by Carla Kelly
She grabbed her husband, and he held her close, much as Stephen had held onto her. “He wants to find his family.”
Headmaster Croker spoke to her next. “We’ll have to find them, won’t we? Go inside, you two sillies. St. Brendan’s doesn’t pay you enough to heat a March morning.”
They adjourned to the parlor, where Stephen sat. Mrs. Perry brought in biscuits and tea, then stalled so long that Able told her to sit down, too.
“We are all involved in this,” he said. “Headmaster?”
Thaddeus Croker gave Stephen a long, measured look. “We can’t countenance running away, lad,” he said, his tone firm but kind.
“My parents—”
“Are on the other side of the world,” Thaddeus finished. “Will you get there someday? I don’t doubt it, with your determination, but you must be better prepared for such a journey. Will you at least agree to that?”
Stephen sat in silence. He put his hand in Meridee’s, finally. “Aye, sir,” he said softly. “Mayhap I realized that when I went no farther than the baker’s shop.”
“Mayhap you did,” the headmaster agreed. “P’raps we can at least find where they are and send a letter.”
Stephen gasped. “You would do that for me?”
“Aye, lad,” the headmaster said. “It will take some time, and you must practice patience.”
“Aye again, sir,” Stephen said.
Meridee heard something different in his voice. Gone was the uncertainty she had noticed from his first day in her care. He sat a little taller, too. Hope is a useful tool, she thought, touched to see its application before her eyes. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.
The headmaster rose and so did the others, deferring to his evident leadership. “I want you and Master Six to return to your classroom.”
“Fractions await us, lad,” Able said. “Let’s leave Mistress Six and the headmaster to plot our next course.”
Stephen nodded and let go of Meridee’s hand. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“You have to trust us to help you,” Able said.
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“I didn’t either, for a long time,” Able told him. “I assure you Mrs. Six is deserving of all your trust. Come. We have work to do.”
“Mrs. Six, I have a plan,” Thaddeus Croker said after the front door closed, and Mrs. Perry had returned to the kitchen. “Are you game for a visit to London?”
Meridee shook her head, feeling not at all game. She had been to London once in her life, and the visit had satisfied all her curiosity on the subject of large cities: noise, filth, fog, and confusion. “My goodness, alone?”
“Heavens, no. Able would never agree to such a thing, nor would I ask it,” Croker said. “I have contracted with my sister, Miss Grace Croker, to finish this school term while we search for a permanent replacement for the unlamented Master Blake. She is in London at our townhouse. I will send a message by post this afternoon. You and Stephen will travel to London in a post chaise, and you will stay in my townhouse while you three visit the Board of Prisoners.”
“Oh, I don’t—”
“Nothing to it. With my sister along, there is not a government door that would dare remain shut to you. I will send a note around within the half hour to Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony. He will prepare a letter to Admiralty House, and we will see what happens.”
“But London …” Meridee said, irritated with her lack of courage.
“When you and Grace have accomplished your purpose, she will return to Pompey with you and teach Master Blake’s class.”
“No stick to beat the boys?”
“Grace needs no weapons to exact obedience,” he said. “Will you do this for one little boy?”
“Aye, Headmaster Croker,” Meridee said, shoving aside her fears as another of her duties made itself plain. “I will be his advocate.”
“He will have none better,” was the headmaster’s quiet reply.
Mrs. Perry frowned over the news after the headmaster left. “You’ll be safe from Portsmouth to London?” she asked, her tone decidedly militant.
“Master Croker said Stephen and I will be taking a post chaise,” Meridee said. She sat down at the kitchen table and made no objection when Mrs. Perry slid the plate of biscuits her way. “Why is he being so kind to this little fellow?”
Mrs. Perry looked around and noticed Betty polishing silver by the window. She moved closer. “I’ve heard rumors from the kitchen staff across the street. He seems to be atoning for some misdeed, but no one knows what, poor man.”
“How could this be part of that?”
Mrs. Perry shrugged.
Meridee spent the afternoon fretting over a bolt to London. She had almost convinced herself that it wouldn’t happen, until a post rider stopped by her house, removed his hat and bowed, and declared he would be by tomorrow morning at five o’clock to pick her up, along with one small boy.
Supper was a quiet affair, with the other boys sneaking glances at Stephen Hoyt, who ate everything on his plate as he always did and kept his eyes directed at the mashed turnips in the bowl in front of him.
Able pushed his plate away first. “Lads, Mrs. Six and Stephen are going to London tomorrow to the Board of Prisoners.” He raised both hands against their shocked expressions. “Nay, lads. Excuse my clumsy diction. He’s going to learn which ship his parents sailed on, and we’ll try to track them down.”
He leaned forward then, eyes intense. “No one must run away to Pompey’s docks ever again. There are too many evil men willing to prey upon young boys. Nick knows that.”
“Aye, sir,” Nick replied.
“I had my troubles, too,” Able said softly. He directed his attention to Stephen. “What were your parents sentenced for? How old were you?”
“I was five, I think,” he said. His eyes went to his plate. “Da was nabbed for poaching. We were hungry. And me mam was nabbed because she did not turn’m in.”
English justice. Meridee could see it: a man wrenched from his family because he trapped a hare or trolled for fish in a stream belonging to some lord who never visited the property and who, if asked, would have been hard-pressed to explain why a hare or a string of trout even mattered to him. Sentenced to another hemisphere for hunger.
“Do you know the length of their sentences?” Able asked.
The boy shook his head. “A long time, is all I know.”
Stephen seemed inclined to talk, and the conversation continued as they adjourned to the sitting room, usually the place for jackstraws and simple card games she was teaching them. Stephen could have sat anywhere, but he stayed by her side this night.
“Did you see them again after that court appearance?” Able asked.
“Nay, sir. They whisked us away,” Stephen replied. “Mam cried and held back, but she was shackled to Da. What could we do?”
Meridee bowed her head against such a picture in her mind, and wished she had no imagination. Able’s hand was warm against her back and it calmed her. What had Stephen just said?
“Us?”
“Me and me little brother. He was four and cried and cried.” Another sigh. “He died of the damp. Couldn’t stop coughing. My folks need to know. The matron told me Willy was better off. How can that be?”
“I don’t even want to think about such scenes,” Meridee declared frankly, after the boys were tucked in bed and she crossed the hall to their room, where Able sat staring into the fire. He held out his arms automatically and she sat on his lap.
“No floating tonight,” he said, speaking into her hair. “I’d rather keep my man parts where they belong, considering that you’ll be gone for a few days.”
“Oh, you,” she said softly and started on his trouser buttons.
“Suppose we don’t learn anything in London?” she asked him later, after the room had quit throbbing. Funny thing about old houses.
“You’ll learn enough, if the records are good. Stephen needs to send a
letter to Australia. No telling if it will be answered, or what has happened in the past few years, but he needs to send it.”
Meridee composed herself for sleep. “I’m probably going to dream about a little boy dropping a letter into a great ocean and expecting it to somehow arrive on the shores of Australia. I’ll be awake all night.”
“Not after that massive bit of pleasantry we just enjoyed,” he said. “Before we married, had you any concept of the soporific effects of coitus?”
She poked him in a tender spot. “I also had no concept of a man who could go from lover to scientist while he’s still breathing heavily. Soporific effects?”
“I’ll give you one minute before you are blowing bubbles against my chest.”
“I don’t do that!” she declared. She would have to ask him someday if she was a scientific experiment.
“Aye, you do, and I love it. And you. Go to sleep.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Meridee and Stephen arrived in London at the end of a long day. Trust Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony to smooth their way. Just before the post chaise arrived on their doorstep, Sir B’s man brought around an official-looking letter, as well as a note tucked inside an envelope containing money, telling her not to argue and try to send it back. A little luxury never hurt a body, he had written. Besides, you’re on St. Brendan’s business, and St. Brendan is my business, too. B.
“I never argue,” Able said, enjoying her distress, or so it seemed to Meridee.
Strange how sitting in a comfortable post chaise could be so exhausting. As much as London with its noise and size frightened her, Meridee felt only relief when the post chaise pulled up in front of a three-story row house on Half Moon Street.
The front door opened and Stephen couldn’t help staring. He backed up to Meridee and whispered, “Gor, but the Crokers are a tall lot, Mam. She’s a reg’lar Long Meg.”
Tall lot, indeed. Miss Grace Croker came down the steps, owning every single tread with a dignity that made Meridee want to back up, too, except she was the adult. She came forward instead and they met in the middle of the sidewalk.
A curtsy from each was proper, then Meridee held out her hand. She saw a starchy sort of kindness in the lady’s eyes.
“I am Meridee Six,” she said, breezing right past the more formal Mrs. Six, because it didn’t seem necessary. Able had already remarked on her ability to see right into a person, a trait he thought he lacked, and Meridee understood what he meant.
“Grace Croker,” the woman said, and clasped Meridee’s extended hand in hers. “We have a little boy to assist.” She laughed, which made even the sober Stephen smile. “I owe you the thanks. Life was getting slow here.”
Tea revived Meridee. Stephen needed no reviving. Like her brother, Grace Croker seemed to have an instinct about little boys. Meridee listened with delight as the tall woman prompted the ordinarily quiet boy to describe the rat they had cleaned and mounted on a plaque in their classroom.
“All nine of us are the Gunwharf Rats,” he told her proudly as he polished off the last of the petits fours and shook his head over another plate of them, offered by the maid who just happened to be standing by with reinforcements.
“I am eager to meet all the Rats,” Grace said. She turned her head when a personage of near-majesty who must be the butler cleared his throat. “Nash, please escort our young guest upstairs to his room. Dinner will be at six.”
Alarmed, Stephen looked at Meridee as though she were his lifeline. Grace noticed immediately. “You will be in the room right next to Mrs. Six.” She touched his shoulder. “If that proves not close enough, I strongly suspect Mrs. Six would have no objection to a cot in her room.”
“None whatsoever,” Meridee said. “I’ll be upstairs in a few minutes, Stephen. This is a good moment for you to write in your log about what we saw today.”
Equanimity restored, he followed the butler from the sitting room, after one glance back.
“He is keeping a log already?” Grace asked.
“Able—Master Six—requires that of all his students,” Meridee explained. “ ‘Ye shood stay-airt yoong to lay-ern yer dooties,’ ” she said, in perfect imitation of her husband’s Dumfries accent.
Grace laughed again, that hearty sound going right to Meridee’s heart, because after only ten hours away from him, she missed her man. “My brother tells me that Master Six is a complete and utter Genuine Article.”
“He is,” Meridee agreed, feeling as at home here as with one of her own sisters. “There isn’t anyone quite like him.” She considered a moment. “Now that I think on it, no one at St. Brendan’s is like anyone I have ever met before.” She took a chance. “You will fit right in.”
“I could not be more delighted with my new calling in life than if King George himself had summoned me to duty,” Grace said. “Er, dootie. You cannot imagine the boredom of life here.” She clasped her hands in her lap, which Meridee already sensed was less a ladylike mannerism than a need to contain the exuberance bottled up inside this tall woman.
“Portsmouth and St. Brendan’s are never dull,” Meridee assured her.
Not one to waste a moment, she described the situation and why they were here. “Able and your brother feel Stephen will never function to his potential if he cannot know more about his parents and where they are. We’re to learn what we can.”
“So we shall.” Grace picked up a sheet of paper from the end table and handed it to Meridee. “I received this from someone rejoicing in the name of Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony, giving us carte blanche to roam the Admiralty itself, once we have established which ship the Hoyts sailed on.”
“That man!” Meridee exclaimed after she read the letter. “He seems to know precisely what we will need. ‘In the bowels of that building, perhaps we should call it a catacomb where misdeeds and triumphs go to perish, you will find the Royal Navy logs of each convict convey,’ ” she read. “He does have a way with words.”
“Thaddeus has mentioned Sir B, as he calls him,” Grace said. “Will I like him?”
“More than you know,” Meridee said.
“Thaddeus assures me I will only be at St. Brendan’s to teach until the end of the term,” Grace said. “He promises I will return soon enough to Half Moon Street to continue my boring life.”
“He never said that,” Meridee chided gently.
“No, but it is a boring life,” Grace assured her. “I intend to make myself so valuable at St. Brendan the Navigator School that I will be able to put the furniture under Holland covers here and take the knocker off the door.” She looked kindly at Meridee. “You have purpose and I need purpose, too.”
After they spent a pleasant evening in Grace’s company—Stephen serious and close to her side—Meridee quietly arranged for that cot in her room, plus a small snack for the middle of the night. She sat beside Stephen’s cot for his nightly cry, then tucked the extra pillow on her own bed close to her side. Missing her husband, she went to sleep.
They headed for the Office of Criminal Business as soon as the earliest morning traffic died down. If this is calm, I am grateful I live in raffy-scaffy Portsmouth, she thought as their carriage moved slowly through streets with strange smells and shouting people.
“I lived in little Pomfrey in a vicarage with my sister and her family,” she told Grace. “Then it was Portsmouth. I doubt I could manage London.”
“Then thank the Lord you are with me,” Grace said. She sat calm and above all tall, which seemed to Meridee to be almost a character trait of its own. “Here we are. Brave faces, everyone.”
“Please, Mam, what is this place?” Stephen asked as the coachman deposited them on the sidewalk in front of a magnificent building.
“Someone in the last century decreed that London didn’t have enough imposing structures, hence Somerset House,” Grace said. “Even the Royal Society is housed here.” She took in Stephen’s puzzled look. “That’s where the brilliant men of our age hold forth wi
th experiments and treatises.”
“Master Six should be there,” he said, then frowned. “But he is a bastard wharf rat, too, and these are probably proper gentlemen.”
Meridee was used to plain language, but she saw Grace was startled. “H’mm,” the lady said, but she recovered quickly. “Some rules in our stuffy society need to change.”
“As for now, we’ll find the Office of Criminal Records and then the Navy Board,” Meridee said. She took a deep breath, frightened nearly out of her shoes, except that Stephen Hoyt was looking at her as if she did this every day.
A porter directed them to a high desk where they faced their first hurdle, a clerk. “Gatekeepers are sometimes annoying little fellows,” Grace said under her breath.
This gatekeeper surprised them. “We’ve been expecting you,” he said, peering down at them from his great height. “Follow me, please.”
Meridee exchanged a startled glance with Grace Croker, and Stephen Hoyt took her hand. At the end of the corridor, the clerk ushered them into an office full of ledgers and occupied by one small man, who stood and bowed.
Will wonders never cease? Meridee asked herself, as she curtsied. “I am Mrs. Six, and this is Miss Croker and Stephen Hoyt,” she said. “We have come to—”
“I know why you are here, madam,” the man said. He indicated a letter on his desk with a familiar crest. “Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony directed me to locate ship’s manifests and whatever else you might need.” He bowed again. “I am Edmund Guillory, chief of the Office of Criminal Records.”
“Heavens, Captain St. Anthony is everywhere,” Grace murmured, as Mr. Guillory gestured toward a long table and pulled out a chair. “You first, Meridee.”
Meridee sat and removed her bonnet. When the three of them were seated, Mr. Guillory sat opposite Stephen Hoyt. “Lad, we are to find your parents?” he asked kindly, which further startled Meridee. She had expected a long face from someone searching for criminals, but Mr. Guillory seemed above that pettiness.
“Aye, sir,” Stephen said in a soft voice. “Me mam and da were transported.” He looked down at the table, shame coming off him in waves. Meridee took his hand.
