The Halifax Connection (65 page)

He was so spent, he had already closed the book and was laying it aside when he realized what he had read. He opened it again, read it again, and a great chaos of things rolled across his mind at once, like tumbling cargo after a train wreck—Nassau and the Irish Stone and General Amherst and Maury Janes’s impossible victory and what did the man want with three ordinary shopkeepers in three Northern cities, questions without answers and answers that no longer needed questions. The meaning of it swept through him unresisted; he was utterly beyond resistance.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!”

He stumbled to his feet, took two or three clumsy steps, and doubled over, rigid, fighting the nausea spilling up into his throat. He tried to speak, but could not. He was barely aware of Matt’s reaching arm, Matt’s voice, gutter harsh the way it got when he was really angry or really scared. “What is it, mate, what’s wrong, damn bloody hell, talk to me, what’s wrong?”

He tried to steady himself, groping for a handkerchief to press against his face.

“Outside.” His voice was little more than a whisper, harsh and choked. “Leave everything. Come outside.”

Matt did not argue. He opened the door. Outside, the sun had slid from sight beyond Citadel Hill. The colonel sat on a rock, quietly smoking. He saw them and got to his feet.

“Well, I take it you’ve finally had enough?”

Erryn stood a moment, drawing deep gulps of air. Then he held up the book. “This belonged to Frances Harris.”

“Oh, shit,” Matt said softly.

Erryn stared at him. Matt still did not see it. Or rather, he was seeing something quite peripheral—how sad for Erryn Shaw, to stumble over this memento of his beloved’s grief. Matt’s face was full of sympathy. Not fear, just sympathy.

“And who is Frances Harris?” the colonel demanded.

“A
woman who died of yellow fever. In Nassau. Where these trunks came from.”

“So what—”

Erryn overrode him as though he had not opened his mouth. “Trunks full of bedding and nightclothes—oh, and a few trifles, a rag doll, a couple of bibles—things people might cling to in their sickbeds. God almighty, don’t you see? This stuff is from people who died! It’s contaminated! Matt, you remember Amherst, you told me the story yourself, General Amherst and the Mi’kmaq? His easy, bloodless victory with a cartload of blankets? All those people dead just for taking a gift? That’s what
Maury Janes is after, don’t you see? That’s what somebody in Nassau gathered up and sent him! These are … they’re plague trunks, Matt!”

Very little could turn Matt Calverley pale. He was white as paper now.

“Erryn, don’t jump me for this, friend, but aren’t you … isn’t that a little bit over the edge?”

“Is it? Think about it. Where did this stuff come from? If people were just emptying out their closets, where are the shoes, the frock coats, the hats? I never saw one.”

Erryn was speaking fiercely, desperately, sorting it and linking it even as he spoke—all the absurdities, the questions that never quite took shape, the constant niggles of discontent,
something doesn’t make sense
, all making sense at once now, ugly and horrible, hammered out like blows.

“Why just bedclothes, mostly? Bedclothes that stink, and not just from being used and stored away, but way worse—they stink like sickness. They’re stained. People with yellow fever vomit bile. I’m told the odour is ungodly. And who was Janes sending it to, in the States? Not just anybody. Two merchants and an auctioneer, who would sell it all willy-nilly!”

“But those are just front men!” the colonel protested. “They’re just bodies to claim the cargo at the other end!”

“And if they’re not?” Erryn demanded. He heard Matt suck in his breath, and went on: “Maybe they’re
exactly
who the stuff is intended for—then what? Consider the destinations: Philadelphia, the second-largest city in the United States. Baltimore, strategic port, to say nothing of being a Southern city that didn’t turn Rebel. New Bern, headquarters and launch point of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron. If I were a Confederate, I’d be hard pressed to find a better place to start a plague myself.”

There was a long, painful silence. After a time the colonel said, very quietly, “We’ve been handling that stuff ourselves. For hours.”

“Yes.”
Handling it with a vengeance. Rolling up our sleeves, pawing
it, groping in it, breathing its stench. All of us. Me. The poor old colonel, who just wanted to call it a bad idea and go home. My dear, dear Matt…

“I’m sorry,” Erryn said wretchedly. “I didn’t … I never dreamt…”

“Who the hell could?” Matt paced, kicked rubbish, paced some more. Finally he stopped. “Look, it’s a good theory, and you mostly know what you’re doing, so you’re probably right. But the fact is, we have to find out for sure.”

“We can’t find out for sure. Except by dying.”

“Easy, mate,” Matt said gently. “Not everybody who gets the yellow jack dies of it. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is, I damn well mean to find out. I’m going to haul that son of a bitch down here and set him to packing his trunks.”

It was dusk. A single lamp spilled a yellow glare through the ordnance shed. Janes took one step inside the door and stood frozen. From his hiding place in the adjoining room, Erryn could not read the expression on his face, but the shocked rigidity of the man’s body confirmed all his fears. Janes looked from one man to the other, and back to the scattered clothing again.

Oh, my God!
He did not say the words, but he might as well have done so.
Oh my god oh my god oh my god … !

It took a long time for him to find his voice. By then he had managed a degree of calm, even of pretended arrogance.

“What the devil is going on here, constable?”

“Just a routine search,” Matt said amiably. “When I thought you were robbing Mr. Shaw last night, I had a look in your pockets, and found your letter and stuff. And then when Mr. Shaw woke up and told us you really were attacked, well, those papers started to look real suspicious. I thought like as not the villains were after whatever you were smuggling in those trunks.”

“That’s ridiculous! I wasn’t smuggling anything in those trunks!”

“So we’ve discovered.” Matt straightened his jacket a bit, as if the discussion were over and he were about to leave. “Sorry for the trouble, mate. You’re free to pack your things and go.”

“I’m free to pack them? You throw my property all over this dungheap of a shed, and I’m supposed to pack it up again? This is outrageous!”

“This is customs and excise. Same all over. Don’t tell me you’ve never been searched before.”

Janes started to speak and then paused, as if changing direction. “Gentlemen, for God’s sake, I was attacked last night and beaten. I was thrown in jail for no reason. The least you can do is give my property back in the same condition as you took it.”

“I’m sorry, Janes,” Matt said. “But it ain’t our job, see.”

“All right, I can pay you to do it. I’ll pay you decent—more’n you’re used to, I expect.”

Hawkins turned on him sharply.
“A
man who packs another man’s trunks is his servant, Mr. Janes. Is that what officers in Her Majesty’s service look like to you?”

“I didn’t mean—oh, Christ, never mind. I’ll go find someone on the street—”

“You can’t do that,” Matt said.

“What the devil do you mean, I can’t do that?”

“It’s too late. I’m going off duty, and we have to get this shed all cleaned and locked up before we leave. It’s Her Majesty’s property, you know.”

“God damn it, constable, I can get a man back here in twenty minutes!”

“Maybe you can. Then again, maybe you’ll just climb on one of those fancy blockade-runners and leave your rubbish behind. I mean, it ain’t exactly worth much—”

“I give you my word I’ll be back! I’ll give you a bond. Here!” Janes groped inside his jacket and pulled out a wad of money. “Fifty Yankee dollars says I’ll be back here in twenty minutes!”

Matt shook his head. “I can’t take that. You got to post your bond at the station, where they write it all down and everything. You just give me money, well, that’s like me taking a bribe.”

“Fine, then, let’s go to the damn station—”

“You deaf or something, Janes? I told you I’m off duty. Just pack your trunks and get it over with, will you? The colonel and me want our dinner.”

Janes stared at him for a long moment, torn, it seemed, between bewildered disbelief and the first real whispers of fear—fear not simply of his deadly cargo lying so unexpectedly close, but fear of Matt Calverley too. There really was something spiderlike about Matt when he dealt with an enemy, something sudden and silent and impossible to predict. And Janes saw it, or sensed it. But he did not fear it quite enough. Not yet.

“Go to hell,” he said. He turned on his heel and strode to the door. It would not open. He shoved at it savagely, several times, kicked at it … and finally must have realized that it was locked.

He turned back to face the room, leaning against the door. Little was left now of his earlier composure. “What the devil is this about, sir?”

“Tidiness,” Matt said with an airy gesture toward the piles of clothing. “We’re tidy folks, we Haligonians. We pick up after ourselves.”

Janes said nothing. He stayed rigid by the door. Matt looked curiously at him, then at the piles of clothing on the floor, then at him again. “I say, there isn’t something
wrong
with this stuff, is there?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, you’re bloody acting like there is. What do you think, colonel? Do you get the impression this bugger is
scared
of his own property?”

“I do indeed, constable.”

“What are you scared of, Janes?”

“Nothing. It’s dirty, that’s all. It stinks. I don’t like stuff that stinks.”

“Should’ve thought of that sooner, shouldn’t you?” Calmly, as if he were buttoning his cuff, Matt drew his pistol from its holster. “You are under arrest, Mr. Janes. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“Under arrest? For what?”

“Littering. Like I told you, this is Crown property. You can’t leave your rubbish here. Turn around.”

For a brief moment Janes hesitated. Then, perhaps, he saw an advantage in it, and obeyed. “Fine,” he said bitterly. “Put me back in your rotten little jail. When I get out, I swear to God I’ll see you ruined!”

Matt closed both cuffs on the man’s wrists before he answered. “Oh,” he said, “I’m not taking you to jail.” He pushed Janes into the centre of the shed. “I’m going to shackle you to this pillar here, and I’m going to pile all these old rags around you so you don’t get cold, and then I’m going home. Come morning, I figure you’ll be a lot more co-operative.”

Finally, terror. Even through the thin crack in the wall Erryn could see it—pure, undiluted terror on Janes’s face. He struggled desperately, trying to hold himself rigid, to be shoved no closer to his precious cargo.

“You can’t do this! You got no right! Colonel, stop him, he’s got no authority—”

It was a short, uneven battle, lasting only till the first stained blanket fell across his chest.

“Don’t, for Christ’s sake, don’t! You’re going to kill me!”

“Kill you? How? With this?” Matt reached for another piece and held it up, laughing. It was the bitterest laugh Erryn had ever heard in his life. “It’s just a bloody nightgown, Janes. Don’t be such a ninny.”

Janes huddled down against the pillar. “Please,” he said. “Please. It’s full of yellow jack.”

They had to know for sure, of course they did. And yet to hear it was shattering. Erryn heard Matt spit out a curse; he saw the
colonel sag like a rag doll and turn away; he felt his own bones chill and shiver. He thought himself worldly, even hard in certain ways, yet he could not, at this moment, understand a man like Maury Janes, understand what moved him to a deed such as this. For who was likely to buy his rubbish? Not the soldiers, surely, who were mostly well supplied by their quartermasters. No, it would be the poor and the homeless, the runaway slaves, the refugees—many of them
Southern
refugees, no doubt, in places like New Bern and Baltimore. Even by the terms of warfare it was a devil’s bargain, the losses cruel and immediate, the gains merely guesswork. No one knew what the Northern government or its people would do in the face of such an epidemic. And if word got out, as well it might, as to how the epidemic had begun?

Long ago in Surrey, Erryn’s tutor used to smile at him sometimes and make small, pithy observations about life.
Of all the qualities one might find in a man
, he said once,
there are none more dangerous to find together than ruthlessness and stupidity.
The tutor had been old even then, and he was dead now. Had he been living, Erryn would have wished for nothing just now but to lay his head on the old man’s shoulder and weep.