by Carla Kelly
Looking more than a little dazed, Cornwall pulled himself together. He pointed his cudgel at Betty MacGregor, who tried to burrow into the sofa cushions to hide herself. “Master Blake said she was nosing around the ash cans across the street at your school, Master Croker.”
“She might be hungry,” the headmaster said mildly.
“Sir, all due respects to you, but we get regular warnings to look out for runaways from workhouses,” Cornwall replied, his voice less menacing. He lowered his cudgel and looked at it, as if wondering who it belonged to.
“Mr. Cornwall, may I ease your mind? The terms of my recent contract at this fine institution plainly state I am promised a maid of all work,” Able said. “We intend to hire Betty MacGregor, who is the twin of one of my more promising students. I trust we may follow through on that lawful contract.”
“I dunno,” Cornwall said. “Where’d you come from, missy? You still look like a runaway to me.”
God bless his wife. Meridee sat next to Betty, who inched slowly away from the sofa cushions. She stroked the girl’s cheek, a gesture Able personally knew to be most satisfactory, in his case, in soothing his overactive brain.
“Betty, you’ll have a room of your own, plenty to eat, and good wages,” Meridee said.
“I still say she’s a runaway,” Cornwall declared, but less strenuously. He took another look at his cudgel and set it on the floor.
And God bless Jamie MacGregor, who if not the smartest pupil among the older class was certainly the shrewdest. “Mr. Cornwall, will you satisfy my curiosity about something?”
The constable grunted, which could have meant anything.
“With a name like Cornwall, did you come from a workhouse, too?” He gestured toward the wall. “Davey Ten there is the tenth bastard of the year. Nick doesn’t have a last name yet.” He took a deep breath. “And my calculus instructor standing by you is Master Durable Six. We seek a chance, sir. Nothing more. Possibly someone gave you a chance? Give my sister one, please.”
The constable looked at the floor for a long moment. Able watched Sir B eye Jamie, evidently impressed with the lad’s courage and cleverness, two qualities essential to a successful Royal Navy career. Well done, he thought.
Cornwall didn’t speak. As Able returned his attention to the constable, he realized that the man couldn’t speak. He swallowed over and over and dabbed at his eyes. Without a word, he picked up his cudgel and quietly left the room, and moments later, the house.
Since her brother and refuge was on his feet, Betty leaned against Meridee, whose arm went around her shoulders as naturally as if she hired maids of all work at midnight all the time.
“Impressive, Mr. MacGregor. To bed now, you scamps,” Able said to his lodgers.
They filed out obediently. Sir B turned his attention to the headmaster. “Master Croker, I don’t think our august presence was even necessary, do you?”
“No, sir, I do not,” the headmaster replied, with the smallest twitch of his lips. “It appears that Mr. MacGregor had the matter well in hand. Goodnight all.”
“One thought,” the captain said, as he stopped the headmaster. “What plans do you have for Master Blake? He seemed to be taking an odd interest in hungry folk nosing about the ash cans.”
“I have a monumental rebuke in mind,” Croker said. “Just short of termination, mind you, because teachers are hard to find. I’ll put him on notice. Will that do?”
It’s not enough, Able thought, as his uneasiness returned. He glanced at Meridee, whose thoughts seemed to mirror his. He opened his mouth to speak, and say what, he was not certain, but Sir B spoke first.
“A stout warning should suffice, Thaddeus,” the captain said. “Goodness but the hour is late. Gervaise, roll me away, if you please.”
“It is late, indeed,” the headmaster said. “I’ll call Blake to account tomorrow. Hopefully, that will be enough. Goodnight, my dears.”
“Here we are, alone at last,” Able joked when their remaining guests left. “Jamie, tell your sister goodnight and hurry back to your dormitory. She’s in good hands now.”
James gave his twin a quick peck on the cheek, told her not to worry, and hurried after the headmaster. Meridee tightened her arm around Betty and spoke quiet words of reassurance. In another moment, his wife and Portsmouth’s newest maid of all work walked arm in arm toward the kitchen.
Able watched them go, certain Betty MacGregor had no idea that she had stumbled upon a good pasture. She would learn. He saw the boys to bed again, after they ate the remaining rout cakes and settled down.
Uneasy and wishing he could have put voice to his fears, he returned to the sitting room and took a sheet of paper from the desk. Meridee found him there a few minutes later. He relaxed at the touch of her hands as she peered over his shoulder.
“What are you doing, my love?” she asked.
“I can’t forget that man’s face,” he said, and held up the drawing to the one remaining lamp in the room. “The man from the Bare Bones.”
“He looks like the devil incarnate,” Meri said, and tightened her grip on his shoulders.
“An ugly customer, to be sure,” Able said. He put the sketch in the drawer. “It’s a good likeness. If I see him again, I’ll know him.”
“You would anyway,” his practical wife said, as she let him lead her upstairs.
He allowed himself to sink into the mattress and delve into the serene luxury of thinking about nothing except his wife, his students, and only a little about force and acceleration, with some Euclid on the side. When Meri came to bed with a sigh of her own, he cuddled her close, a happy man.
“How did we fare, Meri?” he asked.
She put her leg over him, which, since he was not a slow man by any means, he knew was her favorite position for sleep. “Betty will do. She’s afraid of Mrs. Perry, but weren’t we all?”
“Aye, miss. How do you think my esteemed colleague Master Leonidas Blake will take a well-deserved scorching? Meri …?”
Silence. Meri was such a dear to start blowing bubbles against his chest. At least she didn’t snore too often.
Chapter Thirty
The curious hiring of Betty MacGregor felt to Meridee like an answer to a prayer and a welcome addition to the Six household. Able informed her the following day of Master Blake’s monumental scold, delivered by an irate headmaster.
“Master Croker told me that our dear student beater felt supremely put upon,” he told her, “when all he was doing was righteously announcing to the Portsmouth constabulary a poor girl nosing about the ash cans.” He had grabbed Meridee rushing about from afternoon duties to pull her onto his lap in the sitting room.
“Sir B told me that Master Croker had instituted a policy of never turning away a beggar. Why didn’t Master Blake just let her alone?” she asked.
Able grimaced. “I may be gloating about the verbal Dutch rub Thaddeus gave Master Blake, but I am still wondering what Blake’s game is.”
Meridee caressed his cheek. “I remember some ladies from my brother-in-law’s parish who could never wait to spread rumor and innuendo about, and generally ruffle the calm waters of St. Matthews Parish.” She shook her head. “There are some who seem to delight in muddying their nest.”
“Calm parish waters and muddy nests?” Able joked. “Dearest, when it comes to metaphors, you don’t precisely shine.”
“Is this my reward for marrying such a man?” Meridee asked the ceiling, which made her husband laugh, and at least try to shake off the introspection he had fallen into.
“I feel a little sorry for Blake,” he said. “If I had been tongue-lashed that way, I’d be skulking around and avoiding people.”
“He deserved it.”
“True, but I cannot trust a man who will sneak into a grogshop like the Bare Bones and chat with a pimp. He worries me.”
Meridee hugged him, then reminded him that dinner might come faster if she wasn’t cuddled on his lap.
“I’m in no
hurry,” he said. “I don’t worry about my next meal anymore.”
She had no objection to her current position, but there were others in the household to consider. “There are still five—I’m adding Betty—who do worry about that next meal.”
“True. I’ll sit here and think.”
Always amazed at his capacity to withdraw inside his fine brain, Meridee remained in the doorway a moment. Soon his head tipped to one side and he started to breathe in a slow rhythm that wasn’t sleep. She knew his eyes moved under their closed lids. He had explained to her that he saw scroll after scroll reel through his brain with writing on it, or merely numbers. He assured her it all made perfect sense.
It does if you’re brilliant beyond imagining, Meridee thought.
Her husband opened his eyes and craned his neck around to see her at the door. “I’m thinking about liquids, solids, and gasses,” he told her, and closed his eyes again.
“What? No Euclid? He might become jealous of liquids and gasses,” she teased.
“Since you asked nicely enough, Prop. Three this time: ‘Given two unequal straight lines, to cut off from the greater a straight line equal to the less.’ ”
She ran back to his chair and gave his head a shake. “Take that, Euclid!” she said and kissed the top of Able’s head. “Now he’s all mixed in with the solids and gasses.”
“Meri, are you getting tired of Euclid?”
“I’d rather he stayed here in the sitting room and not in our bed.” She looked around to make certain no one overheard and spoke into his ear. “You’re all the lover I need.”
“Aha! You prefer physics under the sheets to geometry,” he exclaimed.
“If you drag in Sir Isaac Newton, you will all three be on the sofa down here,” she warned. “And anyone else roaming around in your head.”
He grinned, then resumed his dream-breathing, as she called it.
The atmosphere around the dinner table was almost jolly that evening. Meridee wasn’t confident the boys would say anything about Master Blake’s scolding, which Able had assured her was common knowledge throughout St. Brendan’s. Apparently scuttlebutt traveled as fast in a maritime academy as aboard the smallest jolly boat in the fleet.
Trust forthright Nick to make the comment all of them must have felt. Still under the influence of life in a vicar’s household, Meridee had instituted a nightly blessing on that evening meal. In rotation, it was Nick’s turn. He clasped his hands together, looking around until everyone seemed suitably reverent.
He bowed his head. “For what Master Blake received today, may the Lord make us truly thankful, and bless the food, too. Amen.”
His fellow students giggled, then cast little glances her way. Meridee knew she should give Nick what Able dubbed her fishy-eyed stare, but she didn’t, especially when Able opened his eyes and usurped her own patented glare with one of his own.
“Nick, all of you, remember this: when you are in positions of power, be firm, but do not strike someone for a wrong answer or even a hesitation,” he said. “And there is no need to make fun of Master Blake. He must have troubles of his own we know nothing about.”
“Aye, sir,” Nick replied in a small voice. His contrition lasted only a moment; the child was blooming into an everlasting optimist, despite his workhouse toil. “Master, what did you do when an instructor hit you?”
“I bore it because I had to, and resolved never to treat anyone that way,” Able said promptly. “So should you. Mr. Hoyt, please pass the turnips.”
Dame Routine reigned supreme as Meridee continued to learn her duties, limits, and obligations to her household and her remarkable husband. The most pressing issue she thankfully left in the hands of her lodgers, who spent several evenings in the kitchen, grouped around the handsome wooden plaque Mrs. Perry had produced out of nowhere and which everyone dubbed the perfect place for the wharf rat’s bones.
She observed how quickly Betty MacGregor had folded herself into the calm waters of the Six household. However dreadful her workhouse experience, there were no marks against her domestic abilities, and so Mrs. Perry informed Meridee.
“She’s a quick one, make no mistake, and can lay a fire as well as I can,” Mrs. Perry said. “Her workhouse matron knew her duties.”
“Does Betty need extra food at night?” Meridee asked, as Davey Ten supervised the correct positioning of the rat’s lengthy tail.
“Aye, miss,” the cook said. “I remember hungry days, myself.”
“You’re welcome to anything from the larder too,” Meridee told her, which earned her a pat on the cheek that left her feeling not much older than Betty.
Jamie MacGregor, with Headmaster Croker’s permission, spent part of his evenings visiting with his twin in the kitchen. Sometimes they talked; sometimes they simply sat close together, no words needed.
“There is a telepathy between twins,” Able told Meridee one evening after they sent Jamie back across the street. “Some of the early Royal Society members—they were a strange lot—experimented with twins by putting them in separate rooms and asking each to record what the other twin was thinking.”
“That sounds absurd.”
Able shrugged. “Seventy-eight percent of the time, they knew.”
There was general rejoicing throughout the kitchen the night rattus norvegicus, glued to his plaque, received Nick’s carefully painted title of Gunwharf Rats, in big letters. Underneath, Mrs. Perry herself had placed eyehole screws, from which hung small wooden strips bearing the names of everyone in the younger class.
“It’s a masterpiece,” Able agreed. “Gentlemen, take it to my classroom tomorrow.” He looked closer at the plaque. “You forgot one name—mine.”
To Meridee’s surprise, John Mark, quiet John Mark, spoke up. “Master, you feel like a Gunwharf rat?”
“Now and then,” their instructor replied. He reached for Meridee’s hand and squeezed it. “Just remember to not let what happened turn you bitter.”
Meridee wished the matter could have rested there, resolved, but there was no avoiding the tension she soon felt from her “boys,” as she increasingly thought of them. In the weeks after Master Blake’s chastisement, genuine camaraderie seemed to dribble away. She tried to get them to chat again at the dinner table, but no one had anything to say.
She took the matter to Able one night, after tucking in four boys who were now reluctant to meet her eyes. She almost hated to bother her husband. He seemed to have preoccupations of his own, having mentioned rumors to her of ships in Plymouth and Torquay being refitted for duty. Even she, no nautical observer, had noticed more ships in the Solent.
She thought of Sir B’s warnings and watched him as closely as she watched her workhouse children, until she realized they were all masters of evasion.
Able lay in bed, frowning, a book in his lap. She was accustomed to him ruffling through pages at unimagined speed, but he just sat there. This won’t do, Meridee thought. She took the book from his slack hands and sat on him.
He flashed her a look of real irritation, which startled her with its intensity. Putting up her hands, she said, “One moment, Able. It is I. Remember me?”
His face changed, but there was no overlooking his discomfort. “Able, please,” she whispered. “What is the matter?”
“You won’t understand.”
“Of course I won’t,” she exclaimed with some spirit. “There is one thing you must never overlook: I love you to utter distraction. Tell me, please.”
He gently pulled her off his stomach, tucking her close to his side. Calmly, with no emphasis, he told her about his earlier dream of staring at the Solent from Sir B’s sitting room and watching it fill up with frigates and ships of the line, all under full sail for Europe.
“It’s coming, Meri,” he said. He turned away and couldn’t look at her.
“What else, Able? Please don’t shut me out.”
“I looked out my classroom window today and the Solent was red,” he said, his
voice barely above a whisper.
She held him tight until he slept, then tried to compose herself for slumber.
It wouldn’t come, so she lay next to her husband, her heart aching to help, with no knowledge of how.
She heard sobbing from the room across the hall and knew she could help someone, if not her lovely man. At Davey and Stephen’s door, she listened and heard nothing. Quietly she put her ear against John Mark and Nick’s door and went inside.
What she saw startled her and she gasped out loud. All four boys were cuddled close to each other on one bed, in tears.
“Dear God, whatever is the matter?” she asked as she knelt on the floor by the bed. “How can I help?”
Four tear-stained faces looked back at her. She held out her arms, felt her heart ache at their hesitation. Nick was the first to move, nearly leaping into her arms. The others followed, weeping.
Stunned, she held them close—as close as she wanted Able to hold her. What is the matter with their world? she asked herself as she rocked back and forth.
This would never do. She sat back and looked into Davey Ten’s swollen eyes, then cupped her hands around his face.
“Tell me what is the matter,” she said firmly. “I won’t leave this room until you do. David Ten, you and I have knelt in the mud and the rain and picked through rat bones together. I deserve an answer.”
Slowly, he nodded. He looked at the others, then back at her.
“It’s Master Blake,” he whispered, as though the teacher stood in the hallway listening. “If we have a wrong answer, he twists the skin on our arms and dares us to cry out.”
He sobbed out loud, then took her hand and put it on his head. She felt one bump and then another. Alarmed, Meridee touched the other boys’ heads and felt the same—wicked injuries no one could see.
“Roll up your sleeve, Nick,” she insisted. “Do it now.”
By the light of the lamp she had brought into the room, she saw cruel red marks. She touched the bruise and Nick flinched.
“We weren’t supposed to say anything, we four,” Stephen Hoyt whispered.
