Page 71 of Unlikely Heroes
“I have no objection to that. Do it immediately, Master Six. Let’s have no suspicion ever fall upon you.”
The tension in the room vanished. “Thank you, sir,” Able replied. “Back to Spain he goes. I admit it will pain me, now that I know him. He is a good man who was cruelly used by Mrs. Munro’s husband, a Portsmouth harbormaster.”
“And because he was cruelly used, so were you,” Ogilvie said simply.
“I was, but I know the truth now, which makes it easier to bear,” Able said. “The war will not last forever. I will see my father again under better circumstances.”
“I daresay you will,” Mr. Pitt said.
“Aye, sir, the sooner the better. I don’t really trust Bertram, Headmaster Croker’s butler, not to give my father up to the authorities. I think he suspects something. I sometimes wonder why Thaddeus Croker does not give him the sack.”
Pitt looked from Able to Ogilvie, who grinned broadly. “Master Six, how do you feel on those rare occasions when you are completely wrong?”
Mr. Pitt and Captain Ogilvie exchanged glances. Able sighed. “All right, gentlemen, whatelsedon’t I know? In the past few weeks the list has lengthened.”
“I am well aware that you have wondered who actually started St. Brendan’s,” Ogilvie said. “Sir B told me as much, and we had a quiet chuckle about it.”
“I have suspected Sir B. Are you going to tell me it wasBertram?”
“As near as,” Mr. Pitt said. “You recall that I have known Thaddeus Croker for years, and our Gracie, his sister.”
“That I do remember,” Able said, with sarcasm spread so thick that both men laughed.
“Thaddeus was a man of business, devoted to it, dedicated to making money,” Mr. Pitt said. “As you know, his family is gentry, with wealth in land. That was never enough for Thaddeus.”
Able couldn’t help his surprise. “That doesn’t gibe with the kind fellow who is so patient with students. Sir, if you could see him managing the lads.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe.”
“He married a lady much like him from the gentry, who brought money to the marriage. She was not really healthy, sad to say,” Ogilvie added. He stood, walked to the globe and spun it around. “Thaddeus had the opportunity to travel to St. Petersburg for fur. It was all he could talk about, how he was going to buy beautiful pelts, then sell them to the Mandarin rulers of China for a huge profit. He was ambitious.” He smiled with no humor. “Bertram was his valet.”
Ogilvie spun the globe again, faster this time. “He was determined to go to St. Petersburg, despite the fact that his wife begged him not to leave her. She was in ill-health, and I must admit, did use such a complaint to her advantage.”
“She was never as sick as she claimed, so Thaddeus discounted it and went anyway,” Mr. Pitt said. “She was dead three weeks later and he could not forgive himself.”
Ogilvie gave the globe a vicious spin. “He came home to a gravestone and the enmity of her relatives. Only Bertram stood by him, even when he retreated into a bottle and stayed there for months.”
Able thought of Headmaster Croker’s dignified and elegant serenity, even when things were not going well at St. Brendan’s. “Nothing seems to faze him now.”
“You should have known him then,” Ogilvie said. He gave the globe a last spin, gentler this time, and returned to his chair.
“You were his friend?” Able asked. “Thaddeus has never mentioned you to me.”
“I was his brother-in-law.”
Ogilvie said it calmly, even as Able watched his expression change from anger to sorrow. “For all her foibles, Matilda Ogilvie was a bonny lass. She deserved better.” He left the room.
Able sat back, stunned. “That’s still a raw wound,” he managed to say. He thought through Ogilvie’s dealings with Headmaster Croker, acutely aware how little the two men interacted. “Painful even today. What did Bertram do to change matters?”
Mr. Pitt poured himself another glass of port and held it up to the morning light. “Such a lovely color,” he said, then recalled himself to the moment. “Bertram was workhouse bred, like yourself.”
“He is so arrogant! He always looks at me as if I don’t measure up,” Able said.
“Sometimes that is how workhouse alumni behave. You should know that.”
He did. Able thought of boys who left the workhouse because someone, generally a relative, wanted them. He felt the sting of their sudden superiority as they strutted about until the moment they left for a real home. Yes, he knew how some behaved, and believed it of Bertram.
“Bertram was also devoted to Thaddeus Croker, despite that yawning gap between their social spheres. He was from the Portsmouth docks and liked to wander there. One day he dragged a sodden and hungover Thaddeus Croker to St. Brendan’s, an old ruin where squatters of all ages fought each other to stay alive. Perhaps you know the desperation of hungry children.”
“I’ve seen that, too,” Able said, unwilling to remember, but unable to stop the scroll that was his brain unroll. In that unerring eye of his mind, he saw children barely older than toddlers pummeling each other for food while older children, equally hungry, egged them on for sport.
