by Carla Kelly
He had met a charming miss in Plymouth two years ago before his last voyage, the eldest daughter of the harbormaster. He could tell she was interested in him at least superficially, because he knew what he looked like in a mirror—the olive skin, pleasing features, and full head of curly black hair.
Then came the moment of truth. She had earlier accepted his birth in Dumfries, then naturally wanted to know more about his family. Should he have lied? He did not, and a few minutes later, found himself outside.
Meridee Bonfort was different. For some unknown reason, perhaps because she knew he was only going to stay long enough to instruct her nephews, she had asked about his name first, never having seen Abel spelled Able.
Knowing he had nothing to lose, he had explained he was named Durable because he hadn’t died from exposure on those stone steps in February, and Six because he was the sixth foundling entered on the rolls of Dumfries Workhouse in 1776. The only expression that had registered on Meridee’s pretty face was interest.
That night he shared a stranger’s bed in Poole’s least-favored inn. The man snored and reeked of garlic, but otherwise posed no threat. Able thought about sharing a bed with Meridee, which meant getting up and walking around the small room, training his mind to Euclid and Proposition Nine. He laughed out loud at Prop Nine, which did look a bit phallic. He mentally rehearsed all the propositions, wondering about Euclid.
Portsmouth hove into view through a squall. As a port, it had none of the raffish charm of Plymouth; even its nickname of Pompey had no inherent meaning, as seemingly unplanned as a bastard child. Able sniffed the air, happy to be back in the land of tar and new rope, mingled with dried or drying herring. Under all was the tang of brine and stink of low tide.
He tried to see it through Meridee’s eyes and felt doubt creep aboard his heart. Portsmouth was no place for a gently reared lady. Still, she had seen it herself only a few days ago, with no apparent complaint.
He caught his duffel tossed down to him, grateful he had packed his best uniform, sober black with gilt buttons and nothing more, because Admiralty had yet to assign sailing masters a uniform. He could wear it to St. Brendan’s, then on his wedding day.
Thanks to the noxious Peace of Amiens, he was the only man at Gunwharf shouldering a duffel. He looked toward the harbor, where few frigates rode at anchor, sails furled, and in some cases, sails gone. He shook his head to see the prison hulks against the horizon, carrying their suffering cargos of Frenchmen not yet repatriated, or maybe forgotten. Who knew?
He was glad enough to leave the docks and walk to Water Street, with its tidy homes belonging to merchants grown rich from victualing vessels and post captains home from the sea.
Able took a deep breath and another as he raised his hand to the brass knocker at 63 Water Street, the residence of Captain Benjamin Hallowell, Yankee captain admitted to Vice Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson’s select Band of Brothers for his tenacity at Aboukir Bay three years ago.
He must have been expected, because the captain’s butler didn’t bat an eye to see a shabby sailor needing a haircut asking for his master.
“This way, sir,” the butler said, and made his majestic way to the bookroom. “Please be seated. I’ll take your … your ….”
“Duffel,” Able supplied, and handed over the sorry thing.
Too nervous to sit, Able stared at the three filled-to-overflowing bookcases for fifteen seconds, memorizing titles.
The door opened. “You can take one or two books to bed tonight, if you’ve a mind to read, Master Six.”
Able turned around with a smile that faded as he stared in open-mouthed wonder at the black eye of epic proportions his lovely Meridee had planted on Captain Hallowell. She had confessed her impulsive right jab to Able before he left for Portsmouth, blaming it on her irritation that the captain seemed less than helpful when she had visited earlier to plead Able’s case.
He saluted his captain, appalled at the carnage one fierce woman could inflict, then grateful right down to his holey stockings that she was on his side, ready to fight his battle with him. Tears welled in his eyes at the thought.
He had known Benjamin Hallowell for years, one of the two commanders who winkled out his great secret, the one that set him apart in ways that even his lower-than-low birth could never have done. He knew Captain Hallowell as a stalwart man who never backed down from a fight, even when the prospect of success or survival was nil.
He gazed in silence at a black eye turning green, and decided Meridee Bonfort could hold her own in Portsmouth.
“A piece of advice, Master Six,” the good man said, extending his hand. “Whatever you do, never underestimate Miss Bonfort. It might be your last conscious thought.”
Chapter Three
“Belvedere, here he is, a bit older, but probably not any wiser,” Captain Hallowell said as he indicated Able standing in the doorway to the drawing room that afternoon. “How could he be wiser than he is now? Wasn’t it you, my fine fellow, who swore to me that if Master Six had lived four hundred years ago, he’d have been burnt at the stake?”
Oh Lord, Able thought. For my sins ….
He glanced at Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony in his wheeled chair, entire right leg gone. He wished, not for the first time, that Sir B’s surgeon, a competent fellow, hadn’t been so overwhelmed by wounded at the Battle of the Nile. Of course, Sir B hadn’t helped his own cause by waving his surgeon on to more seriously wounded sailors, all rank aside. But that was Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony, the enigma of the fleet.
“I did indeed say that,” Sir B replied. “Ben, you should have seen this handsome scamp years before Camperdown when I caught him lying on the operating table, reading.”
“My skinny bum ached for weeks, after my surprise landing on that deck,” Able said. The only way to survive Sir B’s wit was to equal it.
“What I did discover was that he had done his work and was allowed to read, although at lightning speed,” Sir B said. “ ’Pon my word, I’ve never seen pages turn so fast.”
He gestured them both farther into the drawing room, but Captain Hallowell held up his hand. “You two may reminisce on your own time.” He nodded toward Able. “If we are not on the road to Surrey within the hour, Mrs. Hallowell will give me what for.”
He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded twice. “Hand this to Mrs. Fillion at the Drake after your wedding and strive to make your new bride forget she’s marrying a Navy man. That’s an order.”
Able took the paper and opened it. “Sir, it’s too much,” he began and tried to hand it back.
Captain Hallowell would have none of it. “Two nights at the Drake with a compliant woman on her back? What is the Navy coming to? On the contrary, Master Six, it’s scarcely enough, considering what you did for my nephew. Sir B, do your best with this genius of ours.”
“We’ll manage, Ben. Good Christmas to you.”
“I recall your good work for me,” Sir B said after Captain Hallowell showed himself out. “I hadn’t heard about Cape St. Vincent. You amputated Ben’s nephew’s leg, after the surgeon died?”
Able found it vexing to remember every detail of Cape St. Vincent, to hear the moans and pleadings of the wounded, and the listing of the ship in critical need of its own emergency treatment. After Surgeon Sproul died when a Spanish ball pierced the HMS Captain below the water line, two of the other loblolly boys carefully placed Nathaniel Hallowell on the bloody operating table and looked around, wondering who might operate. The pharmacist’s mate had drawn himself into a tearful ball.
Able had watched Sproul perform numerous amputations. With no hesitation, Able had stepped up to the table and cut off the young man’s leg.
“Aye, Sir B,” he replied, embarrassed.
“Why so modest? I have seen your ability.”
“I believe you spotted it first, Captain,” Able said.
“Wise of me, don’t you know? Pour us some smuggler’s sherry.�
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Able did as asked, shoving the sickbay scenes to the back of his mind and substituting lazy days on a ship calmed in the South Pacific.
“Let us move smartly along now. I’ve taken an interest in St. Brendan’s,” Sir B said after a sip and a smack. “Damned good stuff! When my footman admitted Aloysius Bonfort himself, and a pretty miss clutching his hand, I knew this was going to be good.”
“Miss Bonfort can be tenacious, or so I have discovered,” Able said.
“Tenacious doesn’t begin to frame the matter,” Sir B said. “Her eyes were fierce to look at, and yet there was such hope in them.” He leaned forward. “I could tell after only a few sentences that you had found your keeper, Master Six.”
“You’re the one who told me I needed a keeper,” Able reminded him.
“So you do. Sir Horatio Nelson himself showed up here bare minutes later, summoned by our redoubtable Yankee captain, I don’t doubt. So glad he was in port.”
“I trust Mer … Miss Bonfort was suitably impressed, to see the great man.”
Sir B took another sip and smiled at the memory. “She took it all in stride. Your lady told us why you needed to be teaching a classroom of masters-in-training, rather than running one quarterdeck. I’ll never forget her! ‘Sirs,’ said she, looking so lovely, ‘just think: with masters well-trained as only Able Six can do, you’ll reap the benefits for years.’ What could we say?” he concluded, then made Able laugh. “No one wanted a facer such as Miss Bonfort had planted on Ben Hallowell. I rest my case. Are you in, lad?”
“I am, Sir B,” Able replied. He finished his sherry. “Now I have to convince a headmaster, I imagine.”
“You do, but you come highly recommended,” Sir B replied. “Let us visit St. Brendan’s School of Incorrigibles. Is it cold outside?”
“There’s a stiff wind from the west by northwest at about ten knots,” Able said.
“Be more specific, Master Six.”
With a grin, Able told him the degrees and minutes.
“That’s better! Can’t have you losing your grip.” Sir B rang a copper bell at his elbow. “I directed Gervaise to summon my coachman. There you are, Gervaise.”
Without a word, Able took the captain’s boat cloak from the valet and slung it around Sir B’s too-thin shoulders, then put on his own. With a pang, he remembered Sir B as a robust man. This thin fellow with the sallow skin still looked burnt to the socket, and the Nile was five years ago.
“You’re worried about me, Master Six, I can tell,” Sir B commented as his valet, a sturdy fellow by necessity, opened the door on wind and rain.
“Aye, sir,” Able said, knowing better than to play the fool with this sharply intelligent man. “I’d like to see you on a quarterdeck again.”
“Some things are not meant to be,” Sir B replied.
“Perhaps, sir, but I can wish it.”
He stood back while Gervaise wheeled his former captain and current mentor to the carriage and lifted the frail man into the vehicle. Able seated himself next to the commander whose opinion he valued, and who seemed interested, who knows why, in furthering his own modest career. “Thank you for what you are trying to do for me.”
The melancholy left Sir B’s face. “Your almost-wife is a persuasive lady,” he said. “I think we all fell a little bit in love with her as she stated your case.” He laughed softly. “She reminded me a bit of Shakespeare’s Portia in The Merchant of Venice.”
Able knew what was coming. It was the same test administered years ago when Captain St. Anthony had loaned him Shakespeare’s Folio and told him to begin anywhere. “Act Four Scene One: ‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ ” Able quoted, enjoying the memory of Portia pleading Bassanio’s cause, as Meridee had pleaded his. “ ‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.’ More, Sir B?”
“We could go through all the plays, could we not?”
“We could,” Able agreed. “I remember an evening in the dog latitudes doing precisely that.”
“You never faltered, and I realized the Royal Navy had someone special on board. Miss Bonfort seems to know how to use your mind to best advantage.”
“She’s bright, and for some reason unknown, she loves me,” Able said simply. “Here’s one for her, sir, the last verse of ‘Walsinghame,’ by poor, headless Sir Walter Raleigh: ‘But true love is a durable fire, in the mind ever burning; never sick, never old, never dead, from itself never turning.’ ”
Sir B sat in silence, looking out the window. “I haven’t thought of that one in years. Did I quiz you on it?” he asked finally.
“Aye, sir. You know I am Durable.”
“Master Durable Six, you’ll evermore be the only man entered on Admiralty rolls with such an outlandish name.” The captain sighed. “I’d forgotten how lovely that poem is. ‘Never sick, never old, never dead ….’ Able, don’t waste a moment.”
Since Sir B was silent, wrapped in a cloak of melancholy, Able absorbed the route, taking in the mansions that gradually yielded to merchants’ houses. The closer they came to the mighty wharfs of Portsmouth harbor, the meaner the houses. He wracked his super-agile brain to remember St. Brendan’s, but nothing came to mind, which meant he had never seen or even heard of it. The scroll of his brain had stopped at a blank space.
He glanced at Captain St. Anthony, hesitant to speak, until he saw his mentor turn his way, as if giving him permission for conversation.
“I confess I have never heard of St. Brendan’s School,” he said. “I know well who St. Brendan is, but ….”
“Patron saint of sailors like you and me, lad.” Sir B gestured to a narrow street but a block from Gunwharf, where ships headed for dry dock deposited their cannon in neat rows. “We’ll wind down here into the oldest part of Pompey. It was a monastery at one time, who knows how long ago. After Henry the Eighth worked his cruel will on the Catholic Church, the monastery sat idle for centuries.” He chuckled. “The street is called Saint’s Way, far more holy than Portsmouth warrants, I vow.”
Able held the carriage door while Gervaise efficiently moved his master into his wheeled chair again. He turned his collar up against the chill wind that blew toward revolutionary Europe, as Sir B told his coachman to wait.
“Hopefully, the old priss won’t be set upon by roving gangs of hungry seamen,” Sir B joked. “Ring the bell, Master Six. Your life is about to change.”
Chapter Four
“It already has, sir,” Able said, amused, intimidated, unnerved, and wishing Meridee were tucked close beside him. He needed his keeper.
“It will change some more.”
Able steeled himself for whatever lay on the other side of the door, hoping it wouldn’t remind him of his nine awful years in the Dumfries Workhouse, where boys were beaten for nothing except that they were illegitimate, smelly, hungry, and there.
He received his first surprise as the door was slowly opened by a little fellow, putting all his puny muscle into the effort.
Bright, inquiring eyes looked into his. A quick glance, that blink of information that told him everything at once, took in a child dressed soberly in black, reminding Able of his own Royal Navy quasi-uniform. Black buttons substituted for gilt ones, and he saw a wonderful crest on the left breast: St. Brendan the Navigator, cradling a small ship of medieval origin in his arms.
The lad’s shoes were sturdy and he wore black stockings. Able couldn’t recall stockings during his Dumfries years. He received his first pair in the fleet, and remembered staring at them, wondering briefly if they were for his hands.
The boy’s hair was cut close to his head, and he looked as tidy as a pin. He held the door open wider, and gestured them in with a bit of a flourish. There was nothing ground down or hangdog in his expression, so Able Six took heart.
“We have come to speak with Headmaster Thaddeus Croker,” Sir B said. “He is expecting us.”
“Follow me
, sirs,” the little fellow said, turning smartly and striding down the chilly corridor, confident, apparently, that they would follow.
“He’ll command a quarterdeck someday,” Sir B commented with a smile of his own, as Gervaise whizzed him along. “Answering the door is probably a prized duty here. What was your favorite task in the workhouse?”
“Staying alive,” Able whispered, unwilling for the child to hear him. He heard Sir B’s sharp intake of breath and wondered briefly what privileged people like Captain St. Anthony really knew of workhouses. “We fought over kitchen cleanup. Potato peelings were worth their weight in gold.”
“Good God,” Sir B murmured.
“You asked, Captain,” Able said, amused.
Able gazed around the narrow hall. To his surprise, he saw battle flags, one from the Haarlem, sunk at Camperdown; another from the Serieuse, battered to death at the Battle of the Nile. And there was the Salvador del Mundo’s ripped flag, captured at Cape St. Vincent.
Able turned in a slow circle, seeing other enemy flags, probably from smaller ship-to-ship engagements across all the oceans, seas, inlets, and bays throughout their world at war. Some he knew personally; others were the stuff of legend.
“Who … who is behind this school?” Able asked, when they stopped at a heavily carved door, probably the office of the monastery’s abbot in years gone by.
“I have no idea. All I know is that St. Brendan’s School for … for … guttersnipes, thieves, and workhouse bastards has been here for three years.” He shrugged.
They waited silently as their escort knocked on the door.