The Unlikely Master Genius

by Carla Kelly

  Able did. “We all did that, sir,” he said. “We found the fishing tackle, lowered a jolly boat or two, and cast in a line. Why was that remarkable?”

  “The others were fishing,” Sir B said. “I watched you. What were you doing? Sometimes you never even baited a hook.”

  What was he doing? Did this captain-mentor-friend know him almost as well as Meri? The whole experience expanded to Able’s mental view: the endless water, the desultory wave here and there, the sun bright and hot, the creak of the frigate, the odor of heated tar, and the ever-present tang of brine. He knew.

  “Captain, I was not thinking of anything in particular.”

  “Well, lad?” Captain B asked. “How did you feel afterward?”

  “I was at peace.”

  Sir B nodded and addressed himself to Meri. “Madam Six, what say you I take this man off your hands at least once weekly and go fishing?”

  “My life will be simpler,” she joked. “How will you manage?”

  His captain turned his attention to Able. “Master Six, are you aware that I own a little yacht that has seen no action since, well, since my own misfortune?”

  Able knew better than to pity the one-legged, weary man sitting so close to his bed, the man who was probably never out of pain. We all bear a burden, he thought. Who am I to imagine for even a moment that mine is the heaviest?

  “Summer is nearly upon us,” Able said. “I have no …” he paused as a wave of pain washed over him. Meri saw it and took his hand. “I have no calculus students right now, so my late afternoons are open. Aye, sir, let us fish. I can easily commandeer some lads to crew such a vessel.”

  “Bring them ’round this Saturday to that wharf below Gunwharf,” Sir B said. “I have the tackle.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Meri, summon Gervaise, will you?”

  After she left the room, Able touched his captain’s hand, noting how bird-bone thin it was, with every vein in high relief. “Thank you,” he said simply. “I will never be out of your debt.”

  He knew Sir B was not a man who enjoyed compliments, but his former captain surprised him. “Master Six, I have never known anyone like you. Whether what we do with you is a blessing or not, England needs you.” He looked toward the door. “Meridee needs you more.”

  They took out the incongruously named Jolly Roger on Saturday. The water and waves beyond the Isle of Wight had more chop to them. Able did his best to ignore Nick’s sudden turn of head as he vomited into the ocean.

  “Sorry, sir,” he muttered.

  “You’re in good company, Nick,” Sir B said as he lounged in his chair lashed to the railing. “I believe Admiral Nelson himself suffers from mal de mer.”

  Able turned the tiller over to one of his older students and let down an anchor, and another. The movement slowed, then stopped, and Nick sighed with relief. “You’ll accustom yourself, lad,” Able said.

  Able rolled up the legs on the rough seaman’s trousers he wore. The sun was warm on his back as his mind flashed to those calm days in the South Pacific at latitude …. Stop it, he ordered his brain. You know the latitude and longitude, but let it go.

  He put his long legs in the gap in the railing and felt water on his ankles. The yacht listed because Sir B sat in his heavy wheeled chair close by. The water reached Able’s calves, and he smiled inside, completely at home in his watery world. In went his line, without benefit of bait.

  Amazing how quickly his thoughts slowed to one or two complexities, and then one, the ineffable image of his wife, his keeper, his lover, his lodestone. That was all he needed. Fish might be nice, but they weren’t necessary. He hadn’t come to fish. Even in those days in the South Pacific when everyone welcomed some change to their dreary diet of ship’s biscuit and kegged meat, he had never fished to catch fish.

  He knew he would not burn from the sun, thanks to whoever his father was. His skin would darken, but he would not suffer. He glanced at Nick, with his light complexion, and resolved to cajole a ship’s surgeon out of some zinc oxide for his lads.

  He observed the water, at peace. After an hour and twenty-three minutes, he took his line out and stood up. Two of his older students had caught a few fish, and Sir B’s eyes were closed.

  “We had better start back,” Able said to the boy at the tiller, who was dozing, too. “Anchors aweigh, lads.”

  He stood by the gap, his stance wide because a sailor never forgets. Sir B opened his eyes, and Able saw all the understanding. I have two keepers, he thought, and the idea warmed his workhouse heart, the one that might always search for his father.

  “Able, I have a brilliant notion,” Sir B said. “Call it a veritable epiphany. Suppose your lovely wife is brought to bed with twins, one boy and one girl? You can name them Polly and Matt.”

  Able laughed at the same moment that Sir B pushed him into the ocean with his remaining good leg. He gasped and thrashed, then treaded water, loving the feel of his second home.

  Above the amusement of his students and the unrepentant Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony, Able heard the faraway laughter of his spectral mentors, biding their time. He hoped it was distant thunder instead.

  Epilogue

  Summer came, and with it the return to port of Jamie MacGregor and the HMS Terror, battered and in need of a dry dock to fix a puzzling rudder shimmy. His twin close to his side, Jamie ate dinner with them, telling them of Mediterranean fleet actions from Malta to Egypt. Nick and John Mark, their eyes wide, took it all in. Betty piled more and more dessert on her brother’s plate until Nick kindly reminded her that younger boys like excessive amounts of dessert, too. He had a way with words, did Nick.

  Jamie requested a moment alone with Able after dinner, before he had to return to his ship. “We’re still waiting our turn for the dry dock. Captain Baldwin said he will give me permission to board here with you during repairs, if you’ll have me.”

  “Without question. I’ll drop him a note too,” Able said. “You might also want to accompany me on fishing trips beyond the Isle.”

  “Captain Baldwin is a bit of a stickler, sir,” James said. “He might consider that too much fun.”

  “Not the way I’ll word it,” Able said. “And if that’s not good enough, I’ll sic Sir B on him.”

  Jamie shuddered elaborately and they both laughed.

  They walked together by the stone basin, which in addition to the jolly boat now boasted floating platforms where the lads in both divisions were learning to arrange ballast to keep it afloat, even when the boys tasked to be the current created waves that could swamp an unbalanced ship. No one wanted to take a turn treading water and being the current, until Meri promised biscuits to the best waves crew. She had a way with little boys.

  “They’re learning, and they all swim like porpoises,” Able said. “I’d like to get Mrs. Six back in the water, but she reminds me that someone is already swimming around inside her and that is enough at present.”

  “Congratulations, sir,” Jamie said. “You’ll be an excellent father.”

  “I never knew my own,” he replied. “I sometimes wonder if he is yet alive.”

  While they walked, Jamie told Able of Jan’s death, a freak accident when a damaged yardarm under a jury rig suddenly dropped to the deck as Able’s best pupil passed below.

  “We met up with Jan’s ship at Malta, and the sailing master told me what happened,” Jamie said. “The crash paralyzed him from the chest down. The surgeon said he wasn’t in any particular pain, but Jan only lived another two hours. The paralysis moved higher and his lungs ceased to function.”

  Able let the healing balm of tears slide down his face. “I wish matters had been different—we all do—but sadly, such is life at sea.”

  Jamie nodded. He reached into his uniform jacket and took out good old Euclid. “The captain told me Jan asked the surgeon to lean it against his neck so he could feel it, and get it back to you somehow. Here it is, sir.”

  Able took the book, thinking of the years of com
fort it had given him, grateful Euclid had not failed Janus Yarmouth at the end. Let him join you in that polymath circle, Euclid, he thought. He’s a fast learner.

  He returned his attention to Jamie, pleased to see that he had added several inches in the three months since their farewell. He noticed confidence in his eyes and a firmness to his jaw. Jamie MacGregor was growing up.

  “Would you like to keep Euclid?” Able asked. “If you are superstitious, feel free to tell me nay.”

  “I would like to keep him, sir,” Jamie said quickly, “but I didn’t want to say anything. I know Euclid is special to you.”

  “He’s yours.”

  He saw Jamie off and ambled back to Saint’s Way, in no particular hurry. There in the door stood his keeper, gently rounded now. Last night she had taken his hand while they sat close together as he thought and she knitted, and placed it against her belly. “Feel that?” she asked, her face glowing.

  “Bit of a traveler,” he had said, nearly overwhelmed. He poked back gently and felt a returning kick. “He’ll wear you out, Meri-deependable.”

  Here she was now, beckoning him in. He told the usual cacophony in his brain to cease for the night, and it did. He had promised his wife there wouldn’t be anyone in their bed except the two of them, and Euclid had to go.

  “Is our baby entertaining you?”

  “Certainly,” she said, and put her arm around his middle, drawing him into their home. “I’ve started talking to him, but only when no one else is around.” She gave Able a bump with her hip. “I wouldn’t for the world usurp your role as mutterer-in-chief, you and Euclid.”

  “Wretched female,” he teased.

  Arm in arm, they walked into the dining room, where their two remaining lodgers waited impatiently.

  “I told you Master Six would be along soon,” she said as Able pulled her chair out for her. “Nick has something to tell us that will not wait.”

  “Then accept my apology for dawdling,” Able said. “Out with it, lad.”

  Nick pushed back his chair and stood up, shoulders back, eyes front, hands so tight together that his knuckles showed white. He looked directly at Meridee.

  “Mam, I’ve decided on a surname, if it pleases you.”

  “You hardly need my permission, Nick,” she said. “Will we like it?”

  “I hope so.” He took a deep breath. “How does Nick Bonfort sound to you, Mrs. Six?”

  Meridee’s gasp told Able what he needed to know.

  “I … I mean, you’re not precisely using it now, are you?” Nick asked, uncertain. “Y-you said it could be the name of some I admire and I ….”

  He never finished his sentence. Meri rose so quickly that her chair fell backward. She grabbed Nick and they clung together.

  “She likes it, sir,” John Mark told Able. “Last night, Nick asked me what I thought. I wasn’t certain.”

  “Mrs. Six has a soft heart,” Able said.

  “I love it, Nick,” she said finally, holding the boy off to see him better. “We’ll go to Headmaster Croker and see what we have to do to legalize everything.”

  “You really don’t mind?” he asked, and Able heard all the workhouse uncertainty.

  “Nick, I have four sisters and no brothers,” she said and drew him close again. “This means you can carry on the Bonfort name. Thank you.”

  The sheer loveliness of her words sank into Able’s very bone marrow. He thought of lonely Isaac Newton, England’s greatest genius, who was probably still sniping away at Gottfried Leibniz over who had devised the calculus first. That cosmic anteroom of legendary minds he had nearly joined seemed to fade with every day in his wife’s presence.

  He was a man most fortunate.

  * * * * *

  A well-known veteran of the romance writing field, Carla Kelly is the author of forty-two novels and three non-fiction works, as well as numerous short stories and articles for various publications. She is the recipient of two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Regency of the Year, two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, three Whitney Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times.

  Carla’s interest in historical fiction is a byproduct of her lifelong study of history. She’s held a variety of jobs, including public relations work for major hospitals and hospices, feature writer and columnist for a North Dakota daily newspaper, and ranger in the National Park Service (her favorite job) at Fort Laramie National Historic Site and Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site. She has worked for the North Dakota Historical Society as a contract researcher.

  Interest in the Napoleonic Wars at sea led to numerous novels about the British Channel Fleet during that conflict. Of late, Carla has written three novels set in southeast Wyoming in the frontier era that focus on her Mormon background and her interest in ranching.

  You can find Carla on the Web at:

  www.CarlaKellyAuthor.com.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Epilogue