since they had stood face to face and smiled; two years since they had walked together down a street, or laughed across a table of Corey’s fish and chips. They were the dearest, the very best of mates, and they lived month after month like enemies.