The Unlikely Master Genius

by Carla Kelly

  “Macaroons from my favorite baker,” she said and undid the ribbon on the box. “Save me one.”

  He popped one in his mouth and rolled his eyes. “Magnificent.”

  “Bartleby swears that he gives us the day’s leftovers. Between you and me, I believe he bakes us fresh goods and thinks I won’t know the difference.”

  “My dear Meridee Six, I do believe you gather admirers like a magnet attracts metal filings. I have some news for you.”

  “Say on, sir, and stop filling your face with macaroons,” she teased.

  “You brought them, remember,” he teased back. “I have a friend from earlier days, one Bradford Quaiffe, who is sailing to New South Wales with his wife and hopeful family.”

  “On purpose?” she asked, dubious, which meant it was her turn to reach for a macaroon. Hours of reading depressing log entries from the Hillsborough convinced her that any passage to Australia was unhealthy in the extreme.

  “Yes, Mrs. Six, on purpose! He has accepted a position as chief clerk in the colonial government offices, and sails next week from Plymouth.”

  “I’m happy for him,” she said politely.

  “Quaiffe and his wife belong to the Society of Friends,” Sir B said. “They’ve suffered their share of indignities for their religion, and now children at school have started bullying their little ones. A change is in order.”

  She knew Sir B well enough now to at least suspect he had something to do with the events at hand. “And you found him employment in Australia,” she said, knowing it was more fact than question.

  “I happen to know a lot of people in more exalted circles than St. Brendan’s,” he replied, vague as usual when she tried to press him for details. “He was grateful for my help, and I asked for his.” He leaned forward. “Meridee, he is perfectly willing to take Stephen Hoyt along with him.”

  Speechless, she reached for another macaroon, and he slapped her hand. “Mine,” he said. “What do you think?”

  Could it be more obvious what she thought, especially when she started fumbling in her reticule for a handkerchief? She swallowed, she sniffed, then she boohooed into a handkerchief that Sir B generously provided, since she couldn’t find hers.

  “I am going to assume that is a yes, you noisy baggage,” he teased.

  She nodded. After a vigorous blowing of her nose that made her laugh because Sir B put his hands to his face in mock horror, she managed, “Yes!”

  “What a relief, since I already told Mr. Quaiffe that I would have one little boy ready to sail from Plymouth within the week,” Sir B told her.

  “You are nearly the best man I know,” Meridee said, and she never meant anything more. “Stephen has agreed to wait months and months for a letter back, and promises to never run away again, but his heart is already in New South Wales.”

  “Then we should put the rest of him there,” Sir B concluded. “I’ve already discussed the matter with Thaddeus, and he agrees. Will Able be disappointed?”

  “No. I believe he will be relieved,” she told him, uncertain how much of their intimate conversations she should share. She decided the captain needed to know. “Sir B, my dear husband will see this turn of events as saving one student from possible death in the fleet.”

  She opened her heart to Sir B, telling him of Able’s awful nightmare of his students drowning in blood. “I do everything I can to distract him from the way his mind turns at times, but I defy even the best keeper in the world to distract him from death. He’s far too intelligent to be tricked.”

  “Without question.”

  Meridee stood and paced the room. How much to tell this man? She stopped and regarded him, and knew she could tell him anything. What’s more, she had to. “When this war resumes and his lads are in danger, I fear it will go beyond the collapse I witnessed after Nick’s recovery. Sir Belvedere, I love him! What can we do?”

  No answer. Meridee went to the door. “I’ll have Stephen ready to travel.”

  More silence. She opened the door and looked back when Sir B cleared his throat. What am I doing here? she asked herself. I am treading in deep water.

  “I would fear more for Able, except for one thing, madam.”

  “Which is?”

  “He has a worthy keeper.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Despite Mrs. Perry’s concern, Meridee said she needed to rest and supplied no further commentary on her visit. She took off her shoes and lay down, long past questioning her decision to marry Sailing Master Durable Six.

  Without a qualm, she had brushed past the forest of red flags warning her away from such a decision. Life had been simpler when she was a spinster with not an expectation in the world, but she never wanted to retreat to that state again.

  What had changed in recent weeks, when she became even more aware of her husband’s startling intelligence, was that such a gift was more curse than blessing. She never doubted his ability to teach anything to anyone. This skill was evident to all who spent any time in his orbit as he instructed so casually in his classroom, shivered with his students in the stone basin, or sat on the floor playing jackstraws, where he turned sticks into geometry. He could forge the simplest game or comment into purpose, research, hypothesis, experiment, and analysis as his students learned almost without knowing they were learning. What was evident to no one but her was the toll it took on his heart.

  Only someone sharing intimate moments with Able Six could ever understand how his brain raced, caught in a remorseless cycle of thought. Coupled with the disturbing images of destruction to come, her man was trapped by a superabundance of emotions mingled with blinding knowledge that no ordinary person could even fathom. His genius ruled his life, and hers, too, whether she wished it so or not.

  She cherished moments when his thoughts turned only, or nearly only, to her. No matter what lay ahead, she wanted to be nowhere but in her husband’s arms, chatting through the day as normal people did, then drifting to sleep after general merrymaking that seemed to intensify as the threat of war came closer.

  With the departure of Master Fletcher to the fleet, Able had assumed the entire mathematical and navigational instruction at St. Brendan’s, much to Thaddeus Croker’s relief and approbation. “My God, but the man has amazing facility to bring a classroom of ordinary lads to unexpected potential,” the headmaster had told her one evening when she visited with Grace Croker while Able taught his two calculus students in their dining room.

  The cost is high, she wanted to tell the headmaster, but doubted he would hear her. Although nothing specific had reached them, all thoughts in Portsmouth focused on war, and soon. Ever the observer, Meridee had noticed how little the matter was spoken of, but how activity had increased along Gunwharf, as newly refitted ships loaded their cannons back on board. More seamen seemed to arrive daily, and more ships sailed. Silent for months, the ropewalk not far from St. Brendan’s announced its renewal with screeches and groans.

  She had extracted permission to take the younger class to visit the ropewalk. They had all come away fair amazed at the noisy work in the stone building some quarter mile in length, and suitably impressed with the fact that nearly four miles of rope found its way on board the average frigate.

  The smell of hot tar bothered her stomach, but that was nothing to the thrill of walking alongside the rope maker as he directed the twisting of thick strands into even more stout rope destined to support the sails that put wings to His Majesty’s fleet.

  Under Mrs. Perry’s direction, her little lodgers applied themselves to making wooden platforms to support ballast. When at dawn she asked him why, Able took a moment, her head pillowed against his shoulder, to explain the importance of proper arrangement of ballast to correct sailing.

  “Husband, you realize this is odd conversation, both of us naked,” she teased, which made him laugh and tug her closer. He was still smiling when he drifted back to sleep, his eyes calm this time under closed lids.

  Master Six taught his lads
how to distribute ballast on their simulated ships to keep them afloat. Meridee’s fingers grew scratchy from making small burlap bags for varying weights of miniature cargo.

  Stephen Hoyt’s last official duty as a St. Brendan the Navigator student was to stuff the bags with varying amounts of wood chips, soil, and iron filings. He had always worked quietly and soberly, but there was a difference now. Meridee saw it in the way he held himself. When she looked in his eyes, hope looked back at her. He was going to find his mother.

  Able had stressed the “might be” part of the equation that last night, as Meridee counted and packed stockings, smallclothes, and shirts into her husband’s extra duffel.

  “It held my gear through many a voyage, but it still won’t pack itself,” Able said, as he sat on Stephen’s bed and folded the clothing even tighter. When most of Stephen’s clothing and four books, courtesy of Grace Croker, were stowed away shipshape, there was still room for more.

  “Are we forgetting anything?” Meridee asked, looking around at the spartan room.

  “Nay, Mam. I didn’t come with much, think on,” Stephen reminded her.

  “Just with what was between your ears, my dear,” she said with a smile and a look at Able. “That’s all you really need.”

  “Know this, too, Mr. Hoyt,” Able said seriously. “You might not find your mother right away. You might not find her at all. That’s the risk you run.”

  Stephen nodded, but the hope never left his eyes.

  “One thing more.” Able left the room and returned with a collapsing telescope. He held it out to Stephen. “Every lad on a lengthy voyage should spend some time in observation. Use your log to record something every day, including fish sighted, whales blowing, and squalls approaching. Keep a record, Mr. Hoyt.”

  It was almost too much for the workhouse boy. He stared at the telescope in his hands. “Sir, no one has ever given me anything,” he managed to say.

  “Mr. Bartleby sneaks you the occasional pasty from the bakery,” she said.

  “Then looks at me as if daring me to say no, Mam,” Stephen said. “I expect he’ll find another excuse, once I leave.”

  “I expect he will, my dear,” Meridee said, then held out her arms to him. “We’ll miss you, but it’s a good kind of missing, isn’t it, Able?”

  Silent, he gathered the two of them close. “Remember what you’ve learned, boy, and find your mother.”

  Sober in his black uniform with the St. Brendan’s crest, Stephen Hoyt climbed aboard Sir B’s carriage, where the captain’s valet waited to accompany the boy to Plymouth and the HMS Dauntless, frigate, sailing to the Antipodes. To Meridee’s relief, there was also a plainly dressed lady in the carriage. She stepped down long enough to introduce herself as Mrs. Bradford Quaiffe.

  “Rest assured that Stephen will be well-tended in my household,” Mrs. Quaiffe said, as she patted Meridee’s hand. “The captain says we can mail letters home when we reach Rio de Janeiro to take on supplies. I’ll make certain Stephen writes to thee.”

  And then he was gone. Meridee held Able’s hand close to her body as they watched the carriage travel to the end of the street. Her heart tender, Meridee saw the baker and his wife wave to the carriage as it passed.

  “Back to work, my love,” Able said as he put his arm around her shoulder and turned her toward their front steps, where their other lodgers stood. “Plenty of us still have need of you—me more than most,” he whispered in her ear. “I spy three melancholy lads. Should we move Davey permanently into the room with Nick and John Mark?”

  “I’ll ask them.”

  “You’ll stay with me, won’t you, Mrs. Six?” he teased.

  “Even if I blow bubbles on your chest?” she asked, joking in turn, even though his eyes were serious. Perhaps he would always wonder a little if someone was going to come for him; workhouse ways seemed to die hard, if at all.

  “Aye, Mam. Even then.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  War came, not with a bang or tumult, but with a tap on the front door, and the whisper of a late-night meeting in Thaddeus Croker’s chambers.

  The boys were in bed and Meri was putting the finishing touches on what had become the nightly ritual of reading, prayers, and a final hug. Able had returned to the sitting room, craving a moment of as much solitude as his noisy brain ever permitted him to think through tomorrow’s lessons.

  Was he a creature of ritual, too? He blamed Mrs. Perry for a nightly baking of bread that always drew him into the kitchen for the buttered heel of a loaf of brown bread. He had never known white bread in the workhouse, and certainly not butter, but the fragrance, texture, and odor of too much butter meeting with the coarser brown bread invariably sent him upstairs to bed with a smile.

  He had explained to Meri with some dignity that his only purpose in the kitchen was to make certain all was shipshape below before he relinquished the HMS Six to the night watch, but she saw right through him. “Call it a ritual or whatever you wish, but you had better bring me a piece of that bread, too, if you know what’s good for you,” she warned.

  David Ten had begun his own ritual in Able’s classroom. No math scholar he, Davey began what Able mentally assigned the name of Gunwharf Rat Ritual.

  After a particularly grueling written examination involving dread fractions and decimals, Davey survived to fight another day. As his fellow students filed out for their next class, Davey had walked over to the wall where the Gunwharf Rat hung. He touched the rat’s tail, then left the room. Soon the others did the same after each test, touching rattus norvegicus’s tail.

  His own heel eaten and buttered bread in hand for Meri, Able bid the kitchen ladies goodnight. From the hallway, he heard the soft tap on the already locked front door. He knew what it meant. He stood there a moment as his brain raced, then opened the door.

  Thaddeus Croker’s valet had merely to look at Able and with solemnity, declare, “Master Croker’s chamber, as soon as ever possible.”

  He had been waiting for the summons, dreading it, and trying to avoid it, although every corner of his brain had mocked him with the word war, repeated ten times a second over the past month. Not even Meri’s lovemaking had entirely blocked that drone, though he never told her.

  He walked upstairs slowly, bread in hand. She sat in bed already, hair brushed, waiting for the bread. Looking down, he noticed he had eaten half of it on the way. “I suppose I was hungrier than usual,” he said, and handed it to her.

  She took it, her eyes on his face. “What now?” she asked, and got out of bed.

  “I’m been summoned to Master Croker’s chambers,” he said, and turned away to find his shoes.

  “War,” she said. It was not a question.

  He nodded, unable to reply.

  “I’m coming.”

  “No, love, it’s my summons,” he reminded her.

  “And you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” she told him. “I will sit with Grace in her room, but I am coming with you.”

  He knew better than to extend an argument he had already lost. Truth to tell, her hand in his as they crossed the street buoyed him up. Magnanimous in victory, Meri had already given him the remaining bread and butter; she was never one to chortle over success.

  Headmaster Croker seemed not at all surprised to see them both. “You’ll sit with Grace,” he told Meri. “She knew you were coming too.”

  Master Fletcher and Sir B waited in Thaddeus’s office. “You first, Master Fletcher,” Croker said with no preamble.

  “I’m sailing tomorrow with the fleet,” the former instructor said. “I wanted you to know.”

  “Where away?” Able asked.

  “Malta.”

  Of course. Sir B had assured them that Henry Addison’s ministry had stalled for fourteen months, unwilling to return that strategic real estate to the Knights of St. John, Malta’s legal owners. Sure as the world, the French would seize it, if the Royal Navy was not there to stop them.

  Silence rul
ed, broken finally by Sir B. “Are any of us surprised?” he asked. “I thought not.” To the headmaster, he held out a sheet of paper that had been folded twice and sealed in that manner employed by Admiralty. The seal was broken. “This came my way by special messenger this evening.”

  Thaddeus read it to himself, then out loud. “ ‘With the consent of all parties concerned, you, Thaddeus Croker, are requested and required to furnish to the fleet four lads of St. Brendan the Navigator School to serve as apprentice sailing masters to the four captains listed below.’ ”

  Thaddeus named them, and Able felt his heart relax a little. He knew the men as sober, reliable, and of utmost courage. They would never shy away from a fight.

  “ ‘Prepare them for the fleet,’ ” Thaddeus continued. “ ‘They sail with the tide on or about the tenth of April, Year of our Lord 1803.’ Signed John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty. There you have it, gentlemen.”

  He looked around the small circle and stopped at Able. “Render me the names of your four best students, Master Six. We are at war.”

  “This is a hard decision,” Able said, even though he knew it was anything but.

  So, apparently, did Sir B. “Come, come, Able. You know precisely whom to select. I daresay you have known for weeks.” He smiled at Able, and Able hated him for a moment, but only just. “That is your dilemma, my friend. We know you know and you cannot deceive us.”

  Certainly, I know, Able thought. I wish I could say otherwise, but then I would be a worse liar than Meri Six. She is dreadful, except when it comes to not breaking a little boy’s heart.

  “Janus Yarmouth, without question,” he said promptly, hating every word that came from his mouth as he sent his boys to the fleet and possible death. “Jamie MacGregor. He is proficient enough, but his greater skill lies in leadership. Eventually he will command men, I do not doubt.” He named the two other students in his upper class equally worthy and sat back, exhausted and sore of heart.