“What sort of … snooping … did you have in mind, Aggie?”
“That fellow who came on Wednesday, calls himself Theodore Manley? Can you see what he might have with him—documents, messages, things like that? You might not have time to copy anything in detail. Just take notes or, better still, memorize it if you can. And look for anything what might hint at his real name—a personal letter, a prayer book, engraved jewellery, that sort of thing. They often have secret pockets in their clothes or their cases. Look as thoroughly as you can, but don’t undo anything you can’t fix. And always have an explanation for why you’re in the room.”
“You’ve been doing this for a while.” Aggie merely shrugged, and Sylvie went on, “A spy wouldn’t do that, would he? Use a false name and then carry around something with his real one?”
“A lot of them are green,” Aggie said. “There’s things they just never think of. And it’s a good thing, too, because we’re about as green as they are. Did you know General Washington had a huge network of spies, in the Revolution? Your Lord Wellington too, so I’ve been told—he turned it into an art. These days, a lot of folks look down on the very notion. It’s dishonourable, they say, a relic from the old corrupt states of the Continent, completely beneath the dignity of a white, Anglo-Saxon gentleman.”
“Well,” Sylvie said wryly, “the dignity of gentlemen really ain’t something we need to worry about, is it?”
She thought she would be frightened, going through Mr. Manley’s belongings, and perhaps she was, at the very outset. But in a matter of moments the intensity of the search absorbed all of her attention. According to Aggie, he had mentioned at the breakfast table that he was going over to Dartmouth for the morning. This was reassuring, but only slightly. He might change his mind and return. Or Miss Susan might come into the room for some reason. Sylvie worked very quickly.
There was indeed a false bottom in his portmanteau, but all she found beneath it was money, almost a hundred dollars in United States paper, which she left exactly as she found it. But in the desk drawer was a pouch of pipe tobacco, and nestled at the bottom, under the tobacco, was a small key.
There was nothing it seemed to fit—nothing in the case or in the dresser; nothing under his mattress; nothing in the closet. Whatever it was, she supposed he had taken it with him, which did not make a great deal of sense. One might leave a box and take the key, but why would anyone do the opposite?
All around the room, as she scanned it, were various spots where a small item could be tucked out of sight. She noted them and rejected them in turn: they were all places she cleaned every day. Except for one. Beside the hearth was the coal bin—the coal bin she kept so carefully supplied that it was never, ever, empty.
She put everything she had moved back in its place, fetched an empty bucket, and emptied out the coal—and there it was, a small metal box to which the key fit perfectly. Inside the box was a single piece of paper. The message was simple and was probably in code.
Robert. We will buy the horse on Tuesday, at the warehouse. Bring the money. L.W. Deans.
She scribbled it onto a piece of notepaper, replaced it, and fled to her regular work, taking a long moment to check that she had, in fact, left no traces of her search.
She had done well, she thought; in a part of herself she felt quite triumphant. And in another part of herself she felt more and more uneasy. The message was simple enough to be memorized and destroyed; why would the man keep it? Why would he leave his money in the portmanteau, even under a false bottom, when there was plenty of room for it in a locked and well-hidden box? And why did he not keep the key on his person?
A lot of them were green, Aggie said. Well, maybe. Only this one did not strike her as green, just very, very peculiar. She slid her own little slip of paper under Aggie’s pillow moments before the others came in to bed, wondering if the American woman would ever tell her what she made of it all.
Friday came wrapped in fog. Not just a bit of fog, the sort one expected along the coast in the wintertime, but great, drowning blankets of fog, so thick you could not see across the street. Now and then as she worked, Sylvie glanced at the windows, hoping it would clear as the sun rose higher. It seemed rather to thicken instead. Last week Erryn had promised to rent a small boat on the first fine Friday afternoon they had, and take her out to George’s Island or down around the Point. It would not be today.
She was finishing the kitchen stairs when Aggie Breault found her. Aggie looked quickly in both directions before she spoke. No one was in the hallway above; in the kitchen, Sanders was making enough noise with her chopper to drown out an army.
“I’m going downstairs,” Aggie murmured. “Come with me for a minute.”
“Going downstairs” was proper talk for using the toilets. She followed Aggie into the basement, where the water closets were discreetly tucked away. Instead of entering one of them, Aggie turned to face her.
“You did good yesterday,” she said. “I’m impressed. Tell me, how long did it take you to find the key?”
“The key? I found the key right off. It were the box I couldn’t—oh, rot it, anyway!” She stared at Aggie in the dim light, running the search through her mind in a moment, its implications clear now that she considered them. “That stuff were all … it were all bait, weren’t it? You put it there yourself! You just wanted to see if I could find it!”
“Well, partly,” Aggie said. “Mostly I wanted to see if you were careful. If you didn’t leave signs. And if you were—no offence, please, but we have to be sure—if you were honest.”
“And poor Mr. Manley?”
“A good, loyal American who was willing to do me a favour.”
“What if I’d bolted with all his money?”
Aggie shrugged. “It wasn’t his. It’s … operating money.”
“Well, bloody damned hell.”
“It’s a serious business, Sylvie. It’s not a game.”
“I never thought it were.”
“I didn’t figure so. But a friend of mine got stung real bad last year, trusting someone he shouldn’t have. So I try to be careful.” She smiled then, warm enough to burn the fog from the streets. “Are we still friends?”
“Course,” Sylvie said. “You gave me a turn, that’s all. I ain’t mad. Comes right down to it”—here she offered a quiet smile of her own—“I’d a lot sooner work with someone who’s careful.”
“Good. You’re off to Madame’s now, I guess? Jonathan’s brought her carriage. He’s in the foyer, waiting for you.”
Madame had sent her carriage? Sylvie was astonished at the old woman’s kindness. She was a rare one, Madame Mallette.
“Is it him, then?” Aggie asked her.
“What?”
“Your follower. Is it Jonathan? It was clear as day at her birthday dinner that he fancied you.”
“Jonathan fancies me?” Sylvie whispered. “Go on.”
“Well, of course. Are you telling me you didn’t know?”
“You’re imagining things.”
Aggie laughed softly. “You’re a right smart girl, Sylvie Bowen, but you don’t read men very well.”
Was it so? She went over the matter many times on the long ride to South Park Road. It was almost impossible to see. On Barrington, the few carriages abroad were lit as though it were night. Pedestrians picked their way carefully along the boardwalk, many carrying lanterns in their hands. Back in England, Sylvie recalled—back in the mill country—a fog like this would mix with factory smoke and turn the air to poison. Here it rolled in clean from the sea, eerie and dangerous, but clean.
She settled back in the carriage, watching bits of Halifax come and go, stone buildings turned to spectres, appearing and disappearing in a breath. Were men so strange to her, so mysterious? She thought not. She had lived and worked among them all her life.
But she had never been courted, at least not by anyone she trusted enough to accept his courtship—never until Erryn Shaw. And perhaps to that d
egree Aggie Breault was right. Perhaps she did not read those particular signs very well. Did Jonathan Boyd fancy her? The notion had never crossed her mind. Now, when they reached Madame’s house, he thoughtfully held out his arm for her as she stepped from the carriage. She could not resist looking into his face then, trying to read it. He had always been kind to her, but he was mostly kind to everyone, so she had thought nothing of it.
“Careful, lass,” he said. “There’s a bit of ice underfoot.”
His eyes gave nothing away—nothing she could read—but they lingered on her, just a little, and so did his steadying hand. He was older than she was, well past forty, she thought, and sturdy as an oak. She judged him a man who had lived a bit and knew what he wanted. Was it possible that he wanted her?
She hoped it was not so, for his sake, and yet she could not help but be pleased. It was, after all, so very rare.
She read to Madame Louise as usual, and listened for a while as the old woman played the piano. Madame seemed melancholy today, and tired. Sylvie wondered if it was fog and memories of shipwreck, or if it was her rheumatism, and the grippe she had had for weeks that would not go away. At one point she stopped playing and kneaded her fingers as though they hurt.
“Do not get old, Sylvie Bowen,” she said. “It’s very bothersome.”
“I’ve never heard it could be prevented, Madame.”
Madame laughed. “I fear you have the right of it, alas. Pour us some more tea, would you please? Now tell me, have you gone down to Tobin’s and read the memorial to Mr. Lincoln?”
“Yes, Madame.”
The old woman nodded. “Tobin has stirred up a tempest in this town, God bless him. ‘We see no acceptable outcome to this war except the restoration of the Union and the destruction of slavery. All real lovers of liberty and of humanity support you in your struggle.’ Brave words, Sylvie, and it’s high time someone stood on his feet and spoke them in public. We let the other side do all the talking for much too long.”
“Harry Dobbs says Tobin will have his nose bloodied for it.”
“By whom?” Madame scoffed. “Harry Dobbs? John Tobin has powerful friends, as many as Al MacNab does, and maybe more.”
On reflection, Sylvie thought this might well be true. The Irish activist was a member of the Nova Scotia assembly, wealthy and respected. Among the scores of signatures on his memorial were many names as distinguished as his own. His nose was probably altogether safe.
“What do you think will happen in Saint John?” Sylvie asked. “At the hearing? Will they send those pirates to the States, do you think?”
“Extradite them? I don’t know. There are always loopholes in the law, if men want to find one, and probably they will. I expect there’s a great deal of talk about it at the Den?”
“They hardly talk about anything else. Some of the Rebels are so angry at us, you’d scarcely believe it. Yesterday one of them called us a nation of snakes. He didn’t know I were just outside, scrubbing the hallway. It’s peculiar, ain’t it? At the start of the war England were doing all sorts of things she shouldn’t have, for the South, things that weren’t neutral at all. Now we’re having second thoughts about it—not doing things for the Yankees, just saying maybe we shouldn’t be doing them for the Rebels, and already they’re calling us backstabbers and betrayers. They were building rams in Liverpool, for heaven’s sake—rams!—and the government won’t let the Rebels have them now, and so we’re a nation of snakes.”
“He who is not with me is against me.”
“I suppose so.” Sylvie cupped her tea in both hands. It was hot, and purely delicious. It was such a luxury, she thought, to have real tea, fresh, instead of the used leaves that were sold off from the kitchens of the rich, which was all they could ever afford in England. At the Den, the cook sold theirs. Sylvie wondered who finally used them, if they went to the poorhouse, perhaps, and filled the cup of Dinah Reeve.
Madame’s voice broke her dark speculations. She would be going out soon, she said. Would Sylvie like to choose a book for herself and then Jonathan could drive her home?
“Thank you, Madame, I’d love to have a book. But there’s no need to trouble Jonathan. I can walk back.”
“Not in this fog. It’s nigh as dangerous as the dead of night. Some ruffian could snatch you off the street and no one be the wiser.”
“People are out, Madame. I saw them.”
“No doubt, lass, down by the shops and hotels. Not here. It’s out of the question. Jonathan will take you.”
To Sylvie, this felt like an excess of caution. To Madame, no doubt, it was a matter of being responsible. Either way, it left Sylvie to tell a lie or a truth when she wished to do neither.
There was no point in the lie. She would never be able to sustain it. More importantly, she did not want to. Louise Mallette had always been good to her; it would be shabby to pay her back with lies.
“I am being met, Madame.”
The woman went absolutely still. Even her lips scarcely moved when she spoke. “Met?”
“Yes. By a friend. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“A gentleman?”
Sylvie wanted very much to look at her hands, or at the window, or the fine furniture. She did not. “Yes, Madame.”
“And does this gentleman have a name?”
“He is Erryn Shaw.”
“As I thought.”
“Please, Madame, I knew you’d disapprove, which is why I never spoke of it. But he’s never been anything but good to me! He’s been a true friend, and I have so few!”
“Yes. That’s precisely the trouble, that we have so few friends. Loneliness is the bane of every woman’s soul. I trust God understands it as well as I do. Come, Sylvie Bowen, don’t look at me as though I were the hangman. I disapprove indeed. I think you are a great fool. But my father railed at me and locked me in my room, and all he did was make me headstrong. So …” She made as if to smile, but she did not manage it. She looked wearier and more melancholy than before, as though the world had suddenly and bitterly disappointed her. Again.
“So I’ll say only this. It is very rare for a man of Mr. Shaw’s background to marry a woman of yours—not absolutely unheard of, but very rare indeed. Do not judge by the Danners. Mr. Danner was only a shopkeeper’s son with four years of schooling when he married Miss Susan. The gap between them was tiny compared to yours. I hope you are not using it for a measure.”
“I am not, Madame.”
“No. Perhaps not.” She sighed faintly. “Well, go fetch yourself a book, lass. And Sylvie?” She got to her feet, slowly, majestically. “I’ve always thought well of you, since the first day I met you. You have a future here, a simple one, but decent and secure; you can live the rest of your life at peace with man and God. I should be very sorry to see you throw that away.” She paused and added softly, “I helped at the City Mission for years, you know. I’ve seen the alternatives.”
“I understand, Madame.”
“No.” The old woman shook her head. “No, lass, you don’t. No one ever does, until it’s much too late.”
CHAPTER 22
To Love or Not to Love
How say you? Let us, O my dove, Let us be unashamed of soul, As earth lies bare to heaven above! How is it under our control To love or not to love?
—Robert Browning
“WELL, MY HEART,” Erryn said, “it’s too foggy to walk, too early to sup, and too cold to sit under a tree. Shall we go and have tea?”
She said tea would be lovely, and smiled at him as their carriage rumbled gently into the fog. He seemed in the best of spirits, and he looked well at last. The ashen pallor was gone from his face and the brightness back in his eyes. “You’re all better,” she said.
“Oh, much,” he agreed, “except for a nasty scar and some very bad memories. And what of you, Sylvie? A week is such a long time not to see you. Are you well?”
A week is such a long time not to see you. Sweet words, she thought, but ever so slightly ho
llow. In the six weeks since he had been back, he could have come to the Den a time or two, to visit. He knew the maids were not permitted to go out except on their half day, but they could have a bit of company of an evening if their work was done. He had never come, not even once. Unwillingly, she thought of Madame’s words, not as a moral or a practical warning, but as a reminder of her social place. The gap between the Danners is tiny compared to yours …
And he seemed inclined to keep it so. In Montreal they had spoken sometimes of themselves, of things they feared or valued in the world. Now, increasingly, he spoke of things that touched him only distantly or not at all: his life at Eton, or people he had known in England, or funny, silly stories to make her laugh. He encouraged her appetite for knowledge; he would explain the workings of a man-o’-war or the habits of a snowshoe hare, or anything else in the practical world she might be curious about. But she knew little of how he spent his time when he was not with her. If he had close friends here, she had no idea who they were. She had asked him once about his mate who kept the spiders, and he only shrugged. “Oh, we’re not mates anymore, haven’t been for years.”
He was sealing his life away from her, treating their time together more and more as play—as an escape, she supposed, from the world where he really belonged, a world where she had no place.
All of this was perfectly predictable; she had expected nothing else. Yet sometimes, when they held each other, she believed that she was precious to him in spite of it; a diversion, perhaps, but one he wanted very much.
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