by Carla Kelly
Meridee thought of Ben and the many times in his short life she had seen his father kneeling by his cradle, as if amazed at his good fortune to have a son. Tender flowers, indeed. Who was more tender?
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Mr. Pitt said. “Our new age of…of…” He smiled at John Mark, “…of mechanism and scholarship demands more of us than we have given before. Add unrelenting war to that. Mix it all together. We must be willing to innovate. We could do as we always do and expect different results, but that is the surest sign of failure.”
He looked at the sheet of paper before him, picked up his pen, dipped it in ink and crossed out something. He substituted other words or numbers – he sat too far away for Meridee to tell – blew on the page gently, then started it around.
“Add your initials and a yea or nay, Brethren,” he said simply. “We have entered a new age.”
Meridee held her breath as the paper went around the u-shaped table. She heard the scratch of pen on paper. The secretary walked to the middle and took the paper over to the other side of the gap.
Able stared at his shoes, unable to watch. Meridee noted each man, as it dawned on her that this summons to Trinity House was a test. Someone was determined to help it succeed or let it fail. Thank the Lord God Almighty that Sir B had never stated precisely what this whole visit was about. Or maybe even Sir B hadn’t known. That thought took hold of her and she wondered.
But here they were and the paper was going around. It stopped with Mr. Pitt, who looked it over for such a lengthy time that Meridee felt her head begin to ache. Her fingers tingled because Able’s grip had grown stronger. He had probably known all along what was happening.
Mr. Pitt showed the paper to Captain Rose, who nodded, his expression unreadable. Meridee glanced at Sir B, ordinarily a charming fellow with a certain studied indifference about him, probably a product of his aristocratic upbringing. She had never seen him so serious.
“Well then, sirs, and lovely ladies,” Mr. Pitt said finally. “You have our permission to breathe, Master Six. The marks on this paper indicate that we of Trinity House are taking St. Brendan’s under our wing. Do you think Headmaster Croker’s illness will cure more quickly when you assure him that we are happy to funnel three hundred pounds annually into your school to help it grow? I insist that you start paying Miss Croker and find a French instructor, too.”
The normally poised Miss Croker gasped. It was Able’s turn to look at the ceiling with its cherubs and their navigational instruments. He raised Meridee’s hand to his lips and kissed it. She saw tears in his eyes.
“I think Headmaster Croker will recover instantly, Brethren,” Able said finally. “Thank you, sirs. You will never regret this.”
“We had better not,” Mr. Pitt said. “Continue your work, and while you’re at it, keep an eye on those prison hulks in the harbor. Stand a watch and keep it. “
— Chapter Eight —
Prisoner of War Hulk – HMS Captivity
Perhaps he had been too skeptical of Claude Pascal’s decision to support the gunner’s mate and the powder monkey in their audacious bid for freedom. Like the rest of the prisoners who had hoisted the two kegs containing Gunner Remillard and Pierre Deschamps into the empty water hoy, Jean Hubert waited for the other shoe to drop.
Nothing. Perhaps they had succeeded in their bolt to freedom. Even with no method of communication, there were ways to learn if an escape was successful. Many an escape had been fouled immediately, when roll call turned up a missing prisoner or two. When that happened, Captain Faulke ordered all prisoners to stand at attention by their rolled up hammocks while all three levels were searched. And if the mood was on him, the captain made them stand there for hours after.
Buying time for escapees mattered. For a few sou, the rafalés would flit about from deck to deck and answer for the missing persons. If the escapee made it as far as the Portsmouth dock, only to be apprehended, the result was usually torture until the poor rascal divulged the name of his prison ship, upon which time the guards descended again on the hulk for more torment. One punishment for the men on board was to cut already scanty rations for a week or more until some died, and others grew even more determined to escape.
This time, two days passed, then three. By the fourth day, the prisoners on Deck One decided perhaps the water keg scheme was worth another try by two more men. Another meeting was called. Jean went with no more enthusiasm than before, except that even planning an escape he didn’t believe in was a diversion from the stultifying monotony of the daily grind.
Two more prisoners volunteered to be crammed into empty kegs and hoisted into the next water hoy, due tomorrow. “You know, before I lose my nerve,” said one nearly toothless fellow.
Claude Pascal objected. “No, not tomorrow.”
“Why should I wait?” the prisoner asked.
“It is a simple matter, mon amie,” Clause replied, his voice so placating, so soothing. “Let other water hoy sailings pass. We don’t want to press our luck. Maybe in a week, maybe, two. Trust me.”
Before the man could object – even Jean wondered why waiting mattered, since the first attempt had obviously succeeded – Claude moved on to other business, the sort of news that concerned them all.
“Some of you with top deck privileges may have noticed an increased number of bodies brought above deck,” he said.
The men looked at each other, the barely breathable air somehow thicker with such news.
“It’s typhus,” Claude said, then held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I know, I know! Who dies of typhus?” He looked around. “We do, my friends, because we have no reserves of strength to fight it. Besides, who can stop the fleas and lice on this dreadful hulk?”
“This would be an excellent time for First Consul Napoleon to invade England, wouldn’t it?” someone said from deeper in the gloom.
“Perhaps he is even poised in Caen or Calais, ready to do precisely that,” someone else said, to hoots of derision. Prisoners were a skeptical lot.
“Very well, late next week for another hoy,” said the hopeful escapee. “If we are still alive.”
If we are still alive, Jean thought as he returned to Deck One. He scratched his neck, and then his arm, and was that an itch on his thigh? Was he imagining it? A man could worry himself into hypochondria, with or without lice.
All Jean wanted to do was complete his latest sketch, this one of the countryside around Rouen, with the cathedral in the distance. He hadn’t been there in years, but he added rolling hills anyway, reasoning that the English who bought his sketches probably had no idea, either, and he was good at drawing hills. He would draw what he wanted, pocket the few pathetic sou that each picture earned him, buy what food he could, and try to stay healthy enough that if he did come down with typhus, it wouldn’t kill him. A prisoner probably couldn’t hope for any more than that. He sat down to work.
His methodical, orderly day – much like the one before – was upended immediately by a guard.
“Jean Hubert,” the guard said, resting the butt of his musket on Rouen’s imaginary mountains. He moved the butt around until the color smeared. “Come with me.”
“I’d rather usher you into hell and slam the door,” he declared pleasantly in French, counting on the general ignorance of English guards to keep him safe. Of course, he could have said it in English, too, but the guard needn’t know that. Nearly two years ago when his incarceration began, Jean Hubert pledged himself to keeping as small a profile as possible. He suspected that survivors were those who didn’t stand out.
Topside, it was nice to breathe the far better air, even if the bright sunlight made him put up his hands in defense. A look around reminded him that even for the guards, life on a prison hulk wasn’t good. Such a notion might have bothered him, had he cared even slightly for his captors.
The
guard took him to a closed door in the stern of the hulk and nodded to the sentry, who knocked, stuck his head in, exchanged a few words and opened the door wider.
What is this? Jean thought, surprised. Sometimes prisoners were ordered topside to clean up messes. Only a month ago, two prisoners told him about hauling food on board that they never saw: cheese and soft bread and good wine. “Not even a bite?” he had asked. “No, no,” one prisoner from Breton said with a shake of his head. “It was almost enough, just to sniff the wax around the cheese.”
He entered the cabin of Captain Tobias Faulke, with its comfortable chairs grouped near the stern windows. The only view was the next hulk anchored in line, but eh bien, it was better than suffering belowdecks in poisonous air. Standing there in broken shoes, the yellow shirt with TO painted in fading black on that space between his shoulders, the too-short yellow trousers, he faced the captain.
Captain Faulke leaned back in his chair and regarded him. His expression inscrutable, he pushed a sheet of paper across the desk toward Jean.
Jean looked down at one of his earlier drawings of Rive Seine, with Notre Dame in the distance, surrounded by fog. He had spent more time than usual on that sketch, trying to get the correct mood. Even if it was intended for a petit bourgeois English clerk or rent collector who probably had no idea how exquisite it really was, the artist inside that yellow shirt still sought to do his best.
Of course, there was the small matter of smuggling out a sketch for money, an illegal act. Never mind that most prisoners were engaged in making something to sell on the outside, anything for a few sou to keep food in the stomach and breath in the body for one more day. As in most ventures of a susceptible nature in life, the trick was avoiding detection.
Why me? he thought, perplexed more than frightened. Why have I been singled out?
“Prisoner Number One Dash Eighty-Seven, is this your work?”
Jean knew full well what Captain Faulke said, but he looked around for an interpreter. One had to maintain the charade. No one else in the cabin. Now what? He remained silent, because that seemed prudent.
“Jean Hubert, I know you can speak English,” the captain said, with a sigh that bordered on the theatrical. “Others have informed me.” He turned the drawing around. “It’s rather well done, especially considering the obstacles you work under. But never mind that. Have a seat. Tell me something about yourself.”
He remained standing. Captain Faulke seemed willing to wait him out, but for how long? At what point would a man in power summon the sentry and send him to the Hole to think about his sins, or take away more of his pathetic rations? And who had informed on him?
“Lord, but you’re stubborn, Lieutenant Hubert.”
He knows my rank, too? Next he will tell me I am from Cherbourg.
“And your father was a bourgeois from Cherbourg, was he not? Owned a small hotel, I believe. Speak to me, lieutenant, because I have a proposition for you.”
Jean folded. Why not? “Very well, sir.”
“Wise of you not to be stubborn on a prisoner of war hulk,” Captain Faulke said. “Sit down. Let me serve you some excellent sherry.”
Jean sat. He tried to maintain a casual air when the captain went to a sideboard and returned with a bottle, glasses, and macarons, O Dieu, macarons. Faulke poured the sherry and passed the plate of macarons.
Jean wiped the saliva from his lips and took a macaron. He had never eaten a better one, and followed it with three more before he bothered with sherry. But what exquisite sherry! He closed his eyes. He imagined himself anywhere but where he sat, then wondered what he would have to do in return for this.
“What do you want from me, capitain? he asked.
He had to credit Faulke for not acting coy. “You will enjoy this. Did you know that my family is on board with me?”
I neither know nor care, Jean thought. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, he couldn’t give back the macarons or the sherry. “I did not know.”
“I have a daughter aged ten who shows some artistic talent. I would like you to give her daily lessons,” the captain said. “For this I will pay you one meal eaten here when the lesson is done, and one shilling a week.”
Of course he should not agree to this, but had he a choice? A meal? Perhaps, but a man shouldn’t surrender too easily. “What sort of meal?”
“You’ll note the irony of this, because you are a smart man, but I have an excellent French cook. Whatever you like. Yes or no?”
“If I say no?” One shouldn’t spread one’s legs wide like a common whore, after all, and succumb, should one?
Captain Faulke shrugged. He was English; he didn’t know how to shrug properly and have it mean something. “Back where you were.”
“No punishment?”
And then the captain reeled him in. He leaned across the desk and his eyes turned into slits. “Isn’t belowdecks punishment enough, you fool?”
Lulled by the sherry, Jean hadn’t expected that much malevolence. He leaned back involuntarily, then cursed himself for his weakness. “Very well,” he said, in a voice not his own. “I will do it.”
The captain’s eyes stayed slitted for another moment, just long enough to convince Jean that he was capable of playing a deep game. He sat back and resumed his captain face. “Tomorrow at nine of the clock I will expect you here in this cabin. I have papers and pencils. Go now.”
Jean Hubert couldn’t leave fast enough. His heart racing, he forced himself to saunter casually to the door, as if he visited with the captain of a prison hulk every day. Where this would lead he had no idea. All he wanted now was out.
He opened the door, where the sentry and his guard stood chatting.
The guard took out his cord and bound Jean’s wrists again. “Back we go,” he said. “Lucky you.”
Outside that cabin I still do not speak English, he told himself. He gave the guard a blank stare and was rewarded with a cuff to his head for his pains. It wasn’t much of an effort. He ducked and dodged the next blow, wondering if everyone on board already knew his business.
As he looked up, Jean saw Claude Pascal standing in the shadow by the bulkhead. He stared, certain his eyes were playing tricks on him. Was that how the captain knew he was from Cherbourg and spoke English? Surely not from Claude Pascal. He blamed his suspicion on the sherry.
— Chapter Nine —
Trinity House, London
Theirs was a walk of quiet, unexpected triumph from Trinity House to the street. Able noticed John Mark’s frown, and knew him to take orders seriously, especially orders from a former prime minister and a tableful of men of power.
“Are the Rats up to standing a nighttime watch?” Able asked the boy who preferred noisy machines to silent sail.
“Aye,” John replied. “All of us.” He stopped. “Master, do you love England?”
Do I love England? he asked himself. He glanced at Meri, who walked with Grace Croker, their heads together in conversation, Meri who loved him and slept in safety because the wooden walls of the Royal Navy – his navy – protected her, and now their son, too.
“I am fond of England,” he said, but I love my wife and son more.
“Even if England hasn’t exactly treated us well, master?”
“Even so,” he replied simply. “We Rats will do our best to change that.”
John Mark was satisfied. “We will stand the watch.”
Able knew he was too cynical to feel the tug of tears at John’s earnest answer, but he did. He stood by John until Sir B came closer, and the two of them helped Gervaise take the wheeled chair down the three steps to the sidewalk. It was time to relax now, and ask his mentor something that had been on his mind during the entire interrogation – what else could he call it? – inside the stately building.
“You knew what this wa
s, didn’t you, Sir B?” Able asked. “What sparked it in the first place? We have been doing our best to set an insignificant course to attract no attention.”
“We have, indeed. Come closer. Gervaise, wheel me nearer and go stand over there,” Sir B said, every inch the captain, even though he had not stood on his feet in four years and was far from a quarterdeck. “Kneel down, Able, and listen.”
Able did as he commanded. “Did you think the disappearance of that…that rancid instructor would go unnoticed?” Sir B asked, his face as stern as Able had ever seen it.
Able’s agile brain shot through the whole list of that former teacher’s felonies in seconds and left him shaken as though the matter had happened only moments ago. Gambler, cheat, abuser of students, pimp for aristocrats who wanted to prey on the helpless – all of that was Rodney Blake. Good riddance to the man.
“Too bad he had a family of some prominence,” was all Able could muster, because he did understand. “I will go to my grave wondering what happened to those earlier students who ran afoul of him.”
“I, too.” Sir B sat back. “Blake’s family has made inquiries, asked some pointed questions about St. Brendan’s. Although he may not be prime minister at the moment – I predict that will change soon – Mr. Pitt has forwarded me letters from Blake’s father.” He gave a weak smile. “I’ll likely never know, but the tug of fatherhood must compel a man…” His voice trailed away.
Able thought of Ben, his short life already so unlike his father’s. “Yes. I understand that. A father would never want to give up, even when hope is gone. So Mr. Pitt summoned us to check St. Brendan’s for soundness,” Able asked, “because Blake’s father harbors some suspicions?”
“I think that is so,” Sir B said. “And yet…Mr. Pitt didn’t inform me ahead of time, or ask my opinion about this meeting, something he usually does. Odd, that.”
Able knew he was quite capable of forging the late and unlamented Blake’s handwriting. I could send the family a letter from the interior of Canada from their son, and they would believe it, he thought. I could follow it a year later with a letter from the provincial governor of Quebec, expressing his condolences that Sir Mallory Blake’s son had been eaten by a polar bear. The idea had some merit, but he didn’t think Sir B in the mood for such a solution.