There was never any question that Meri Six had enough mother in her heart to add the Rats to her special stewardship. She had told him once, as if he might think her a low-achieving failure, that all she wanted was to be a good wife and mother, and there was no way she could match or even fathom his brain. He had been happy to assure her that her practical, grounded nature, plus her bounteous love and fine looks, were precisely what a man with a too-busy brain craved. He thought she believed him, but he was never precisely certain. After one domestic disaster, she had wisely but firmly forbidden him from ever handling the simple arithmetic from butchers or tradesmen. Theirs was a fortunate marriage, because the easy stuff eluded him.
She was right; there was only one Sir B, Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony, who, along with Captain Benjamin Hallowell, had grasped the enormity of Durable Six’s amazing brain and put it to good use. Sir B had commanded him in two oceans and on two seas, had seen to his mentorship as a sailing master, and landed him at St. Brendan School for Navigators to teach boys much like himself, bastard workhouse children with untapped promise.
Now Sir B lay dying, the result of seven years of pain from wounds earned the hard way at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. The loss of his leg had led to additional complications, over which physicians had no power. No physician knew enough.
When his wife Grace, a fellow St. Brendan instructor, had walked the Sixes to the door, her arms around both of them, she had told them her dear man had survived long enough for the birth of his son George Belvedere Routledge St. Anthony.
“Georgie kept him alive,” Grace said, as they stood together, waiting for the St. Anthony carriage. “I could wish for more, but Able, he is so weary of pain.”
“We know that,” Able said. “Grace, should we…”
“No,” she said softly. “Get Meridee home. She’s drooping but she’ll never admit it. Get her to bed. If something happens tonight, I believe you will know.”
“I believe I will.”
After getting Meri home and into her nightgown, she insisted on their nightly ritual of another look at Ben before she agreed to crawl into bed. They stood a moment, arm in arm, looking down at a sleeping boy, arms and legs stretched out so confidently: Benjamin Belvedere Six, seventeen months old, and ruler of all he surveyed.
“I hope he and George St. Anthony will be great friends,” Meri whispered. She tucked his blanket a little higher.
“They will be,” he agreed. “C’mon, Meri. You’re about to drop.”
“Am not,” she insisted as her eyes closed. He picked her up and carried her to their bed, scene of much General Merrymaking, as his lover liked to call it. She was asleep before she even stretched out.
He watched her a moment, deeply satisfied and still a little amazed at so wonderful a creature in his bed, he who had come into this world with less than nothing, except for a prodigious brain often more curse than blessing. Now, in descending order of importance, he was a husband, father, respected instructor, Younger Brother at Trinity House, friend of Billy Pitt, England’s First Minister, and almost-father to Nick Bonfort who slept down the corridor, a Gunwharf Rat at St. Brendan’s. Last and often least, Able was a reluctant member of a group of genius dead men who gave him good advice upon occasion and ignored him if they felt like it.
Meri was always first, and their son a close second, Ben who would grow up knowing who his father was. Alas, poor Ben. Only last week, Able had sat Meri down in the dining room for the bad news. The conversation – remembered in its entirety, of course – made Able smile even now, when he was at his lowest.
“Meri, I have made a most unfortunate discovery.”
“How bad can it be? You’re holding our son and reading dear Euclid to him.” She gave him her brightest smile. “Ben looks so happy. You two are such a pair.”
“Brace yourself, Meri-deelicious. I have been reading with my finger under each word. Bless me if our little scamp didn’t push my finger aside because I wasn’t reading fast enough. Meri? Meri? Are we still friends?”
“Dear sir, I am digesting this news. He’s reading? Tell me the worst: Is it the English translation or the