Unlikely Heroes (St. Brendan Book 3) Read online

  Able opened the door onto Saints Way, which was full of the ordinary and extraordinary people of Portsmouth, waiting for the procession. “So many people,” Meridee murmured.

  “I daresay Sir B is taking a few secrets to the grave,” he whispered to her. “His acquaintance far exceeded a baronet’s usual sphere. He was an unusual man, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded, then smiled at Ezekiel Bartleby – baker, consoler of Gunwharf Rats with sweets left at St. Brendan’s, and man who knew everything of interest on the street. Her smile faded, thinking that she would no longer need to take sugar-sided rout cakes to an invalid now past all pain and sorrow. Mr. Bartleby must have read her thoughts, because he patted his chest, then looked away.

  Followed by Mrs. Perry, Meridee and Able took the few steps down to the street and waited as six Royal Marines gentled the plain coffin into the waiting wagon, no fancy feather-decked hearse. It was a common navy vehicle, such as a victualer might use to move his kegs and boxes to the docks, ready to be stowed aboard a ship bound for a distant shore. Meridee felt her ready tears rise. Dear, dear Sir B, if you could lend a hand to my little one. She is also on a distant shore.

  “Why is it, Able, we knew he could not last, and yet we wish him with us still,” she said as he headed her toward the carriage. “Are we so selfish?”

  “I believe we are,” he said. She heard all his chagrin. “Oh, and what is this? It appears to me that our equally singular Grace St. Anthony is not going to go meekly to church in a carriage.”

  “Good,” Meridee said. “I’ll keep her company.”

  He took her arm. “If you’re up to it, Meri.”

  “I am. It’s not so far to St. Thomas.” I owe the great man, she thought, her heart full of sorrow and love. Sir B, you found the perfect place for Able Six and me.

  Grace took her hand when she crossed the street. They touched foreheads and Grace murmured, “Meri, join me, but only if you feel you can.”

  “It’s not so far,” she said, nodding to her man, who stood with his young crew beside the victualling wagon. “And you?”

  “We’ll hold each other up,” the new widow said, “much as we have held each other up on different occasions.” She looked at the sky. “It’s a fair day for my dear man. The wind is right, too, isn’t it?” She squeezed Meridee’s hand. “Tell me it is.”

  “It is, dear friend.”

  The short walk to Portsmouth’s cathedral only taxed her toward the end, but Grace was there to put a supporting arm around her waist. Grace leaned closer.

  “Meridee, how did you and I ever get entangled with navy men, of all specimens?” she asked. “They’re ribald and frank and have a certain reputation, and we’re ladies.”

  “Just lucky, perhaps,” Meridee said, looking at her husband ahead of them, doing the slow funeral walk with his Rats. He looked back at her now and then, always appraising. “I would change nothing.”

  “Nor I. More time would have been nice, but he was in such pain.” Grace spoke quietly, almost to herself.

  Two rows of dignitaries lined the steps outside St. Thomas. Meridee was not surprised to see the Elder and Younger Brothers of Trinity House, but there stood Billy Pitt, England’s Prime Minister, looking too old for his years and shaky on his feet.

  She sighed with relief when Able moved closer to Smitty and whispered to him, which sent the stalwart Rat to stand beside William Pitt, and hesitate not a moment to support him, even as some mourners gasped. There was no mistaking Mr. Pitt’s nod of gratitude, either.

  She didn’t know the officers – Royal Navy men, Royal Marines and a smattering of British Army – but many of them also wore the distinctive star designating them Knights of the Bath. There they stood, bareheaded as a mist fell, honoring one among their number who had left them too soon.

  She breathed deep of the incense inside the old church, wondering how many navy men had been laid to rest in this vicinity, and how many women mourned them. Please let me not be numbered among them, she thought, watching as the Gunwharf Rats stood their watch around the plain coffin.

  When William Pitt was seated, Smitty joined his fellow Rats. He did a strange thing first, walking behind the coffin and placing both hands on it. He touched his forehead to the flag draping the highly polished wood in a tender gesture she had not though to see from that formidable Rat who kept his secrets and confided in no one. He stood beside Able finally, their shoulders touching. She wondered who consoled whom.

  Meridee bowed her head, exhausted. She heard a murmur, a brief rustle of skirts, then the blessed relief of Able beside her, his arm around her.

  He only left her side when the service ended and the Rats listened for their note. Singing “Heart of Oak” was the perfect touch, the song Sir B wanted, the anthem of St. Brendan the Navigator School. She heard chuckles from the navy men around her. Some sang along.

  Not for Sir B a pampered spot among his ancestral dead on his little-used estate in the Hampshire countryside. He had insisted upon a plot outside St. Thomas, Portsmouth’s cathedral, a place with a view of the water. She and Grace followed the coffin carried now by the Gunwharf Rats into God’s Acre, with its collection of wells and ne’er do wells, lowlife and high livers of a navy town.

  “I have often thought that there was a shadier side to Sir B that he never shared with anyone, his wife included,” Grace said as she and Meridee followed the coffin out of the church. “He was no particular angel.” She gestured at the grave markers large and mostly small around them, then turned her gaze to the docks and tall-masted ships. “I loved him.”

  They held hands as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, he who had conducted a most impeccable funeral service inside, continued with majestic words, the last resource of finite humans contemplating the great unknown. He stood before the coffin, looking down for a long time. He raised his eyes to heaven.

  “’Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower…’”

  The hard words smote Meridee’s heart. She thought of her man, and the Rats, and the danger only miles across the Channel, where a dictator of no mean skill strutted and postured, threatening all manner of harm to her darlings, usurping the Lord God Almighty in his desire to ordain death. Cut down like a flower, indeed, sir, she thought. It will be a fight to the death, as it has been for decades.

  But this was no time to tell the Lord His business, she decided. We do have a short time, sir, she acknowledged. Pardon me if I whine. You are right, of course. We are puny creatures.

  The graveside service ended, following one final prayer, spoken louder than the first, because the wind had picked up. Meridee watched her husband raise his face to the wind. She looked around, amused to see the other seafarers do the same. Trust Sir B to request a perfect wind for ships to sally forth from Portsmouth, bent on destruction of the French. Trust God to humor him.

  She knew it was time for her and Grace to depart, to leave the lowering of the coffin into the ground to shipmates and brother officers. She released Grace’s hand, as the widow moved to the coffin one last time for the touch of her lips to smooth wood.

  As Grace took her final farewell on earth from the man she loved best, Meridee observed the Gunwharf Rats, each almost as dear to her as her own son. She knew their stories and their sorrow. She loved them all.

  She couldn’t have explained to anyone the emotion she felt when her glance settled on Smitty. He still stood beside her husband, his face a study in contemplation. She had always thought him a handsome fellow, if formidable in the extreme. He had showed up on St. Brendan’s doorstep one chilly morning, declaring to Headmaster Thaddeus Croker that he was Smitty, he wanted admission, and he had nothing else to say. For some reason, the headmaster never questioned him. None of them did. Smitty didn’t invite interrogation.

  She regarded the boy in silence, startled as she recognized the profile, the way he pursed his lips, and that certain
tilt of his head. It can’t be, she thought. Or can it? Then, Why, before this moment, did I never notice?

  Confused, she looked at her husband, surprised to see him watching her so carefully. He touched his hand to his heart and nodded ever so slightly.

  There was so much she wanted to ask, but it was time for the ladies to leave while the men buried Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony. She knew they would do it themselves, despite gravediggers standing by. She also remembered her own father’s burial, and her mother’s hysteria when she heard clods of earth thumping onto Papa’s casket.

  Meridee took Grace’s hand. “Let us leave them to their work,” she whispered.

  Grace nodded, offering no objection. “I need Georgie,” she said, then started to sag.

  Of all people, Captain Angus Ogilvie scooped her up and carried her to the waiting carriage. Meridee hadn’t seen him arrive, yet here he was. Didn’t Able say the man had a real facility for materializing when least expected? He was needed now; here he was.

  He set Grace in the seat. “Should I stay?” he asked her, brusque and to-the-point as usual.

  “No, but thank you,” Grace told him.

  Captain Ogilvie handed Meridee into the carriage. “You look like crow bait yourself, Mrs. Six.”

  “It’s been a long and trying month, captain,” she told him, half exasperated, half amused by this strange fellow. What wouldn’t he say?

  He nodded in sympathy. “I fear we have many of those ahead, Mrs. Six.” He looked toward the Solent and the Isle of Wight beyond. The wind had picked up and whitecaps danced on the water. “We’re all sailing into troubled seas.” He tipped his hat to them. “I’ll see you both again, and soon.” He closed the carriage door and nodded to the coachman.

  Grace leaned back, her eyes closed. “All I want now is my baby at my breast and my feet on a hassock.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The house will seem so empty. How is it that one frail man could suck out all the air? How will I manage?”

  “One day at a time, possibly subdivided into hours and quarter hours,” Meridee told her.

  Grace opened her eyes at that. “Sometimes, dear friend, you sound remarkably like our master genius.”

  “That’s what he told me after we lost our baby,” Meridee said. “Of course, he was holding me close and his eyes looked like mine.”

  Grace nodded and took her hand. “Quarter hours right now for you?”

  “I’m up to half hours,” Meridee said simply. “Let’s go find our little ones.”

  Chapter Four

  The gravediggers stood respectfully by as the men from Trinity House, other officers of renown, and the Gunwharf Rats, lads of no renown, shoveled silently until the job was done.

  As he shoveled, Able turned his mind over to the scenes, dialog, and thoughts swirling around in his brain, remembering the first time he came to Sir B’s attention, all the way to their final conversation – just the two of them – a week ago.

  Sir B’s conversation began coherently enough, as the captain remembered those days at sea when he winkled out Able’s astounding gifts, then set him on a path that let to sailing master, and now this, a Younger Brother of Trinity House. Even better, to Able’s mind, Sir B had smoothed his way to St. Brendan’s as an instructor of lads like him, bastards with nothing to recommend them but brains and courage.

  “Of course, you owe your lovely wife for St. Brendan’s more than I,” Sir B said. “She refused to take no for an answer when poor Captain Hallowell tried to discourage her. She blacked his eye, so I heard, or was that a rumor?”

  They laughed together over that only days ago, and then Sir B sighed. “I hate to leave you Sixes and my wife and son. Seems damned unfair. I had hopes…”

  He made Able carry him to the window. Sir B weighed less than nothing, so Able held him easily, pointing out the warships at anchor. The prison hulks still brooded close by, less noisome, but no place for anyone yearning for liberté and egálite.

  “Jean Hubert just walked away last week, you say?” he asked. “Did that surprise you?”

  “No,” Able replied. “He was homesick for France. I admit I envy a fellow who has a home to miss. I’ve never longed for the workhouse.”

  There was more, certainly, because POW Jean Hubert was no gentleman. St. Brendan’s art and French instructor had broken his parole, but he had left Meridee a note with a cryptic comment: “We will meet again.”

  Back in bed, Sir B dozed and murmured about his younger brother, dead these several years, and something about “…nothing but heartache and worry,” then, “… I tried to do right, once I learned. Did I?”

  Did you what? Able thought, as he collected Nick Bonfort and Smitty. They stood together, looking down at the covered mound, the resting place of landsmen. He wondered if Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony would have preferred burial at sea.

  He put a hand on each boy’s shoulder. Nick moved closer, because that was Nick. At least Smitty didn’t shy away.

  “Care for company?”

  Captain Ogilvie came toward them. I already have company, he wanted to say, but he knew better. Angus Ogilvie was still someone to be cautious around: a spy catcher, Trinity House’s dogsbody and all-purpose killer. He was a man with blood on his hands. Able regarded the shorter man for the split second his brain required. And a man with something to tell me, he thought. P’raps I should listen and not judge.

  Better be open with this man Able knew he should trust. “Aye, Captain,” he said. “Is it private conversation?”

  “It is, Master Six,” Angus said most formally.

  Able handed Smitty some coins. “I wager Ezekiel Bartleby has some petit fours or those treacle biscuits Mrs. Six is so fond of,” he said. “See if you can get her some. I’ll join you there.”

  Smitty pocketed the coins. “Master, you know Mr. Bartleby won’t take payment if he knows it’s for Mrs. Six.”

  “You can try. If he cuts up stiff as usual, there is generally a one-legged tar hanging about with a begging cup.”

  “Aye, Master. C’mon, Nick.”

  He watched the boys as they walked away. Smitty needed new trousers; Meri had let these out all she could. If the darling of his heart had a shilling for each pair of trousers she had altered, or all the socks she had darned belonging to her lads, she would be independently wealthy.

  Nick looked back once, and Able smiled at him, content to call this lad son when no one else was around. Nick had already wrapped himself around Meridee’s heart, since she had kindly loaned him her maiden name, because, as Nick put it, she wasn’t using it.

  “You love them, don’t you?” Angus Ogilvie asked as they walked slowly away from God’s Acre.

  “Aye, one and all,” Able replied. “It pains me when they leave us for the fleet.”

  “That’s what they’re supposed to do,” the captain said, in that spare way of his that suggested he was a humorless fellow.

  “Not all of them,” he said quietly. He watched the Goodriches trundle themselves into a carriage with John Mark, another of his lads, and little Pierre, a former French POW. Some leave us for real homes, he knew, and blooming careers in our modern mechanical age. He thought of Davey Ten, already an assistant pharmacist mate, and Stephen Hoyt, clerking in the penal colony in New South Wales. There were others, some quick, some dead, because war was no respecter of age or ability.

  “You’re a soft touch, Master,” Ogilvie said. He spoke with some hesitancy then, he who Able knew was not a sentimental man. “Mrs. Six looks somewhat down pin. Is she well?”

  “She miscarried a daughter a month ago,” Able said. “We’re both a little down pin, I suppose, but her, most certainly.” Should he say more? “Her pain is more than physical.”

  “Yours too, I think,” Ogilvie said, surprising Able with sympathy.

  “We love children.” A glance at Captain Ogilvie told Able something more. Maybe he didn’t know this man, not really. “Sir, did you and your late wife have children?” he asked
.

  “Yes and no, I suppose,” the captain said, after a pause that took them half a block, walking slowly. “They were buried together, our son in her arms.”

  “I’m sorry,” Able said, and meant it with all his heart.

  “It was years ago. We carry on, Master Six. What else can we do?”

  What was there to say to that? They walked in silence, but it was not an uncomfortable silence now.

  “I have two matters of interest for you, Master Six,” Ogilvie said finally.

  “Call me Able, please,” he said impulsively. Something had changed in their brief walk. “If you wish,” Able added. After all, the man did outrank him.

  “I do wish it,” Ogilvie said promptly. “Able, then, if I will be Angus to you.”

  “Most certainly, when we are informal like this.”

  “It’s this, Able. Make of it what you will,” Angus said. “I was in Cádiz six months ago, following that damned Clause Pascal.”

  “I’ve heard of your trail of blood from the Baltic,” Able said. “And your encrypted notes gleaned from less-than-eager Frenchmen.”

  “A day’s work,” Angus said, but the flippant comment seemed too glib. “You’ll be pleased to know that our friend Claude met a fitting end in Cádiz.”

  “I am pleased.”

  “The strangest thing: He got in fight in a taberna down on the dock and ended up with a dagger in his eye. Imagine that.”

  “Yes. Imagine that.”

  The captain rubbed his hands together, either in glee or in an unconscious imitation of the also-late Pontius Pilate. Able didn’t care to know which.

  “He served his purpose. No, the matter I have for your consideration is more intriguing than the death of a scoundrel. Six months ago, I stood on the dock and saw the combined fleets of Spain and France.”

  “We know they are bottled up there.”

  “Bear with me, Able,” Angus said, with a touch of that frosty impatience Able knew well. “What a sight! There before me, bobbing at anchor, was Santísima Trinidad, the biggest ship of the line I have ever seen.”

  “I remember her from the battle off Cape St. Vincent,” Able said. “Fair took my breath away. And?”