by Carla Kelly
Able smiled inwardly at the earnest look on Simon’s face. He thought he knew where the artificer was going with this, and it touched his heart.
“Master Six, John Mark needs a last name, because it isn’t Mark,” Simon said in a rush, his face red. “I want it to be Goodrich.”
“I believe you are right,” Able managed to say. “Come to my house later, both of you. We have to leave this in John Mark’s hands, but I know he worships you and Mr. Maudslay’s amazing block pulleys.”
Simon’s smile could have lit the darkest room. “We’re praying for the success of your action tomorrow night.”
“Thank you. I’ve never been much of a believing man,” Able said as he dabbed at his eyes. “All science argues against it. And yet…yes, please pray for us.”
The morning of May 17 dawned clear and cool, with a little chop on the water. Meri had not let him out of bed, clicking the lock and taking off her nightgown. She laughed when he shrieked “help” in a tiny voice, as he had done the morning after their Devonshire wedding. It was their little joke.
When she was sleeping again, he dressed quietly, unlocked the door, laughed silently about that lock and key, and padded down the hall for a look at Ben, who kindly slumbered, too. He tapped softly on Jean’s door, then opened it.
The lieutenant sat on his bed, fully dressed, a pad in his lap and pencil in hand. Smitty slept. Able noticed that the boy’s thumbs were curled inside his fingers, the way Ben slept.
“I’ll get him up,” Jean whispered. “One hour in the headmaster’s office?”
“Aye. What are you writing?”
Jean shrugged. “My sister is dead. I have a brother somewhere in Canada with a fur company. Do you think a letter addressed to Christophe Alain Hubert, North West Company, Canada, will get to him? It’s a big country.”
“Probably. Eventually. Leave it with Meri.”
“Have you written a letter?”
Able shook his head. He could never tell anyone that he had pressed his heart to Meri’s heart last night and this morning, as close to his wife as humanly possible, legs and arms twined together. What could he possibly say? “Should I?” he asked.
“You should.”
Able nodded. “One hour, across the street.”
He tapped on John Mark and Nick’s door, stirring them awake with less effort than usual because they knew what day it was, and what was coming toward them. He had seen serious youngsters aboard many a ship, mere children slapped on the rump in hammocks or dumped out, if the bosun was more unkind than most. He had had been turned out that way, himself.
“One hour, lads, then over to Headmaster Croker’s office,” he said. “We’re reviewing everything one more time.”
He did as Jean directed, writing a note to Meri in the sitting room, knowing how fearsomely inadequate it was, how little it expressed the depths of his heart. She already knew where their modest money was banked, and where whatever documents either of them deemed important were stashed. They had already discussed what she would do and where she and Ben would go, should matters fall out in a way neither of them wanted. He had encouraged her to marry again, because every boy needed a father, every wife a husband. He didn’t mean it, and she understood. Meri could follow her heart however she chose.
He wondered if he had left her with child. A daughter would be nice, maybe named Mary after his mother, who had tried so hard to make sure he had some chance at life. Benjamin and Mary, dear ones. He knew they would be in excellent hands because his wife was everything he had ever hoped for. More time would be nice. Time, time, bend some time for me, Newton, he thought in exquisite agony. Give the universe a wave of your magic wand and speed time to end this war. Do it for me.
Miserable beyond words, he sat back in his chair at Meri’s writing desk and demanded that the people in his brain give him all possible help. He had never asked them for much. He had made no demands. His life had conditioned him to expect nothing. Most days he didn’t even want the voices.
“Do this for me now,” he whispered. “If you cannot guide me and keep me safe somehow, help the others. Help my wife.”
His brain was strangely silent. He heard kitchen noises, the murmur of voices from the Rats’ room, the sound of Meri’s bare feet going down the hall to Ben’s room, his son the tyrant indignant that he was wet and hungry. To his delight he also heard the beguiling sound of the ocean in the middle of the Pacific, and suddenly, a grand chorus of singers doing celestial justice to Mozart’s final Requiem in D Minor.
When the last chorus faded, he signed his name, folded the paper, wrote Meri, Meri, joy of my heart, and tucked it in the desk where she could find it someday.
The day was cool, so he pulled on his boat cloak, centered his bicorn, and left his home.
He shouldn’t have looked back, but he did, hopeful. She did not fail him. Meri stood at their son’s window, Ben in her arms, her hair untidy because he had run his fingers through it even more than usual. He loved the feel of her hair.
He lifted his bicorn to her, and she waved and blew him a kiss. She pressed her hand against the glass and he raised his in imitation. He could almost feel the warmth of her palm against his, even from across the street.
God keep you, Meri.
— Chapter Forty-three —
Dusk started the great engine of battle.
The day began with an assembly in St. Brendan’s cellar of what Sir B used to call “all the moveable parts,” with the Gunwharf Rats selected for this fleet action on land suitably sober and wide-eyed.
Looking burned to the socket, but with the old zeal and resolve evident to Able, Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony went over the entire plan. Wisely, he began by complimenting a beaming Mr. Markham on the efficient way his clerks had vacated their office in Building Eleven with dispatch and order.
‘Pon my word, sir, I do believe we all enjoyed this bit of derring-do,” the accountant said, practically rubbing his hands together in glee. “We clerks don’t often have such fun.”
Able was grateful he stood in a dim cellar, so Mr. Markham couldn’t see his smile. Sir B managed himself with real aplomb. “We of the Royal Navy could not conduct this punitive action without your excellent cooperation. King and country thank you.”
From his expression of sublime satisfaction, apparently that was all the praise required for the senior clerk to forget the disturbance to his typically dull day of ledgers and numbers, and the upcoming loss by fire of what office furniture couldn’t be hauled out discreetly. Mr. Markham pounded his heart with clenched fist. “We are honored to play our small part in ridding the world of the Corsican monster,” he declared.
“Well, yes, er…”
Even Sir B couldn’t withstand that. Able saved him by stepping forward and with a perfectly straight face ordering, “St. Brendan students, three cheers for the accountants!”
The three cheers were administered with great enthusiasm, giving Sir B and the normally stuffy major of the Royal Marines, Portsmouth, time to recover. Headmaster Croker held up remarkably well. Politely dismissed then, Mr. Markham went his way rejoicing, a happy and patriotic man.
No fool by any means, Able had put Walter Cornwall in charge of the sortie to surround and seize the house where the lantern signals had originated. The constable’s initial reluctance to speak “in front of me betters” vanished nearly at once, because he was thoughtful, careful and knew what to do.
Good show, Walter, Able thought with admiration, as the constable described how the Marines, Gunwharf Rats and other constables would cover front and back doors, then rush in, pistols ready, and swords drawn. “Go in swinging and shouting,” Walter advised. “I’ve been impressed how useful that is in discomfiting everyone.” Perhaps Walter had been bitten by the educationist’s bug, because he turned to Smitty next. “What do we do then?”
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“Gag’um and bind’um,” St. Brendan’s talented sailor-in-the-making with the look of a street thug said. He patted Nick Bonfort’s head. “Then we make sure Nick can send a message to the hulk.”
“And?” Walter asked.
“If there is a response, we all take down the flash sequences so there is no error,” Wren said. Lark nodded.
Able next yielded the floor to the gunner’s mate, Royal Marine Artillery, who described the powder laid down in those first floor rooms – the upper floors had been used for storage since the reign of Charles II – and how it would all be touched off at nineteen hundred hours with a long lead, one hour after the clerks left Building Eleven and right after the conspirators’ house was secured.
“Sor, we’ll ‘av ta fire brigade close as can be, so nuffink spreads,” he assured the rest of them. “Flash, bang, smoke and fire.”
“Now then, John Mark, Whitticombe and Tots, you’ll be stationed at the sea wall to watch if anyone comes ashore from the hulks,” Able said.
“And if they do, sir?” John asked. “We’re not very big.”
“I forget that now and then,” Able said, which had the desired effect of straightening the lad’s posture and putting a proud smile on his face. “Major, can you spare some marines for sea wall duty?”
He could and made a few notes on his tablet, and proved he was a father, too, by adding, “They’ll be back-up in case these capable-looking lads need a little more dash. One or two is all we need. I have confidence in St. Brendan’s.”
I, too, Able thought, as the Gunwharf Rats filed upstairs toward their morning class with Miss Croker, who had no intention of letting a major naval action stop her from nouns, adjectives and adverbs.
The major hung back for a moment to assure Able there would be more like six Marines close to the sea wall. “The lads don’t need to know that, but we’ll feel better, eh?”
“Yes, major, we will,” Able said.
Nick and Jean remained in the cellar for another lesson. Yesterday, on Jean’s direction, Simon Goodrich’s best artificer had fashioned a rough approximation of a French signal lamp.
“We don’t know if there is a coded signal to be sent when what they think is Building Twelve goes boom,” Jean said as he lit the paraffin in the small metal cup. “I’d show you how to send Mission accompli. Quoi de suite?”
“Which is, sir, if I may ask?”
Mission accomplished. What now? Able thought as Jean told Nick. What now, indeed? Thoughtful, worried, tense and calm in turn, he helped the last marine in the cellar lift Sir B’s wheeled chair up the narrow cellar steps, where he saw, to his relief, Grace’s old retainer waiting there for his new charge. Sir B whispered to Able, “He’s a bit of a bull dog, is old Junius. We’re rubbing along famously.”
And then it was time to wander, because he couldn’t help himself. First down to the kitchen, where the cooks were stirring a great pot of burgoo. Able had already told the Rats that was to be their noon meal – well-sugared oats. “It’s what we men eat before a fleet action,” he had told them yesterday. “After we’re served, Cookie douses the galley fire to keep the frigate safe as we sail into action. You’ll get apples around four o’clock and maybe grog the way Mrs. Six fixes it. That’s it until the action is over.”
“Why, Master Six?” Lark had asked. While there were no stout students at St. Brendan’s, Lark had discovered the pleasure of food, once he came here and learned how good it felt to be full.
“I want everyone in his fighting trim,” Able said.
The cooks knew what to do, and politely chased him out. Grace was teaching. Nick and Jean were practicing. Because one of the old salts from the dockyard was taking Able’s place in the classroom this morning, prodding the lads to dismantle and reassemble a sextant, Able found himself oddly non-essential. He thought about going home, but he had left Meri cheerful enough, and he would only pace the floor and worry until shadows lengthened.
He walked to Building Eleven, where the clerks had been replaced by Royal Marines dressed in sober black suits, sitting at the desks and looking busy, should someone walk by and take a too-great interest. A corporal showed him the trail of powder and piles of rags doused with coal oil and more powder. “We’ll get out and fire it, and you’ll hear a respectable bang, Master Six,” the man said with some relish. “Just a day at t’office.”
The other fake clerks laughed and sent him on his way, too. He paced the Gunwharf, where cannon were stored when fighting ships were placed in ordinary. The cannon were gone now, laid down aboard frigates and ships of the line that sailed and fought in all the oceans of the world. Again, he felt that tug and pull, as relentless as a tide, that whispered to him, “Come to sea again, Master Six. You know you miss us.”
“I would miss my wife and child more,” he said out loud, then looked around, hoping he was alone.
As it turned out, he wasn’t alone. He looked and there was Meridee, cloaked and bonneted, a most proper lady who had thrown in her lot with a common bastard.
“What in the world brings you here?” he asked when she came closer, reached up to kiss his cheek and took his arm.
“Sir B stopped by the house on his way home and told me you were pacing about, most melancholy. Ben is sleeping and Betsy and Mrs. Perry are standing guard.”
She put her hand to her mouth, and her eyes shone with mischief. By God he loved to see her that way, her eyes turning into little blue chips. “And do you know what?”
“Better tell me.” She didn’t know he had watched Walter Cornwall cross the street with real purpose on his face, heading to the Six house, a man on a mission.
“I peeked in the kitchen to tell Betsy I was going out for a walk, and what did I see but Constable Cornwall giving her such a kiss! I backed out before they saw me, because who wants to interrupt that?”
“Not I.”
He turned and they strolled to one of the dry docks, where a swarm of workers were patching a great hole in the side of a seriously wounded frigate, back from one of the many nameless ship to ship encounters in the Mediterranean. It was noisy work, but he didn’t have anything to say. It was enough to feel Meri close to him and know she loved him.
“I was thinking this morning…” They had moved away from the dry dock and were walking toward the quiet street where they lived. He felt his face heat up, which made him wonder about man and woman and marriage. He had been married long enough to know there wasn’t anything he hadn’t done with this woman that should raise a blush now.
“About what, my love?” she prompted.
“I was hoping perhaps you were with child again, and if it is a girl, you would name her Mary, after my mother,” he said.
He knew precisely what his words would do to her, and they did. She leaned into his arm and tears filled her eyes. “Able, don’t,” she whispered. “This sounds like a last will and testament. You are not going to die tonight.”
“We have no way of knowing that, wife,” he told her.
“We will eventually have a daughter and we will name her Mary,” she said, and he marveled at the ferocity of her words. “I’m worried enough without your worries, too.”
“I know. Forgive me.”
“You’ve done everything you can. You’ve probably even rehearsed what to do when everyone goes wrong,” she told him. “Aha! I thought you had. Do you know what you need?”
He chuckled, which made her turn rosy. Was Meridee Six always going to be a modest thing? Probably.
“Able, do men ever not think about women?”
“I doubt it.”
She tugged him into Ezekiel Bartleby’s bakery. “This was what I had in mind.”
He winked at Ezekiel beaming behind the counter and watched as Meri looked though the biscuits and eclairs and settled on petit fours, her favorite. She
selected a dozen, paid for them over the baker’s protests, and took Able outside to sit on the bench in the sun and eat them. Each one was sugary heaven. He ate more than he should have, but she was laughing and talking and he was, too, almost as if there was no war, no danger, no threat. For a brief moment they were a couple with nothing to do but eat and discuss those mundane bits of nothing that constituted marriage.
He knew what time it was. The clock in his head never failed him. He fell silent, then, “Go home, my love. I’m to meet Jean and Captain Ogilvie at the Marine Wharf in twenty minutes.”
She nodded. She wetted her handkerchief with her tongue and wiped the sugar from around his lips. “Can’t have you looking like a schoolboy, can I? What would people think?”
He gave her a businesslike kiss, because it seemed to suit her mood, then followed it with a better one that suited his, and as it so happened, theirs. He turned her about to face their home at the end of the block, and he walked the other way toward the Marine Wharf.
He told himself to forget her and Ben, and he did, as he and Jean changed into prisoner garb: too short trousers and orange-yellow shirts with TO inked on the back for Transport Office. Shoes came off. They debated manacles and decided on loosely tied rope, so they could slip out easily when the moment came.
Daggers secured under loose shirts, Jean with a cudgel up his sleeve he found somewhere, they sat down between their marine guard, with Captain Ogilvie aft in the cutter.
“What time is it, Able?” Jean asked.
“It wants twenty minutes of seven,” he replied. “Nineteen now.”
“How do you do that?”
“Don’t ask.”
They came alongside the Captivity, and the bosun piped them aboard. God, but the ship stunk. I am getting soft, Able thought, remembering other ships at sea and their overall stench. Prison hulks were different, it appeared. Despair has an odor.
All pomp and power, Captain Ogilvie demanded to see Captain Faulke. He held out Mr. Markham’s best bit of forgery: Two notarized chits for one Jean Hubert, late of the Calais, escapee, and Solide Six, late of the Bon Dieu, escapee.