by Carla Kelly
Throughout the long afternoon and into dusk, she read, alternating the book with Sir B and his knots. When the servants returned to light the lamps, she heard a commotion in the hall. One of the older lads ran out and returned to announce that Master Six, Mrs. Perry, the baker and a remarkable number of Marines were coming up the steps.
“Nick?” Meridee asked, alert. “Oh, please.”
The boy nodded. “One of the Marines is carrying him, and Nick doesn’t look too happy about it.”
Meridee leaped up and ran to the entrance, Davey Ten beside her. Her hand to her heart, she watched as the Marine set Nick down. She knelt and held out her arms, and he threw himself into them. She rocked him back and forth until the little boy with no last name and the beginnings of a black eye said he was fine, and could they please go home?
“I’ll take you home, Nick,” Meridee said. She stood up and held out her hand for him to grasp. “Davey, Stephen, and John Mark, too.” She turned to look at her husband, who had stood so quiet, almost as if he was observing from a great distance. The sight chilled her heart. “You as well, Able.”
“I should stay here and explain …” he said. He shook his head, and she saw his dazed look. “Headmaster Croker can tell the story.”
“And you can tell me,” she said, quailing inside because she did not know what to expect, not after Sir B’s narrative.
“I’ll come, too, if you’ll have me,” Sir B said.
Her look of relief must have been visible to ships at sea, so happy was she with this kindness. “I cannot express my gratitude to you,” Meridee whispered. “I feel remarkably inadequate to the task at hand.”
“You’re not,” Sir B told her, “but you will learn that for yourself.”
They left St. Brendan’s accompanied by the baker, who gave Meridee a funny little bow. “Nick’s fine,” he said. “We got there in time before anything happened.” His expression turned grim. “It was a close-run thing. Mrs. Six, that master who used to teach here was in the process of selling t’little fellow to an old satyr who arrived in a carriage with a crest on the door. What is the matter with some people?”
Meridee patted his arm. “I hardly know. Thank you for your help, Mr. Bartleby.”
The baker rubbed his hands together. “Took me back to me own Navy days. A man should knock a few heads together now and then. It’s good for the soul.” He gave her a cheerful wave. “Send Betty down tomorrow for some brown bread.”
“Wait. Tell me please: Master Blake …?” Meridee felt a shiver down her back, just saying his name. She prayed silently that no matter what, Nick wouldn’t be required to testify in any court convened.
“Master Blake?” The baker took a liberty and patted her shoulder, which bothered Meridee not a bit. “Let’s say no one is ever going to find him again. There may be bits and pieces floating by, but that’s enough of the story from me.”
I am loose in a town full of madmen, she thought, even as she felt amazing relief. Surprised, she looked around, wondering when day had turned into dusk. Practical matters resurfaced and she wondered just how many carrots Betty had chopped, since that was the only command she had given before she dashed across the street.
Meridee should have known better than to discount Betty’s resourceful nature, close kin to the reliable lads around her. She followed Able up the steps and breathed deep of beef stew.
The boys hurried inside while Able stood still in the foyer, Davey remarking that he was gut-foundered. She watched her husband as he lowered his head, as though he couldn’t move another step. Silent, she put her arms around him and rested her head against his back.
He turned around in her arms and held her close, pressing her head to his chest now and trying to cover her eyes, almost as if he didn’t want her to see what she knew he was seeing.
“After dinner, you are going to lie down and I am going to sit with you,” she told the gilt buttons on his uniform.
“Meri, why couldn’t I see what was about to happen?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard a word.
In truth, she doubted anything she said would register in a unique mind filled with pictures, thoughts, and commands, and who knew what else, all leaping about for attention. What did her words count, against so many? She would try, though. She leaned back in his arms and looked up at him.
“No one can know everything,” she said, speaking distinctly and slowly. “Not even you, Able.”
He looked down at her, almost as if he were seeing her for the first time since she burst into his classroom hours ago.
“You knew, didn’t you?” he asked, searching her face for what, she knew not. “Mrs. Thomas didn’t fool you.”
“Maybe it’s an instinct women have.” She spoke with great care. “I was suspicious. I was wary, simply because I did not want to give up Nick.” She pressed her hand against his chest with some force, trying to hang onto him, because his eyes were starting to look past her. “You wanted so badly for Nick to have something you did not—a family.”
“Aye, Mam,” he said, with the vestige of a smile and the pale cousin of his usual good humor. “I let it override what should have been my caution, too. I have my own blind spots that I am learning about, Meri. Am I always going to be a workhouse boy?”
He leaned heavily against her suddenly, and she staggered to hold up his weight. She was saved from a tumble to the floor by Gervaise, who grabbed Able and lowered him carefully to the floor.
“It is happening, my dear,” she heard behind her. “Corporal, help my valet carry Master Six upstairs. Show them where to go, Meridee.”
She nodded her thanks to Sir B, whose wheeled chair was half and half out of the front door. Running upstairs, she motioned for the men to follow. Her little lodgers looked on in real fear, so she leaned over the railing and put on her best face.
“My dears, he is exhausted from this very trying day,” she said, grateful to see Mrs. Perry in the front hall now. “Mrs. Perry, settle them with dinner, will you? I’ll be down when—”
“You’ll stay right beside your man, if I am not speaking out of turn. I will take charge of the boys,” the cook said. “Come on, lads, you can help Betty and me put the finishing touches on dinner, and Nick can tell us about his adventure.”
Meridee opened the door to her room and pulled back the coverlets on the bed. “Put him there,” she said. “I’ll manage him now.” She pressed her hand to her heart and failed miserably at a smile to Gervaise and the Marine.
“It was our pleasure, Mrs. Six,” the corporal said. “Master Six is formidable in a fight.”
After the door closed, she set about making her husband comfortable, removing his shoes, tugging him out of his coat, unbuttoning his trousers and pulling them off. He lay there with his eyes partly open, unnerving her because even in this state of near unconsciousness, he seemed to follow her with his eyes.
When he was reduced to his smallclothes, she shifted him as best she could and covered him. She sat next to him on the bed and lay against his chest, aware of his beating heart, which seemed to move slower and slower. Alarmed, she sat up and shook him.
“Don’t you dare desert me now!” she said.
In response, he opened his eyes wide, which alarmed her even more than his half-aware state, because he seemed to see someone over her shoulder. She turned around and saw nothing, to her immense relief.
But he saw something; she knew he did. She patted Able’s cheek, then forced herself to stand and turn around, facing his demon, too.
“Go away,” she said in a loud voice. “I don’t care who you are, or what you think you need, but we need Able Six more. Go away. Leave him in peace.”
Well, that felt remarkably stupid, she thought, as she turned around and sat down again. “Able, I ….”
His eyes were closed all the way this time. For one terrifying moment, she thought him dead. Sick at heart, she rested her head against his chest again, and after a few moments that seemed like hours, felt his heart b
eating more regularly.
He put his hand on her head and rubbed his thumb against that spot behind her ear that she liked so well. “Meri, you were awfully rude to my mental guests just now,” he said, slurring the words as though he had drunk too much grog at the Bare Bones.
She remembered what Sir B had told her. “I care not a fig if I was curt to Sir Isaac Newton,” she replied. “I’m not too pleased with your great friend Euclid, either. You’ve had a trying time, Nick is safe, and I am here.”
“I cannot argue that,” he said. “He won’t bother any more workhouse boys, will Leonidas Blake.”
“So you are safe, too,” she said. “Go to sleep.”
He slept through the night. Sir B joined her for a few hours, once the boys were asleep. The captain’s pallor distressed her, but she understood as never before that captains—the good ones, at least—were never free of responsibility for the lives of every crew on every ship. He told her the rest of the story.
“That corporal who helped Gervaise said that when he arrived with his patrol, Mrs. Perry had just administered a whack to the back of Master Blake’s head and he lay bleeding on the floor.”
“Where was Nick in all this?” Meridee asked. “Pray God he did not see such a spectacle.”
“Alas, he was already in the carriage of as foul a member of the peerage as I can imagine, but I will spare you his name, because he has some power,” Sir B said. “He had gone no farther than removing Nick’s coat, and the boy was resisting with all his might.” He paused and gave her a look of great kindness. “Calling for Mam, too, and he didn’t mean that wretched woman who turned him over to the man in Able’s sketch.”
“I failed Nick, too,” she said, hard put to hold back her tears.
“On the contrary. Nick knows who loves him best,” Sir B said. “He’ll have some nightmares, I don’t doubt. Hug him close, just the same as you hug this man close.”
“Aye, mister,” she said, in imitation of her boys, which made the captain smile.
“The woman?”
Sir B chuckled, his merriment genuine. “I wish you could have seen Mrs. Perry yank off that wig and grab that harridan by red hair that my corporal said fair blinded him. Held her by her hair and lifted her quite off her feet.” He laughed. “The corporal said Mrs. Perry held her out so she couldn’t even hit her, no matter how hard she tried. I’d like to have seen that.”
“Not I,” Meridee said with a shudder.
“No, not you, my dear Mrs. Six. You are a gentlewoman and I know Able intends you to remain so,” Sir B told her. “Anyway, the watch hauled her away, kicking and screaming. A repairing lease in Australia should remedy her inclination to associate with low company. I will so stipulate that in a letter to the Navy Board tomorrow morning.”
“Thank goodness,” Meridee said. She put her hand on Able’s chest when he started to move. “No worries, dearest. I’m here and Nick is safe.”
“Good,” he replied, sounding almost himself, except that his eyes behind their closed lids were moving at a fantastic rate. She covered his eyes until he relaxed.
“There now, my love, I wish you would sleep,” she whispered and kissed his cheek. Able pursed his lips and made kissing noises, then did as she asked.
“You’re far better for him than any sea captain sitting beside his hammock in the South Pacific,” Sir B told her, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. He turned serious soon enough. “The pimp is gone, too. Someone in the Bare Bones—Mrs. Perry has no idea who—grabbed up the man and gave him a good shake, like a terrier with a rat. He will bother no one else.”
“My stars! I certainly hope whoever killed him doesn’t get into trouble for it,” Meridee said, even as she wondered, probably for the final time, what her sisters would think of such a comment from their well-mannered little sister.
“Trouble in the Bare Bones? Ha! Mrs. Perry said the watch made a feeble stab at questioning the, um, patrons in that distinguished grog shop, but apparently no one shook the man to death. I will draw a curtain over that lamentable episode in Portsmouth’s lively history, and you should, too.”
“With pleasure. And Blake is dead?”
“As dead as a man can be. On that score, the watch wisely did not question Mrs. Perry or the baker too closely, either.” He put a hand on her arm. “And you shouldn’t.”
“Not a word, although Mr. Bartleby did make some remark about ‘bits and pieces.’ ”
“The Bare Bones is next to a butcher’s shop,” Sir B said. “And now let us draw an even heavier curtain over that matter. I do not believe even Blake’s family will mourn overmuch.”
“We are back to Blake again,” Meridee said, wishing her next thought would vanish, because it disturbed her greatly. “Those three other lads from the younger class who went to homes,” she began, and couldn’t finish. “Did Blake—”
“Did Blake play a role there, too?” There was no mistaking Sir B’s shudder. “Meridee, I do not know.”
“Is there some way to find out?” she asked. “Is it too late for them?”
He couldn’t meet her eyes, and she had his sad answer.
They sat in silence, holding hands, until Mrs. Perry tapped on the door and said that the boys were ready to be tucked into bed. Letting go of Sir B’s hand, she went across the hall to Davey and Stephen Hoyt’s room. She wished Stephen a good night and was rewarded with a hug, the first she had ever received from the silent lad, who would probably mourn the loss of his parents until he died.
In the next room, she hugged John Mark, and then Nick for a long time. “I still want a last name, but not that badly,” he said finally. “Mayhap it’s not so important.”
“Maybe it is not, Nick,” she said, and kissed his forehead. “Sleep now. If you need me, I am merely across the hall.”
“Thank’ee, Mam,” he said, as his eyes closed. “Beg pardon, but Master Six needs you, too, and my mates are here.”
Grateful, troubled, she returned to the first room. “Davey, you’re my hero,” she said. “If you had not watched out the window, then found that sketch, where would we be?”
A few more words with both boys, and she closed the door and returned to her own room, where Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony was wrapped in his cloak again and preparing to depart, the redoubtable Gervaise behind to push.
“Madam, I will take my leave,” he said. “Gervaise tells me the corporal waits below to help him get my feeble carcass down the stairs and out the door.”
“Any advice?” she asked, feeling more alone than ever.
“Only this, and I hate to bring it up.” He was silent a moment, marshaling his forces. “When his students go to war, where some might die, I do not know what will happen.”
Meridee saw her guests from the house, hugged Mrs. Perry and Betty in the kitchen, then returned to her room. She curled up next to her husband, her hand on his eyes, her head on his shoulder until he woke in the morning, looking around, declaring he was hungry, and why hadn’t she got under the covers last night?
“We had company, and it was late,” she told him.
“Company? Who?”
“Sir Isaac Newton, Euclid—your friend and mine—Galileo, plus several other gentlemen I cannot recall,” she told him calmly.
“Meridee, do you wish you had never met me?” he asked.
“Don’t be absurd,” she told him. “Your friends are always welcome, as long as they do not wear out their stay.”
“And if they do?”
“I’ll sort them out and send them home, Able Six.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Impervious to strife and terror, apparently, the good ship St. Brendan the Navigator School for the Misbegotten and Mostly Forgotten righted itself and sailed on into spring.
Was there telepathy in the very air of Portsmouth? That evening when the boys were busy with extra pages of fractions at the kitchen table, her husband announced it was time to try out the water of the stone-lined basin.
She knew the boys had been taking turns skimming leaves and other detritus from the calm waters of the basin, everyone waiting for spring to warm the water a little. Surely Able wouldn’t have time to teach her, too, and how could he do it so she remained modest?
She had to give him credit for sheer nerve.
“Dearest, the time has come,” he announced after she had tucked her charges in bed. “You and I are going to the basin.”
“Able, really,” she tried.
“Aye, really.” She heard the firmness he seldom used in her presence that reminded her he was not merely a husband, but a sailing master. “You need to know how to swim. I also want to test my ability to teach someone how.”
“It’s cold. I’ll die.”
“You won’t,” he assured her. “I’ll haul you out before your lips turn blue.”
“It’s dark out. You won’t be able to tell,” she argued, even though he was already moving her toward their dressing room.
“Strip down to your shimmy,” he said. “I’ll get bare, too. We’ll wrap up in our cloaks and take along blankets. Handsomely now.”
“How did I get myself into this position?” she grumbled as they crossed the street and walked around St. Brendan’s toward the stone pool.
“You married a man not easily discouraged.”
It was easy enough to put on a brave front, but more difficult as she stood on the steps leading down to the water. “You first,” she insisted.
He took off his boat cloak, sidled past her and into the pool with no hesitation, drat the man. He looked down. “Gracious, but my testes just crawled into my abdominal cavity, begging for sanctuary.”
Meridee laughed out loud, unable to help herself. “When in Rome,” she muttered under her breath, threw off her cloak, and followed him into the water. The shock of sudden cold made her gasp. She grabbed Able’s bare arm as he towed her into the pool.
“I can see I’m going to want to anchor a taut rope against the basin wall at this three-foot level,” he told her. “Until then, hang onto the waistband of my smalls.”