by Carla Kelly
“Were you close enough to see well?” Nick asked.
“Close enough to smell horse shit,” Stephen declared.
“I stayed at the Croker’s townhouse,” Meri told Able, leaning close. He breathed in the fragrance of lavender and knew he could survive until bedtime.
“A townhouse? Is our headmaster a far grander man than I suspected?”
“I believe he is,” she whispered back. “And Grace Croker is a force to be reckoned with.” She tapped the side of her glass with her fork and the boys turned to her, expectant.
“We also brought along your new British history and English instructor, Miss Croker,” Meri announced. “She will be staying across the street at St. Brendan’s.”
Silence met this news. David Ten raised his hand tentatively. “Please, Mam, does she have a pointer?”
“Emphatically not,” Meri said. “What she will do is fix you with an awful glare if you have not studied your books.” She smiled at Stephen. “You may ask Stephen about her later.”
“May I tell them what we learned?” Stephen asked.
“In the sitting room,” Meri said. “You need to eat now.”
Into the sitting room they went, with Mrs. Perry and Betty invited too, which meant that somehow Jamie MacGregor knew when to knock on the door, followed by Jan Yarmouth.
“I would say we have a true sitting room, wouldn’t you, Husband?” Meri asked, as the younger boys ranged themselves cross-legged on the floor.
He said something, happy to let Meri direct the flow of conversation. Her arm went around his waist and she hooked her thumb into the waistband of his trousers, not really caring if anyone in the room noticed.
“Out with it, Stephen,” John Mark said when everyone was seated. “Talk!”
The others chuckled. John Mark had the patience of a gnat.
“You first, Mam,” Stephen said.
“We went to the Office of Criminal Business in a marvelous building called Somerset House,” she said, then turned her lovely eyes on Able. “The Royal Society meets there, and you should belong to it.”
“When pigs fly,” he said, feeling amused for the first time since she went away. “Earthworms have more exalted pedigrees than mine.”
“I suppose. I must thank Sir B personally for greasing our way. Mr. Guillory had the ledgers with their manifests right there on his desk and ready for us.”
Stephen nodded. “We found my parents’ names in the manifest for the Hillsborough, which sailed in October, five years ago.”
“Once we found the names and the ship, Mr. Guillory directed us to the cellar of Somerset House, where ships’ logs are kept,” Meri said. “I don’t precisely understand why the Royal Navy keeps those logs. Aren’t those commercial ships the convicts sail on?”
“Aye, but they are contracted by the Navy Board,” Able said. He felt himself relax as Meri leaned against him. “Mr. Hoyt, I’ll wager you saw some pretty gruesome penmanship in those logs, did you not?”
“Aye, sir,” Stephen said. “Gruesome.”
“What did that tell you?”
“That maybe we need to improve our own penmanship in the logs we’re keeping.”
“Excellent, lad. Do continue.”
“Miss Croker and Mam—uh, Mrs. Six—”
“Mam will do,” Meri said.
Able watched the others in the room smile at that. He knew his darling was going to be Mam from now on, no matter how many little Gunwharf Rats eventually passed into their home. Better and better, he thought.
“The ladies looked through nine months of entries,” Stephen explained. “I couldn’t read the writing too well, so the porter set me to work putting memoran … memo—”
“Memoranda,” Meri inserted. “They are little orders and comments that get batted from office to office, I daresay.”
“I put memoranda in order by date,” he said. “I had me own desk too.”
“He did,” Meri told the others, quashing any disbelief. “He had a little date stamp too, to indicate when they were alphabetized.”
Stephen took a deep breath. “Mam found the entry about me da.” He looked down at his hands, as if gathering himself together.
Don’t let it be something awful, Able thought.
When Stephen spoke, Able heard the pride. “Me father broke up a fight among the convicts when one of them tried to knife the other over some ship’s biscuit,” he said. “He died saving the victim.”
The whole room seemed to sigh. “Gor, a hero,” Nick whispered. “I’m sorry he died, Steph, but a hero!”
“I know,” Stephen said. “The log entry stated it was the most noble act ever seen on a convict ship.”
“And your mother?” Meri prompted.
Stephen’s face brightened. “Nuffink in the daily logs about her death, but she did save a lady … well, you explain it, Mam,” he said, his face red.
“Apparently Mrs. Hoyt is a midwife,” Meri said, and Stephen nodded. “Stephen remembers that about her from north of the River Thames, where they used to live. One of the convict women was brought to bed and had difficulty delivering the baby. Mrs. Hoyt saved her life and the infant boy’s life.”
Dear Meri. Her face was rosy telling something so intimate to lads. And now Australia had a future settler, plus Stephen’s convict mother.
“Excellent,” Able said. “Mr. Hoyt, your mother possesses a valuable skill that will serve her well in a new colony. I think you need not worry too much about her future there.”
“That’s what Mam said, too. She and Miss Croker had me write a letter to her, which will be sent with the next convict ship.” His face fell and his shoulders drooped. “It’ll be seven months getting there, then they have to find her, and then seven months getting back to me. That’s a long time to wait for a letter.”
Everyone in the room nodded. Jamie MacGregor patted the boy’s shoulder. “But you know, and that’s worth almost gold. When you have trained here for two or three more years, you’ll be ready to sail to Australia.”
The boys nodded again. God bless Jamie MacGregor, leader in the making. Able already knew the Gunwharf Rats looked up to the older lad who had found his twin sister.
“You won’t be tempted to fly the coop again?” Jamie asked, and again Able applauded silently. Better the admonition come from one of their own.
“I might be tempted, but I won’t,” Stephen promised. He yawned, and Able glanced at the mantelpiece clock, a gift from that same Sir B who seemed to be greasing everyone’s wheels.
“Lads, morning comes early,” Able said. “Steel yourselves. Tomorrow afternoon, it’s into the stone basin with all of you. Mr. MacGregor and Mr. Yarmouth, you are requested and required to attend as well. Inform the others your age. We’re going to float and we’re going to swim.” He clapped his hands. “Bedtime.” He looked at them expectantly.
“Handsomely now!” his Gunwharf Rats shouted and raced double time for their rooms, after snatching up the biscuits twisted into wax paper that Mrs. Perry always set by the stairs.
“Enough for us, sir?” Jan asked. “We like the goodies too.”
“Aye. Goodnight. And we will have time for the calculus tomorrow,” Able said.
Go away, go away, he thought, as Meri took her time saying goodnight to Mrs. Perry and Betty. In their room, he shucked his clothing into an untidy pile and threw on his nightshirt. Perhaps he could close his eyes tonight after general merrymaking and not see that damnable river of blood again.
His wife seemed to take her own sweet time saying goodnight to the lads across the hall. He heard their laughter and begrudged them every second with his darling, even as he cursed himself for being a fool of magisterial proportions.
Ah, there she was, her face stark and serious because no matter how vaunted his mind, Meridee Six had a special knack for knowing when all was not well.
She went right to the bed where he lay and sat down beside him. “My love, what is wrong?”
“I don’t ev
en know how to tell you,” he began, and then the words tumbled out. By the time he finished his narration of bloody drains, his little students swirling down to their deaths, and the Treaty of Amiens in tatters, she lay next to him, her hand over his eyes. Were his eyes closed and moving? He had been unaware.
He prepared to let her cry, not that he could have stopped her, and then Meri surprised him.
She sat up. “Husband, you have just told me about a room of blood and your students drowning, and the Treaty nearly gone. Then you told me about a Pythagorean theorem, and something about Euclid and isosceles triangles. With scarcely time to draw a breath, you were back on the steps of that church in Dumfries, newly born, and then it was something about ‘For every action there is an equal and positive—’ ”
“Opposite—”
“Reaction.”
She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, her face close to his. Was she trying to stop the flow? “I have to know something. When you are just … just going about your business on an average day, how many thoughts go through your mind at the same time?”
Thank God. She was going to save him because she understood, as much as any sane person could understand. “At least three major conversations or events—battles, beatings, amputations,” he said, “plus little scenes jumbled in somehow, depending on how tired I am or discouraged or overworked. Or missing you.”
She rested her head on his chest. “I had no idea it was such a quantity,” she said finally. “Able, how do you manage a mind like yours?”
He had no answer. He had never known anyone like himself either. He lifted her from his chest and looked at her closer. “There is only one time I have close to a single thought in my head. Is there any wonder I crave such times?”
The terror left her eyes, and she understood. Was ever a genius so fortunate?
She turned around. “Unbutton me.” When he finished, she looked him in the eyes and took off every stitch of clothing as he watched. Naked, she carried her dress, stockings, and shimmy into their dressing room and laughed when she saw the disordered mound of clothing already there. She threw hers on top, which made him smile.
“I won’t go away again,” she said as she pulled back the covers. “Able, get rid of that nightshirt. Handsomely, now.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Husband, it is a good thing I am also fond of general merrymaking,” Meridee said. “A more skeptical wife might think you are making up all this and preying on my good nature just for more … um … you know.”
That earned her a pat on the fanny. The pat turned into a caress, followed by his hand growing more heavy. In another moment, he slept.
She nudged him awake a few hours later, ready to confess, because her lively conscience would not let her sleep. He reached for her, and she held him off. “You need to know something first, Romeo,” she said. “I must confess to a lie of massive proportions.”
“How bad can it be?” he asked, sitting up and folding his hands primly in his bare lap, sort of but not quite covering his private parts.
She pulled the blanket over him. “I don’t need any added distractions,” she scolded, which made him chuckle and relieved her heart, because he appeared to be focusing on her alone. But how could she know?
“I lied about that entry in the Hillsborough log, describing the incident with Stephen’s father,” she said, too embarrassed to look her husband in the eye. What must he think of her? “Lester Hoyt was the perpetrator, not the hero.”
There. She had confessed. “I should have known better, but Able, did Stephen need more bad news? How much becomes too much?”
She held her breath as Able leaned toward her and kissed her forehead. “You aren’t too disappointed in me?” she asked, after he did it again.
“You rendered a kind service to a child.”
Her husband’s quiet assessment was balm to her soul. Still, she knew better. “I can’t imagine the Lord is pleased, but thank you,” she said.
“Au contraire,” Able said. “The Lord has probably already directed one of his angels to place an entire row of gold medallions in your book of life. Come closer.”
Meridee moved closer, her back to the headboard, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Certainly Stephen was sad to learn of his father’s death—I daren’t alter that—but his face turned calm when I … after I told my lie.”
“I suggest you dismiss the matter from your mind,” he advised. “This is what he needed to hear now. Leave it at that.” He rubbed her bare shoulder. “Goodness, you’re cold. We can either light a fire, or we can economize on fuel by taking advantage of the dark and quiet.”
“I vote for the latter,” she said, and slid down in the bed again. “You’re thinking only of me?” she whispered in his ear as he kissed her throat this time.
“Only you.”
Perhaps Able was right about her book of life. After Stephen’s errand to London, Meridee knew she would never look at her little charges the same way again. Where she had been silent about their earlier lives, fearing to open barely healing wounds, she asked questions and learned more than she wanted to know, except it was exactly what she needed to know. To her further surprise, they seemed almost eager to talk about their trials.
After strategizing with Mrs. Perry to keep the others busy, Meridee spent a delightful evening with Nick, alone at first, then joined by the others. They all ended up with a fit of giggles as he auditioned last names, ranging from Haydn, because she liked The Surprise Symphony, to Kedgeree, because the homely dish Anglicized with fish and cream instead of lentils and Indian spices had become his favorite meal.
Able contributed Cosine as a possible surname, because Nick had a right understanding of geometry before the others in his class, while David Ten suggested Nick consider numbers. “Six and Ten are taken in this household, but think of the variety,” Davey had said.
“And you’re short, so p’raps Eight and a Half will do,” John Mark said. “Just run it together like one word.” He wrote Eightandahalf on a spare scrap of paper. “And look, you can pronounce it however you choose. I like Atandehalf, with the accent on tan.”
It was monumental silliness, but nothing made Meridee happier than to hear the solemn boys ribbing each other. Able, not so dignified, slapped his forehead and flopped back on the sofa, carrying her with him. The boys laughed harder, and her heart was at peace.
There wasn’t much else she could do for her husband, except make sure he was tidy every morning and love him at night, provided she wasn’t half dead from household duties and doing battle in the market with grocers and butchers who were devious in the extreme.
“I ask you, Able, do those men train before mirrors to pull long faces and bring tears to their eyes when I suggest in my politest fashion that they are overcharging me?” she asked one night while he brushed her hair. It was a pastime she adored, and which she noticed relaxed him.
“Have you tried batting your eyelashes at them and swaying your behind a bit?” he suggested. “I know it inspires me to pay attention.”
“That is a perfectly wretched idea and you know it, Husband,” she said. “I suppose it is impossible to expect fair play in a Navy town where victuallers tell me that if I do not cough up their prices, there are many ships preparing for long voyages who will.”
He put his hands on her shoulders at that. “Have they said as much?”
“One or two. It seemed to slip out.” She looked up, met his gaze in the mirror, and understood. “Able, are they outfitting ships for war?”
“I fear so, but keeping it reasonably quiet. I suppose there are French spies everywhere.” He set the hairbrush on the dresser. “Life is going to change soon and I dread it.”
“You’re doing everything in your power to make lads like Jamie MacGregor and Jan Yarmouth prepared and useful,” she reminded him later, comfortable in bed, as her eyes started to close.
“It will never be enough.”
“Able, you w
ould say that if you had been teaching them for years, and not mere months,” she countered. “This is your Keeper, ordering you to go to sleep. You, too, Euclid.”
“Aye, Mam,” he said, and she felt his chuckle.
The morning brought a handwritten note from Sir B, informing her that his carriage would be in Saint’s Way at ten o’clock to take her to his house.
“He’s getting peremptory,” Able remarked, as he stood still while Meridee gave his neck cloth one more twitch. “I often wonder how much he knows about the current state of affairs in the fleet.”
“Should I ask him point blank?” she said.
“He will never tell you. Stay out of trouble and send Mrs. Perry to joust with the butchers and greengrocers today, will you?”
“Aye, sir,” she said.
Sir B’s carriage was there at ten precisely. She made John Coachman stop at the bakery and picked up macaroons from Ezekiel, who asked about Stephen Hoyt. She told him about their experience in London and he nodded.
“It’s tough to be a workhouse lad, I would imagine,” he said, giving a little pat to the pasteboard box before he handed it to her.
“I’m grateful it was never my lot,” she said and tried to pay him.
He waved away her coins. “Sometimes I am overcome with a generous nature,” he whispered. “Just don’t tell me ball and chain in the back room.”
“My lips are sealed. These are going to a bona fide hero, a man with one leg. He’ll be grateful, too.”
I wish all shopkeepers were as kind as our baker, she thought, as they rolled from their rough streets to the more genteel heights. She looked down at St. Brendan’s, small in the distance, and her own home across the street, more dear to her with each passing day.
Each visit to Captain St. Anthony’s mansion started with a wary knock on the door, but none of them had reproduced her first frightening experience. Sir Belvedere reclined on a chaise longue, wearing an eye-popping paisley robe that an Oriental potentate would envy. He waved a hand at her and pointed to a chair pulled close.