by Carla Kelly
She decided to do the worst first. Mr. Wharf Rat still had enough face left to reveal melancholy eyes, one drooping from its socket, the other in place. She soon exposed the skull, which separated from its neck with no preamble. She didn’t even want to think about the gray goo inside the skull, so she forked the disgusting thing onto the black cloth.
Braver now, Meridee observed the tiniest bones, perhaps toe bones, which were already free of their muscle and tissue and in danger of being lost in the muck as the rain poured down. They were too small for the fork, so she used her fingers, reminding herself there wasn’t anything she couldn’t wash off her hands.
Meridee was fishing out the other leg when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped and put her hand to her throat, not a wise move. To her relief it was David Ten. He knelt beside her and picked up the extra fork.
“Master Six thought you might do something like this,” he said. “He told me to come ahead while he finishes the calculation, um, calcification.”
“Calculus. I was afraid the bones would wash away,” she said. “It appeared that Mr. Wharf Rat is made of sterner stuff.”
“Like us,” he told her as he scraped away with some skill.
Meridee sat back on her heels and watched how meticulously he separated the tiniest bones from what remained of the viscera. She marveled at his interest; he seemed to forget she was there as he devoted himself to the rat that she had to admit wasn’t as huge and menacing as it had seemed when she came outside armed with only a square of dark fabric and multiple good intentions.
He dissected the creature with some flair, even, and surprising skill. “How do you know so much about rats?” she asked finally.
He chuckled at that, as if she were a slightly slow child. “Mrs. Six, when you’re hungry enough to eat a rat, you want to get all the good parts.”
Meridee decided right then to complain less. “I’ll take your word for it.”
He continued his slow progress through the rat. “That’s the tibia and fibula,” he said, pointing to tiny bones. “You know, that part between your knee and your ankle.” David whistled. “Wow. This must be the tail. Look at those tiny little bones.”
Meridee looked, and hoped no one at St. Brendan’s would ever see the need for another set of rat bones on the premises.
“There’s the femur,” he told her. “It’s the meatiest part and tastes fine with salt.”
“David, you amaze me,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’m not really much good at numbers, and I hope Master Six isn’t too disappointed.” She saw the worry on his face. “You don’t think the master will send me back to St. Pancras if I don’t like numbers as much as he does, do you?”
“There is not the slightest chance,” she said firmly. “I’m no expert at numbers, and he’s not sending me back.”
“But he picked you especially,” David argued. “It’s not the same.”
He did, didn’t he? she thought, delighted at the little fellow’s observation. “No, it isn’t the same,” she agreed. She made herself look down at the rat stew. “I think you’re an expert at bones. There will be a place in the fleet for someone who likes bones and has a strong stomach.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I am convinced.”
She heard the door open behind her and turned to see Nick coming down the steps. “Did Master Six send you to help David and relieve me?” she asked.
He nodded, and hunched down, because the rain was both constant and getting colder. “He said he didn’t think David would be persuasive enough, think on.” He stood with a frown, then shook his head. “I don’t know about this.”
“Join me, then, because I don’t either,” she said, moving over and a little farther from the rat. “I am leaving all major rat decisions to David Ten. I will do what he tells me to.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “You listen to him? He’s a workhouse boy, same’s me.”
“He knows bones, and I never argue with experts,” she said, only half joking. “Nick, what is your particular talent? I have observed already that St. Brendan’s boys seem to excel at something or other. Do you like numbers?”
“Well enough. I like books better,” he conceded as he took the fork from her fingers. “I will help Davey now.”
He said it with finality, and had no qualms about taking the fork from her. She wasn’t being dismissed, because there was nothing in his voice that sounded arbitrary. He had been sent to relieve her, and he obeyed. She sensed no dismay at their obvious differences or her evident superiority. He obeyed.
“So you like to read?”
“I love to,” Nick said, his eyes on the task at hand as David pointed to a tangle of fur. “This, not so much.”
Meridee was cold, but so were they. She knew Able intended for her to go inside, but she wanted to stay in the orbit of these interesting children.
“Davey, how would you display these bones?”
“I’d find a board and sand it down,” he said with no hesitation. “I’d put the rat in the middle of the board. I’d splay out the arms and legs, and label each bone.”
“I can see that,” she said, and she could. “Mrs. Perry knows wood. Her late husband was a carpenter’s mate.”
“She scares me,” Davey said. “Maybe you should ask her.”
“We’ll ask her together,” Meridee said. “Strength in numbers.”
“My penmanship is good,” Nick volunteered. “We would need a pen with a small nib for the lettering by the bones.” He moved his hand as if seeing bigger words march across the board. “And then really big at the top, ST. BRENDAN’S WHARF RATS.” He smiled for the first time, a shy smile that told Meridee he didn’t do it often. “We’ll hang it in our classroom because we’re the rats.”
Impressive, she thought. Nick had ideas.
“We could find a way to attach little strips of wood hanging down, with our names on them,” he said. “P’raps our names and the years we spent at St. Brendan’s before we go to the fleet.”
“You only have one name,” Davey pointed out.
“I know. It’s a problem,” Nick said.
“Nick, you have the amazing good fortune to be able to choose your own last name,” she said. “How many of us can say that?”
She could tell from his wide-eyed expression that he had never considered the possibility. “You mean, I could do that?” he asked. “Is it legal?”
“Why not?” Meridee replied, praying with all her heart that it was legal because it suddenly mattered to her. “My name is Meridee, and I always thought that was a little silly. I’m stuck with it, howsoever.”
“Not as silly as Ten,” Davey said.
“Sillier,” she insisted. “My five sisters have good solid names like Louisa and Amanda, and Augusta, Jane, and Mary. And Bonfort? What could I do with that,” she laughed out loud, “except marry a man named Six?”
They laughed and the rain poured down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Do you know what I will find when I go home today, gentlemen?” Able asked Jamie MacGregor and Jan Yarmouth, who looked stunned after an hour of merely starting to think about the calculus. “I will find my wife still out in the backyard, trying to save rat bones.”
“Master, you sent two of the younger boys ahead to do that, didn’t you?” Jamie asked.
“I did. I know my wife, though.”
Back to the matter at hand—the stunned looks. “Remember this about the calculus: it’s the study of how things change. When you know how things change, you will be able to predict how other things change.”
Jamie’s hand went up slowly, as if he feared ridicule. Able remembered times he had raised his hand like that and been beaten. At the time, he couldn’t understand why. He did now. His workhouse teachers, overworked and underpaid and probably hating their teaching assignment, knew less than he did.
“Aye, Jamie? Let me assure you that there will be no ridicule for any questio
n.”
“Maybe it is silly, but why is the calculus important?” Jamie asked.
“It’s a sound question, Mr. MacGregor. What if we could change an atom, something so small you cannot see it with your eyes? That was a question the philosopher Leucippus asked in 370 BC. He said the universe is composed of two elements, atoms and the void in which they move.”
“If we can change an atom—and I don’t understand how we even know they exist—everything is possible then,” Jan blurted out. “Beg pardon, I should have raised my hand.”
“It’s just the three of us. Leap in whenever you wish,” Able said. “You’re correct, Mr. Yarmouth. Everything is possible.”
He eyed his students, pleased to see more understanding. “Here is your assignment for tomorrow. Think of a machine you believe people need. Write a paragraph about it.” He held up his hands for emphasis and stood up. “Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. Think large. And now I must go home and pry my wife from rat bones.”
The boys laughed and left the room. He stood in the doorway and watched them chat with each other down the hall. Headmaster Croker told Able that one of the first rules he instituted at St. Brandon’s was the abolition of workhouse silence in the halls and dining room. He smiled to see Jan gesturing large and Jamie laughing about it, imposed silence a memory to them now.
As he stood there thinking, Able entertained a new idea, something he had never considered: as harsh as the workhouse had been, it had given him the strength for the Royal Navy, and the knowledge that there wasn’t anything he couldn’t manage. He knew himself to be tough and resourceful. Maybe he should give some of the credit to bleak, cruel, and dreadful Dumfries Workhouse.
He swung his boat cloak around his shoulders and closed the classroom door. A few steps took him toward the classroom of Master Blake, who had already glared at him today, pointedly ignored him during luncheon, and demanded of his students loud enough for Able to hear that in his classroom that there be no talking.
Master Blake, don’t punish your students to get back at me, he thought, and wondered what Meri would do if confronted with such outright loathing. He swallowed his pride and knocked on Master Blake’s door.
“Enter.”
Able walked in and closed the door behind him. Master Blake stood there, black-robed because he had walked the rarified halls of Cambridge and earned a Bachelor of Letters. He might have been a handsome man, but his face was set and disagreeable, as if he had breathed in too much shoreline at low tide. Everything about him reeked of privilege and condescension.
“You’ve come to reimburse me for a new pointer?” Master Blake asked.
“Never,” Able replied. “St. Brendan’s boys don’t need to be beaten. They’ve been abused for years, and I can tell you personally it is no pleasant thing.”
“You teach your way, and I will teach mine,” Master Blake said and turned his back on Able, dismissing him.
Not so fast, Able thought. “I wanted to thank you for teaching these lads history and law,” Able said. “Heaven knows they—”
“Need it?” Master Blake interrupted. He turned around, and there was no mistaking the hostility in his eyes. “I never saw such ignorance.”
“That is why they need what you can give them,” Able said, forcing down his own dislike. “We’re training leaders, sir.”
Master Blake laughed. “This, Master Able, is a farce.” He turned his back to Able again.
Then why in God’s name are you here? Able wanted to ask, but allowed prudence to reign instead. “Could I ask … could you possibly teach them to write in a fair hand? Some of them will be keeping ship’s logs, and they will need that instruction. No? Ah, well, it was a mere suggestion. Good day, Master Blake.”
“Don’t ask for anything else, bastard,” Master Blake said.
Able flinched. He itched to wrap his fingers around the insufferable man’s throat and watch his eyes fill with blood and pop from their moorings, as he had seen a thief killed in Morocco once. Better to think about the pleasure of murdering Master Blake and leave it at that.
He invoked a passage from his favorite Euclid, which calmed him. When Able started down the stairs, he was met this time by Master Fletcher, the old salt hired to teach the upper class navigational techniques. Able had spent some time under Master Fletcher’s tutelage in the Mediterranean, and knew him to be competent and thorough. For a moment he felt like a pup again, sitting cross-legged on the deck behind Fletcher’s actual students, taking in what the master taught because Captain St. Anthony had ordered him to learn.
Master Fletcher motioned him closer and they walked down the stairs together.
“I couldn’t help overhearing that bit of bombast from Blake,” Fletcher remarked. “I also heard how you broke the whiny fellow’s pointer.”
“For my sins,” Able said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
“He’s a strange one, is Master Blake,” Fletcher said, after a glance back up the stairs. He lowered his voice. “I know scuttlebutt is worth what you pay for it, but I’ve heard that Headmaster Croker was forced to take him on as a favor to one of the uppity ups in the gov’mint who controls the purse strings here at St. Brendan’s.”
“Blake has high crimes and misdemeanors he is atoning for?” Able said, striving for a light tone. As much as he admired Fletcher’s skills, he shied from gossip.
“Gambling debts, I hear,” Fletcher confided. “Maybe a touch of fraud. Blake comes from a good family. Maybe someone at Whitehall or Admiralty wanted to spare an illustrious name unused to the tar brush.”
“And we get him,” Able said, with a shrug. He remembered the boys waiting for him below. “Maybe he’ll improve, Master Fletcher. Meanwhile, I have little boys to escort to their new posh digs across the street.”
Fletcher laughed at that, but his troubled expression betrayed him. “Go then, young master,” he said. Then, taking his arm, he added, “Come with me some night to the Bare Bones for a drink.”
“Now that brings back a memory or two,” Able said, well-acquainted with the worst grog shop and brothel in Portsmouth and unwilling to return. “Meri would kill me and no jury would convict her.”
“I have my reasons for inviting you,” Fletcher said. “A time or two, I’ve seen Master Blake in there, which I do not understand. I wonder what you might make of it.”
Master Blake in a sty that some of the captains in the fleet had declared off limits to their men? “That does surprise me,” he said. “Why would a gentry cove take himself there?”
“He’s up to something, sure as the world,” Fletcher said. “What, I could not say. Well, here are your lads. When you have time and can sneak away from your pretty ball and chain, I’ll shout you a snootful at the Bones.”
They had stopped in front of the statue of St. Brendan. Able nodded at the sailing master, his eyes on the boys. “You have aroused my curiosity, Master Fletcher,” he said. “Seems a strange place for a superior sort of fellow like Blake. We’ll see about that grog.”
Clothing bundles in hand, their eyes betraying their uncertainty, Stephen Hoyt and John Mark stood close together, two lads against the unknown. Thaddeus Croker had told them earlier that Stephen was a runner. They were also new to St. Brendan’s, cried in their beds at night, and needed a kind touch, even though they likely had no idea what a kind touch meant. How to begin?
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Both boys lowered their gaze to the stone floor and shook their heads.
“I am fair gut-foundered,” Able said. “I am not certain what Mrs. Perry and Mrs. Six have prepared, but I can guarantee it will be tasty.”
He shepherded the silent children across the street. The rain had stopped, but the gray day was about to surrender to darkness.
“I don’t know what state of affairs we’ll find inside,” he told his quiet charges. “Mistress Six has been cleaning rat bones. Remember that stone basin?”
“Aye, master,” he heard from Jo
hn Mark. His voice was scarcely audible, but at least he spoke.
“I hope David Ten and Nick have relieved her of that duty,” he said as he opened the front door. “Come in, please.” He sniffed the air. “I smell meat pie.”
Telling the boys to set down their bundles by the stairs, he motioned them to follow him out the back door, where three people knelt in the wet grass, heads together.
Able put his hand lightly on Stephen Hoyt’s shoulder. “Just what I thought. What should we do, Stephen?”
He didn’t expect an answer; he didn’t know what he expected, which was a novel enough sensation.
“You could beat her, Master Six,” the boy said softly.
God above, why? Able asked the sky. He knelt beside the boy who ran. “We don’t do that. Not her, not you. Here’s what we do.”
He walked down the back steps and cleared his throat with a loud and entirely theatrical harrumph. “Aren’t you the wife who abhors rats?”
“Guilty,” she said, sounding anything but. “We’re nearly done. Could you bring out a lamp, Master Six?”
He squatted beside her, unwilling to muddy his new uniform. “Master Six stays across the street,” he whispered in her ear.
“Able then,” she said. “A few more minutes?”
He stood up, then flicked his finger against her head, which made David Ten laugh.
“David and Nick, how about this?” he said. “You two finish up in the next five minutes. Mrs. Six will come inside with me and dry off.”
“Aye, sir, that’s fair,” Nick said. “I’ll fetch a lamp.”
“Thank you. Up you get, Mrs. Six. You’re sopping wet.”
Nick hurried back with a lamp. There was a final consultation between the three bone pickers, after which Meri carefully wrapped the square of cloth into itself and carried it up the steps.
“What miracle is this?” Able joked. “Is this the same lady who swore never to have rat bones in her house, let alone hold them?”
“The very one,” Meri said. “They won’t take up much space.” She looked over her shoulder. “Take one more look around, Davey and Nick. We need to dry off.”
