The Halifax Connection Page 4

  No, very definitely no. The Halifax militia was not going to be part of this parade.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Old Man is Looking for Some Spies

  There is a great war raging in the South, and it would undoubtedly suit the interest of some if the fires of war could be lighted up here …

  —John Cordner

  ALL IN ALL, the review went off very well, ending with speeches and a salute from the Royal Artillery. Only two fights broke out in the crowd, both of them handled tidily by the marines. The brass and their guests were piped away to a great rousing cheer. By then the sun was low, lost in the clouds behind Citadel Hill. In the harbour, the water was slate grey; the far shore had blurred to a long line of dark ridges, and the near one to clustered silhouettes of ships and black masts spearing an ashen sky. Several small fishing schooners were drifting home for the night, and the Dartmouth ferry chugged manfully to Queen’s Pier.

  Erryn Shaw sighed faintly, watching it all. He had lived with exile so long that he scarcely noticed anymore, except sometimes at nightfall, when the whole world scurried to its dens, and he remembered that his was a rented room in a colonial garrison town, in a small frame house where no one else lived except an old man and a cat.

  “Are you on duty tonight, Matt?” he asked, hoping very much the answer would be no.

  “’Fraid so. I’m taking a certain out-of-work stage manager I know down to Corey’s and stuffing him full of good cod and plum pudding and such.”

  “That’s a duty, then, is it?”

  “Erryn, you’re so damn blue they could dip you in a laundry vat and use you for dye. What’s a good mate good for, if he don’t think he ought to do something about it?”

  Erryn grinned and salaamed. “The stage manager is at your disposal. Stuff away.”

  Corey’s was a fine place to eat. Tucked into a narrow lot on Hollis Street, with a harness maker on one side and an upscale whorehouse on the other, it was not favoured by the better people of Halifax; and since it had no barroom, it was not favoured by the worst. This arrangement suited the respectable working class very nicely. As in most eateries, except for the best hotels, meals were served only between certain hours, and the choice was limited to whatever was cheap and plentiful in the markets at the time. Tonight it was haddock, beautifully fried and served with great scoops of golden chips and a bottle of excellent white wine. Erryn dug in with a will.

  “When did you eat last?” Matt murmured.

  “Don’t remember,” Erryn said. Then, realizing he was being absurdly melodramatic, he added, “Breakfast.”

  The food was simple, but very tasty and satisfying. In spite of himself, he started feeling better. A good meal—and most especially a good meal with friends—could lift the gloom from almost anything.

  “So,” Matt asked after a bit, “have you seen the posters for Mr. Rutherford Sanstrom’s lecture tomorrow night? On the Just and Legitimate Claims of the Confederate States to their Freedom and Independence, amen?”

  “Oh, quite. And the editorial in the Recorder too, telling us how all our natural allies in America are in the South, because we all have better table manners than the Yankees.”

  “Well, they did mention one or two other reasons.”

  “All of them equally to the point.”

  “Agreed.” Matt slid his empty plate away and pulled his wineglass closer. Erryn never understood how the man could eat so fast; perhaps a childhood of near starvation was the likeliest explanation. He thought Matt would drain the glass in one go, just like his supper, but instead he only wrapped his hands around it and said, very quietly:

  “You know, mate, the old man is looking for some spies.”

  Erryn regarded him, puzzled, wondering what he had missed in the conversation.

  “Which spies?” he asked. He knew there might be quite a few in town. Halifax was a colonial outpost and the summer base of the entire Atlantic Squadron. It was a major trading port as well, a rough garrison town filled with seamen and soldiers, with strangers from every palace and gutter in the world. Even in quiet times there would be a spy or two among them; with a war ablaze next door, there were likely to be many.

  “His own spies,” Matt said.

  “He’s looking for …? Sorry, Matt. Start over.”

  Matt leaned forward a little, glancing at the nearest table. They were loud and boisterous there, paying no attention to their neighbours. Nonetheless, he lowered his voice even further. “Nova Scotia’s crawling with these bleeding Southerners, Erryn, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Oh, there was some here before you left, but nothing like now. They’re starting newspapers, making speeches, cuddling up cozy with the shipowners and the politicians and even the Church. Rutherford Sanstrom’s staying at Archbishop Devin’s house, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Now, nobody past the age of three believes they only want to tell their own side of the story and buy a little coal for their blockade-runners. There’s way too many of them for that. So what do they want?”

  “Well, that’s easy. They want us in the war. We’re their natural allies, remember?”

  Matt raised his glass. “One for you, mate.” He drank briefly. “Now, I have another question. Would an out-of-work stage manager be interested in a job? Five pounds a month plus expenses, guaranteed by the Crown.”

  “When did you start speaking for the Crown?”

  Matt tapped lightly at the sleeve of his makeshift militia jacket. “This speaks for the Crown.” Then, perhaps realizing that he was being absurdly melodramatic, he added: “Now and then.”

  Erryn said nothing for a time. Matt Calverley was his best friend, a friend who knew exactly how much he lost when the Grafton Street Theatre went down, and how desperately he wanted to replace the loss. Matt was not joking. The offer was genuine, and Erryn was not at all sure he liked it.

  “Doing what?” he asked finally. Cautiously.

  “Making friends with that bleeding pack of Southerners. Nodding and smiling when they talk about the just and … what the hell did they call it? … claims of the Confederate States—”

  “Legitimate.”

  “Right. Legitimate. Well, we all can dream. Anyway, you snuggle up with them, and drink with them, and find out what the hell they’re up to, and then you tell me, and I tell the old man, and he tells the GG, and then maybe, just maybe, we get to keep our necks out of their God damn war.”

  The old man is looking for some spies … SPIES? ME?

  “You fell out of bed and hit your head on something, Matt.”

  “Think about it. The Confederates are crawling all over us. In the West, Niagara’s just as bad, and Montreal’s even worse. The lieutenant-governor is practically in bed with them, right along with Jamie Orton and the rest of his miserable lot. As for Fenwick Williams, he’s pure soldier. He’s not thinking political. All he’s thinking is how many men he’s got and which way to point the cannons when the shit’s in his face. So the plain truth is, nobody’s watching our backs here. And Monck knows it, up in Quebec—”

  “That will be Lord Monck to you, constable,” Erryn quipped.

  “Two,” Matt said amiably, and raised his glass again. “Anyhow, he and Colonel Hawkins go back twenty years. He’s sharp as a headsman’s axe, the colonel says, but real quiet about it. Real careful. He doesn’t want any cannons going off anywhere. But the only way he’s going to manage it is by staying one step ahead of the Confederates—”

  “Matt, for Christ’s sake, stop. You’re not saying a damn thing I don’t already know. The answer is no. I’m not a … This isn’t … I’m sorry, but it’s just no.”

  Matt filled Erryn’s glass and then his own.

  “All right,” he said. “Just thought I’d ask.”

  “Aren’t the Americans doing anything? About the Rebels up here?”

  “Sure. Following them around like burrs on a bear’s ass. Trouble is, when they learn something, they don’t talk to us. They talk to Abe
Lincoln.”

  He leaned back in his chair. He was only four years older than Erryn, and they had much in common, but in appearance they were very different. Matt was a man of barely medium height, elegantly made and darkly attractive, with a short beard and moustache he always kept immaculately trimmed. When he was quiet, as he was now, draped lazily over the arms of a chair, he looked nothing like a policeman, much less a drill sergeant; he looked like someone’s friendly pet kitty. Through the years, a number of angry sailors and lumberjacks had reached the same unfortunate conclusion, and made to toss him over a bar or down a set of stairs, only to discover they had laid rude hands on a bobcat—a creature created entirely of bone and sinew, with lightning reflexes, four compact limbs too fast for a human eye to follow, and mean, mean teeth. Moreover, Matt Calverley knew every dirty trick ever tried in the stinking dens of Barrack Street. He had, after all, grown up there.

  “What’ll you do, then?” he asked. “For work?”

  “I’ll find another theatre.”

  “Until then?”

  “I don’t know. Live on my father’s money, I suppose.”

  “Man said to me once—I was fourteen, fifteen maybe—he said, ‘What are you really good at? Find that out,’ he said, ‘and then do it, come hell or damnation.’ After I thought about it awhile, I decided I was good at figuring other people.”

  “So you joined the constabulary. A reasonable decision.”

  “Well, I didn’t join right off,” Matt said wryly. “Those were the days when they were still trying to lock me away.” He had chosen a table tucked right into a back corner, where they had relative privacy. He watched now as the noisy guests nearby picked up their hats and jackets and started to leave. “And what about you, my friend? Have you ever thought about it? What might be your most remarkable talent?”

  “Putting plays together.”

  “What else?”

  “Bloody hell, Matt. You’ve known me long enough to know what I can do. And what I can’t.”

  “Sure I know. Just wondering how you see it yourself, that’s all. What else, besides plays?”

  Erryn shrugged. “I can act well enough for an amateur production. I play a fair to middling flute.”

  Matt watched him with patient expectation, as he might have watched a small boy figuring out a puzzle. And it occurred to Erryn that his friend was not asking about artistic talents at all. Matt was, after all, a city constable, a member of the militia, and now, apparently, some vague sort of colonial spymaster.

  “I’m a crack shot. And I can run very fast. But then,” Erryn added, “maybe to the people you spend your time with, running very fast isn’t counted as a talent.”

  “What else?”

  “What else? God, I don’t know. All things considered, I suppose I have a talent for survival, or I wouldn’t be here at all. Oh, and I’m very literate. I can speak French, read Latin and Greek, name all the kings of England, and do figures in my head. Now, will that do?”

  “You’ve left out your most exceptional talent of all.”

  “Which is?” Erryn asked, genuinely curious.

  “You can fit anywhere. Handle yourself anywhere. You’re a fish to whom the whole world is water. You could dine with the bloody House of Lords or piss in a trough by the Water Street livery, and there wouldn’t be a soul, neither one place nor the other, would think for one minute you didn’t belong there.”

  Erryn opened his mouth and closed it again, silent. He was not sure if he had been complimented or royally insulted.

  “And that, Erryn Shaw, makes you the best God damn natural spy I’ve ever seen, or ever hope to see. And I can’t think of one reason why you shouldn’t put such a fine talent to use.”

  “Well, I can think of some reasons. Lots of people here know me, and they know exactly what I think of the Southern Confederacy. God knows I’ve said so often enough.”

  Matt shrugged. “Early on, people said all sorts of things. There’s four states in the Confederacy that voted for the Union, first time around. There’s a fellow I know down at Logan’s Wharf, solid man, with a damn fine head on his shoulders. He was expecting Abe Lincoln to declare a crusade against slavery, and he was all for it. Instead, Lincoln overruled some general who tried to free the slaves in his own bailiwick, and the lad snaps around, just like that. He’s all for the South now, says the Yankees are just bullies kicking some smaller chap’s ass. People change their minds, Erryn—that’s the first thing. And the second thing is, far as I ever noticed, you did most of your talking to me. You’re way too well bred to get in political battles at other people’s dinner tables. What with you running the theatre and then going to Bermuda, and being so damn polite, I don’t think the Grey Tories know what you think, really.”

  “Maybe,” Erryn said. “As to the war itself, maybe. But it doesn’t matter. A man’s politics are of a piece. I don’t care for oligarchies, remember? For people being shoved into boxes because of who their fathers were, or weren’t. I don’t see how a man can call himself civilized and keep slaves. And frankly, on a bad day I don’t have much use for the British Empire. I’m not a Tory, Matt, Grey or otherwise. And that’s something most of Halifax does know.”

  “What of it?” Matt asked very calmly.

  Erryn shook his head in exasperation. “What of it? Matt, for Christ’s sake—!”

  “Jack Murray blew back into town while you were gone. He’s as strong for the South as Jamie Orton now. Stronger, maybe. All he’s missing is some little Rebel flags growing out of his ears.”

  Erryn stared at him. Jack Murray was his friend—not as dear and close a friend as Matt, but nonetheless a friend. Jack Murray was a liberal and a freethinker, a supporter of change-minded English Radicals such as Cobden and Bright. Politically, Jack Murray was a great deal like himself.

  He’s as strong for the South as Jamie Orton now?

  “It doesn’t split clean, Erryn,” Matt said softly. “Men’s politics aren’t of a piece. Or maybe they are, but the pieces fit damned peculiar sometimes.”

  Which was something Erryn knew, of course. He knew it as a principle of history, as a recurring theme in drama, even as a fact of this war: the Liberal Gladstone in England, making speeches in praise of the South; the fossilized Conservative he had met in Bermuda, condemning secession as the very essence of anarchy. It did not matter what one used for a marker—rank, race, religion, party; wealth or privilege or power or the lack of them—men from the same group still came down on both sides of every fight. More of them on one side than the other, usually, but always on both. He knew that. He had simply never thought of it as applicable to himself.

  Matt leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the table and linking his hands. “Jack Murray is supporting the Confederates for the purest of liberal reasons. They’re fighting for national independence, just like the Greeks and the Poles. Why shouldn’t he support them? Why shouldn’t you? You don’t have to like slavery—hell, James Orton doesn’t, either. The war isn’t about slavery—”

  “The hell it isn’t.”

  “Oh, not once the Confederates cross their own borders. Soon as they cross a border, they turn it into a whole different war, all noble and proper like a cutpurse dressed for church. Your views on slavery won’t matter if you don’t make a fuss about it. And it won’t matter if you had doubts at first, either; lots of people did. But the more you saw and read, the more you understood the truth. The Yankees are only after power, the Southerners are honourable and civilized, and so on and so forth as you please. The Rebels love converts, Erryn. They’re like religious folk that way: they’re so sure they’re right, it’s just natural if you come around to their way of thinking.”

  “Matt …”

  Of course, he protested further, but for all his protests Matt Calverley had an answer, and bit by bit he found himself yielding. It was obvious Matt desperately wanted help. Five pounds a month plus expenses was a tempting offer, and whatever else, he would at least have somethi
ng interesting to do. Finally, and most importantly, there was the political question itself. The prospect of a war here, between his own people and the Americans—a war that might kill him or his dearest friends, a war that might smash this small and promising world to ruins, smash it for no good reason at all—Lord, it made him cold to his bones. So, in a different way, did the prospect of a triumphant Confederacy. He had been raised an aristocrat himself, after all. He recognized the qualities of his own kind when he saw them—their arrogance, their astonishing audacity, their faith in the use of force. The cold smell of authoritarian empire lay all over the Southern Confederacy’s supposed fight for freedom.

  Against all of these things his natural common sense, such as it was, grew less and less persuasive, even to himself. The evening passed. The fish bones on their plates grew dry and sorry-looking, the wine bottles empty, the dining room more and more deserted. Spent, Erryn struck his colours for good—All right, all right, I’ll do it—and wondered just how quickly and how badly he would come to regret it.