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?”
“On the dock stood a sight to behold, a real Spanish grandee. He had gold epaulets and sparkly stuff everywhere else except possibly his crotch. Spaniards do have a certain elán.”
He paused for what Able could only assume was dramatic effect. Good Lord, he thought. Tell your tale.
“Bless my soul if he didn’t look exactly like you, with twenty-plus more years on’m.”