Mrs. Six, must be the glue that holds this crew together.”
“All I do is love them,” she said softly.
They sailed three days later on the Mercury, bound for the blockade off Rochefort, three busy days of acquainting Harry Ferrier with his duties, and Able feeling his own awe at such an exalted sailing master taking on this gaggle of workhouse lads.
“I must be honest,” Ferrier said late the last night ashore, after Meridee had gone to bed, and they were drinking rum with Headmaster Croker across the street. “How does a man go from constant activity to nothing? I should never have retired, except that my eyesight isn’t what it once was.” He chuckled and pointed to his milky orb. “Especially in this eye.”
He pulled out a slim case and put on his spectacles. He grinned his famous gallows grin that had startled many a midshipman laboring over sightings and paperwork. “Thought I’d wait to put these on until after I signed that contract for thirty-five pounds annually, plus quarters and found. A man can’t be too careful.”
They all laughed, even Captain Ogilvie, who had been remarkably quiet during the past few days. In fact, Ogilvie accompanied Able back across the street, after the headmaster’s diabolical butler stoppered the rum bottle and gave men used to power a fishy stare of his own.
Ogilvie turned back to look at St. Brendan’s. “If Bertram were my butler, I would shoot him.”
Able couldn’t help laughing. Perhaps he had drunk more rum than the law required, but it was funny. He held out his hand to Angus Ogilvie. “Good night to you, sir.”
“And to you.” He didn’t leave. “Able, may I accompany you to the blockade?”
“We’ll be crowded. The Mercury only has six berths.”
“No matter,” Ogilvie said, brushing aside any obstacles. “You’ll be on hot racks anyway, with your small crew.”
“True enough. I’ll be acquainting my seafaring pupils with the joys of watch and watch about, so there should always be empty berths. Why now, sir, if I may ask?”
“If the occasion arises, you can set me ashore in Spain. I suspect Admiral Calder will order you to join his squadron for a while.”
“Dangerous work,” Able said, wondering how Headmaster Croker would appreciate the students of St. Brendan’s heading into deeper trouble than mere messaging. “I’ll remind you that my oldest crewmember is fourteen.”
“If you can believe him. Smitty looks older.”
“You were at the reading of Sir B’s will. His brother Edward’s by-blow would be fourteen. Why were you there at the reading?”
It sounded presumptuous to a man whose ears buzzed a little from overmuch rum. Even Euclid was silent, perhaps already sleeping off the rum. Still, Ogilvie’s answer surprised him.
“I like Grace St. Anthony. Good night to you. You sail on the tide?”
And that was that. Able hoped Meri wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t. When he came into their chamber, she rose from bed, took his hand and walked him toward Ben’s room. “Our son has turned into a bit of a martinet. He thought to order me about in French. I told him what I thought about that and he sobered up considerably.”
Able watched their sleeping son, admiring such a complex creation from two people who loved each other. He would never tell Meri in a million years, but he stored up in his heart those wonderful moments when he had tapped on his sleeping wife’s swollen belly and felt answering taps. They had developed a little code that he tried out, once Ben was born – two taps, answered by three taps, then so on through a lengthy sequence. He had sired a mathematician.
Meri didn’t need to know that. “He’ll always keep you on your toes,” Able said.
“We’ll manage. Come now, Able. We’re wasting time and I know you sail on the tide.”
She loved him thoroughly, and then again before anyone was awake. He hated partings as well as the next navy man. At least she was kind enough to brush the tears from his eyes.
“I don’t like to be wept on,” she whispered. “I do want another baby, however. You know, just a normal child this time. It might be a novelty.”
How did she do it? Make him chuckle, and tear up, and go through the ecstasy of mad, slow love in an ordinary bed? He looked closer and saw her tears this time. “I did not know you when I sailed to war before,” he said. “At the dock, I had watched other partings of my mates from their wives,