by Carla Kelly
He had to know more. “Sir B, does your information state where away these specific frigates?”
“Two to the renewed blockade, and two to Malta. Beyond that, I know not.”
The meeting got worse then, if that were possible. The headmaster picked up another sheet of paper, stared at it a long moment as if he had only seen it for the first time, and handed it silently to Able.
I’ve been recalled to the fleet, was Able’s first thought. Last year, when he was starving ashore in Plymouth on half pay, he would have welcomed such news. Now with Meridee Bonfort Six in his life, he wasn’t so certain.
Could it be worse than this? Good God, no. He read the words in a blink. “The Navy Board wishes to know if there are any lads in my lower class who might be suited for duty, as well.” He rested his overworked head in the palm of his hand then looked up. “I will ask them, sir, but it must be voluntary. They are so young.”
“You went to sea at nine,” Croker reminded him, damn the man.
“Aye, sir. It was that or die of beatings,” he snapped.
They stared each other down. Thaddeus Croker looked away first. “Very well, Able. They must volunteer.”
There was nothing more to ask or say. Able turned his attention to the headmaster, and noted with some small satisfaction that he was not the only man to suffer with such news. The headmaster’s eyes had filled with tears. He swallowed several times, then mastered his emotions.
“To bed, gentlemen. It is late, and I am certain we all wish to toss and turn tonight and get up bleary-eyed and cross. I will make the announcement at breakfast. Master Six, your lodgers will break their fasts across the street tomorrow.”
“Aye, sir.”
Not trusting himself to bid either man a civil goodnight, Able fetched Meri from Grace Croker’s private sitting room, a tiny nook tucked in the corner of the headmaster’s rooms.
He didn’t walk his wife directly home, but circled around behind the school to stare down at the water level in the stone basin. “We’ll raise it to eight feet tomorrow with the tide and practice nautical rescue.”
Meri cried when he told her the news of Jan and Jamie joining the fleet. He held her close, or maybe she held him close. It was hard to tell.
Chapter Forty-Four
Able gave up attempting sleep after hours of lying awake and twisting himself into the blankets. Getting up as quietly as he could, he tiptoed downstairs and sat in the dining room to create page after page of geometry questions and solve them. He had moved on to the calculus when Meri joined him.
“I tried not to wake you,” he said, speaking to her even as he continued his relentless diagrams.
“Who was asleep?” she asked. “I’ll sit here and mend stockings. Able, you really need to trim your toenails now and then. You are not an orangutan.”
Gadfreys, but she was hilarious. Able shoved away the papers and laughed. In a moment she was smiling too. She pulled out her darning egg and he returned to his calculations. By the time dawn made its way to the forgotten street in scabrous Pompey, she announced her morning plan.
“I’m coming with you to breakfast.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Then thank goodness it isn’t your decision,” she said firmly.
The six of them crossed the street an hour later, Mrs. Perry having inserted herself in the equation. No, seven. After dodging a grocer’s cart, Betty joined them at the steps of St. Brendan’s, her expression allowing no denial.
Able surveyed his entourage. “I used to think I had some power of command,” he said to no one in particular, which made Meri jab him in the ribs. “Ow! The women in my life ignore me. Let this be a lesson to you boys. Ladies rule.”
Funny how the very air could change in the venerable old refectory where monks had once eaten more sparing meals as they listened to St. Benedict’s Order read aloud. After the prayer, Headmaster Croker slowly rose, almost as if he had aged a century since last night’s meeting.
“What I say here is secret. Divulge it on pain of immediate return to your respective workhouses,” Thaddeus said. “War will be declared soon and the fleet at Portsmouth will sail within the next week.”
He paused for a deep breath. Able knew what such a declaration cost the man who had started this school on his own, before the idea took hold in Navy circles. “Janus Yarmouth, Jamie MacGregor, William Five, and Arthur Trevithick will report in a week to the HMS Terror, Albemarle, Arundel, and Speedwell, there to serve as apprentice sailing masters.”
Able looked at Jan and Jamie, who whooped with delight at the news that was causing him nothing but grief and misgivings of a profound nature. Betty burst into tears and ended up folded in Mrs. Perry’s embrace. Meri pressed her lips tight together.
“Master Six, I believe you have an announcement, too.”
Meri looked at him in surprise. Last night he had lacked the courage to tell her the rest of Headmaster Croker’s order. He walked to the front of the dining hall to stand beside Thaddeus. He decided it would be better not to look at Meri while he delivered his news.
“The Navy Board is also soliciting the service of younger lads.”
Meri’s sudden intake of breath went into his heart like a cutlass and lodged there.
“For the present, such a commitment must be on a voluntary basis. I, for one, have much to teach you younger men to prepare you for successful service in the fleet. I would prefer that you remain with me, but this is your choice. See me in class.”
He sat down next to Meri and did not imagine that she slid away from him. “No, Meri,” he whispered. “Never do that to me. I follow orders.”
Silently, she moved close to him again. He put his arm around her and kept it there through breakfast, which neither of them could swallow. He listened to the excited chatter of the boys in the upper class and understood the emotion of going to sea for the first time. It had never grown old for him, and for a small moment, he envied their chance to pit themselves against the French and Spanish navies. He knew Meri would never understand.
“There you have it, my love,” he told Meri when the meal was over and he walked her to the main door. “I’ll see you this evening. We’ll be practicing nautical rescue and showing up wet for dinner.”
She nodded, not looking at him, but burrowing close as if she did not want to ever let go. “This is too hard,” she said finally.
“Would you believe me if I tell you I hate war?” he asked.
“I am not certain I would,” she said. She hurried across the street.
Pray God I have not ruined the one person who keeps me alive, he thought, as he prepared to join his younger students. Miss Croker was taking the older lads for morning classes and so walked beside him up the stairs.
“Meridee has a soft heart,” Grace remarked in her spare way. “I do not. Your younger boys are going to practice more penmanship and composition until either I am satisfied, or Napoleon himself appears in my classroom.”
“Miss Croker, you are certifiable,” he said, happy to tease and lift the gloom that had settled around his heart. So she thought only Meri was soft? He must be a better actor than he knew.
In his classroom, Able handed back test results, which made Davey Ten sigh and rest his forehead on his desk.
“Mr. Ten, I recommend more earnest delving into the wonderful world of decimals,” he said. “The dining room. Tonight.” He looked up. “The rest of you may attend, if you choose.”
The morning passed quickly enough. When the boys filed downstairs for the noon meal, Davey stayed behind and Able’s heart dipped lower.
“Aye, Davey?” he asked, knowing what was coming and dreading it.
“I’m no great shakes with mathematics,” Davey said. “Master Six, I would go into the fleet now.”
“You will greatly disappoint Mam,” he said.
“I know, sir, but I have an idea,” the little boy said, looking at Able with those old eyes all the workhouse boys possessed—he
, as well.
“Speak.”
“Sir, you know I like bones, and I didn’t flinch when John Mark rammed that splinter up his fingernail.”
“No, you didn’t. In fact, I told you precisely what to do to remove it and you followed every direction,” Able replied, feeling hopeful because he suddenly had a plan. At times his cursed brain did him a real favor.
“Master, I will go to sea as a loblolly boy,” Davey said. “I’d rather do that than mathematics, and shooting the sun and plotting courses.”
“Possibly,” Able agreed. “I hate to bring up another sore subject, but you’re not precisely proficient at swimming yet.”
Davey’s face fell. “I could try harder,” he mumbled.
“You could. We’ll practice again today, once the afternoon classes are finished.”
“Aye, sir. But what do you think?”
Far too much to ever explain to you, he told himself. “I think it is a good idea, Davey. Mam won’t.”
“I know, sir.” Davey brightened. “Can you sweeten her up?”
“I’ll try,” he said, wondering what the boys thought about Able and Meridee Six behind their bedroom door.
He wrote a quick letter and made certain it went with the day’s mail. Lunch in the dining hall was gall and wormwood again, but he knew he had to eat, so he did.
He sat at the table with his upper class boys, watching the animation on the faces of the ones headed to the fleet. No matter how many facts he stuffed into their heads, it wouldn’t be enough. Now they would learn from others, and from the hard school of fleet action.
Headmaster Croker had wrangled a jolly boat from Gunwharf, and it was bobbing in the basin when they adjourned for nautical rescue. The boys wore their oldest clothes, sparing their class uniforms as they tossed each other into the basin and swam to the boat, to be hauled aboard by a firm hand on their waistband. They practiced over and over until the sun began to sink in the west and everyone was shivering. Able wasn’t certain how Meri would receive him and three soaked lodgers, but he told himself he was a man and not a mouse.
“That’s it, lads. You four there take turns practicing your cleat knot to fix the boat to the basin,” he ordered. “We’ll practice again tomorrow.”
He had to smile at their high spirits. He understood their air of expectation, their awareness that the arrival of war meant they were soon to graduate four of their number, but that their time was coming, too. He looked toward his home, also aware that women wanted to nurture. Please to God that Meri wouldn’t slide away from him again.
Their lodgers trooped inside first, to be met at the door with towels and Mrs. Perry’s stern injunction to strip and wrap in a towel.
They did as commanded, which made Betty turn away and laugh. Mrs. Perry ordered them upstairs, then faced him.
“Master Able, your wife said you are to come upstairs as-is.”
“Am I in the brig?” he asked. “She was unhappy with me this morning.”
Mrs. Perry rolled her eyes and pointed to the stairs. Able knew as well as the next man when to take orders.
Meri sat on their bed, holding out a towel. He stripped and let her wrap him up, listening to her mild scold as she wondered how he kept from coming down with his death by a cold, or putrid throat, or pneumonia, and what would she do then? Bury him in at sea and be forced to earn her bread in a grog shop?
He listened to her, dried off, then folded her in his arms. She whispered into his chest, “I heard Davey volunteered for the fleet.”
“Aye, he did. He wants to be a loblolly boy and work in a sickbay,” Able said. No sense in trying to fool the unfoolable. “I have some thoughts on the matter, so do not despair yet, Mrs. Six.”
“I do not like this part of your job,” she said, helping him into dry small clothes, even though they both knew he needed no assistance.
“I don’t, either, if it’s any consolation,” he told her. “Blame Boney for wanting to rule the world.”
“Hurry up, Durable. Mrs. Perry has no patience with dawdlers.” She left the room.
“How long am I going to be Durable?” he called after her.
“Until I decide you are not.”
He was Durable only until a knock on the door later that night, after he gave up attempting to insinuate more calculus into heads far too excited about going to the fleet to pit themselves against one of Sir Isaac Newton’s embarrassment of riches. A pity, that. He had been about to introduce Gottfried Leibniz’s easier approach to the calc, too.
He opened the door, and could have fallen down in relief to see a man bearing a twice-folded document, the corner of which had a single word: Haslar.
He sent the fellow away with a coin, closed the door, and leaned against it, prying off the seal of the Sick and Hurt Board. He read the reply in the usual burst of words, then made himself read it again the way ordinary people did. Occasionally there was a certain pleasure in savoring something, and this was one of those times.
He took the stairs two at a time, then reminded himself that he was twenty-six years old and not a child ready to pluck at some kind lady’s sleeve until he had her attention. He knew plenty of ways to get his wife’s attention, but this one required some dignity, since he didn’t relish being Durable.
He stood in the doorway as she patted the last child, tugged up the blanket on another, and answered a question concerning breakfast from John Mark, who still seemed to worry about food more than the other two. She blew a final kiss into the room, then closed the door.
He couldn’t help that he grinned like a fool as he handed over the letter right there in the hall.
“I can’t take much more today, Durable,” she said.
As she read the letter, she sagged against the wall. He picked her up and her arms went around his neck.
“Will this do?” he asked, and she nodded. “I’m Able?” She nodded again.
Carrying her into their room, he deposited her gently on their bed. She clung to him, and he felt her relief flow right into his own body. He lay down beside her, because it was always the best place to be.
“I couldn’t say anything until I knew for certain that the superintendent would see it my way, but he owed me a favor,” Able said. “Are you all right? You’re not one to faint.”
“It’s been quite a day of emotions,” she said simply. “You truly have arranged for him to be a loblolly boy at Haslar?”
“He’ll be one mile away from you. Hospitals on dry land need loblolly boys, too. Davey has the wit to become a pharmacist’s mate, and we’ll see what else.”
“Why does the superintendent owe you a favor?”
“A simple thing.”
“For you, maybe …” she began.
“I was laid up for a few weeks …. You know that scar on my thigh which you like to kiss, before moving on to adjacent attractions?”
She nodded, and he saw her blush.
“He needed a particular tool to delve deeper into an abdominal wound. I designed him one and supervised its construction. I told you it was a simple thing.”
“Are you always going to amaze me?” Meri asked.
“I’d rather astound you with my prowess in bed and my blinding good looks,” he teased.
“Able! For heaven’s sake.”
He pointed to the letter. “In two days, you’ll take David Ten to Haslar. That is an order.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Meridee took David Ten, the Royal Navy’s newest loblolly boy, to Haslar Hospital two days later and left him in the care of Superintendent Welby, who assured her Davey could return to Saint’s Way occasionally for meals.
“It won’t be easy here, Davey,” she said, as Surgeon Welby and her boy walked her back to the entrance.
“I know, Mam,” he said, “and I know I’ll be afraid now and then. I want to do my part for king and country.”
She held him close and breathed in his fragrance of wool and little boy, and that odor of brine she also noticed abo
ut her husband. Where it came from, she wasn’t certain. Maybe she smelled that way, too. The ocean had a way of seeping into a person’s heart, so why not the pores, as well?
“What would Master Six say at a time like this?” she asked as she nodded to Surgeon Welby, who held open the door.
“Probably, ‘Go oon naow, Mizdress Six, and tayk heersilf hoome,’ ” Davey said, so she was still laughing as she climbed into the waiting conveyance Master Six had insisted upon.
“Able, I felt like Hannah in the Bible, taking her son Samuel to that old Levite in the temple,” she told her husband that night. “Dear me. Maybe I shouldn’t be a house mam to these waifs and strays, if I am going to get so teary-eyed every time one of them moves on in the world.”
“Headmaster Croker discussed that with me this very morning,” he said. “He already has two new lads in mind for your extra-special care.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Let me have a few weeks to get used to the idea that Stephen and Davey ….” She couldn’t go on, still wondering over how quickly little boys could worm their way into her heart.
“We’ll see,” he told her. “You might need to bear me up in a week when my older students go to the fleet.”
He closed his eyes and she automatically put her hand over them, well aware they would soon be racing behind their lids. “You’ve trained them all you can,” she soothed, as her practical nature surfaced. “Able, not everyone dies, who goes to sea.” She nudged him. “And you accuse me of high drama!”
“I do, don’t I?” he said, cuddling her close. “You’re right; there are quite a few of us who live to fight another day. I shouldn’t worry so much, should I?”
He sighed and she heard all the uncertainty.
Words were easy, reality harder. The entire school turned out to send the four lads to the fleet as sworn servants of the Royal Navy. They wore their uniforms with the distinctive patch of St. Brendan the Navigator. Meridee pronounced them tidy, but Able called them squared away.
She had some idea how hard to maintain was his cheerful demeanor with the four boys singled out, at ages twelve and thirteen, for a taxing apprenticeship. Now their training would take on new meaning as they sailed to revolutionary Europe.