The Halifax Connection (59 page)

“So,” Matt went on, “what can you tell me about these two chaps who turned up last week? This Captain Carson, as he calls himself, and his mate Lacey? I know Carson’s left already, but I wondered what you might have heard.”

Erryn cocked an eyebrow at his friend. Southerners came and went here all the time, and Matt was always interested in anything he might learn about them. But he had never before arranged a meeting to ask about someone so recently arrived.

“Why do I get the feeling you already know more about them than I do?”

Matt only smiled and waited.

“I can’t tell you much,” Erryn said. “They were both supposed to go directly to Montreal—I do know that. But Lacey decided to stay on for a week or two. Apparently he isn’t well.”

“Is that a fact or a pretence?”

“A
fact, I think. He looks like death on a stick.”

“You’ve met them, then?”

“Just once,” Erryn said. “They were fairly discreet, but they did talk a lot about how war-weary the Northerners supposedly have become, and how much support the Rebels have in places like Ohio and Illinois. So it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re thinking about another Northwest uprising. And they came well supplied with money; they did let that slip.”

“How much money?”

“Carson left five thousand behind just to keep his mate warm and cozy till he feels better.”

“Five
thousand?
Jesus. D’you ever have the feeling we’re working for the wrong government?”

“All the time.”

Matt laughed. “Anything else?”

Erryn shrugged. “Just gut instinct. But Captain Carson is no soldier, no matter what he calls himself. And they’re men of substance, both of them. That I could spot from a mile off. Add it in with their impressive bankroll and I’ll wager they have high connections.”

Matt nodded. “The very highest, probably. Lord Lyons has been hearing some interesting rumours down in Washington. Seems Jeff Davis has chosen himself a pair of so-called commissioners to come up here, name of Jacob Thompson and Clement Clay, politicians from away back. Thompson was Minister of the Interior under President Buchanan, and Clay was in the Alabama senate. The descriptions we have fit Carson and Lacey pretty well. And everything you’ve just told me fits too.”

“Commissioners for what?”

“Well, that’s the question. The Hawk’s been back and forth with Governor Monck for days, and I gather he’s been back and
forth with Lyons. Depending who they ask, Thompson’s role is purely diplomatic. According to others, it’s the usual sort of troublemaking.”

“Diplomatic?” Erryn murmured. “That could get rather boring for him.”

“Rather. There’s no way Monck will meet with them. So I’d vote for the troublemaking role myself. Things are likely to get lively in the West.” He smiled then, just a little. “Don’t look so gloomy, mate. I’m not sending you to chase after them. I need you here, and even if I didn’t, Bryce has a solid team behind him now, he can handle it. And Hawkins says a lot of ordinary chaps have started paying attention too—keeping track of the Southerners, and reporting anything that don’t look right. They make a lot of mountains out of molehills, he says, but it’s worth it. They keep the buggers off balance.” He dug about in his pocket and retrieved a battered muffin wrapped in newspaper. “Do you mind? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“No, please, go ahead.”

“You know Mason packed up and left England? The Confederate envoy? He damn near set off a war getting over there, on the
Trent
, and when the Rebels didn’t get their way with those rams in Liverpool, he just said bugger it and left town.”

“Yes, I know. Kind of reminds you of the 1860 election, doesn’t it?”

Matt laughed and bit off a great chunk of muffin.

“So tell me,” Erryn went on, “this plan that’s afoot for uniting the provinces—what do you think about it all? I’ve wanted many times to ask you.”

“I like it. Some are scared, of course, thinking the West is so much bigger and going to gobble us up. They might even be right, to a point, but I don’t think we have a choice. I gather the Southerners like the idea, most of them?”

“Oh, quite. They have this vision of an independent Confederacy all arm in arm with an independent Canada, and the poor
humiliated Union squished in the middle. Just the other day, one chap was describing to me the fabulous resort trade they’ll bring us after the victory, since they’ll never want to spend their summers in New England again. Oh, and we’ll soon be building mills, too, for the cotton. We’ll replace Lowell as the textile capital. Hell, in a few years we’ll replace Manchester.”

“Really?” Matt murmured. “And what about this uncomfortable little business of the Underground Railroad?”

“Nobody ever mentions it.”

“No, of course not. Doesn’t it occur to them that if they
do
win, it might be Canada and the Union standing shoulder to shoulder to keep them in line?”

“God knows what occurs to people, Matt—or what doesn’t. I used to think we were reasonable sods, most of us. Since this war started … I don’t know. There’s times I think reason is something we take off the shelf and play with when we’ve nothing else to do.”

“And here I thought I was a cynic.” Matt licked the last crumbs of muffin off his fingers. “So how are you, mate? You look rather wrung out, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I’m all right.” Erryn hesitated, knowing he had to go on, knowing also that his friend would be sadly disappointed in him. “I’ve fallen in love.”

Matt considered this for a moment. “Have you now?” he murmured.

“Well, yes, and the thing is, I had to tell her what I’m doing.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Erryn wondered sometimes if Matt had learned his quiet, dangerous patience from his spiders; or if he came to fancy them because he saw in them some shadow of himself. Matt waited for Erryn to continue. Only his eyes betrayed how seriously he was taking this.

Briefly and simply Erryn told him the facts—how he and Sylvie Bowen had met and become friends, how she had turned against
him when she learned of his work with the Grey Tories, how he had come home from Woodstock and found her gravely ill.

“I couldn’t leave her so. I simply couldn’t. She’s alone in the world, except for me. I had to see her, make it right with her if I could. And for that I had to talk to Madame Mallette.”

“You told both of them?”

“Yes.” Erryn made a small, apologetic gesture. “I know you’re wanting to call me a romantic fool, and maybe worse. But I love her terribly, and quite apart from that, I owe her my life. It was she who got me rescued on the
Saguenay.”

Matt examined his boots. “What do you want me to say, Erryn? If we were making bets, I’d give you decent odds—you’re a good judge of character. Hundred to one, maybe, that both of them can keep their mouths shut. Trouble is, mate, it’s still your life on the table. And maybe some other lad’s as well.”

“I know. And I weighed the risks, really I did. But how do you walk away in such a case? When it’s someone who loves you, someone you owe your very life, who needs you now, who’s maybe dying—how in God’s name do you walk away?”

Silence fell, troubled only by bits of sea wind sighing past the windows, and once, briefly, the scampering of mice somewhere in the walls. The lamp flickered, shifting the dark shadows on Matt Calverley’s face. He was almost forty, and for the first time Erryn could remember, he looked it.

“I hear stories,” Matt said at last. “Oh, I know most of it’s rubbish, just whiskey talk and old gaffers trying to make themselves important. But a man can’t get his head kicked in on Barrack Street anymore without someone telling us he was selling information to the Yankees, or to the Rebs. Anyone who turns up dead is a spy. And you can’t help wondering if there ain’t a few grains of wheat in all the chaff. I watch my back now like I never did when I was running the streets and thieving for my bread.

“So …” He looked up and met Erryn’s eyes; his own were unyielding. “So you’d best not take this any farther. She knows
who you work for, so be it. She’s not to know more—no names, no places, not a solitary move you make, nothing. And that’s not a suggestion, Erryn, it’s an order.”

Matt had never, ever, stood on his authority before. Most of the time neither of them considered the fact that he had any. They were best mates, after all; what else was necessary?

“Yes, sir,” Erryn said.

“And don’t God damn call me sir, either.”

It rained the next day, great drowning sheets of rain that slammed against the carriage windows and ran like rivers down the streets. Erryn’s fear lay over him as dark as ever, but at the Den he found Sylvie sitting dressed in a chair, reading. He found a brightness in her face and a strength in her voice that astonished him. Soon, she told him, she would be back to her chambermaid’s duties, and the servant girl they had borrowed from the Ortons could go home again.

It appalled him to think of her staying on, with the work so brutal and the days so long, with nothing but a garret room to sleep in, sunless and cold as a barn. Yet he dared not tell her of his fears. He dared not say to her, “Sylvie, for the love of God, marry me now, today, and leave this place while you can!” She would see it as protectiveness, or even pity, rather than as love, and she would back away. She would marry him when she was convinced that he meant it, that he knew his own heart. Till then … till then, he thought, he could only go on loving her, and wait.

On one thing, however, he was determined: they would continue their courtship as before, and be damned to the war. At first she objected. Everyone who worked at the Den knew how her aunt had died, she told him. They knew she backed the Union. They knew she had been friends with the Yankee woman, Aggie
Breault. Surely this would get back to his Rebel friends sooner or later, and then they might come to doubt him.

“I want to see you,” she said fiercely. “I want to more than anything! But if you were to come to harm because of me—”

“I won’t come to any harm,” he said. “Whatever there is to know, they know most of it already, ever since that day at Compain’s when we met Miss Isabel. If I continue seeing you, it won’t matter. I mean no offence, my heart, but the Grey Tories will never take you seriously. A gentleman’s son could have only one possible interest in a servant girl, and it most assuredly is not her political opinions. I fear it’s your reputation that will suffer, not mine.”

“That be true for most of them,” she agreed, “but maybe not for all. Even one’s enough to make you trouble.”

Oh, yes, he thought, one might be quite enough. One like Brad Taylor, or even Maury Janes. But it made no difference. Till the day he died, he would never forget the shock of Jack Murray’s words; the image of Sylvie lying on her sickbed, wasted almost to shadows; the fear that shot like ice into his soul. He might have a lifetime by her side, or he might have a mere ten years, or five, or two. He was not surrendering a day.

And so, every Friday they walked out together as before, to Corey’s for tea, or to the Common, where there were concerts sometimes in the evenings. If it was not raining in the afternoon, they might wander down to the Point, and sit with a picnic basket by Fort Ogilvie and watch the ships go by. This she seemed to enjoy more than anything, especially if he brought his flute along. For two perfect weeks he imagined that his life was unfolding as it should.

By then it was May, the warmest May the city had known in years. Even her attic room was cozy now, she told him, and her work was easier, too, since it was not raining every day.

“Easier, perhaps,” he said, “but still hard enough, I expect. Are you managing all right?”

“Oh, yes. Miss Susan’s made the others help me some. And she don’t say nothing when I’m not as fast as I were before. She’s an odd sort, she is. Being around her every day, you’d think there weren’t a soft spot in her anywhere. But she’d come in the room sometimes, when I were sick, and she’d look at me, specially if I were coughing bad, and her face would go all sad and haunted. She ain’t forgot the mills, I think. She left it all behind, that world, but she ain’t forgot.”

The sun was low. All the food they had brought with them was gone, and most of the wine. He watched her as she poured the last of it into the small silver goblets he had borrowed from his landlord. He wanted her almost more than he could bear. He wished they were in Gideon’s house, or in the woods—somewhere, anywhere, where they could lie together.

There are places in the city, Sylvie—quite disreputable places, I will admit, but well kept and discreet—where a gentleman might come quietly to an unlit door, accompanied by a lady with a veiled face, and there he takes a room for a couple of hours, so they might be together, alone.

She handed him a goblet, smiling. Across the channel, a church spire in Dartmouth gleamed in the last of the sun, but here the shadows were already gathering.

Did he dare to ask her? Would she think badly of him for it? Most women would. But then, she was not most women. She was Sylvie.

They touched goblets lightly, sipped. He could not look at her and sort out his thoughts. He looked to the water, where a small sailboat was drifting in, lazy as a cloud.