The Halifax Connection

by Marie Jakober

  “The way I see it,” Aggie said, “if you’re really high, you fuss with things because it’s expected, but if you miss something, the world isn’t going to end. You have your place. But if you’re just trying to get up there, like the Danners, then everything has to be perfect, and more than perfect. You have to be twice as Catholic as the Pope.”

  “I thought the Danners were up there. More or less.”

  “Oh, William is, pretty much. But for Jack I think it’s still ‘more or less.’ He’s just a small commission merchant, after all. As for this boarding house, it looks real fine to us, but to people who own shipping companies and run banks, it’s small change. And then there’s … well, Miss Susan’s background.”

  Ah, yes. Miss Susan’s background. You would never guess it if you didn’t know, Sylvie thought; she dressed every inch the lady. She spoke like a lady too, not a trace of Lancashire about her, never a hint of North Country dialect or working-class toughness. She had erased it all, and made herself over in their image. But still they knew.

  “Will they ever really accept her, do you think?” Sylvie asked.

  “Oh, I reckon so. There’s a few snots who won’t, but most of them will.” Aggie paused and then added pointedly, “As long as she never makes a single mistake.”

  At that point Miss Susan’s steps could be heard in the hall and they fell silent. When she had checked on their progress and left again, Aggie had a question of her own.

  “Do you ever see anything of the Ortons? At Madame Louise’s place, I mean?”

  “No. I’ve never even met them. I saw Mr. Jamie on the street once, but Reeve had to tell me who he was. I know he’s all for the South, though. His son went off and joined their army last year.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. What does Madame think of it?”

  “She’s never said. But she’s all for the North, so I doubt she thinks much of it. She says slavery is a great sin, and defending it by warfare is a greater one.”

  “She actually said that? Good. I heard rumours she was on the Union side, but I never know what to make of rumours. Well, we might have an interesting time of it tomorrow night.”

  As it turned out, they did indeed have an interesting time of it, but not for any of the reasons they expected. The guests began arriving around two, all very grand in their finery and fancy stones. Sylvie caught only glimpses of them, seeing them in the hall as they arrived or stealing a look through the parlour doorway as she passed. She tried to picture Erryn among them, in his wine-coloured waistcoat and gold cufflinks and spats. It was like picturing a hawk in a drawing room. A very well-behaved hawk, of course; he would perch with his wings carefully folded and he would never peck a soul. But his bright eyes would not miss a flutter in the curtains, and there would be all that wild energy inside, restless, wanting to take wing, to snatch a choice hors d’oeuvre from the plate and soar away.

  God, how she longed to see him again.

  And maybe she would, one day soon. It was something to hold on to as she spent most of the long afternoon in the scullery, where Emma Sanders fussed and stormed like a clockwork toy that never ran down. Sanders was an exceptionally good cook. The dainties they sent upstairs by the plateful made Sylvie’s mouth water, and the meal they were preparing seemed fit, not merely for a king, but for a god. Racks of lamb, squashes baked with sugar and spices, Yorkshire puddings as light as a cloud, stuffed potatoes, pastries with chicken and cream, preserved vegetables in sauces, a great pot of chowder, duffs and trifles, bite-sized tarts made with brandy and nuts … it was truly divine. And this time they would get their share. Usually they ate the boarders’ fare, not the household’s—a fact that Sylvie accepted without complaint; it was nourishing food, decently prepared, and there was always plenty of it. But if Miss Susan was a hard mistress sometimes, she was also a shrewd one. She knew that her perfect evening required more than the servants’ best. Their best she expected as a matter of course. For this she needed perfection, and if she got it, they would get to feast.

  So they worked like fiends. They had a bit of help. William Danner had loaned them his butler to help Aggie with the serving. And Madame Louise’s only manservant, who was also her coachman, put the horses up at the nearby livery and settled down in the kitchen, whence he would tend to the boarders and their dinner. He was somewhere in his forties, a gentle, quiet man named Jonathan Boyd, who made himself useful every way he could.

  Sometime during the afternoon, the sun went down. Sylvie never noticed. She was inexperienced in the scullery and therefore given the meanest jobs, mostly fetching, chopping, and slicing, or washing an endless accumulation of pots and utensils. Nothing she did pleased Sanders. If she worked quickly, she was too careless; if she took more care, she was too slow. She was a ninny, a simpleton, and what in the world was Miss Susan thinking of, hiring factory trash to serve in a proper household, she might as well put an old crow in a birdcage and expect it to sing.

  After a while it was like the rattling machinery in the mill: you never stopped noticing, but you kept your mind on what you were doing and tried to shut it out. So it was that she did not hear Aggie’s steps running down the stairs, and only half heard her voice as she ran into the kitchen.

  “Those dirty bastards have taken another ship!”

  Sylvie did hear the cook’s response, loud and properly outraged. “See here, Breault, we do not use that sort of language in this house!”

  “Language be hanged!” Aggie flung back. “Mr. Orton just came in, Sylvie. He said he’s just had word from Saint John. The Rebels took another one of our ships, went on board as passengers and took her over and killed a crewman and wounded a whole lot of others. They took the engine-room boys prisoner and dumped the rest off in Saint John and now they’ve gone raiding and he says they’re Canadians!”

  “WHAT?”

  At this, even Sanders went motionless, with a spoon half raised in her hand.

  “Slow down, Mrs. Breault,” Jonathan said. “Start from the beginning. What ship? And what do you mean, they’re Canadians?”

  “The Chesapeake, from Boston. Some passengers took her over on the high seas, they say they’re Confederates, but the crewmen they left in Saint John say they’re from here—”

  “From here?”

  “—and Mr. Orton says he thinks it’s true, says he recognized one of the names they used. And anyway, Englishmen don’t sound like Southerners when they talk, and everybody knows it—”

  Sylvie stared at her. “You mean there’s our own people gone pirating for the Confederacy?”

  “You can’t call them pirates!” Harry Dobbs said. “It’s war and they got every right to take an enemy ship!”

  “We ain’t at war,” Sanders snapped. “Our lads got no business taking anybody’s ships.”

  “Well, they did,” Aggie said. “And they killed the engineer, and the captain says it was plain murder and the whole ocean won’t be big enough to hide them.”

  “Oh, bloody damned hell.” Jonathan sat down on a kitchen bench and shook his head. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  The answer came from the doorway, where Miss Susan had arrived unnoticed.

  “It means we might yet find ourselves at war,” she said. “But for the moment, we have guests, and they are your only concern. Is the boarders’ dinner ready to serve?”

  “Yes, m’um,” Sanders said.

  “Very well. Boyd, if you would be so kind, see to it. Bowen, you are to help him. As for this matter of the ships, it may be exaggerated, and until we know, it’s not our place to be spreading gossip.”

  Never once had anyone heard Miss Susan express an opinion on the American war. She ran a boarding house where both Northerners and Southerners stayed; she was the soul of discretion. But now there was a bleakness in her eyes and in her voice, of a sort Sylvie had never seen there before—a bleakness she knew she would not find in the eyes of Jamie Orton. To this extent at least, Miss Susan had taken sides: she wanted no pa
rt of the Rebels’ war.

  For the next couple of hours, no one had much chance to talk. Two meals had to be served, to thirty-seven people, dining on two different floors, all separate from the kitchen. It was mostly Sylvie and Harry Dobbs who carried the pots and platters up, and the dirty dishes back down. By nine-thirty the Danners and their guests were down to chocolates and brandy. At ten Aggie and Jonathan returned to the kitchen.

  “Miss Susan says we can eat now,” Jonathan told them. “And Mr. William’s butler says we should behave like Christians now, and leave a bite for him.”

  He was smiling, just a bit. Sylvie glanced at the chowder pot, still half full, at the racks of lamb still lying on the plates. They could all eat twice over and there would be plenty left.

  “What’re they saying up there, anyway?” she asked. “About that ship?”

  “Nothing. Not a peep. They say one thing, they’ll get Madame all upset and spoil her birthday. They say the other, and Mr. Jamie’ll skewer them for it later.”

  “How well do you know them, Jonathan?” Aggie questioned. “Are they all for the South, like Mr. Jamie?”

  “Madame isn’t.”

  “I know Madame isn’t. I mean the rest of them.”

  He shrugged. “Near as I can tell, they split nicely in three: one batch Union, one batch Confederate, one batch don’t-care-poppycock. Trouble is, Mr. Jamie’s the head of the family, so the Union sort and the don’t-cares don’t argue with him much.”

  “Except Madame,” Sylvie said.

  “No,” Jonathan said, “not even Madame. There’s no point. It’d be like arguing with a tree.”

  “So why’s he like that, anyway?” Aggie persisted. “So keen for the Southerners, I mean. Do you know?”

  “The rich stick together. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “Madame’s rich,” Sylvie said.

  “Madame’s been through a few storms,” Jonathan said. “Makes people think when they get kicked around a bit.”

  Sylvie shook her head. “In Rochdale, there were big arguments about the war, even in the mills. John Bright came and gave a talk in the Mechanics Hall one night. He’s in the Parliament and all, and he’s rich. He’s got more bloody money than you or I can dream of. And he spoke for the Union and we cheered him and signed this big long letter to send to Mr. Lincoln, saying we were behind him even if it meant no cotton for the mills, because we were working people, and slavery kept working people down, didn’t matter where. And when we came out of the hall, some of our own mates called us horrid names, and said why should they go hungry for the sake of some bloody niggers.” She paused, searching for words. “It’s rich and poor, maybe, but it ain’t just that. It’s … I don’t know … like you said about Madame … it’s thinking …” She wished Erryn were here; he would know what words to use. And then she wondered if he bothered his head about any of these things, ever. He never so much as mentioned the American war. Once, she’d asked him very tentatively for an opinion, and he merely shrugged. He didn’t know, he said, he hadn’t paid much attention. It was one of the few times he had ever disappointed her.

  “Let’s go eat,” Jonathan said. “A meal like this doesn’t come every day.”

  They descended on the nearby table, where the others were piling their plates. Two hours ago she had been dreaming of this feast. Now she scarcely cared if she ate or not.

  “You’re right, Jonathan.” Harry Dobbs sat down expansively before a plate that looked laden enough for two. “Let’s eat by all means. It’ll be army biscuits next week, likely.” The silly ass actually sounded pleased.

  “Do you think they’ll come here?” MacKay whispered to no one in particular. As at so many other times, she seemed frightened and bewildered.

  “Will who come here?”

  “The pirates.”

  “Oh, come on! They’re privateers, not pirates!” Dobbs said. “And I rather hope they do come. It would be something to see!”

  “And the whole Yankee fleet behind them, I suppose?” Sanders flung back at him. “You’d like to see that as well, would you?”

  Dobbs shot her a defiant look, but said nothing. However great an ass he was, he knew, as did every Haligonian who was sane and past the age of five, that every warship in the Atlantic Squadron was gone, sailing weeks ago for their winter posting in the Caribbean.

  Except for a few old, unimpressive cannons on the Citadel, the city was defenceless against an attack from the sea.

  CHAPTER 17

  Mac Nab

  What security is there that … in an ill-judged attempt to quench the American strife, we should in the result endanger the peace of Europe?

  —The Times (London), November 17, 1862

  FROM THE DECK of the mail packet Delhi, Erryn Shaw watched Halifax glide closer, bit by bit, a ribbon of buildings strung along a grey shore, with the mound of the Citadel rising hard at its back. In the winter morning it seemed all black and grey, but at least it was there, visible, a small miracle after five days of fog and gales. For a brief while the cloud cover broke, the water sparkled, and the spire of St. Paul’s and the dome of the Town Clock shone proudly in a pool of winter light. Erryn stayed by the rail despite the wind, admiring everything he saw. George’s Island passed with its bare slopes and stone batteries, and then the busy wharves of the South End, Corbett’s and Wood’s and the West India Company, all suddenly as familiar as old friends. More than any time since he had left England, he felt as though he were coming home.

  They docked at Queen’s Wharf with barely a bump. As always, Her Majesty’s mail sacks disembarked first; he was the first of the passengers to follow. He would have liked to go to his rooming house, have a hot bath and a long nap, and then find Sylvie Bowen and invite her to dinner. But alas, those were the governor’s guineas rattling in his purse, and Lord Monck, worldly and dutiful soul that he was, expected him to earn them. He picked his way through the waterfront crowds and the mud to Alexander MacNab’s Dry Goods Emporium on Hollis Street.

  Although other Grey Tories in Halifax were more socially prominent and more personally committed, for sheer energy and usefulness to the cause MacNab outranked them all. He was a large man, almost as tall as Erryn himself, and easily twice his girth. Receding hair and sagging jowls gave him something of a bulldog look, which rather suited him. He had scrapped his way from obscurity into the ranks of the Halifax elite. Now, in his fifties, he was one of the richest men in town, but everything about him was still hard-edged and always slightly challenging. It did not help that he had been born with a hair-trigger temper, and he never made much effort to control it.

  Erryn found him already on his way out, his coat wrapped over his arm, talking to a deferential and harassed-looking clerk. Erryn remained discreetly at a distance, but he could still hear anger in MacNab’s voice, and numerous references to things amiss, and the clerk saying “yessir” to everything, indiscriminately. MacNab was still talking as he turned away: “I want it packed before you leave tonight, do you understand, before you—Well, I’ll be damned! Mr. Shaw. Good to see you back.”

  “Thank you. How have you been, sir?”

  “Can’t complain.” MacNab had a crunching handshake, and a bear’s paw to wield it. His gaze raked Erryn from head to toe, as though he were examining a piece of damaged merchandise. “You look like hell, Shaw. No offence, but I’ve seen livelier washed up on the pier. What the devil happened to you, anyway? I never could make much sense of it in the newspapers.”

  “I got myself a knife wound and a very cold bath in the St. Lawrence. They fished me out again, but it was a near thing.”

  “Did you know the son of a bitch?”

  “No. He went over the side with me, and they never found him. Some sod who called himself John Hill was missing from steerage after, or so the police told me, but no one knew anything about him. He was just a ruffian, no doubt, with his eye on my purse.”

  “You don’t suppose it was some damned Yankee agent?”

 
“Now why would I suppose that?” Erryn murmured, very dry. “What with our neutrality laws and all?”

  MacNab laughed and slapped him lightly on the arm. “Why indeed? So fill me in, for Christ’s sake. Did you come by Portland? The buggers must be mad as hornets down there.”

  “I did, and they are, though I couldn’t make any more sense out of their newspapers than you could make out of ours. Is it true the men who took the Chesapeake were Canadians?”

  “Half true. The captain’s a naval officer from Kentucky. Duly commissioned, by the way, with a letter of marque, legal as can be. The piracy charge is rubbish. But most of the crew was recruited in New Brunswick, and a few around Shelburne.”

  “No wonder the Yankees on the Delhi wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “It’s a hell of a kick in their teeth—and right before Christmas, too. Listen, I was just on my way over to the Waverley for lunch. Come with me. Jamie Orton will be there, and some other lads. They’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Thank you, I will. But first I’d better give you these.” Erryn unbuttoned an inside pocket and withdrew two envelopes. “Our friends in Quebec sent some letters for you.”

  “Ah, good. Give me a minute, will you?”

  MacNab flung his coat over a counter and took the envelopes away with him. Idly, Erryn glanced over the store’s interior. MacNab’s Dry Goods Emporium was large, classy, and profitable. It had made the man a good deal of money before the war, but now, supplying blockade-runners with overpriced goods had raised his profit margin from high to astronomical, a fact he demonstrated by building himself a splendid three-storey mansion—not out on the Northwest Arm, where most of the rich people lived, but right in the heart of the city, on Barrington, where he could stay close to his business … and where, of course, the whole world could walk by every day and admire it.

  Erryn admired it as well, on the way to the Waverley. It was almost finished, MacNab said; the workmen were installing the floors and the panelling. Erryn judged it a beautiful home, and he said so.