The Halifax Connection Read online

  They were words to grow strong with in the full light of day, words to hold and carry out into the street, proud-eyed and smiling. But when the night came down, they were only empty words.

  She thought of Frances, arm in arm in the moonlight with Nathaniel Foxe. Frances was forty-three. She had crow’s feet around her eyes, and bits of grey in her hair, and yet the captain was falling in love with her.

  Sylvie understood then, quite suddenly, why she could not have borne to go walking with Master Schofield. She would have cried every time she passed them on the deck. Not out of envy, but out of the simple recognition of her loss. No man had ever looked at her in such a fashion, treasured her company so much, tucked her arm against his side with such protective tenderness. And the odds were high that no man ever would.

  She dug Fran’s mirror from their trunk. She turned her face into the light, drew her loose-hanging hair back behind her ears, and regarded herself. Sometimes she could do it with absolute detachment, as if she were looking at a picture in a book. Sometimes she could not bear to do it at all.

  From just above her left eyebrow a tangle of scars spread down her face, reaching almost to the centre of her cheek; the longest and cruellest of them twisted to the line of her jaw. The tropic sun, darkening her face a little every day, had made the marks a small bit less distinct. Here, in the cabin, the lamplight softened their awfulness.

  Yet here they were nonetheless. She would carry them forever. Even in old age, when she grew tired and forgetful, when even the worst of her memories might fade if they were left alone, the marks would still be here, reminding her.

  You can run, Sylvie Bowen, from everything but this …

  It was very late when Frances returned to the cabin—so late that Sylvie wondered, quietly, if they had retired to the captain’s cabin first. Fran looked extraordinarily happy.

  “Well,” Sylvie said, “I take it you enjoyed yourself?”

  “I did.” Frances sat on her bed and took her shoes off. “He asked if he might call on me, when we’re settled in Halifax.”

  “And you said yes, then, did you?”

  “Oh, certainly. But I warned him that a woman on her own for the whole of her life were likely to be set in her ways. And he said a man who’d been at sea since he were twelve would be much the same. If I weren’t scared of it in him, he said, he weren’t scared of it in me.”

  “I don’t think there’s much that man be scared of.”

  “No.” Bit by bit, Frances began to undress. “He’s such an interesting man. A good man, I think—certainly he’s been good to us. But so interesting. I think I could sit for the next ten years just listening to him talk about his travels.”

  “Well, with a bit of luck you will.”

  “Luck?” Without a flicker of warning, a shadow passed across Fran’s face. “It be a very long time now, Sylvie, since I believed in luck.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The Raiders

  Whenever we heard a Yankee howl go up over a burned ship, we knew there were fewer dollars left with which to hire the canaille of Europe to throttle liberty on the American continent.

  —Captain Raphael Semmes, Confederate Navy

  SYLVIE WOKE to storm the next morning, to bits of pale dawn light and the realization that the cabin was tipped like a hillside and she had just been tumbled against the wall. Grey water came at her in waves, smashing into the tiny window. She ducked her head, terrified. For a small moment she believed they were sinking and about to die. But the water fell away; she saw light again, and steadied herself. It was a bit of high wind, that was all. Last night at supper, Captain Foxe had promised as much. He could tell by the sky, he said.

  They dressed and groped their way to the saloon. The steward was nowhere to be seen, but four other passengers were there: the Draytons and the two Americans, Canfrey and Paige. No lamps had been lit, but the windows were generous here, and the grey dawn was turning into day. She could see the tension in Canfrey’s smile as he rose to greet them, the dark anger in Mr. Drayton’s eyes.

  “All hands are on deck except the cook,” Canfrey told them. “We’re on our own down here.”

  “Is the storm that bad, then?” Fran asked.

  Canfrey tried to answer, but Drayton did not give him a chance. “Bad?” he cried bitterly. “It’s a bloody howling gale out there and that lunatic is flying every piece of canvas we’ve got! Everything! Even the topgallants! He’s going to kill us all!”

  “He’s an experienced seaman,” Canfrey flung back. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He hates the Southerners so bad he can’t think straight!”

  “Southerners?” Fran said very softly.

  “We’re being chased.” Canfrey did not quite meet her eyes as he spoke. “The lookouts spotted her at first light, on our port bow, no more’n a few miles off. Just miserable bad luck, that she got so close in the dark. By then the wind was high. He told the men to raise sail, we were running for our lives. He sent me below, and they battened down the hatches.” Canfrey was still on his feet, holding on to the table with one hand. “I expect it will be a long day.”

  They were locked below for hours. Later, one of the younger officers told them what it had been like on the deck—every hand on the ropes, even the poor steward, and the ship listing till the lower sails were trailing in the water. There wasn’t a soul could hear himself think, he said, with the waves crashing over the deck, high enough to drown a man where he stood, and the wind howling like a banshee, and every beam and spar crying out from the strain. Some feared they would lose their mainmast, or go over, but the Osprey was built to take the worst of weather; she could take all of this and more. Captain Foxe meant to run, and if the Rebels meant to catch him, they’d have to learn to fly.

  So they tacked, he said, they tacked like very devils, with the captain tied to the foremast, roaring out his commands. And yes, he was good, and they all knew it, but that day he was something more than good, he was one of those sea gods they painted in books. He knew the ship as though it were part of him; he knew the wind as though he had called it up himself. Sometimes, when it got bad enough, he would reef the sails a bit. Then he would raise them again in a breath, bleeding the gale for all it could give him of its power. And the Osprey flew.

  Hour after grey morning hour she flew, and every time they looked behind them, the pirate ship was a little bit farther away.

  In the saloon, the cook brought the passengers sandwiches filled with slabs of cold meat, sweet cakes, and all the hot coffee they could drink. The second mate made a brief, drenched appearance, bringing them Captain Foxe’s reassurances—and, for what they were worth, his own: “Just a bit of rough weather, nothing whatever to worry about, sailed through a score of these myself, I have …”

  Whether this comforted Fran, Sylvie could not judge. It certainly did not comfort Mr. Drayton. He simply grew angrier than ever at Captain Foxe.

  “If we survive this,” he promised, “I will see him in the courts, by God! I’ll have him pilloried for risking our lives like this!”

  “Oh, shut up,” Sylvie said.

  The effect was magical, like dropping a piece of ice into boiling water. Everything went quiet. Everyone stared at her. She was young and unassuming; she never said much. For her to speak out now, in this blunt fashion, was decidedly shocking.

  “You are impudent, miss,” Mrs. Drayton snapped.

  Sylvie glanced about the room. The tables and benches, bolted to the floor, were still in their places, but everything movable was scattered and sliding about the saloon. Out there …? How much ocean was out there, she wondered, cold and deadly and uncaring? How many ships had it snapped like a matchstick already? And who was in the ship that chased them, and what did they mean to do?

  In the face of such questions, what was a little bit of impudence?

  “Why did you book your passage on the Osprey, Mrs. Drayton?” she asked. “Mr. Drayton?”

  “Tha
t most certainly is none of your concern!” Mr. Drayton said coldly.

  “Well, it were your concern why we did,” she replied. “Any fool can see you got heaps of money, and you don’t like the Yankees. If you took yourself a good English ship, you wouldn’t have to worry about no bleeding lunatics, now, would you? Or did you just help yourself to a bargain, the same as us factory trash?”

  There was no telling what Mr. Drayton might have said next, but the ship lurched suddenly to port and he lost his balance. He fell like a great tottering piece of furniture, landing with his face on a silver plate. Mr. Canfrey helped him to his feet, which only seemed to make him angrier. There was nothing for it then but to gather up his wife and what little remained of his dignity and retire to his cabin.

  Sylvie settled on the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Come and sit, Fran,” she said lightly. “The floor be the only safe place around.”

  She reached, drawing Fran close beside her. Her aunt was rigid, and Sylvie could guess why. We didn’t go through all of this so I could bury you at sea.

  “We’ll be fine, Fran,” she said. “We’ll outrun the villains and sail into Halifax tomorrow with all flags flying.”

  “You’re not scared of much, Miss Sylvie, are you?” Mr. Canfrey observed.

  Not scared of much? He was an innocent sod, that one. It would take her an hour to tell him all the things she was scared of. Dying in Rochdale, for starters. Looking down a long grey tunnel and seeing a dirt mound at the end of it, coughing her life out with winter coming on, the damp going into her bones and hardly any coal in the house, hardly any food. She would be scared of that forever, even when Rochdale was only a memory. She would be scared of drunken quarrels too, of men with raised fists, or broken glass in their hands—oh, yes, broken glass most of all. There was a world of things to be scared of, a thousand hard ways to die, or to live so broken there was no more point in living at all. Going down in a ship like the Osprey, in a daring flight from pirates—well, if you had to go, it was a better way than most.

  All day the Rebel raider chased them, and bit by bit the storm began to lessen. Sylvie grew more hopeful from the change, so innocent was she of seafaring and war. “Look,” she said to no one in particular, “the storm be lifting, I think.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Canfrey said. “We’re losing the wind.”

  His choice of words undid all her hope in a breath. They were losing the wind …

  They still might make it, the American went on. They could escape in the dark, if they could stay out of the raider’s reach until then.

  But it was near to summer solstice; there still were hours of daylight left.

  The passengers were allowed back on deck late in the afternoon, and there they could see the peril for themselves. It was a race now, sail against steam, skill against mechanical power, fortune against time. With a wind so small it barely ruffled Sylvie’s hair, the Osprey was still running—spent as a dying bird, but still running. The strange ship came on, riding low in the water and painted a dark, deceptive grey. She needed no wind. Smoke poured from her funnel, billowing over the few sails she still carried, rolling like black clouds across the water. From his high post on the Osprey a lookout kept scanning the sea, hoping perhaps to spot a Yankee warship or even the signs of a rising storm.

  Neither came. The horizons lay empty except for their pursuer. The frail wind fell away to almost nothing. The sun was low when Captain Foxe summoned everyone on deck and spoke to them.

  He was very calm, but his eyes were like those of a man condemned to die, and sometimes, under his quiet words, Sylvie heard a knife edge of anger in his voice, all the more bitter for being so well contained.

  “Ladies,” he said, “gentlemen, men of the Osprey, who have served me so well, some of you for many years … unless a miracle takes place in the next half hour, we will be taken. The Rebels will help themselves to everything on this vessel they can use, and then they will burn it. We will be brought aboard their own ship as prisoners.

  “To the best of my knowledge, all of these raiders are commanded by officers of the Confederate navy. That means we will be treated as civilians according to the normal usages of war. None of you, especially the foreign nationals among you, and most especially the ladies—none of you should have anything to fear. We may be with them longer than we like, but we won’t be killed or badly mistreated, and eventually they’ll drop us off at a neutral port, or onto a neutral ship, as it suits them.

  “One thing I want to make very clear. These are fighting men, and while their officers may be gentlemen, they are all dangerous, and some may be little more than bandits. Which means, my friends, that once we strike our colours, we are surrendered, and we act accordingly, however much it hurts.

  “To my crew, I want to say thank you for your hard work and faithful service. To my passengers, I can only say how sorry I am that I can’t take you safely into harbour as I promised. Nothing will change when we leave this ship. I won’t consider my responsibilities ended until every one of you is home. And every member of this crew will be paid in full.

  “That is all. Good luck, and may God protect us all.”

  After so many hours of waiting, it ended with a suddenness that astonished her. She saw a small puff of smoke on the Alabama’s deck, and had a brief second to wonder about it before a sound like an explosion shattered the afternoon calm. Someone shouted, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” but she still did not understand until the shell hit, screaming into the sea right alongside. Sheets of water lashed across the deck, drenching them. She spun about to look for Fran, and saw only chaos: Mr. Drayton was on his knees and Mrs. Drayton stood with her arms in the air, screaming as though she had been knifed. The chickens were plunging and squawking and the ship’s cat was a small streak of black and grey, bounding for the hatch.

  “Sylvie! Are you all right?” Fran appeared suddenly beside her, wiping tangles of wet hair from her eyes. “The bloody bastards are shooting at us!”

  “Well, they missed,” Sylvie said.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  She turned sharply at Canfrey’s words.

  “It was a warning shot, Miss Bowen,” he went on. “I reckon it landed just about where they wanted.”

  There was a rush of activity near the quarterdeck, followed by a calm so icy she could hear the captain’s voice even where she stood.

  “Mr. Schofield, run up the colours and heave to.”

  “What’s he doing?” Sylvie whispered.

  “Surrendering. Once they’re in firing range, we have no choice.”

  So easy it was, after all. A steam engine and a few guns, and all the splendour of the Osprey was undone. The magnificent creature, who could fly like the wind when the wind was true, folded her splendid sails like broken wings and turned against the last of the dying breeze to wait for her enemy.

  The enemy came on fast now, her black funnel puffing, her sharp prow slicing water like the fin of a shark. Even the passengers, without the benefit of spyglasses, could count the eight heavy cannon mounted on her sides, and see the men who clustered on her deck in small, eager packs.

  The deck grew very still. Even Mr. Drayton stood voiceless, staring. They had no weapons and no way to run. They could only hope the captain’s promise would prove true: We will be treated as civilians according to the normal usages of war …

  Beyond Sylvie’s cabin window there was only darkness now; within, only the steady churning of the mail packet’s engines to tell her they were moving. It was a fine little ship, this mail packet, tireless and fast. It was an honest ship, too. It should not have made her think of the Alabama, and yet it did, simply for the sound of its engines, for its unrelenting speed.

  It be a very long time now since I believed in luck …

  Fran’s words, she thought, would stay with her forever. They would sit quietly in all the corners of her life, as they sat now in the shadows of her cabin, the cabin Captain Foxe had booked for her when she left
Nassau, and paid for with his own money. Some people would call it luck, no doubt, this fine lodging on a fine, fast vessel. Luck also, the envelope he pressed into her hand before he said goodbye, in which, when she opened it, she found twenty-five pounds. She was grateful. Life was too hard for her ever to be ungrateful. But it was not luck. It was simply something that happened, like she and Fran finding the Osprey, and the Alabama finding them.

  Everything the captain told them had proved to be correct; they were treated as civilians according to the normal usages of war. Sylvie had feared all sorts of violence, not least a battle on the high seas, the Alabama going down and all her captives with her. She had never feared Nassau; she all but wept with thankfulness when they docked. She had not thought to fear the yellow fever, or the long line of quarantine cabins she could only stare at through a fence, or the windswept hillside where they took the dead …

  It was impossible to sleep. More than anything, just now, she wished she had something of Fran’s—anything, a scarf, a comb, or best of all the little book of Mrs. Browning’s sonnets Sylvie bought for her years before. It was the one fine gift she had ever been able to buy, and she could afford it only because the spine of the book was wrecked and the pages stained with wine. The damage mattered to neither of them. Only the words mattered, and the words were astonishing, divine. Many a night in Rochdale they would sit and read together, awed by the beauty of the poetry, awed also by the poet’s story. Elizabeth Barrett had been almost as old as Fran when she encountered Robert Browning. She had not been poor, admittedly, but she had been frail, living a constrained and lonely life with very little future. Love, for her, changed everything.

  For Fran it changed half a dozen days.