The Halifax Connection Page 5

  There was, however, one last matter to be settled. As they rose to leave, he put his arm around his friend’s shoulder and asked wearily: “Matt, you don’t really think I’d piss in the troughs by the Water Street livery, do you?”

  “No,” Matt said, with his wicked street arab’s grin. “But if you ever start, I’ll damn well toss you in jail.”

  BOOK TWO

  The North Atlantic, Summer 1863

  CHAPTER 3

  The Osprey

  We are going to burn, sink, and destroy the commerce of the United States.

  —Captain Raphael Semmes, Confederate Navy

  THE TALL SHIP passed them miles to the east, under full sail in the last of the afternoon light. A dozen or so of the mail packet’s passengers clustered by the starboard rail to admire it. Such a fine ship, they kept saying, so stately and graceful. Sylvie Bowen stood alone, apart from the others, and said nothing; but when the strange vessel moved off into the distance, and the other passengers lost interest, she remained by the rail until the last trace of it was gone. The Osprey had been a ship much like it, the beautiful Osprey she and Fran had boarded at Liverpool in May … nine weeks ago if you reckoned by the calendar, a lifetime otherwise.

  She brushed away tears with the back of her hand. Sometimes she could think of Fran without this rush of grief. She could look out across the grey water and acknowledge quietly that Fran was dead. Fran would never have the promising new life in Nova Scotia they had dreamt of. She would never be courted by Captain Foxe—or, if he changed his mind, by anyone else. She was gone forever, lying in a churchyard in a wild Caribbean town, where drunken blockade-runners brawled in the streets until daybreak, and sand barely hid the bones of pirates.

  Nassau. Back in England, Sylvie had only heard of the place because of the American war, through a few small items in the newspapers Fran borrowed from her friends. Nassau was coming to matter in the world: a friendly port for Confederate raiders, a transfer point for commerce running the blockade. This much Sylvie had learned from the papers, but she never imagined she would go there. That last wonderful day on the Osprey, they were speeding northward from Bermuda, and Nassau was a thousand miles away …

  When they first sailed from England it had been late in May, the sun hot as summer and a fair wind blowing. Such days, Captain Foxe said, were God’s gift to good ships, and his Osprey flew like the lean bird she was. From Liverpool she made Bermuda in twelve days, where she unloaded bales of English textiles, cases of tools and copperware, and carefully packed china; sundry stocks of medicines and books; and three pianos. Into the partially emptied hold went crates of oranges; barrels of sugar, molasses, and rum; and last of all, a shimmering, squalling parrot in a cage, purchased, apparently, by a gentleman in Halifax, though no one could imagine why. By then June had come, and the Osprey was winging for Nova Scotia under a full spread of sail.

  Sylvie had been on deck for much of the day, with Fran and the others. She was still twenty-six back in June, thin to the point of frailty, and dressed in a plain cotton frock without lace or trim or hoops—a frock that clearly marked her as a member of the working poor. People noticed this, of course, on a ship like the Osprey. They also noticed her hair, beautiful hair as dark as midnight, always hanging long and loose about her face. It gave her a certain aura of wildness that caught everyone’s eye, and that men and women judged as it pleased them. She could do nothing about their judgments, and had long ago stopped trying.

  Her aunt, Frances Harris, sat on the bench behind her, peeling and partitioning an orange, one of the tiny luxuries they had bought for themselves in Bermuda. She did it slowly and carefully, keeping the sections in a bowl on her lap, and eating them with voluptuous pleasure, one by one.

  “Here, Sylvie,” she said, “have a piece or two, before I gobble it all.”

  Sylvie smiled, and went to sit beside her. Fran looked so content, she thought, and every day more so. It was beautiful to see.

  “Thanks,” Sylvie said. She had never tasted oranges in England. Once, in Darwen, a peddler had brought some in his wagon, and she had stood nearby like a beggar, staring, aching for them. They looked so glorious, like handfuls of heaven in a basket. Then Johnnie Morris came up behind her and said, “I’ll buy you one, if you do it with me,” and she walked away. She did not want to look at them anymore, or at him either, the mean little sod. He always had a bit of money; he could have bought one for himself, and given her a piece, just one tiny piece, so she could know what they were like …

  The orange was heavenly indeed. She accepted a second offering, and then, when it was all gone, she sucked a small gob of juice from her finger and looked wryly at her aunt.

  “A lady like Miss Caroline would never do that, I suppose?”

  Fran smiled. “Miss Caroline? How could she? She’d be wearing gloves.”

  Miss Caroline never came on deck without gloves. She always wore a great floppy bonnet too, and carried a parasol, as if all this glorious, soul-warming sunshine were rain. The rich were peculiar, and there was no denying it.

  “Well, at least she’s friendly, and willing to talk a bit,” Sylvie said. “There’s one or two among the others who still be wondering how we got on board.”

  “We bought our passage the same as everyone,” Fran said coolly. And that, for Fran, was the end of it. They were here; their fellow passengers and the whole rest of the world could deal with it, or not, as they chose.

  “I should tell you,” Fran went on, in the most casual manner possible, “Captain Foxe has invited us to supper in his cabin tonight.”

  “Us?” Sylvie whispered. Then she laughed softly. “Go on. You’re teasing me.”

  “Not a bit. Master Schofield will be there too, of course. The captain says it be his birthday, and he’s serving up a fine chicken and a bottle or two of his best port. So of course I told him yes.”

  Sylvie did not know what to say, so for a time she said nothing. Early in the voyage, almost as soon as the women recovered from their seasickness and emerged from their cabin to eat and take the air, Captain Foxe had shown a remarkable degree of interest in Frances Harris. This did not surprise Sylvie nearly as much as it surprised everyone else; all her life she had watched Frances attract the interest of men.

  But Nathaniel Foxe was a ship’s captain, wealthy enough to own this splendid vessel—not the usual sort of man to invite a pair of Lancashire ragpickers to a birthday supper in his cabin. No wonder Fran was so light of heart today, so quick to smile.

  “You like him awfully, don’t you?” Sylvie said.

  “Rather more than is good for me, I suppose. You’re not a bad judge of people, Sylvie. What do you think of him?”

  “I think …” She paused, searching for the right words. “Well, he got all that authority, but I never seen him throw his weight around. And he always treats us same as the others, as if being poor don’t matter. Is that what Americans be like?”

  Fran laughed softly. “I haven’t met a lot of them, love. But unless they all died and turned into angels, I doubt it.”

  “Well then, I’d say he’s a good man.”

  “Yes. That’s rather what I think, too.”

  Sylvie leaned back against the bench. She felt impossibly content, warm and well fed as a sunning cat. She would have purred if she had known how. This, she thought, must be how slaves felt when they escaped from their masters, or prisoners when they fled from their dungeons—when they had actually made it. When the past was too far away to ever catch up with them, and everything ahead was only possibility.

  She wondered what Halifax would be like. A well-ordered, prosperous city, Miss Susan’s letter had promised them, with plenty of work for anyone who wanted it. A sailor town, Frances had added wryly, garrison to half an empire, and sitting right next door to that nasty American war. Prosperous it might well be, Fran said, but she was taking “well-ordered” with a grain of salt.

  For her part, Sylvie did not care; whatever it was like, sh
e would have a future there. Sylvie Bowen, clerk. Or chambermaid, or scullion, or God knew what. Something. Something that would not kill her, as the mill would have done. As the mill had begun to do, fibre by deadly cotton fibre. She had watched it kill others, a few of them every year—six or seven, maybe; not enough for anyone to notice, down there in London where they made the laws. It was only a matter of time until she became another. And she had known as much, the days she looked into Fran’s little mirror and saw her face as dead as lime, only the eyes alive, red and always watering, half blind with pain; the nights she had choked in her bed, coughing and coughing into the blankets, trying to muffle it, trying not to keep Fran awake …

  Now she was free. The great rattle of the spindles was silent, and the sea air was as wild and as clean as the sky.

  Until the morning she climbed aboard the Osprey, Sylvie Bowen had never been among what they called “the better people.” Oh, she had seen them from time to time, when some owner came to the mill to give orders, or when the church ladies came to their tenements with bits of food and old clothing, and endless talk of cleanliness and God. Now, on the Osprey, the fine folk were in sudden, disturbing closeness, elbow to elbow at the dining table, and out on the deck, walking past her almost close enough to touch, smiling, perhaps—even bowing a little, if they were men. Good morning, ladies. A fine day for sailing, ladies … They were polite, of course. Even the horrid Draytons were polite now, but she knew what they thought of her.

  The ship had been three days out of Liverpool when she and Fran first came out of their cabin for a proper meal. She walked into the grand saloon and saw the whole pack of them gathered as at a king’s feasting table: the captain in his trim uniform looking for all the world like a hero out of a book, the others practically shimmering in the lamplight, dressed to the very nines.

  She had not expected this. She had expected … oh, she was not sure what, a room like the eateries in Rochdale, perhaps, through whose windows she had seen scattered tables with small groups of men. She thought she and Fran would sit off by themselves in a corner—not here, at this long, sparkling table. Not with all the others. She could feel their eyes on her, taking due note of the unbound hair, the pathetically cheap dress. But there was no possibility of flight; Captain Foxe himself stepped toward her and pulled out her chair: “Good evening, Miss Bowen, please be seated.”

  She sat obediently, and found herself face to face with the most insufferable snobs on the vessel, quite possibly the most insufferable snobs in the whole British Empire: a certain Mrs. Drayton, made entirely of silk and lace and baubles; and beside her, her husband, who stared at the mill-town women as if they were livestock who had wandered up from the hold.

  At first, all Sylvie wanted was to flee, yet by the evening’s end she was glad they had come. Divine odours drifted out from the galley, and her humiliation gave way to a sheer longing for food. It came at last, enticing beyond all her expectations, a roast of beef with turnips and yams and thick slabs of bread. She watched in wonderment as the steward loaded her plate. Surely this couldn’t all be for her? But it was, and it was achingly good. Bit by bit she felt better. Bit by bit the company mellowed too. Captain Foxe was friendly and polite, treating them as if they were perfect ladies, and in his presence no one seemed ready to do otherwise.

  But when the passengers were alone among themselves, it was different. The very next day, Sylvie came upon a gathering in the saloon, the proud English couple in their midst. None of them noticed her come in, engrossed as they were in their own conversation. She caught only the last of Mrs. Drayton’s words:

  “—never allow my servants to wear clothes like that.”

  “It’s appalling, really,” her husband said. “We understood the Osprey to be a fine, respectable vessel. I for one did not expect to be sitting at the table with factory women, or whatever the deuce they are. I can’t imagine how it was allowed.”

  “Well, it is an American ship.”

  “Quite beside the point.” This was Mr. Paige, who was from the States himself. “I know hundreds of Americans who’d never lower their standards like this. I fear the war has made our captain desperate. He’ll take anyone who can pay.”

  “Yes, and how were they able to pay, I wonder? A decent servant girl is doing well if she’s got a shilling to spare for a pair of shoes.”

  Well, Sylvie thought bitterly, m’appen you should pay them better, then!

  She stood irresolute, curious to hear what else they might say, yet desperate to escape unseen. She looked at each in turn: the English Draytons, Mr. Paige, Miss Caroline, the other young American, Mr. Canfrey. Rich, every blighting one of them. Well-tended bodies that never dreamt of hunger. Hair fashioned just so. Nails all trimmed and clean. Rings that sparkled even in the lamplight. Clothing so fine and precious you could stroke it like a cat.

  And they were wondering where she got her money?

  “Maybe an inheritance?” Miss Caroline suggested hopefully.

  “Good heavens, no. People like that don’t know anyone with money to leave them.”

  “Well, however they came by it,” Mr. Drayton said, “I’ll wager it wasn’t honest labour, or they’d value it more. Really, I ask you: creatures like that, travelling first class? A pair of honest immigrants would stay with their own kind, and hang on to their money so they don’t end up in the workhouse!”

  It wasn’t honest labour? Day after day, she and Fran had tramped to the cotton mill before the sun rose, and stumbled home again in the dark. They worked in air no human could safely breathe, in noise to shatter the nerves of a stone. They did it from the year she turned eleven until the day the mill shut down, and they had not earned their passage out?

  She stared at Drayton, unable to find words to answer an accusation so monstrously unjust. While she floundered, Miss Caroline stepped into the breach.

  “Really, Mr. Drayton, I dare say you’ve gone too far. I’m sure these women worked and saved for their passage, as most of the immigrants do. We do the lower orders a great injustice, you know, if we assume that just because they are poor they are also criminals.”

  “Oh, come now, I didn’t say that—”

  “With respect, sir, I fear you did.” This was Mr. Canfrey, the youngest of the group, who until now had said nothing. He got to his feet; perhaps he had had enough of the conversation. “I’m going topside, Paige. Are you coming?”

  Mr. Paige lifted a glass still half filled with wine. “When I’ve finished.”

  “I’ll see you later, then. Ladies. Mr. Drayton.” He turned and saw Sylvie. He had the decency to seem embarrassed, but before he could say anything, she shook her head faintly. They both retreated, very quietly, in opposite directions.

  She cried over it for most of an hour. It had seemed a miracle, getting onto this ship. They did not choose it so they could travel first class. They chose it because the war had made it cheap, because her lungs were bad, because they wanted to get to America alive. So she cried, bitterly, but in time she cried herself out, and there was nothing she could do in the cabin except sit on her bed and read a battered dime novel she had already read twice. After another hour she found herself both hungry and bored. It would be lunchtime soon. Her mouth watered, remembering yesterday’s dinner. She would go and see the steward, she decided, and ask him to bring her plate to the cabin. Then the bloody Draytons could eat and strut in peace.

  But there was Fran. She knew what Fran would say to this: “Then they’ve won, Sylvie.” That was exactly what Fran would say, with a little brush of Sylvie’s hair across her forehead. “You can’t do it, love. Because then they’ve won.”

  No, she had to face the buggers down, so she might as well just do it. Besides, she had not been on deck since they left the Mersey and everyone got seasick; she wanted desperately to get out in the sun, to walk, to look at the sea.

  And there Mr. Canfrey found her and apologized for his companions. The English upper classes, he said, were such intolerable s
nobs. He did not mention that his countryman Paige had been cheerfully agreeing with them. Nor did he ever look directly at her face. But he did apologize, and day by day things got better. It was a long voyage and a small group of passengers; simply getting through the days required a measure of civility. But more than anything, it was Captain Foxe who set the standards of their social world. His passengers were his guests, and he treated them all with unfailing courtesy; it was hard for them to do less. Moreover, he liked these Lancashire ragpickers, and whatever the others may have thought of his taste, or of his morals, Sylvie doubted that any of them were willing to make him mad.

  Now he had invited the ragpickers to dine in his cabin.

  Oh my, Sylvie thought, this was going to cause a stir. Mr. Drayton would say democracy had corrupted the whole American race and here was the proof of it. Mrs. Drayton would fan herself and ask for smelling salts. And tomorrow, when Fran and Sylvie turned up on deck, everyone would look at them and wonder what they had been up to, besides devouring chicken and port.

  I suppose if we were terribly proper and respectable ladies, we’d have to think twice about going. This way … well, there be advantages to everything, even to being factory trash.

  She was licking the last bit of orange juice from her fingers when a shout of “Sail ho!” brought everyone to the railing. The sea in all directions seemed clear and empty. Sylvie glanced up, where a lookout clung to the rigging with one hand, holding a glass to his eye with the other.

  Between one breath and another the deck had gone silent. Conversations died in mid-sentence; even the work sounds stopped. A sailor stood with a bucket in his hand, the water from his mop draining over his feet. In the sudden quiet they could hear every slap of the sea, and every squawk and cluck of the chickens. Any strange ship could be a Confederate raider. According to Mr. Canfrey, the Alabama under Captain Raphael Semmes had burned and sunk seventeen American ships—merchants, whalers, fishing vessels, anything that crossed her path. Seventeen already, he told them, as of the day they left Liverpool.