She had stopped walking, and turned to him. “It be a chance for me, see, though I suppose it don’t sound like much, with you having all the books you want. But I love reading more than anything. If I can go every week, I can learn all sorts of things, m’appen enough to get some other work. She has a piano, too, and I could hear her play—I’d die for that. But if she gets mad at me, and won’t let me come, then I’ve lost it all. Then I just make beds and scrub dirty floors. Nobody’ll ever hire me for anything else, not with this face. So …”
She looked at the cobblestones, and at a wheelbarrow going by, and then at him again. He knew her fear was exaggerated. Madame was old and almost blind, apparently at odds with many of her kin. Surely she would be glad to have someone come to read to her, and talk, and admire her Mozart sonatas. Surely she would not give it up simply because Sylvie had befriended a stranger in the street. Surely she would do no more than sniff, and offer up a proper wise-old-lady lecture, and then the world would go on as before.
Surely.
But maybe “surely” wasn’t good enough. Maybe, when you had nothing, “surely” was only hope concealing terror. Nobody knew for certain what those who were stronger might do when they got angry. Madame could buy herself another Sylvie Bowen as fast as laying down a coin.
He opened his mouth to speak, to say it was all right, he understood, but she spoke first.
“If we lived here, it would be different. But it’s just a visit. After she’s finished her novena, we’ll be going home. And I won’t see you anymore, anyway. So …” She met his eyes, openly, honestly, the way she had on the riverbank. “So if you came to the church again, and spent an hour with me once or twice, I’d like it awfully. And I’ll always remember it.”
He was ready for most anything, but not for this.
“You’re going home?” he said. “I thought you lived here, you and Madame. Where is home, then?”
Nassau, where her aunt was buried? No, it couldn’t be; she said she would never put a flower on the grave. Quebec? No, Madame was not French; it was her husband who was French.
England? Oh, please, God, not England …
“A long way,” she said. “In Nova Scotia. Halifax.”
“Halifax?” He laughed, and took her hard by the shoulders. “Sylvie Bowen, you’re a veritable sorceress! You can say a single word and make the whole world perfect!”
“I’m going a thousand miles away, and the whole world’s perfect? Well.” She drew his hands away and turned to walk again.
“I live there.” He was grinning like a cat in a creamery, and he did not care.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“I ran the theatre on Grafton Street, before it burned in ’61. I live on Morris, about a block from the Governor’s Grounds. When I’m flush I eat dinner at Compain’s, and when I’m poor I eat at Corey’s. And I’ll wager five bob the Miss Susan you work for is Susan Danner, Jack Danner’s wife. They keep that fine four-storey boarding house on Barrington, the one they call the Den. Now do you believe me?”
She stopped again. “You never said a word.”
“Neither did you.” He brushed her hair back from her forehead, lightly. “I think we’ve talked about everything in the world except ourselves. How are you travelling home? By way of Portland, I suppose?”
“Yes, from Quebec. Madame has a sister-in-law there, in a convent, one of those dreadful strict ones where they let you see somebody once or twice a year, and you have to talk to them through a screen. We’ll take the night boat, and go and see her, and catch the Portland train the same afternoon.”
“Which boat? I mean, which day? I’m heading home myself. It would be grand if we could go together.”
“Thursday.”
“I’ll move heaven and earth to be on it,” he said, and was rewarded with a flash of sheer shameless pleasure in her eyes. Too late, she looked away and changed the subject.
“So you ran a theatre?” she said wistfully. “That must have been wonderful. Did many people come?”
“Most of our shows were packed. Though I must tell you, it wasn’t much of a theatre—just a big bare room, really, the upper floor over Richey’s Warehouse. We had a raised stage at one end, and wooden benches for the audience, and some pot-bellied stoves so they didn’t all freeze to death. The actors had to dress in a little hole in the back of the warehouse, and come up the back stairs to the stage. But I brought in some fine touring companies from the States, and every year the lads from the garrison and I would put together a decent amateur production. It wasn’t London, but it was all right. Have you ever been to the theatre?”
“No. Madame says her cousins and their friends do plays sometimes, at their parties, and even at the balls at Government House. But I’ve never seen a play. I’d love to, someday.”
Madame’s cousins at Government House? That brought him up short, until he recalled how Sylvie had first described the blind woman’s family: Merchants, the lot of them, and a great proper clan of rich Presbyterians to boot, except for the one who ran off and married a French-Canadian Papist from a Boston merchant brig.
Oh, hell, he thought. That’s who Madame Louise was. Bloody damned hell.
The connection had never crossed his mind. It should have, he supposed, but he had been thinking so much of other things, and he had simply assumed that Sylvie and Madame lived in Montreal, or at least somewhere in the West. And so none of those other people had ever crossed his mind—the other widow who was named Louise, the other clan of rich and proper Presbyterians—the clan of Halifax timber magnate David Scott, whose daughter had indeed, many years ago, eloped with a junior officer from a Yankee merchant ship, to the universal horror of her kin. David Scott, whose sister married Douglas Orton, and who had himself wed a sister of the same house. Living in Halifax, there was but one person Madame Louise could be: Louise Doreen Mallette. David Scott’s daughter.
James bloody Orton’s first cousin.
This was a complication of the first order, but before he could begin to think seriously about it, they had reached the church. He lifted her hand to his lips, caressing it rather longer than was proper. If she minded, she gave no sign.
“Tomorrow, sweet Sylvie Bowen?”
“Yes,” she said. And she did something then that quite amazed him. She reached, quietly, deliberately, and played the back of her hand across his cheek. He had never considered himself handsome—nor had anyone else, as far as he knew—yet there was a fierce admiration in her eyes, as though she found him astonishing and perfect.
Only after she had fled, wordless, into the church did he see the meaning of it—the possible meaning, at least: that to a woman who bore such cruel scars, perhaps he was.
CHAPTER 10
The Grand Conspiracy
With the Michigan under our command … we would have had the lake shore from Sandusky to Buffalo at our mercy, with all the vast commerce of Lake Erie as our just and lawful prey.
—Captain Robert D. Minor, Confederate Navy Report to Admiral Franklin Buchanan, February 2, 1864
AFTER ERRYN LEFT Sylvie at the sailors’ church, he found a fallen log in the grass near the river and sat for a time to collect his thoughts. Five days back, in the quiet house in the Champ-de-Mars, Agent Latour had told him of Daniel Carroll, the man who had gone with Jackson Follett to George Kane’s house and afterwards ordered fifty dumbbells. Yesterday, at Morrison’s party, Erryn had drawn the Irishman quietly aside and offered him an enticing business proposition. Alexander MacNab in Halifax was looking for an agent in the West, he said, a good, sharp man with contacts on the Lakes who could buy Western goods at favourable prices and ship them to the coast. The offer was genuine; MacNab had broached it months ago, and Erryn had tucked it into his back pocket, to offer to precisely the right man at precisely the right moment. Carroll bit like a hungry fish, and invited him to Sunday supper.
Sunday supper was now an hour or so away. Erryn ran his hands across his face, and watched
a small squirrel scamper past his feet and vanish in the scrub. Carroll was his only possible link to a conspiracy on the Lakes—if indeed such a conspiracy existed—and Erryn knew scarcely anything about him. Carroll was a good businessman, he was second-generation Irish, he liked music. That was all.
He liked music … Well, Erryn thought, it was something, and tonight it would have to serve, because it was all he had.
The first thing that struck him at Daniel Carroll’s house was its air of unpretentious friendliness. He was thoroughly charmed by the man’s family. Mrs. Carroll was a striking woman, fine-featured, gracious, and obviously with child. They had two daughters, whose ages Erryn guessed at ten and nine, and a boy of perhaps seven. Erryn had been to many suppers where children were fed separately and shooed away. Here they sat at the table, even the youngest, and they behaved adorably. Erryn told stories to make them laugh, many from the life of his boyhood idol, the admiral.
“He was a grand old chap, the admiral. My father was a close kinsman, you see, so we were often invited to his house. And I’ve no wish to speak ill of him, for he was a great hero, but sometimes he could be a grouch. Now, the admiral had a cat. Oh, he had dogs too, like any English gentleman, but to him a dog was nothing but a dog, something to chase after foxes and make a lot of noise. But cats … well, cats were lordly creatures, cats were the ancient companions of kings. One day he found this poor, bedraggled kitten on the road and brought it home with him. Nobody ever knew what was wrong with it, but it sneezed. All the time. Over and over. It would hunch its shoulders and go uh-choo! And wipe its paw across its face, and go uh-choo!” All of this Erryn demonstrated, very politely and delicately, to the vast amusement of the table. “So everyone in the house called the little thing Sniffles. No matter how hard the admiral tried to name it something grand, it remained Sniffles. Eventually he gave up.
“Now, as the tale was told to me, the older Sniffles got, the more he came to be like his master. He got grouchy. Only the admiral, being an officer and a gentleman, kept his grouchiness mostly to himself, but Sniffles, being only a cat, let the whole world know. And do you want to know what Sniffles did when he was mad about something?”
Erryn turned expectantly to the children, who quickly exchanged glances with their parents and with each other.
“He bit people?” the eldest suggested.
“Oh, heavens no. He was a gentleman’s cat. He’d never bite anyone. No, he hid things. And always only one of them. One glove. One stocking. One cufflink. When Sniffles got his back up, one of everything in the house went missing. And it was a big house.”
The children giggled. “He took only one?”
“Only one.”
“And did anyone ever find it again?”
“Oh, most everything turned up eventually, in some corner or another. At first the servants were blamed, or the younger children, and they were all very indignant, as you can imagine. But the admiral never blamed anyone. I think he always knew it was the cat.”
And I think it tickled him, too, the sorry old sea hound with his one arm and his one eye and his hard, hard memories. “There, the rest of you can get along with one for a while too, ha ha!” He’d never have admitted it, of course, not even to himself, but it tickled him.
Tickled me, too, if you want to know the truth of it.
“Sniffles got caught finally, when he tried to drag a boot up to the attic in the middle of the night. Of course, he couldn’t lift it properly, so it thumped on every step. Some people thought the ghosts were out, and pulled their covers over their heads. But three of us went to investigate. And there he was, hauling away on that poor old boot like a sailor on a rope. We didn’t try to stop him. We just stood there and laughed ourselves silly.”
It was much later when they rose from the table, admirably fed and contented. It might have seemed to Erryn that he had known this family for years. It might have seemed so, that is, if he had allowed himself, even for a moment, to forget why he had come.
“I’m told you have a liking for a ballad or two,” he said, “so I took the liberty of bringing along my flute.”
“Oh, and did you now? What a grand idea! Let us have some of that fine Madeira in the parlour, Annie, and I’ll teach this young Englishman to sing!”
“Can we come too, Papa?” pleaded the elder daughter.
“Mr. Shaw and I have business to discuss, my love,” Carroll said, “so you can’t stay for very long. Just for a while.”
The parlour of Daniel Carroll’s house was large and finely furnished, yet it had a plainness about it too, an air of warmth and easy comfort rather than of show. For an hour and more it rang with song. Annie Carroll could play most anything on the piano, merely from hearing a verse sung or a few bars of the melody from Erryn’s flute. And there was nothing Carroll loved better than an old song. He had a fine tenor voice, a prodigious memory for verses, and he sang everything with passion, as if the heroism of the ballads, and the love and the grief, were all of it his own.
Erryn was genuinely sorry when his hostess bade them a gracious good night and took the children off to bed.
“Don’t be putting your flute away just yet,” Carroll said after the door had closed. “Annie so loves to play, I can’t deny her. But I’d fancy hearing that pipe of yours just all of itself, if you’d do me the honour.”
“It would be a pleasure,” Erryn said. “You have a beautiful family, Mr. Carroll. I dare say I envy you.”
“Why, thank you for that. I love them dearly, and that’s the truth of it. There’s no luckier man alive.”
They settled into their chairs, as comfortable together as old friends. If less had been at stake, Erryn would have been sorely troubled by his role here tonight. As it was, he was troubled nonetheless, but he was prepared to live with it.
He blew a few tentative bars and then asked for his host’s preferences.
“Ah, play whatever you fancy. You could break a man’s heart with that pipe, you could.”
He played a bit of O’Carolan, and a bit of Mozart, and a bit of Southern Confederacy. Between the songs they talked of one thing and another, the cities they lived in, and the American war, and even, for a little while, Ireland. So the evening sped away, along with two more bottles of excellent Madeira, some of which Erryn regretfully consigned to a sodden handkerchief, tucked into a wineskin in his pocket. This was a simple manoeuvre at a crowded, noisy dinner party; it was far more difficult in a company of two. Fortunately, Carroll got up twice to tend the fire, and once again to fetch a book he admired. When he left the room altogether, probably to relieve himself, Erryn quickly emptied the wineskin and most of his glass into a potted plant.
By then the hallway clock was striking eleven. The rest of the house was quiet, the children long asleep, and the servants gone to their rooms. Carroll was cheerfully but thoroughly drunk.
A likeable man, Erryn reflected. An altogether decent man, as far as he could judge. Surely not the sort to be hatching plots with Jackson Follett? What reason could he possibly have? He had a future as promising as a gold brick road. He had a beautiful family. He had, as one might say, every damn thing a man could want.
You are chasing phantoms, Erryn Shaw. Give the man your hand, thank him for dinner, and go home.
No. Not yet. Men like this have been on the wrong side of wars since war began.
He took up the flute again and played softly, almost idly.
“That’s a fine, melancholy piece,” Carroll said when he paused. “I’ve not heard it before.”
“It’s called ‘Sweet Lorena.’ A favourite, I’m told, in the Southern camps.” He leaned back into the pool of comfortable silence and stretched his long legs out over the carpet. For a considerable time he had been studying Carroll, wondering how to play him, hoping a turn in the conversation might lead to an opening. Nothing had. He would have to gamble, that was all—gamble on Carroll’s friendliness, gamble on the wine. “I say, Carroll, have you ever been tempted … Oh, I s
uppose not. With a young family and all, a man wouldn’t be. But sometimes I am, you know. Tempted. To get my hand in. I’ve done a few things for Jack Follett and the lads, but so often I think it’s not enough, I ought to be doing more. At the same time”—here he paused with a small, self-conscious laugh—“at the same time, I don’t fancy spending the next five years in a Yankee prison camp. Least of all that one on Johnson’s Island.”
Carroll tensed a little at the name; or perhaps he only shifted in his chair. In lamplight, it was hard to tell.
“No,” he said. “You certainly wouldn’t want that.” He reached for the Madeira. “You’ll have a wee drop more, won’t you? And then, if you’ll not mind me being forward, perhaps we might talk about your business? Be a sin to keep you out all night, it would, with my going on forever about Ireland.”
“Ah, yes, thank you,” Erryn said. He held out his glass and went on as though he had heard nothing except the offer of another drink. “The truth is, I’ve been tempted a great deal more of late, and I was hoping perhaps you could advise me.”
“I don’t see how, and that’s a fact. A decision like that a man has to make for himself.”
“Oh, the decision is made. I want in. The question is how and where. And I’ve heard rumours there’s something grand afoot, a raid across the Lakes, and it seems pretty obvious where it’s going. I mean to ask Jack Follett if I can go along, but to tell you the truth, though he’s as fine a man as I’ve been privileged to know, and bright too, his followers … well, his followers have planned more than one disaster.
“So I’m in a bit of a dilemma. And I was wondering—oh, it’s damnably impertinent to ask, I know, but the hell of it is, there’s no one else. I can’t tell Jack I want to go along and then, if I find it’s all some piece of folly, turn about and say to him: ‘Ah, sorry, mate, I’ve changed my mind.’ So will you tell me, Carroll, friend to friend: How the devil are we going to take that gunboat? Or have a hope in the world of capturing Johnson’s Island if we don’t take it?”
The Halifax Connection Page 14