Page 6 of Unlikely Heroes
“It is, dear friend.”
The short walk to Portsmouth’s cathedral only taxed her toward the end, but Grace was there to put a supporting arm around her waist. Grace leaned closer.
“Meridee, how did you and I ever get entangled with navy men, of all specimens?” she asked. “They’re ribald and frank and have a certain reputation, and we’re ladies.”
“Just lucky, perhaps,” Meridee said, looking at her husband ahead of them, doing the slow funeral walk with his Rats. He looked back at her now and then, always appraising. “I would change nothing.”
“Nor I. More time would have been nice, but he was in such pain.” Grace spoke quietly, almost to herself.
Two rows of dignitaries lined the steps outside St. Thomas. Meridee was not surprised to see the Elder and Younger Brothers of Trinity House, but there stood Billy Pitt, England’s Prime Minister, looking too old for his years and shaky on his feet.
She sighed with relief when Able moved closer to Smitty and whispered to him, which sent the stalwart Rat to stand beside William Pitt, and hesitate not a moment to support him, even as some mourners gasped. There was no mistaking Mr. Pitt’s nod of gratitude, either.
She didn’t know the officers – Royal Navy men, Royal Marines and a smattering of British Army – but many of them also wore the distinctive star designating them Knights of the Bath. There they stood, bareheaded as a mist fell, honoring one among their number who had left them too soon.
She breathed deep of the incense inside the old church, wondering how many navy men had been laid to rest in this vicinity, and how many women mourned them.Please let me not be numbered among them, she thought, watching as the Gunwharf Rats stood their watch around the plain coffin.
When William Pitt was seated, Smitty joined his fellow Rats. He did a strange thing first, walking behind the coffin and placing both hands on it. He touched his forehead to the flag draping the highly polished wood in a tender gesture she had not though to see from that formidable Rat who kept his secrets and confided in no one. He stood beside Able finally, their shoulders touching. She wondered who consoled whom.
Meridee bowed her head, exhausted. She heard a murmur, a brief rustle of skirts, then the blessed relief of Able beside her, his arm around her.
He only left her side when the service ended and the Rats listened for their note. Singing “Heart of Oak” was the perfect touch, the song Sir B wanted, the anthem of St. Brendan the Navigator School. She heard chuckles from the navy men around her. Some sang along.
Not for Sir B a pampered spot among his ancestral dead on his little-used estate in the Hampshire countryside. He had insisted upon a plot outside St. Thomas, Portsmouth’s cathedral, a place with a view of the water. She and Grace followed the coffin carried now by the Gunwharf Rats into God’s Acre, with its collection of wells and ne’er do wells, lowlife and high livers of a navy town.
“I have often thought that there was a shadier side to Sir B that he never shared with anyone, his wife included,” Grace said as she and Meridee followed the coffin out of the church. “He was no particular angel.” She gestured at the grave markers large and mostly small around them, then turned her gaze to the docks and tall-masted ships. “I loved him.”
They held hands as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, he who had conducted a most impeccable funeral service inside, continued with majestic words, the last resource of finite humans contemplating the great unknown. He stood before the coffin, looking down for a long time. He raised his eyes to heaven.
“’Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower…’”
The hard words smote Meridee’s heart. She thought of her man, and the Rats, and the danger only miles across the Channel, where a dictator of no mean skill strutted and postured, threatening all manner of harm to her darlings, usurping the Lord God Almighty in his desire to ordain death. Cut down like a flower, indeed, sir, she thought.It will be a fight to the death, as it has been for decades.
But this was no time to tell the Lord His business, she decided.We do have a short time, sir, she acknowledged.Pardon me if I whine.You are right, of course. We are puny creatures.
The graveside service ended, following one final prayer, spoken louder than the first, because the wind had picked up. Meridee watched her husband raise his face to the wind. She looked around, amused to see the other seafarers do the same. Trust Sir B to request a perfect wind for ships to sally forth from Portsmouth, bent on destruction of the French. Trust God to humor him.
She knew it was time for her and Grace to depart, to leave the lowering of the coffin into the ground to shipmates and brother officers. She released Grace’s hand, as the widow moved to the coffin one last time for the touch of her lips to smooth wood.
As Grace took her final farewell on earth from the man she loved best, Meridee observed the Gunwharf Rats, each almost as dear to her as her own son. She knew their stories and their sorrow. She loved them all.
She couldn’t have explained to anyone the emotion she felt when her glance settled on Smitty. He still stood beside her husband, his face a study in contemplation. She had always thought him a handsome fellow, if formidable in the extreme. He had showed up on St. Brendan’s doorstep one chilly morning, declaring to Headmaster Thaddeus Croker that he was Smitty, he wanted admission, and he had nothing else to say. For some reason, the headmaster never questioned him. None of them did. Smitty didn’t invite interrogation.
She regarded the boy in silence, startled as she recognized the profile, the way he pursed his lips, and that certain tilt of his head.It can’t be, she thought.Or can it?Then,Why, before this moment, did I never notice?
Confused, she looked at her husband, surprised to see him watching her so carefully. He touched his hand to his heart and nodded ever so slightly.
There was so much she wanted to ask, but it was time for the ladies to leave while the men buried Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony. She knew they would do it themselves, despite gravediggers standing by. She also remembered her own father’s burial, and her mother’s hysteria when she heard clods of earth thumping onto Papa’s casket.
Meridee took Grace’s hand. “Let us leave them to their work,” she whispered.
Grace nodded, offering no objection. “I need Georgie,” she said, then started to sag.
Of all people, Captain Angus Ogilvie scooped her up and carried her to the waiting carriage. Meridee hadn’t seen him arrive, yet here he was. Didn’t Able say the man had a real facility for materializing when least expected? He was needed now; here he was.
He set Grace in the seat. “Should I stay?” he asked her, brusque and to-the-point as usual.
“No, but thank you,” Grace told him.
