The Halifax Connection

by Marie Jakober

  “Ah, yes,” Bryce said. “And twenty-two sailors in particular, I suppose?”

  Bryce’s tone was ever so slightly patronizing. It annoyed Erryn a little, but he gave no sign. “It did cross my mind, Jon.”

  Bryce wiped his forehead, where rainwater still trickled from his hair. He was forty or thereabouts, a quiet, experienced policeman, the man in charge of intelligence operations in Montreal insofar as anyone seemed to be in charge at all. Spying on the Confederates was a slapdash affair everywhere, even in Halifax, and this man did not have Matt Calverley’s talent for organizing the work or reading the evidence. Still less did he have Matt’s killer instinct.

  It was Matt who had smelled trouble when the blockade-runner Robert E. Lee steamed into Halifax harbour with twenty-two Confederate naval officers and men, among them the already well-known and well-respected Captain John Wilkinson. They were all supposedly bound for England, perhaps to take charge of a newly purchased vessel. Matt was having none of it; the scuttlebutt, he said, was way too loud. Moreover, the Lee’s valuable cargo had been sold by Alexander MacNab, who was the Confederacy’s chief supply agent in Halifax, and who was, in Matt’s opinion, a conspirator of the first order. Matt put every informer he had onto watching the waterfront, the hotels, the boarding houses, and the stagecoach depot. He had good descriptions of several of the men, and Erryn had personally encountered one. Also, as with most Southerners, their accents were difficult to hide.

  As far as anyone could discover, none of the twenty-two Rebels boarded an outgoing ship. Indeed, none of them were spotted on the waterfront again. Two were discovered waiting for the stagecoach to Windsor—almost certainly the first leg of an overland journey west. As for the others, in a matter of days it became impossible for any of Matt’s men to find a trace of them. Even among the Grey Tories it was quietly and casually assumed that the men had sailed.

  All of this Erryn had explained in detail to Bryce and Latour when he first arrived in Montreal, along with Matt’s conviction that the sailors had come west to do some mischief on the Lakes. The Montrealers had listened politely, and Latour had promised to watch for any sign of Wilkinson’s men. But now, sitting in the house in the Champ-de-Mars, Erryn wondered if their efforts would all prove too little and too late, if the Rebels would slip away and do whatever harm they intended, long before the Canadians learned enough to stop them.

  He shifted restlessly in his chair. His great sodden boots were by the door, but every time he moved, more water slithered down his trouser legs.

  “Do either of you have anything for me?” he asked.

  “Yes, actually,” Latour replied. “It seems you’re not the only chap who’s been sent out shopping. Do you know Daniel Carroll?”

  “Only by reputation.” Second-generation Irish. Importer/exporter. Rich. Pro-Confederate. Very low-key, however; not the sort to sit in the bar of St Lawrence Hall drinking toasts to Dixie.

  “About eight days back,” Latour went on, “Carroll paid a long visit to George Kane’s house, accompanied by Jackson Follett. On Monday he placed an order at Frères Desmarais for fifty dumbbells. Of course”—this with a quick, almost apologetic glance at Jonathan Bryce—“Carroll’s a wholesale merchant, with a half-dozen country stores up the Ottawa Valley buying stock from him, so …” He shrugged. “So it probably doesn’t mean very much.”

  Erryn thought it might mean quite a lot. Kane was the former police marshal of Baltimore. He had spent several months in a Federal jail for suspected disloyalty. Immediately on his release, he bolted for Richmond, and soon afterwards turned up in Canada. He was now the second most important Confederate agent in Montreal. According to Latour, there were four men staying at his house, four quiet young men who almost never went outside. It was no great stretch to wonder if Daniel Carroll’s visit—and his purchase—was in some way linked to them.

  “What the devil would a country store in the Ottawa Valley want with fifty dumbbells?” Erryn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bryce said. “What would the Confederates want with them?”

  “Cannon shot.”

  “Well, that’s what Latour said too. Maybe cannon shot. But where are the cannon? You can’t go out and buy them the way you buy pistols.”

  “Any kind of weapon can be bought,” Erryn said wearily. “If you can pay for it, you can buy a cruiser, armed and manned and ready for action. The Confederates have already done it twice.”

  Neither man could argue with him. After all, the Alabama and the Florida were already abroad, every beam and ratline and brass cannon built in England, paid for in Rebel gold.

  “The Robert E. Lee,” he reminded them, “sold a raft of blockade-run cotton in Halifax—about seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth. That would buy a nine-pounder or two. To say nothing of some pistols and knives.”

  He was right, of course, and they knew it. He was also spinning, and they knew that too. He was fashioning a fabulous, intricate web, just like one of Matt’s pet spiders, building himself a marvel of airy geometry—but come a single swat from the landlady’s mop and nothing would be left of it, just a flutter or two on the ceiling, and a little grey blob on the floor.

  He sighed, and they talked on of other things—what he had heard and seen in St. Lawrence Hall; who might attend Edmund Morrison’s party; word of Southerners arriving or departing; all the gossip, the quarrels, the rumours of ill-doing or desertion. This Bryce and Latour truly valued, for neither of them could get as close to the expatriate community as he could. For this, if for nothing else, they were willing to accept his outsider’s involvement, and listen to his opinions with respect, if not always with conviction. When he had told them all he could, he asked for one thing from them.

  “Is anyone watching this Carroll chap? I mean, watching him personally, all the time?”

  “All the time? No. We haven’t the people. It’s enough keeping track of Follett and Kane.”

  “Could you find one from somewhere? Just for a few days?”

  Bryce began to object, but Latour was faster.

  “I can,” he said cheerfully. “But it’ll cost you a beer.”

  “How much beer do I owe you now?”

  “Oh, barrels. I mean to collect, too.”

  Erryn laughed and shook hands with them. “I always pay my debts,” he said. “Eventually.” He pulled on his slicker and went back into the rain.

  All the way back to his hotel he mulled it over in his mind. Matt’s suspicions were reasonable enough on the surface. Wilkinson and his men did not appear to have left Halifax by sea. They were no longer there, so they had probably gone west. They were an elite group, with a disproportionate number of officers. Therefore, if they had gone west, perhaps they were on a mission. If so, it followed that, being naval men, they would likely target something on the St. Lawrence or the Lakes.

  It was all perfectly reasonable, with just enough snatches and snippets of evidence to provide an illusion of substance. Yes, Erryn was certain he had spotted one of the men in Montreal, the same man he had met in Halifax. Yes, there were four exceptionally quiet Southerners staying with George Kane, and there was a large amount of traffic between his home and a nearby boarding house where, it turned out, some other very quiet guests were staying. Yes, Erryn had been asked to buy a small amount of weapons, and it was Follett’s practice to spread such tasks around among a number of his friends, so no one attracted much attention. Yes, dumbbells could be used as cannon shot, and Dan Carroll ordered fifty after visiting George Kane’s house. And yes, oh yes, there was a Federal prisoner-of-war camp on Johnson’s Island, just outside Sandusky, holding some fifteen hundred Confederate officers, as tempting a target as any band of naval commandos could ever hope for.

  It was all perfectly reasonable … and all spider silk, every frail thread depending for its existence on another just as frail. Maybe a handful of those twenty-two naval men were here. The rest of them could just as well be anywhere, scattered across the length of the coloni
es, doing nothing of interest whatever; indeed, they might be halfway home by now. As for the four men in Kane’s house, they might be the leaders of a mission—or they might just be his friends; they might be sick; they might be deserters, or fugitives from ordinary justice. And what could a handful of weapons possibly prove? Jackson Follett had been buying them since forever, mostly for Southerners heading home through the western states.

  Most importantly of all, the United States had a gunboat stationed on Lake Erie, mounted with eighteen-pound cannon. No cross-border raid would take Johnson’s Island, or any other target on the lake, without taking the Michigan first.

  No, he told himself, he had nothing of substance. He was merely giving in to his natural flair for the dramatic, and to his desire for a grand coup, something to hold up and wave the next time Lord Monck sighed and wondered what that man Shaw did with all his money.

  Back in his hotel room, he shucked off his drenched clothing piece by piece, hung it carefully to dry, and crawled naked into bed. He was heading home soon, he decided, and be damned to it. And when he got there, he was going to drown Matt Calverley. That was a promise. He was taking the sorry bugger out behind some barren rock face and damn well drowning him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Brownie

  If Mr. Thornton was a fool in the morning, as he assured himself at least twenty times he was, he did not grow much wiser in the afternoon.

  —Elizabeth Gaskell

  EDMUND MORRISON was to Montreal what James Orton was to Halifax: a prince of business, a pillar of the Church, and a powerful leader of the pro-Confederate faction in the city. Erryn did not especially look forward to his grand dinner and ball. Still, he knew he had no choice except to go, and go in style, which was a dubious proposition at the moment. His frock coat was gone, loaned to a destitute Confederate for a wedding, along with his best white linen shirt. For whatever reason, neither item had been returned. His boots had mucked through far more mud and horse dung than ever was good for them. Then, a few days back, his hat had been run over by a carriage. So it was that Friday afternoon found him in the heart of the old town, with a good supply of cash and a melancholy inclination to indulge himself.

  It was a perfect Indian summer day, lazy and hot, yet with a hint of autumn greyness in the sky. He made his way without haste toward the Bonsecours Market, through small, winding streets and narrow stone buildings rising side by side, Continental-style, each with a small shop opening to the street and dwellings directly above. From these latter came the smells of chicken and beef and cinnamon and onions, along with the clamour of voices and the laughter of children. Carts and drays rumbled over the cobblestones, dogs barked, wooden signs creaked on their chains above the doors, offering the goods and services of the tenants: shoes, millinery, gentlemen’s apparel, apothecary, tailor.

  He bought an apple from a street vendor and ate it as he walked, grateful to be far away—at least in spirit—from anything connected with the American war. He had been nineteen solid months on duty, talking the Confederacy, eating, drinking, dreaming the Confederacy; he was sick to death of the Confederacy. More than anything in the world he wanted a furlough. A few hours spent alone, buying himself fresh fruit, and books, and some fine new clothes, was as near to the thing as he was likely to get.

  So he poked about the shops, bought a few trifles that pleased him, stopped in a tiny café for a glass of wine, and walked on, wistfully admiring all the young women he passed. One in particular he admired—a sylph stepping down from a carriage, barely touching the hand the coachman offered her, a sylph with astonishing black hair, all of it hanging loose about her shoulders and shimmering in the mid-October sun.

  Ah, he thought, now that was pure, perfect grace … A second woman followed her out of the carriage, an aging woman, bent and heavy, moving with such care that he wondered if she might be blind. Was she the younger woman’s mother? No, he decided. She was dressed conservatively, as befitted her age, but in garments of the finest quality. The other, the black-haired one, was dressed like a servant, in a plain, dark blue frock. He slowed his pace, hoping for a clear glance at her face, but she was bent toward her companion, helping her over the cobblestones to a tiny shop that offered rosaries and religious books.

  The street was narrow, crowded, and he was in the way. He stepped backward hastily, his eyes still following the woman, and crashed into an old man dragging a wheelbarrow.

  “Pardonnez-moi,” Erryn said quickly, reaching to steady him. “Je ne vous ai pas vu. Je suis désolé. Êtes-vous blessé?”

  The old man glared at him and spat. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, you bloody frog?”

  “Oh.” He considered answering this question in the fashion it deserved, but turned instead to steal a last, parting glance at the woman. Such divine hair, he thought, well worth a second look, even for an insult or two. And so, watching her go, he caught sight of a man in a slouch hat and brown flannel shirt slipping quickly through the doorway of a shop perhaps a hundred feet away.

  Some minutes earlier, when he had glanced about before crossing a street, he had seen a similar hat and shirt, a similar distance behind him. Which might mean nothing, of course; slouch hats and brown flannel shirts were hardly rare, and the streets were filled with people.

  He went on as if he had noticed nothing. In an hour or so, after impressively replenishing his wardrobe, and depleting his purse in a comparable fashion, he finished off with a visit to Chez Maurice. Perhaps the good monsieur could do something clever with his hair?

  The good monsieur smiled, draped a white cape around Erryn’s shoulders, and examined him with the air of a salvage expert studying a shipwreck. Like so many Frenchmen, the barber himself had splendid dark locks, thick and wavy and shimmering like fur. He lifted Erryn’s meagre offerings sorrowfully, as though he wondered what he could do for this pauvre anglais, with such thin, straight, straggly hair, the dreary colour of watered-down beer.

  “What is your pleasure, m’sieu?”

  “Just do your best,” Erryn said. Then, after a moment, he added: “Il y a un grand bal, demain. Très important.”

  “Ah, ouí.” The barber smiled. “Un grand bal, et peut-être une jolie demoiselle?”

  A great ball, and perhaps a pretty young woman?

  “Peut-être,” Erryn said, although he doubted it, at least as far as he might be concerned. It would be splendid, though, if it were to happen. He was hungry for a woman—very hungry, when he thought about it, so he tried not to think about it very much.

  The barber took his time, chatting pleasantly, sometimes in French, sometimes in English. When he finished and held up the mirror, it was clear he had indeed done his best. Erryn paid him, adding a generous tip, and went back out into the afternoon sun. A small distance down the street he glanced back. Sure enough, there was Brownie in the slouch hat, or someone exactly like him, slithering out of a small café.

  Nothing about this surprised him. The Federal agents watched the Rebels here as faithfully as the Canadians did. More than once Erryn had found one of them lounging outside his boarding house in Halifax. When he left town, they sometimes turned up on the same trains and steamers. It was a tribute to his credibility as a Grey Tory, he supposed, but he did get tired of it.

  He walked on, turning twice onto adjoining streets. Brownie followed. The man was obviously inexperienced; the really good agents could follow a man for days before he noticed—and there were probably some he never noticed at all.

  Well, bugger you anyway, Erryn thought, and settled down on a shaded bench in the gardens of Place Viger with his new French novel. It was his favourite spot in the whole city, this garden, laid out English-style, with radiating pathways and a grand fountain in the centre. The Royal Artillery band gave splendid concerts on Wednesday evenings, complete with fireworks. He stretched his long legs out carefully, making sure not to trip any innocent strangers, and began to read.

  Very soon he discovered that he could not concen
trate. Perhaps he was tired, or simply restless, or perhaps it was Brownie in the slouch hat, sitting just opposite, hiding ineptly behind a patch of shrubs. The silly sod was impossible to ignore; all Erryn had to do was lift his head from his book and cast his eyes a little to the left. Well, really. I’m not to have a moment’s peace, I see. If it isn’t the damn Rebels in my face, it’s some damn fool Yankee.

  The sun was low now. Off to his left he heard a church bell, the sailors’ church down on the waterfront, calling the faithful to evening Mass and reminding him that his small self-appointed furlough was almost over. It was time to get rid of Brownie. As he contemplated the task, the prospect of a bit of chaff at the man’s expense grew irresistible. Yes, indeed, he thought, a fair return for being such an unconscionable pest. He dug a pen and paper from his pocket, scribbled briefly, folded the note, looked about, and slipped it into a crack in the bench, every motion at once theatrically furtive and absurdly obvious. The message was brief and to the point:

  Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree;

  Up went pussycat, down came he.

  Down came pussycat, away Robin ran,

  Said little Robin Redbreast: Catch me if you can!

  He was smiling a trifle as he hurried away, imagining Brownie’s quandary: should he continue the chase, or fetch the note, or wait to see who claimed it? (Oh, and a sweet wait that would be!) The American leapt to his feet, standing irresolute for a moment, staring one way and then the other. But Erryn had a mighty stride, and considerable experience in losing his watchers when he seriously wanted to. Before Brownie could decide what to do about him, he had jumped into a carriage and was gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Irish Stone

  A heavy heart, Belovèd, have I borne From year to year until I saw thy face …

  —Elizabeth Barrett Browning