Page 30 of Unlikely Heroes
She tucked him close. “It’s true.”
After luncheon, they walked hand in hand a few doors down to Number Twenty, Saints Way. Betsy Cornwall had a decided green thumb. In all their riotous yellow and orange glory, nasturtiums spilled out of the window boxes. A flowering pot of asters by the front door spread their own beauty. Ben leaned over for a sniff and announced, “Aster tripolium, from the Greek word for star, a perennial favored by butterflies, lepidoptirae.”
Oh mercy,Meridee thought, not certain whether to laugh or cry.This goes in a letter to Papa immediately.
“Was Papa reading to you from Linnaeus recently?” she decided upon. She knocked on the door.
He nodded, and took another sniff. “I do love flowers and Papa.”
Betsy Cornwall opened the door holding her own little one, a blond baby with blue eyes who looked remarkably like the best of Betsy and her husband Walter Cornwall. A finger to her lips, she ushered them inside. “Walter is on night duty this month, so he is sleeping. My stepdaughter is at school.”
“We can come back later,” Meridee whispered back.
“You can stay with me in the kitchen and have some tea,” her former servant said. “You don’t mind the kitchen, do you?”
“You know I don’t, my dear.”
For a glorious hour, they drank tea and ate biscuits while Ben and Sally regarded each other with curiosity. In a short time, Ben tutored his younger friend in the fine art of block-stacking while Meridee and Betsy discussed teething and constipation, and the latest exploits of Betsy’s brother Jamie MacGregor, one of the early Gunwharf Rats now serving in the Pacific Ocean.
Meridee looked around with pleasure at the order and neatness of Betsy’s domain, she who had walked miles and miles from a distant workhouse in Carlisle to find her twin. Betsy had also found the man who loved her, even though, as Portsmouth constable, Walter Cornwall had nearly arrested her for vagrancy. Here Betsy was now, mistress of her own home, beloved wife and mother.
“Our lives hinge upon the strangest bits of fortune, don’t they,” Meridee said as they watched the children at their feet. “How brave you were to run away and look for Jamie. You took a chance.”
“You understand me,” Betsy said. “You took a chance, too, think on. I imagine there are some in your family who thought you had taken leave of your senses to marry a workhouse bastard on half-pay.”
They laughed together. “I suppose they did,” Meridee said. “I didn’t care then and I still don’t.”
Betsy picked up her knitting. She nodded in the direction of the scullery, where Meridee saw a small girl watching them. “I took Tilly Blank from the St. Pancras workhouse only last week,” Betsy said quietly. “Because she had no last name and there was a blank in that space for a name, someone wrote Blank.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Walter says I can get another girl, later on. I wish I could do more.”
“I think Mrs. Perry and I should find someone like Tilly,” Meridee said.
“It will be a kindness,” Betsy told her. She held out her hand to Meridee and squeezed it gently. “My Walter is asleep and I know right where he is. Is it hard…” She shook her head, unable to ask her question. Maybe it didn’t need asking.
Wordless, Meridee nodded. “When I write to my man, I number my letters,” she said, when she could speak. “Too many go astray. The first thing I write is, “As of whatever date it is, we are alive and well. And …and I hope… I pray, he is alive to read it.”
They looked at each other. “I do that with my letters to Jamie,” Betsy whispered. “I know theirs is the hard lot, fighting Napoleon and watching out for storms.” She held Meridee’s hand close to her cheek. “But women wait.”
“We do,” Meridee agree. “Where would we be without friends who share the same burden? Jamie is on my mind, too.” She smiled inside, wondering at wisdom and how a body acquired it. One thing she knew beyond a doubt: she had a deeper well of courage now than the bride who had cast her lot with a genius teaching workhouse boys in a town as vile as Portsmouth, a town she loved more each day. Time would determine the depth of that well.
Pensive and full of tea and Betsy’s good biscuits, Meridee left after hugging her former maid, who had come to her with the same terror she saw in little Tilly Blank’s eyes. She stood with Ben on the steps as he sniffed the asters again, thankful for his good nature, glad to be his mama.
They crossed the road and stood on their own higher front steps a long while, watching the warships in the Solent. She sighed over the prison hulks, and returned her gaze to the frigates and ships of the line, some getting ready to sail, while others – some battered by war or the elements - moved toward Portsmouth’s massive dry docks. A crane close to the slip whereMercuryusually tied up swung a cannon from the wharf to a frigate. Soon it would be settled in place to join its fellows, ready to deal in death across the Channel, where her husband, if it pleased God, still lived.
She stared at the ships. Was he safe? Was he dead? Would he return?
Ben tugged on her hand. “Mama, don’t worry.”
How did he know?
Chapter Fourteen
On July 18, theMercuryjoined Admiral Calder’s blockading fleet flanking the broad river that flowed past the inland harbor of Rochefort, on the coast of France. Four days later they sailed into battle with Calder at Cape Finisterre, land’s end of Spain.
They went to the blockade with full and settled stomachs, courtesy of a Spanish fishing smack they hailed and boarded. Perhaps to say that they boarded theSan Pedrowould have been stretching the matter, and so Able informed Smitty, who, as sailing master, kept the official ship’s log.
They discussed the matter when both of them were groaning from the delight of too much hake fried in olive oil, both acquisitions paid for by Angus Ogilvie. Avon March must have been sent from heaven to prepare meals. Able knew he would owe the prescient Grace St. Anthony forever, by suggesting that her little fellow in lower mathematics come aboard.
“As tempting as the matter might seem to you, Smitty, we didn’t really board theSan Pedroscreaming foul oaths and wielding cutlasses,” Able said as Smitty sat, poised, read to write. “They welcomed us and sold us fish and olive oil.”
