The Halifax Connection

by Marie Jakober

  It’ll be over and done with before anyone knows it’s happening …

  Sheriff Cobb seemed not to notice anything amiss, not even when Matt demanded of him bitterly, “What are those sons of bitches doing here?”

  “Who?”

  “Orton and his lot! I thought this was all supposed to be kept quiet! How the devil do they know about it? And why were they let in?”

  “Oh, now really, Calverley. The order was to keep the riff-raff out. Those gentlemen aren’t the sort to start a riot.”

  “They’re Rebel supporters. They’re damn well the sort to start something.”

  Cobb looked at him and looked away, with a small shake of his head. Matt could readily guess what he was thinking. Cobb had always been a man with an overly high opinion of respectability—not rank as such, but respectability. His background was almost as destitute as Matt’s, but his family had been law-abiding and decent, indeed heroically so. He was therefore convinced that those who made up the low-life of a community were inherently different from those who did not. It was not poverty or bad luck that took them down; it was heredity, or some other essential flaw. They were—so he had said more than once—the detritus of society. They could be helped occasionally; he was all for supporting the City Mission and the SPC. But such people would never really be like decent folk.

  To Cobb, the streets below the Citadel were as low as the low-life got, and hiring the likes of Matt Calverley as a peace officer had appalled him: this was bringing Barrack Street back to city hall to live. It made no difference that years of honest work and quiet living stood between the street arab and the aspiring police constable. Young Calverley was still a whore’s brat; a vicious, dirty fighter, a long-time petty thief who would have ended up in Rockhead except he was always too smart to get caught. What the devil did the Halifax constabulary want with a man like that?

  “Well,” François Dufours supposedly had said, “maybe we want a man who knows how it all works, up by the Hill. All I can ever do, most times, is guess.”

  Perhaps the city officials of the day agreed, but Matt always suspected that a shortage of candidates had been the real reason he was hired. The constabulary was undermanned, dismally paid, and routinely exposed to every sort of weather and every sort of insult, including violence. Men were not exactly lining up in droves for the job.

  Now, twelve years later, not even Cobb could seriously doubt Matt’s effectiveness as a peace officer. But the sheriff would always doubt him as a man. The sheriff would always believe that, somewhere inside, Matt carried a flawed identity that would never be eradicated, and that might show itself at any moment, like hereditary madness or disease. He did not trust Matt’s judgment on anything, least of all on the subject of his betters.

  You have such a grudge against Orton, he said once, you could see him rocking a baby and you’d think it was plot.

  There was a fragment of truth to the accusation. Matt was generally inclined to believe the worst of an enemy. This was a fault with some practical value in the streets—it had saved his life a time or two—but it was a fault nonetheless, a prejudice. He reminded himself of it now, and warned himself to be careful. If something starts here, Matt old boy, you damn well don’t want to be the one to start it.

  Quarters were close on the wharf. The Grey Tories clustered loosely at one side and talked among themselves. Matt watched them relentlessly, but he sensed nothing of the edgy hostility that usually built up in groups of men when they were contemplating violence.

  “What do you suppose they’re about?” he muttered to Constable Grover.

  “Nothing much. Showing the colours, likely. Making sure their poor Mr. Wade knows he’s got friends here.”

  Matt said nothing. His common sense confirmed Grover’s words; his instincts still resisted, bitterly.

  “I think Cobb’s right, mate,” Grover went on. “This is the sort of thing gets fought out in a courtroom. And God knows the buggers might win there, too. The Yankee consul closed one loophole on them; they’ll do their damnedest to find another.”

  So they’ll be watching like hawks for any misstep on our part.

  This made sense, especially coming from Grover. The man was experienced, and on the subject of the American war he was as close to a genuinely neutral observer as Matt had met.

  Matt scanned the wharf again and then looked out to sea, to the five American vessels anchored in the channel. The harbour looked as it did on most any winter afternoon, with clusters of vessels anchored all along the waterfront. The Dartmouth ferry was heading out; a few fishing boats were drifting in. None of this held Matt’s attention for longer than a second—only the launch from the Ella and Annie, approaching fast. Orton’s people were watching with attention now, but otherwise quiet. Behind him, Matt knew the military cordon was solid. Unless several of them had been suborned—not one of them, but several—no one was getting George Wade through.

  The launch docked quietly.

  “We won’t crowd them,” Matt said softly. He did not believe that a legal definition of George Wade’s freedom depended on how much room he had to walk around in, but he had heard some very strange arguments raised in courtrooms from time to time. So, fine, he thought, the pirate could have his two minutes of liberty undisturbed. He could talk with his Grey Tory friends, with Jamie Orton, who was already stepping forward to shake his hand.

  Sheriff Cobb drew aside to give them room for their courtesies. The men were milling a little now, and laughing. Wade took Orton’s outstretched hand, leaned forward a little to listen to something he was saying, then, between a breath and a breath, stepped over the side of the jetty and disappeared.

  “Bloody damned hell!”

  It was almost too quick to be comprehended. Matt lunged forward, using elbows and shoulders on everything in his path, including Cobb, who was staring vacantly like a fish who had been whacked on the head. Matt plowed through to the edge of the pier and cursed savagely. A skiff was pulling fast away, with Wade hunkered down in it and two men on the oars, rowing like very demons. Matt cursed again, for he knew them: John Elworth Payne and Harry Gallagher, rowing champions for the entire province of Nova Scotia.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “That man is under arrest!” Even as he shouted, he drew his pistol, knowing they would not heed him. “I’m a policeman! God damn you, Gallagher, stop or I’ll shoot!”

  One warning shot over their heads, and then Wade …

  The warning shot tore into the grey sky as Jamie Orton’s big hand knotted over the gun.

  “You’ll nae be killing anyone today, you damned Yankee hireling!”

  Orton had height on him, and reach, and seventy-five pounds. It made no difference. Matt spun in his grip like a cat and rammed his knee into the man’s crotch. Astonishingly, even as Orton buckled with a cry of pure anguish, he managed to keep his hold on the gun. For a moment they grappled, the weapon pinned perilously between them. Another second or two and Matt would have wrenched it free. Then the full weight of a man’s body slammed into his back and a wiry arm closed around his throat. The voice was Robert Collier’s, almost pleading, “Let go, God damn it, let go!”

  “Bastard!” Matt spat, and slammed his elbow backward and up, hitting something, he did not care what. By then Jack Murray was on him as well, grabbing at his arms and his clothing. They were not trying to fight, only to hold him, but they were strong, and he was mad as a bitten cat. He struggled savagely, cursing them with the ugliest words he knew, words he never used in ordinary anger, not buggers and bastards and God damns, but the worst gutter talk of the brothel. The gun clattered onto the wharf and someone kicked it into the water, but now, like men who had taken hold of a wolverine, they dared not let go, until finally all four were tumbled to the timbers in a snarling, dishevelled heap.

  Constable Grover and various Grey Tories rushed over, peeling the men off one by one, helping them to their feet. Matt was on the bottom.

  “Keep your bloody hands off me,” he s
napped. They did, but two of them stayed resolutely between him and Jamie Orton, a fact he noted with quiet scorn. He rubbed his wrist. It hurt cruelly from being twisted, but otherwise the Grey Tories were far more damaged than he was. Collier’s nose was streaming blood and Jack Murray was holding his stomach and hobbling on one foot. Not that it mattered; they had won. The skiff was well out of range. Even as Matt stared after it, the fugitive waved, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Thank you, boys, and God save the Queen!”

  The Grey Tories cheered. Matt pointedly ignored them. Despite what Sheriff Cobb or anyone else believed, he was not a man who carried grudges. He valued his small, stubbornly acquired place in the world too much to wager it for the sake of malice or revenge.

  The Grey Tories milled around him, all of them very pleased with themselves, MacNab laughing and slapping Jack Murray on the back, Orton still grey-faced but nonetheless smiling. There would be many a toast raised in the Waverley tonight, and in the Halifax Club.

  Matt did not promise himself that he would bring them down. After twelve years, he knew better. Bringing one of these bastards down was like seeing a comet: it happened, but not very often. But he promised them a fight. With the hard anger that brooded softly in the bottom of his soul, an anger kindled and nurtured in his boyhood, which he had learned always to contain but which never altogether left him, he promised the Grey Tories of Halifax the fight of their God damn miserable lives.

  CHAPTER 20

  After the Chesapeake

  We hold that the independence of the South is the true and sure means of extinguishing slavery.

  —Pamphlet of the Southern Independence Association, Manchester, England

  No bill of attainder or ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

  —Section 9, Article 4, Constitution of the Confederate States of America

  ERRYN SHAW KNEW nothing of the Queen’s Wharf affair until it was over. He woke up Saturday morning feeling feverish and exhausted, came out to the kitchen for a hot cup of tea, and crawled back into bed. His landlord was determined he should stay there.

  Erryn got on well with his landlord. Gideon Winslow was a widower now and past sixty, but in his prime he had been a fine tailor, and with his wife had raised three hardy sons. All of them were off in the world now, being sailors and farmers and Lord knew what, sending money home so he might live decently. He rented his spare room cheap, mostly for the comfort of having someone in the house.

  He was not fond of cooking, and in any case Erryn never kept regular hours when he ran the theatre; nor did he keep them now. So the two men formed a simple understanding: Erryn was not to expect regular meals as a boarder might, but, on the other hand, if he came home hungry, he was to help himself freely to whatever he found in the kitchen. Winslow always made sure there was something substantial—at the very least, a loaf of good fresh bread and cheese. Erryn appreciated the old man’s kindness, and also his flawless discretion. Winslow only asked about his background once or twice, very delicately, and when Erryn evaded the questions just as delicately, he never asked again.

  For his part, Erryn tried to be a good tenant. He wiped his boots, he never smoked or spat tobacco, he did his drinking elsewhere, and he always paid his rent on time. From time to time he brought home delicacies to share—chocolates, fine sausages, oranges in the wintertime—and the old man would smile like a boy.

  They were, therefore, more like friends than landlord and tenant. Winslow, proud as he was of his fine sons, never made the mistake of thinking Erryn Shaw was one of them. Still, he could be surprisingly protective. When Jack Murray came by on Saturday morning to take his friend down to Queen’s Wharf with the others, Winslow would not so much as invite him in.

  “The lad’s sick in his bed,” he said. “You oughtn’t to be fetching him out, not on a day like this.”

  Jack nodded sympathetically and went away. When Erryn rose shortly after noon, Winslow fried him up a plate of scrambled eggs and potatoes, and told him what he had done.

  “Why, thanks,” Erryn said. “I would’ve gone, I suppose, but frankly, I’m glad I didn’t have to.”

  Monday morning, when he learned of the prisoners’ release in the newspapers, he decided Winslow had done him a greater kindness than he knew. It would have been hard to see three men go at Matt Calverley, with himself standing by and pretending not to care. He was not at all sure he would have managed it.

  He read the story again very carefully, assuring himself that Matt was, in fact, unhurt. He read the editorials. He went out for a breath of fresh air and bought up all the other papers, poring over them with the same care. It was too early, perhaps, to speak of a pattern; this was only the first day. But except for a handful of the strongest pro-Confederate journals, a pattern was already emerging.

  Halifax was not impressed.

  Halifax, this supposedly Grey Tory town, this bastion of blockade-runners and spies, was raising its editorial eyebrows at the behaviour of James Dougal Orton. Whatever had the man been about? they wondered. Offering insult to the Queen by preventing the exercise of her lawful warrant? Attacking a peace officer in the performance of his duty? Helping an accused murderer to escape? Surely these were not the actions of a leading citizen and a man of the law. One after another the editors found themselves at a loss, unable to understand the descent of a gentleman of such lineage and reputation into what was scarcely better than the act of a hooligan.

  “Welcome to the world, lads,” Erryn murmured, laying the paper aside.

  He did not allow himself to feel too reassured; the only thing more changeable than the moods of the press were the winds of the North Atlantic. Still, it comforted him. The Grey Tories were a powerful minority; it was easy to forget sometimes that they were only a minority.

  One week later, James Dougal Orton was arrested. The word on the grapevine was that Sheriff Cobb was feeling mean as a weasel, seeing how he had been made a fool of, and went over to the Northwest Arm in person to pick him up.

  The cells beneath the police station were gloomy, dirty, and cold. Today they contained the usual assortment of brawlers and drunks; a woman named Malone, charged with keeping a common bawdy house; and a fourteen-year-old pickpocket who reminded Matt rather sadly of his younger self. James Orton had a cell of his own, next to that of Malone and the women prisoners. He was sitting on his wood bunk with his coat wrapped around his shoulders, looking dignified and altogether untroubled.

  As well he might, Matt reflected. He would be bailed out in an hour or two, and the odds were high he would never return. Matt pulled a chair into the cell, locked it again, and sat, resting his arms on the rickety chair back. Orton glanced at him without hostility, but also without much interest.

  “I’d like to ask you a question or two, Mr. Orton.”

  “There’s nae a thing I can tell you, constable, that Sheriff Cobb has nae heard already.”

  “Well then, let’s just say if a lie is big enough, I prefer to hear it with my own ears. First off, the release of the Chesapeake prisoners was private information. Who told you about it?”

  “I was nae told a thing about it. I went down to the waterfront to look after a wee bit of business. There was a crowd gathering, and I went by for a look. A few of the lads said they thought there might be something afoot with the Chesapeake, and so we stayed about to see.”

  “And they were all there on business too, I suppose? Your lads?”

  “It was nae my concern why they were there, so I did nae ask.”

  “And the rowboat, with champion rowers on the oars?”

  “For that, you must ask Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Payne.”

  “Oh, I did. It was a pleasure outing, they tell me. They brought their boat all the way round from the Northwest Arm just to scuttle along the stinking jetties, and listen to the fishmongers scream, and dodge all the traffic coming in and out, purely because they enjoyed it. Man does that for pleasu
re, he belongs in the crazy house.”

  Orton said nothing.

  “How much did you pay them, Orton?”

  “I paid nae man for anything.”

  “Send him over to us, constable,” the bawdy woman Malone suggested. “We’ll soften ’im up for ye.”

  “Now there’s a thought,” Matt said cheerfully, and saw the quiet indifference in Orton’s eyes harden into offence. The man’s moral priorities were curious, to say the least.

  “So,” he went on, “we’re supposed to believe it was all … what’s that wonderful word they use in books? … oh, yes, serendipity. It was all pure serendipity, you being there, and all your friends, and even a rowboat just when you needed it. As for you jumping on me and knocking me down, I suppose that was serendipity too. You took a fit, I suppose, standing out in the wind?”

  Orton refused to be baited. “I could nae let you shoot a man down in cold blood, constable.”

  “What about Orrin Schaffer?”

  “Who?”

  “The engineer on the Chesapeake. The one George Wade shot in the face. In cold blood.”

  “We can nae say he did it, constable. The man’s nae been tried.”

  “No, he hasn’t. And you made damn sure he won’t be. You puzzle me, Orton, do you know that? Most times, a man might think you were a decent sod. You’ve done a good deed or two in this town, you talk as though you got a conscience. And yet you don’t seem to care a damn if you and your Grey Tory friends drag the whole country into someone else’s war—and not just in it, but on the wrong damn side. What the devil do you like about the Rebels, anyway? Do you think it makes men special, keeping other men as slaves?”

  “Ah, for God’s sake,” Orton said sharply, “that’s nae the question at all—”

  “Question or no, they’re still the side with the slaves.”