by Carla Kelly
“We should eat one,” she informed him. “Peel it for me.”
He did, hoping she would share. To his infinite delight, she handed him five segments. Could this day get any better?
“Let us try this,” he told her, when the fourth orange was a memory. “Arrange the three remaining oranges, and then let us include the orange peel. How would you do that?”
She did have an eye for arrangement. He nodded. “Bien joué! Now, mademoiselle, draw.”
They both sketched the oranges, first with the peel, and next more formally grouped around a goblet. “Tomorrow let us fill in with color,” he said, and she nodded.
Ianthe bounced off happily, and Jean retired to the dining room cubby, hopeful of a meal perhaps lukewarm this time, since there was a cold wind blowing off the sound and March seemed determined to exact all the punishment it could on a man who preferred the Caribbean, or at least the south of France.
The food was cold, but the memory of those five orange segments warmed his heart. Or would have, if he hadn’t found himself eavesdropping on the worst conversation of his imprisonment.
Almost full, he was wiping his mouth on his sleeve when the dining room door opened. Jean wondered later what would have happened if he had popped out of the alcove carrying his used dishes, and apologized for any inconvenience, and left. It didn’t happen that way.
Maybe it was his natural reticence, honed to sharpness by war and imprisonment. He decided instead to lean back into the cubby, and that made all the difference.
“You are telling me what?”
Captain Faulke’s crisp comment sounded no different than his tone of voice with prisoners, except that it was softer. After all, he was in his living quarters, and not dispensing disagreeable information to hundreds of prisoners whose lives were already miserable.
“Capitain, as we speak, two potential escapees in empty kegs are waiting to be swung out of the hold and onto the water hoy.”
Jean had to clap his hand over his mouth to prevent his gasp of recognition. He took a breath and held it, wanting to doubt his hearing, but knowing he could not. Claude Pascal had an unmistakable lisp. What was he doing?
He was betraying the prisoners. Suddenly lightheaded, Jean felt himself start to sway. With real effort, he took a careful, quiet breath, knowing with a sick feeling in his stomach that the time was past where he could bumble out of the alcove and get away. Any movement now meant his death.
“Excellent, Claude, excellent. The two kegs are marked?”
“With a small cp.” Ah, that lisp. Damn Claude Pascal for fooling all of them that he was their factotum, their liaison with the captain, the man who had pledged his fellow Frenchmen that he would work tirelessly to make their lives easier. Jean closed his eyes.
“I’ll dispatch a cutter immediately with that information,” Captain Faulke said. “There are dock workers who know what to do.” He chuckled. “They are waiting for my orders.”
“What will you do?”
Oh Claude, you demon from hell, don’t sound so eager, Jean thought. How can you do this? He felt tears on his cheeks. It’s for money, isn’t it? No wonder you seem better fed than all of us. No wonder you have four pairs of wool socks, four more than all of us. I have seen them. He listened in misery as coins clinked from one hand to another hand. Earning a sou here and there is one thing, but betraying your fellows?
“Do? It’s so fitting! My two men will open those kegs as dusk is coming on, stick the fresh water hose inside, hold it there until it fills, then nail it shut and drown them. They’ll be too weak to resist.”
Jean wanted to bang his head against the bulkhead, tear his hair, scream, do something. What could he do? The plot was going to move forward no matter if he revealed himself or is he stayed silent. He would be the next man dead, probably even sooner than the poor men in the kegs, who were looking forward to freedom. After all, that earlier attempt must have succeeded. Why not theirs? Claude Pascal had been wise to tell them to wait, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he?
The captain laughed. “And I will write a report to Admiralty, telling them I foiled an escape plot.” More coins changed hands. “Enough of these reports will get me out of this wretched assignment and you will eventually return to France a wealthy man.”
The two demons chuckled. “Tell me, Claude, what are you planning to do with all the money you will make, between now and peace?”
“Land, a house, and a fat wife.”
They laughed and left the dining room. Head bowed, Jean Hubert, artist, prisoner, man who wanted to do nothing but get along until all this madness was over, sank to his knees in the tiny space and pressed his forehead against the deck. In agony, he heard the command given to hoist up from the main deck ten water kegs, one at a time. He sobbed out loud, then put his hand over his mouth.
When all was silent, he stepped out of the alcove. He stood there a long moment, listening, barely breathing. Silence. He opened the door, his eyes now on the door to the companionway.
There she stood, Ianthe Faulke, eating an orange. Jean sucked in his breath and gave her what he knew was a ghastly smile.
“I just finished my luncheon,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound as lame as he heard with his own ears.
“You’re not supposed to be here now,” she said in that flat voice he recognized from her argument over the soft pastels. “I will have to tell my father.”
— Chapter Eighteen —
Meridee smoothed down her dress, then looked at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that. No gaps. The bodice that two weeks ago was uncomfortably tight felt just a little snug, nothing more. Vanity, thy name is Meridee, she thought. Equally pleasant was the comfort of a quiet, well-ordered household. Until Able Six came walking to Pomfrey two years ago, she could not have imagined being mistress of her own home, with a family.
Classes had begun again and her home was currently quiet. Ben slept in his small chamber. A militant look on her face, Mrs. Perry had set out for the fish market, determined to find cod, or take a fishmonger or two down in the attempt. In the back yard, Betsy had applied herself to beating the sitting room rug draped over the clothesline that morning by Nick and John before they hurried across the street for class. Able even had a moment to kiss her soundly with no audience before he walked across the street to classroom duties.
She had told Able last night about Grace’s admission of love for Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony, which left him silent. “No ideas?” she had asked.
“Not really,” he said, cuddling her close. “And I thought my courting was doomed to destruction.”
“It appears not,” Meridee said.
He chuckled at that. Silence and then, “You know how I sometimes think I cannot quite follow subtle nuance?”
She nodded, composing herself for sleep.
“I will tell you one thing I have observed about the estimable Sir B.”
“Which is…”
“He appears to be a man past hope for himself. This will require a hard cure.”
She thought about that as she walked downstairs, wondering how to kindle hope in a man who thinks – who knows, if Able was right – he has no sexual appeal to a potential wife. That Sir B was wrong was beside the point, Meridee reasoned. She understood. She had once resigned herself to a lifetime of antique virginity, tending nephews but never her own babies, because a woman with no dowry could expect nothing. “Things changed,” she said softly. “They can for you, Sir B.”
She spent a moment looking at the clock, reminding herself with this new term of scholarship who among her charges would show up first, after class. After morning classes and before luncheon, Able had started taking John Mark to Building Twelve, carrying a sketching pad and new pencils, and the admonition to do whatever it was Simon Goodrich required of him, even if that meant sweeping the s
awdust-coated floors, or just oiling machinery.
That first day, Meridee had packed John’s lunch bucket with an extra sandwich and dried fruit for the little boy in the yellow shirt named Piers. “He’s shy, but he’s hungry,” John told her, which meant another sandwich, because Meridee knew little boys.
Nick Bonfort had been formally invited by Master Six to join a class of young scholars examining the rudiments of algebra. “I’m not too young?” Nick had asked.
“Not at all,” Able assured him. “We’ll tuck our little class in after seamanship, and before dinner.” Those two certainly wouldn’t be first to loom over the stewpot in the kitchen.
As the early spring sky mellowed toward dusk, John would likely trail in first, but never in a hurry, because everything at the docks interested him. “He’s a born mechanist,” Able told her. “I expect that any moment he will dismantle one of your kitchen appliances, probably the apple corer.”
“And reassemble it?”
“With any luck. He’ll draw all the parts first.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I told him to.”
John had come home yesterday with a drawing of what looked like a jumble to Meridee, but which he proudly proclaimed a drawing of a lignum vitae saw. He sat her down at the dining room table and explained that Mr. Goodrich was making a saw of true size for the pulley factory. “It will be twelve feet tall,” he said. “He said I could help him.”
And you will, she thought, remembering last year’s quiet boy, the introspective one who only now was exerting a calm sort of leadership that Able said would suit him well, no matter whether he led on land or sea.
The house was nearly too quiet. Meridee sat down in her favorite chair and reached for her overflowing mending basket. She could think of no excuse to avoid it, especially since Headmaster Croker had raised her salary to three pounds a month. Nowhere had the headmaster specified the darning of little boys’ stockings, but Meridee knew her duty.
She had finished darning Nick’s pile of stockings when she heard someone running down the street and shouting, “Mam! Mam! Oh Mam, please!”
She threw aside the basket and reached the foyer when John Mark, his eyes wide with terror, slammed open the front door so hard it banged against the wall. He grabbed her around her waist and nearly toppled her.
He held her tight, sobbing into her bodice, his face white, his whole body shaking. He was also soaking wet.
“John, did you fall in the harbor? Let’s find you a blanket.”
He shook his head and she felt him shudder. Meridee grabbed him by the shoulders and held him away from her, not caring that she was wet now, too. She gave him a little shake. “What?”
The shake was enough. “Mam, you have to help them!”
“Who?”
“The men in the kegs! I think they’re prisoners, but the watermen are drowning them. Please!” He took her hand and dragged her toward the open door.
“One moment, John.” Meridee broke his grip. She ran to the kitchen and out the back door, where Betsy was pounding on the rug. She kept her voice low and calm, even as she felt the rising tide of John’s anguish in her own heart. “Run and tell Master Six to hurry to the water hoy dock, then come back here and stay with Ben. Now!”
With no hesitation, Betsy dropped the rug beater. Meridee had already turned to the kitchen again, but she stopped. “Wait! When you’ve warned him, run to Landport Gate Station and ask for Walter Cornwall.”
“Mrs. Six, I can’t!” Betsy said, her eyes filled with terror.
Meridee knew her maid of all work was remembering the night Constable Cornwall nabbed her eating out of an ash can and nearly had her removed to the Landport station, before she could find her twin Jamie MacGregor, a St. Brendan student.
“Do it,” Meridee demanded, in a voice unlike her own.
Betsy nodded, her face grim. She pulled up her skirts and tore around the side of the house. Meridee took a deep breath and held out her hand to John Mark.
Silent now, and intent, the boy ran up the street with her, past the baker’s and onto the busier road. She jerked him back when he nearly darted in front of a cart and horse, then ran faster with him, as the driver yelled something highly uncomplimentary.
John led her through a crowd of sailors to the normally quiet inlet off the Gunwharf, where water kegs from the prison hulks were offloaded, and then filled, for their return to those miserable wrecks that rode at anchor. She pressed her hand against her side, wishing she had not laced her corset strings so tight after Ben’s last meal.
“Mam, see?”
Breathing heavily, Meridee saw dock workers grouped around two kegs that had been pulled out from the others. Two men were holding down the lid while another nailed it shut. Meridee gasped to hear gargling sounds and gagging from the inside of the keg.
Merciful Savior, she thought, still unable to breathe after her pell mell run from her quiet home to the place Able told her never to go by herself.
“You can’t do that,” she managed to gasp, which only brought laughter.
Dumbfounded, she turned her attention to the other water keg, where two other men held down a man, pushing him lower and lower, as the third worker trained the water hose down on him. The man in the keg raised his hands then clasped them, pleading in silence as he gargled and began to drown before her eyes. When the hose came out, the lid slammed down. He banged against the side of the keg, a sound Meridee knew she would hear in her heart for the rest of her life.
Beside herself, Meridee grabbed at the man with the hose. “What in God’s name are you doing?” she demanded. “Stop this cruelty at once.”
He shoved his unwashed face close to hers, uncomfortably close. No one ever invaded her privacy like that except her husband, and that was no invasion. Even worse, he snatched at the front of her dress and pulled down. Frantic, she grabbed at his hand as her bodice came away.
John Mark jumped on the man’s back and yanked on his hair, screaming at him. One of the other workers threw the boy against the empty kegs. Meridee shrieked and tried to reach for the little fellow. She tore herself from the worker’s grasp. She forgot about the spectacle of her breasts exposed to the gathering group of men and tugged at the keg’s lid like a wild woman. Her tears mingled with phlegm as she broke her nails trying to get the lid off. Breathing heavily themselves, several men touched her and started edging her away toward a row of kegs shielded from view of the wharf. She felt a hand under her skirt and sobbed out loud.
Oh no, no, she thought as she struggled. “Don’t touch me again,” she gasped. “My husband will kill you.”
They laughed and crowded closer. “If he can find us,” Water Hose Man said. “You’re prettier than most whores down here.”
Her outrage over the treatment of the two prisoners in the kegs – what else could they be but prisoners? – paled as she thought of John Mark’s poor mother, hustled aboard a ship under cover of darkness and passed around a frigate for nine horrible months. And there, John lay now, sitting up and staring in disbelief at blood on his hand. Dusk was approaching fast. She knew she had no friends on that wharf except one small, dazed boy.
A primitive part of her brain commanded her to stay on her feet, no matter what. If she fell, they would be on her in a moment, their blood lust already up by what they had done to two men committing the crime of trying to escape from hell on earth. She backed away and put her hand to her pocket, remembering. She felt the bird-shaped scissors from her darning basket.
His hands digging into her waist and wandering to her exposed breasts, Water Hose Man dragged her to him. She grabbed the scissors and scraped them down his face.
With a roar of pain, he slapped her so hard her jaw seemed to explode, and threw her into the water.
— Chapter Nineteen —
/> Down she went, down and down into cold, oily water much deeper than the stone inlet at St. Brendan’s where Able had taught her the rudiments of floating last year. She floundered and fought her way to the surface, gasping to breathe as her mouth filled with seawater and whatever else floated in such a toxic place.
Panic filled her entire body and brain as her winter wool dress and warmest petticoat dragged her below the surface again. At least her shoes were gone. She had been wearing felt slippers when John Mark ran into the house. She must have lost those on her run.
Able ran through her brain. She resolutely forced herself not to even think of Ben as she went under again, struggled to the top and thrashed, trying to breathe. Able please.
How could she ever understand what happened next? Who was that little dark man in her mind now? She had seen him somewhere. Was he in a book she had dusted? A fellow customer in Ezekiel Bartleby’s bakery? A bust in Able’s classroom?
Euclid. Dear lovely Euclid, the Greek mathematician whose propositions her husband so loved to quote, even when he wasn’t aware he was doing it. He had told her once that the propositions calmed him. She had told Able to banish Euclid from their bedchamber, and as far as she knew, Euclid spent his nights elsewhere.
But there he was. Euclid smiled gently and told her, “If a straight line set up on a straight line make angles, it will make either two right angles or angles equal to two right angles. That is Proposition Thirteen, dear one.”
There was more, but she saw the picture in her mind and remembered what to do, because the proposition calmed her, too, something she never would have imagined in her life. Down she went again, but this time she reached under her skirt and untied her petticoat. It dropped away and she moved to the surface faster. Her dress went next, with her shimmy the only thing between her and nudity. So be it. She shivered as the cold March waters dug in deeper.
In her calmer frame of mind, she heard Able this time, his Scottish brogue more pronounced than usual because he was teasing her as he put his hand against her backbone and flipped her up in the stone inlet last year. Lean back as though I am tugging you up by your belly button, she heard from somewhere inside her brain or heart. And breathe. Fill those marvelous lungs. Lean back! Show me your tits! Then, Pretend you’re a starfish.