The Halifax Connection (10 page)

He had seen most of the world, it seemed, and many kinds of men. He had opinions about nearly everything, not least the American war. In the saloon, when he was asked, he had made it quite clear that, slave state or not, Maryland had thousands of committed Unionists, and he was one of them. But he wanted to maintain courtesy and amity among the passengers, so he rarely said more.

Here, in the privacy of his cabin, among people he ranked as friends, he was considerably more blunt. Rebellion was treason, sea raiding was piracy, and the men responsible—the leaders—deserved to be hanged.

“And would you hang them?” Fran asked him. “Yourself, personally?”

He did not say anything for a time. He was, Sylvie thought, somewhat annoyed that she had asked so probing a question, and also somewhat pleased.

“You mean, if it was my decision, would I put my signature on the paper? No, probably not. More likely I’d dump them off on a rock-face island with a box of matches and herd of goats, and tell them: ‘Here. You all want to be little princelings? Be my guest.’”

Dinner was well eaten and the second bottle of port was almost gone before the talk grew more personal, before he told them how he had run away from home at the age of twelve, from a factory tenement and a father who had beaten him once too often, and how he had sneaked aboard a brigantine bound for India.

“We were two days at sea before they discovered me. The captain called me a worthless little rat. He would’ve liked nothing better than to throw me overboard and let me swim back to Baltimore. But he was afraid it might bring him bad luck. So I could stay, he said, but I’d darn well earn my keep. I did a grown man’s work on that ship, and the scoundrel paid me nothing but my food.”

Thus he learned about sailing the hard way, he told them, through storm and hunger and curses and blows. He learned well nonetheless, changed ships, changed masters, but never changed his dream.

“A
ship of my own—that’s what I wanted. One of those beautiful square-riggers I used to watch when I was a boy. God, how I loved them! And I don’t know how many times I swore it, swore it way deep down, like an oath on the Bible, that I’d have myself one of those ships before I was fifty.”

“And you did,” Frances said, smiling.

“With five years to spare.”

He was showing off a bit, of course he was, trying to make a grand impression on a woman who attracted him. But as she listened, Sylvie thought perhaps he was sending a different kind of message as well.
I was nobody once, too. I owned nothing; I was kicked about and taken advantage of—and, yes, I got out, I have a place in the world, I even have this ship, but I remember how it was. So it doesn’t matter if you come from a mill town, Frances Harris … or maybe it does matter. Maybe it matters terribly, because it means we are alike, and there are things I can tell you I can never tell my peers, because they wouldn’t understand. They can’t even
imagine
half the things that I remember …

Eventually the supper ended. It was night by then, a glorious summer night, with the moon rising almost full. Not surprisingly, Captain Foxe invited Fran to walk with him on the deck.

“Would you care for a bit of a stroll as well, Miss Sylvie?” Master Schofield asked.

For the smallest moment she met his gaze, knowing well what she would see there: the careful yet uneasy courtesy of a man trying to be kind, doing what he knew was expected of him.

“Thank you, Mr. Schofield, but I’m quite tired.”

He saw her to the cabin she shared with her aunt, where he bid her a gracious good night, lingering a little—not long, but enough to make her wonder if she might have misjudged him. Perhaps he would have liked to stroll with her. Perhaps on a ship, where women were few, and where young, unmarried women were fewer still, perhaps men were easier to please.

Perhaps.

Ten years ago she would have walked with him. She would have walked with anyone, anyone who was not abusive or howling drunk or escaped from a madhouse, rather than be alone. Ten years ago she still believed there was someone who might love her. In theory she still believed it. She always smiled and was heartened when Frances said, “For God’s sake, Sylvie, you have the body of a nymph. You’ve hair most women would kill for. Forget the scar. You’re pretty, love. Damn it all, you’re
pretty!”

They were words to grow strong with in the full light of day, words to hold and carry out into the street, proud-eyed and smiling. But when the night came down, they were only empty words.

She thought of Frances, arm in arm in the moonlight with Nathaniel Foxe. Frances was forty-three. She had crow’s feet around her eyes, and bits of grey in her hair, and yet the captain was falling in love with her.

Sylvie understood then, quite suddenly, why she could not have borne to go walking with Master Schofield. She would have cried every time she passed them on the deck. Not out of envy, but out of the simple recognition of her loss. No man had ever looked at her in such a fashion, treasured her company so much, tucked her arm against his side with such protective tenderness. And the odds were high that no man ever would.

She dug Fran’s mirror from their trunk. She turned her face into the light, drew her loose-hanging hair back behind her ears, and regarded herself. Sometimes she could do it with absolute detachment, as if she were looking at a picture in a book. Sometimes she could not bear to do it at all.

From just above her left eyebrow a tangle of scars spread down her face, reaching almost to the centre of her cheek; the longest and cruellest of them twisted to the line of her jaw. The tropic sun, darkening her face a little every day, had made the marks a small bit less distinct. Here, in the cabin, the lamplight softened their awfulness.

Yet here they were nonetheless. She would carry them forever. Even in old age, when she grew tired and forgetful, when even the worst of her memories might fade if they were left alone, the marks would still be here, reminding her.

You can run, Sylvie Bowen, from everything but this …

It was very late when Frances returned to the cabin—so late that Sylvie wondered, quietly, if they had retired to the captain’s cabin first. Fran looked extraordinarily happy.

“Well,” Sylvie said, “I take it you enjoyed yourself?”

“I did.” Frances sat on her bed and took her shoes off. “He asked if he might call on me, when we’re settled in Halifax.”

“And you said yes, then, did you?”

“Oh, certainly. But I warned him that a woman on her own for the whole of her life were likely to be set in her ways. And he said a man who’d been at sea since he were twelve would be much the same. If I weren’t scared of it in him, he said, he weren’t scared of it in me.”

“I don’t think there’s much that man be scared of.”

“No.” Bit by bit, Frances began to undress. “He’s such an interesting man. A good man, I think—certainly he’s been good to us. But so
interesting.
I think I could sit for the next ten years just listening to him talk about his travels.”

“Well, with a bit of luck you will.”

“Luck?” Without a flicker of warning, a shadow passed across Fran’s face. “It be a very long time now, Sylvie, since I believed in luck.”

S
YLVIE WOKE
to storm the next morning, to bits of pale dawn light and the realization that the cabin was tipped like a hillside and she had just been tumbled against the wall. Grey water came at her in waves, smashing into the tiny window. She ducked her head, terrified. For a small moment she believed they were sinking and about to die. But the water fell away; she saw light again, and steadied herself. It was a bit of high wind, that was all. Last night at supper, Captain Foxe had promised as much. He could tell by the sky, he said.

They dressed and groped their way to the saloon. The steward was nowhere to be seen, but four other passengers were there: the Draytons and the two Americans, Canfrey and Paige. No lamps had been lit, but the windows were generous here, and the grey dawn was turning into day. She could see the tension in Canfrey’s
smile as he rose to greet them, the dark anger in Mr. Drayton’s eyes.

“All hands are on deck except the cook,” Canfrey told them. “We’re on our own down here.”

“Is the storm that bad, then?” Fran asked.

Canfrey tried to answer, but Drayton did not give him a chance. “Bad?” he cried bitterly. “It’s a bloody howling gale out there and that lunatic is flying every piece of canvas we’ve got! Everything! Even the topgallants! He’s going to kill us all!”

“He’s an experienced seaman,” Canfrey flung back. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“No, he doesn’t. He hates the Southerners so bad he can’t think straight!”

“Southerners?” Fran said very softly.

“We’re being chased.” Canfrey did not quite meet her eyes as he spoke. “The lookouts spotted her at first light, on our port bow, no more’n a few miles off. Just miserable bad luck, that she got so close in the dark. By then the wind was high. He told the men to raise sail, we were running for our lives. He sent me below, and they battened down the hatches.” Canfrey was still on his feet, holding on to the table with one hand. “I expect it will be a long day.”

They were locked below for hours. Later, one of the younger officers told them what it had been like on the deck—every hand on the ropes, even the poor steward, and the ship listing till the lower sails were trailing in the water. There wasn’t a soul could hear himself think, he said, with the waves crashing over the deck, high enough to drown a man where he stood, and the wind howling like a banshee, and every beam and spar crying out from the strain. Some feared they would lose their mainmast, or go over, but the
Osprey
was built to take the worst of weather; she could
take all of this and more. Captain Foxe meant to run, and if the Rebels meant to catch him, they’d have to learn to fly.