by Carla Kelly
Even her eagerly given heart and body had not been enough to entirely force back the demons that tried to worm their way into an already over-crowded brain. These last few nights, she had done nothing more than hold him close as he recited all of Euclid’s Elements out loud in what passed for sleep.
Euclid, dear Euclid. Meridee had to turn away to preserve her composure as Able gave his beloved, battered copy of The Elements to Janus Yarmouth, a most promising student of calculus and now an apprentice sailing master.
“You’ll find time to look through Euclid when you’re standing a dull midnight watch,” Able told the boy. “I know I did.”
“Aye, sir, but we all know how fast you read,” Jan reminded him.
“I read Euclid more slowly,” Able said in humorous protest.
Jan must have felt the loosening tie of student to master, now that he was a duly sworn member of the Royal Navy, too. “Sir, did it take you forty minutes more than your usual thirty to memorize it?”
“More like thirty to twenty,” he said. “I cannot lie, Jan.”
And so they were laughing as all four young men—how was it they looked older than mere boys now?—gave smart salutes to Headmaster Croker and Master Six and turned their faces toward the Channel.
“We’ll have time for more calculus later,” Able called, and Jan waved back.
Meridee kept her arm tight around Betty after she ran to give her twin a final kiss, then watched him climb into the jolly boat taking him and Jan to the HMS Terror and HMS Albemarle anchored in the Solent. Another jolly boat waited to take the other classmates to frigates anchored farther out.
“He’s a brother to be proud of,” she said to her maid of all work.
“He could die tomorrow, Mam,” Betty whispered.
“We could all die tomorrow, my dear,” Meridee whispered back. “I daresay your twin would remind you that a well-trained sailor has odds in his favor.”
Her maid nodded, then gave her a searching glance out of workhouse eyes. “As bad as the workhouse is, it sometimes feels safer than the world, think on.”
It was. Trust a workhouse miss to know the difference.
“This life is better, my dear, as onerous as it feels right now,” she said. “Let’s stop at our favorite bakery and see what Mr. Bartleby has of a spectacular nature to drive away our megrims.”
“My lower boys number seven, and my upper grade stands at eight, all of whom can swim. We are fifteen to our original twenty-four,” Able announced a week later, after another session in the stone basin. “Tomorrow we are arranging ballast in that jolly boat I think I will not return, if no one seems to miss it.” He put a casual arm around Meridee as she set the table in the dining room, since Betty was lying down with cramps from her monthly.
He stopped her and took the plates from her hands. “Here and here and here,” he said, placing them, then shrugged. “For the life of me, I can never remember whether the forks belong on the left side or the right side.”
“You’re also not very good at simple adding and subtracting,” she said as she edged past him to set the knives and forks. “The butcher came to me hat in hand this morning to say that someone in this household, who put the initials A.S. on a bill along with the funds, had underpaid him.”
“Did I foul that?” he asked, tugging at her apron strings until they came undone.
“Royally.” Meridee poked his chest. “I paid him the correct amount and sent him on his way rejoicing, after promising you will have no more hand in the matter.”
“Why do you tolerate me, Meri-deelectable?” he asked.
“Heaven only knows,” she said, although she could have given him any number of reasons. “You stick to the calculus and I will somehow manage adding and subtracting. What is it about genius? Sometimes you are not so smart, Unendurable Six.”
“Since I do not know anyone like me, I cannot even hazard a guess,” he said cheerfully.
Even now, weeks after the sailing of the frigates, followed by more and more ships leaving their Portsmouth anchorage, Meridee wasn’t certain her husband had reconciled himself to his students in the fleet. Grace Croker assured her that Able taught in the classroom next to hers with his usual flair.
“I hear them laughing. I peeked in once to see them balancing chairs on top of each other,” she said over tea. “When I asked what they were doing, he said something about Newton and gravity.”
“I would like to sit in his classroom someday,” Meridee said. She took another sip, grateful how easily tea went down. I wish he still did not mutter about Euclid, she thought. I am getting tired of Greeks.
Grace Croker took her leave then, after reminding her they were coming to dinner tonight in her brother’s private quarters. “I tell my brother I want to entertain now and then,” she said, kissing Meridee on both cheeks. “I also said it would be something besides everlasting pickled herring and spotted dick!”
Meridee was putting the finishing touches on Able’s neck cloth when Mrs. Perry called upstairs to say there was a messenger at the door. When he did not return, she finished buttoning up the back of her dress, except for the one button she could never reach, and went to the top of the landing.
Meridee shrieked and ran down the stairs, horrified to see her dear man prostrate on the floor, gasping as though there wasn’t enough air finding its way into his lungs.
She recognized the astounded messenger as one of Sir B’s servants. She knelt beside Able and tugged at his shoulders, trying to turn him toward her, while Mrs. Perry paid the messenger and slammed the door.
“Able, oh please!” Meridee said. “Mrs. Perry, do you see a note?”
The cook forcibly moved Able into Meridee’s arms, where he tried to breathe. Mrs. Perry moved his leg and found a crumpled note. Smoothing it out, she handed it to Meridee. Her hand shook as she read the note, cried out, and pulled her husband closer.
“I cannot manage you alone,” she said, speaking as distinctly as she could into Able’s ear. “Who should I send for? Please tell me, my love. Please!”
Nothing. She looked up to see her lodgers on the stairs, fear on their faces. “Master Able has had a setback.” She looked over her shoulder. “Mrs. Perry, please take them into the kitchen.”
The cook gestured and the boys came down the stairs, filing past her and Able, who now lay in her arms, breathing again, his eyes closed.
“Please, Mam, was it something we did?” Nick asked.
“Heavens, no,” she managed, as her own heart shattered into tiny pieces. “I’ll tell you later.”
“It’s as I saw in my dream,” Able told her, his eyes still closed, his voice ragged. “They’re dying one by one.”
They were still crouched together in the hall when Headmaster Croker ran inside without knocking. His face its own Greek tragedy mask, he knelt beside them as Meridee gently rocked her husband and stroked his face.
“Sir B warned me this might kill him,” she whispered. “It is Jan Yarmouth.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Don’t console me, Able thought. Don’t question me. Don’t tell me it was just an accident. Don’t tell me we are all called upon to make sacrifices in wartime.
He sensed that he lay in his own bed, a nightshirt on, but with only the vaguest memory—unusual for him—of Meri removing his clothing and snapping at someone else in the room who tried to help—unusual for her. He heard voices that were mere mumbles, and then, oddest of all, nothing—no thoughts of any kind. He seemed to be drifting through space and even beyond the planets, into an empty part of the universe inhabited by men wearing clothing of earlier times.
He recognized Galileo first, with his droopy eyes and high cheekbones. And there was Johannes Kepler, with a high ruff around his neck and intense brown eyes. Beyond him sat René Descartes, distinct with his long nose and supercilious expression. He smiled to see Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz sitting far, far away from each other and darting angry glances back and forth.
; “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he murmured. “Have some patience. There is fame enough to go around.”
Then he felt his wife rest her head against his chest. He breathed deep of her familiar lavender fragrance, even as he sniffed the salt of her tears. He wanted to say her name, but there were more scientists and philosophers piling into the room in his mind’s universe. Artists, too. Michelangelo lay on his back painting the Sistine Chapel, while Leonardo gnawed his lip over a curious flying contraption with a rotor on top.
Dear God above, you terrible, omnipotent, unfeeling deity, he thought. I told Jan Yarmouth to imagine any kind of machine he thought the world needed. He said something about a glorified ship of the air that could travel to the moon and back. Did we tempt your domain? Are you angry with us? With me? Why Jan? Why not me?
He must have spoken out loud, because Meridee sobbed into his nightshirt that was already wet, either with his sweat or her tears.
“Able, God is not angry with you. Please believe me,” she said.
He tried to speak, but the lure of the scientists assembling distracted him. He smiled to see Aristotle chatting with Nicolaus Copernicus, and there was Galen in Greek robes, talking to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, chubby Dutchman with a flowing wig. Van Leeuwenhoek had observed his own sperm under a microscope he built. Able chuckled. Meridee would probably laugh if he told her that, but she would also blush.
Why were these men gesturing toward him, a workhouse bastard who couldn’t even cope when his prize pupil died in a stupid accident at sea? He didn’t belong in this exalted group of men, each of them as dead as Janus Yarmouth. He was nothing and nobody.
As much as Meri tugged on him, he couldn’t resist the urge to pull away. He sighed with pleasure. Seated beside an empty chair sat Euclid, his old companion through years of loneliness and self doubt. Euclid smiled and Able smiled back. “I know you,” Able said out loud.
Euclid nodded, pointed to the empty chair and patted it. Able stood where he was, his attention captured by a sign high above them all. It was in Greek, but that was no obstacle. “ ‘Polymaths,’ ” he read. “I belong with you. You are my friends. How kind of you to make room for me.”
He took another step closer to the empty chair, then turned around, startled, when Meridee called his name.
“Don’t you dare leave me!” she said most distinctly. He knew a command when he heard one, no fool he.
Still, he looked back at the assembly of giants, his friends, his mentors. Euclid no longer beseeched him, however. Able frowned to see someone else sit down in the chair he wanted. Something told him it was a man from the future, a fellow wearing felt slippers, with a moustache sorely in need of a trim, and wispy, white, wild hair.
“I have lost my place to an interloper from the future,” Able said. Someone cleared his throat and he glanced at Newton, who gestured him closer. “Yes, sir? What would you like from me?” he asked.
“We’re a lonely lot, boy,” the exalted, amazing Sir Isaac told him. “Go back where you were. Teach those lads like yourself. We’ll keep for another fifty or sixty years.”
He wanted to argue with them, but someone else was arguing louder. He heard, “Leave me alone with him,” countered by “But you need help,” and “Let me summon a physician.” He heard, “Leave us alone!” and knew deep in his heart and soul that Meridee was fighting for him. “Get out, the whole pack of you!” Really, Meri, he thought. I didn’t know you were so ferocious.
He heard a great whooshing sound, as a monstrous figure carrying a cross and an astrolabe sucked in all the polymaths, geniuses, philosophers, artists, and musicians in his odd universe. Immensely grateful, he realized Meri had not been shouting at someone in the room, but at his spectral colleagues.
Able grabbed Meridee, the only anchor in his peculiar life, and she clung to him. The others tumbled away, leaving him alone in an empty, distant room.
As he felt a familiar hand stroke his forehead, he relaxed. He saw Meri’s dear face without opening his eyes. She was beautiful and kind, and apparently quite willing to banish a roomful of well-meaning people, as well as the brilliant specters crowding in his brain. He had no idea she could be so fierce.
He probably deserved a good scold. He had behaved in a most unmanly fashion, dropping like a rock over the death of a student with abundant potential, gone forever. Blame Napoleon, a quiet voice told him. Defeat Boney by providing the best navigators for the Royal Navy.
Wait. Did he hear that from his cosmic friends? Or did someone more infinitely precious just whisper in his ear?
He knew sound advice, especially when his dear one lay across his chest, inhaling and exhaling with him, as though compelling him to breathe on his own.
He had his doubts. What if those awful, blood-drenched dreams returned? Could he dismiss them? Had he the power? Might as well decide if Meridee Six really wanted him, with all his quirks and weirdness.
“Very well, Meri,” he said. His voice sounded distinct, and he knew he spoke out loud this time. “If you want me, you must give me some good news. It has to be something grand enough to give me reason to keep going, because I need it in the worst way. If you have nothing, I cannot stay.”
He opened his eyes as Meri sat up, her hair wild around her face, tears on her cheeks, worry in those eyes he loved so well. She gulped and turned rosy. He also saw two men against the wall by the door, one standing and one in a wheeled chair, so he understood her reticence.
“Good news,” he repeated. “Handsomely now,” he added, which made her smile.
“I have some.” She took his hand and placed his palm against her belly. “You’re going to be a father,” she whispered. “Is that good enough news? We need you here—your students, me, and this baby of ours.”
He knew he was having trouble breathing again because Meri breathed along with him until he righted himself in the HMS Six.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“About seven weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your mind is so busy,” she said, and his heart broke a little. “I … I wasn’t certain you had time for two of us. Prove me wrong, my love.”
“I will,” he replied. “I pledge you my troth on it.”
Her eyes filled with tears at his mention of their marriage vows. She smiled, and became his keeper again.
“Tomorrow you are marching to a barber shop, because your hair is in serious want of cutting. You will not, repeat not, ever attempt to manage household funds again. You will teach the calculus and how to work a sextant, and introduce a generation of navigators to sines, cosines, tangents, and … and isos … isocentric? Eccentric triangles.”
He laughed at that and patted her belly gently. “I promise, Mrs. Six.”
She whispered in his ear, “No more Euclid when we are in bed together, just you and me. Banish him. I know you can. You can do anything.”
You just raised me from the dead, he thought. No sense in telling her, though. She might get a swelled head.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Durable, you know I would follow you to the ends of the galaxy, but my current condition would suggest I not go swimming with you,” Meridee said later on in the day, after Able had eaten and actually slept a little.
Blushing appropriately, his darling sat on the edge of their bed while he lounged most comfortably against both pillows, hands behind his head. Sir B watched them, his eyes filled with something close to glee.
“We will agree that you need more diversions, something to take your mind to a better, calmer place,” Sir B said. “Move me closer, Gervaise. Either that or push me up and down so I can pace.”
Meri laughed at that, perhaps banishing any embarrassment she felt about speaking of what was going on inside her. She may not have been more than seven weeks pregnant, but already she was proprietary of their baby.
“Anything not to be Durable,” he joked, and she squeezed his leg. “Very well, Mrs. Six, I will concede the ne
cessity of not continuing our swimming lessons.”
He closed his eyes and started to think about his recent brush with infinity and the friends waiting for him in that weird cosmic anteroom. His betraying eyes! Meri’s hand covered them and she told him to relax.
“Able,” was all she said, but it was enough. He willed himself to only one or two thoughts pinging around, which felt like his brain was on holiday. One thought concerned their unborn child, which soothed him remarkably.
He opened his eyes, and she took her hand away, resting it on his chest over his heart. “That’s better,” he said, “but Sir B is right.”
To his amusement, Gervaise did begin to push his former captain here and there, until Sir B stopped his valet.
“I think I have it. Wheel me closer, Gervaise.”
Sir B came as close to the bed as he could. The smile in his eyes was contagious, at least to Meri, who smiled back. My God, the woman was beautiful. He had read somewhere about the glow of pregnancy, but Able had no idea it came so soon, even when their child couldn’t be larger than her little finger yet.
“I sense a conspiracy,” he said.
Meri turned innocent eyes on him. “Not at all, dearest. Don’t you see that Sir B has an infectious enthusiasm?”
He didn’t. “This must be added to my blind spot, you two. I don’t seem to pick up those cues as rapidly as you do. But say on, sir. I know I need at least one release that doesn’t involve my wife. Meri, will you always blush?”
“You are almost Durable again,” she said, her face flaming. “Don’t press me.”
Sir B laughed out loud. “Gervaise, find yourself something to do in another room.”
After the door closed, the captain in Sir Belvedere St. Anthony came to the forefront again. Once a captain, always a captain, Able supposed. It was certainly true of sailing masters.
“What was it you used to do in the South Pacific when we were becalmed?” he asked. “Remember? Well, damn my eyes, certainly you remember.”