him a spy – onto Clive’s staff, once Hébert was presumed dead. This spy could report Sir Clive’s business and do England no harm.
Ogilvie made his way casually, slowly, back to the harbor, the trail of blood following him. Someone would raise an alarm eventually, but that was the beauty of Spain. People were reserved and disinclined to intrude, even during such questionable times as these, or maybe because of such times.
Still, one couldn’t overlook a stream of blood, even as night settled on Cádiz. Angus Ogilvie squeezed through an alley barely wide enough for skinny cats and came out into a different street.
Tired, so tired of following Pascal, Ogilvie walked to the dock and stared at the Santísima Trinidad riding on her anchors in the harbor. He admired the fine lines, convinced that while the French made the best fighting ships – the Royal Navy had copied them shamelessly for years – the Spanish created the most beautiful ones.
As he stood in the shadows – Christ, how much of his life had been spent in shadow lately – he noticed two men walking together, one of them in uniform and the other well-dressed and with a flair that some tried to duplicate, but only the Spanish managed to carry off.
Ogilvie was too tired to listen to their conversation, so that wasn’t what made him pay closer attention. It was the Spaniard in the handsome frilled uniform that made Captain Ogilvie’s mouth open in surprise, that same jaded and world-weary Captain Ogilvie who was never surprised by anything.
He could have sworn Sailing Master Able Six, that dratted genius, stood there.
Chapter Two
Six Months Later, 1805, Portsmouth
That night in Sir B’s sickroom, Master Able Six thought the end would come during the Middle Watch, when wounded and dying men laid down their defenses and surrendered to death. On several occasions when he was forced to act in lieu of a ship’s surgeon, he had sat beside men as they let out that last pre-dawn breath.
Even Davey Ten, now serving his apprenticeship as assistant pharmacist mate, had commented on the propensity of men to die in the wee hours. “Why, sir?” he had asked Able only last week over Sunday roast beef at the Sixes’ home when he was granted leave from Portsmouth’s Haslar Hospital.
“I don’t know,” Able had told him, a statement that hardly ever crossed his lips because he usually did know. Apparently even Euclid and Able’s other unseen cranial friends were not privy to some secrets. People died when God dictated. Even a man of science understood that.
Able knew the end was close when he said goodnight to Sir B, and left the St. Anthonys’ bedchamber arm in arm with his wife. He had watched his wife Meridee droop and wilt through the evening, partly from sorrow, and partly from her slow recovery after last month’s miscarriage. She had offered no objection when Lady St. Anthony – better known still as Grace Croker – had quietly summoned the family carriage for the ride back to their house across from St. Brendan’s School.
In the carriage, Meridee had gone right into his arms, or perhaps he had gone into hers, because the loss of someone so dear couldn’t be borne alone. Thank God, yet again, that he was married. At the moment, Able couldn’t fathom enduring such a death by himself. The loss of their much-wanted baby had been difficult enough, but Sir B had winkled out Able’s great mystery, and set him on a true course that had taken him to Portsmouth, St. Brendan’s, and this life.
“This is hard,” he whispered to Meri, realizing how inadequate that puny phrase sounded.
She held him closer. “I wanted our baby, oh my word, I did, but as much as that, I…I know we will have more children. There is only one Sir B.”
It was a brave admission from the best woman he knew, and the best mother to both their little boy Ben, and to the Gunwharf Rats of St. Brendan the Navigator School she also mothered. The workhouse lads had earned their title of Gunwharf Rats, the result of finding the sorry carcass of a rattus norvegicus and prevailing upon squeamish Meri to help them boil the bones and then see them mounted on a plaque. Who knew how things like that took on a life of their own, and a meaning that went beyond a rat on a plaque? Because the rat belonged at St. Brendan’s now, so did they, who had