Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (16 page)

He is astounded. His mouth works up and his eyes stare at me in disbelief and I swear a line of spittle comes out the side of it and runs down his chin. I get to my feet, as I have had enough of this.

"What! No shame? No contrition? You
are
possessed! You will prostrate yourself!" he shouts, letting loose a cloud of spit droplets in the air. "Prepare to have the Devil beaten out of you!"

He raises his rod and comes toward me. I back off a few steps and says, "No, Sir. I will not be beaten by you. I have been beaten by Mistress Pimm, but I suppose that goes with being in a school, but I will not be beaten by you, not in a church." I pause for breath, for my heart is poundin' and my chest is startin' to heave. "I go to a church for solace and consolation and to be in company with my friends in the presence of God and to think about my place in His universe, not to be beaten and shamed!"

I'm in a fine froth myself by now and I don't know where I'm gettin' the cheek to speak up like this but I push on, the words just pourin' out o' me.

"I spent almost two years in the Royal Navy, and I was not flogged once, Sir, not once!" I pull myself up and throw
my head back. "I ain't apprenticed to you, and I ain't a member of your household. You think that 'cause I ain't a lady no more that you can beat on me if you want, but you're wrong, Sir, as I am a freeborn English woman and I
will not
be struck by you!"

I've been walking backwards this whole time and I'm about to turn to go out the door when he rushes up to me and grabs me by the arm and lifts the rod again, shouting something about a Jezebel right into my face, but I shouts back at him, "You let go of me, Preacher! If you hit me I'll put the police on you, I will! I know where they are and how things work down at the courthouse and ... and ... and I got me a lawyer, too! So let
go
of me!"

With that I jerk my arm from his grasp and bolt out the door, leavin' the amazed Preacher alone in the gloom of his church.

I rush back into the warmth and safety of the kitchen and put my back to the door and stand there pantin', tryin' to calm myself down. Through the fog of my fear and anger I hear Betsey say, "
See, Peg, seel It's happening again!
" and "
Shush, you don't know, you must be quiet, hush your mouth now!
" from Peg.

I think that's what was said, but when I ask Betsey about it later, she just shakes her head and won't say a word. And neither will Peg.

It ain't long till Annie and Betsey Byrnes invite me to go home with them to spend the night and Mistress says all right 'cause she really don't care what her serving girls do, even though she makes sure I'm locked up tight every night. And Sylvie comes over, too, 'cause she lives just down the street from them, and we have a fine dinner with their parents and their younger sisters and brother and one older brother whose name is Timothy who seems right pleased that I came over. Their father is a shipwright so we got a lot of things in common and we get along well, and their mother is a fussy, jolly sort, who makes sure everyone's got enough to eat, and beams proudly over her merry brood.

After dinner we play ring games and tell riddles and I pull out my pennywhistle and give 'em a few tunes and songs and raps out some steps and then we gathers about the fireplace and pops popcorn, which is the most wondrous and tasty thing and which Betsey says the early settlers learned from the Indians back when the Indians was being nice before the British started paying them to ... and then she reddens and clams up, having forgot for a moment, I guess, my history
and place of birth, but I laughs it off and packs in more of the salty popcorn and sings a few more songs. Timothy sits next to me by the fire and we hold hands for a while till it's time for us to go to bed. He's a sweet boy and I give him a peck on the cheek as we leave for upstairs. Then we girls get dressed for bed and have a great giggling good time in their big old feather bed, all of us, Annie and Betsey and Sylvie and even the little ones, Eileen and Gabby and Antonia, who are so thrilled to be with their older sisters on this night of merriment that we fear they shall never sleep.

But sleep they do and then we sit up cross-legged and light one candle and talk of the boys they got their eyes on, with great snickerin' and teasing back and forth. Annie and even shy Sylvie are quite frank in reeling off their list of boys who they might look favorably on, but Betsey keeps her secrets, she just smiles and shakes her head and looks off. They tell me I should marry Timothy 'cause he's taken a shine to me and he's a good boy and has got a trade and they'd love to have me for a sister-in-law, but I have to tell 'em I am promised to another.

Course they drags every detail of my recent misadventure out of me and I warms to it, being a natural show-off and storyteller, and I prolly shouldn't but I really gets into the tellin' of it, and they squeals and covers their mouths with their hands in shock and delight when I tells 'em about Mrs. Bodeen's girls and specially about Mam'selle Claudelle
day
Bour-bon. Then I puffs up like the judge and tells that part, usin' a deep voice for the judge and a high squeaky one for the constable and a sweet one for Mr. Pickering, and they says how could you be so brave to take all that, and I say I warn't brave at all as I was on the edge of wettin' my
pants at any moment during the whole thing and they can take
that
as the truth, and amen to that.

Then I puts Jaimy's ring in my ear with great ceremony so that I knows that I looks like a pure buccaneer to them, and then I tell them about the Brotherhood and the
Dolphin,
as I sure don't owe Mistress no promise about not tellin' about my past to these girls. I tell them about the Brotherhood oath and I tell 'em to each spit in both of their hands, and they say, "
Yuck,
" but they all do it and so do I and we all clasp hands mixin' the spits and I say all deep and magical-like, "This being the forming of the Dread Sisterhood of the Lawson Peabody, each what pledges to the others that they will in all ways watch out for each other and never to betray another member but always help them and keep them uppermost in their hearts, and so say you one, so say you all." And we all say, "Amen," and drag the word out long and long.

And then I tell 'em all about that time in Kingston and how Jaimy and me's got an understanding about gettin' married and I get
ohs
and
ahs
and wide eyes when I tells 'em almost all about Jaimy and our hammock and our other spots on the
Dolphin,
and Sylvie up and says, "So you've bundled, then, Jacky?"

More snorts and stifled giggles from them all.

I sit up and say, "You will tell me what 'bundling' means and then I will tell you if I have done it or not." I am watchful. I don't mind bein' teased, but...

Annie clears her throat and puts on a teacher tone. "Well. There's a lot of farms around here that are so far out on the frontier that the girls don't ever get to see any boys 'cept her own brothers for maybe
years
at a time." She takes a deep breath and goes on. "Sooooo ... when there's something like a barn dance or something, and a boy and girl spark a bit ... weeeeellll, if that happens and it's agreeable to the parents, then later the boy is invited out to spend the night at the girl's farm ... aaaaaaaand, if all goes well at dinner, then..."

"Spit it out, Annie," I says, gettin' impatient with all this hemmin' and hawin'.

She finally gets it out in a rush. "Then the boy and girl go to bed together and sometimes there's a board down the center of the bed and sometimes there's not, but usually they keep their nightclothes on and spend the night in just talking and maybe a little kissing and stuff, but no more than that, and if they find in the morning that they still agree, then they set up a date to get married and then they do and they go off to start their own farm.
We
never do it, of course, 'cause we're city girls and there's plenty of boys around here."

"You Yankees never cease to amaze me," I say, and after I have thought on this a bit and thought back on my own case, I say, "Yes. I
have
bundled and I did find it
most
pleasant."

There's hoots and I get called "Tacky Hotbottom" and there's pillows thrown and shrieks all around until, finally, down below, the father of the house takes up a poker or some such thing and gives the floor beneath us a few sharp raps and issues a muffled threat to beat us all to sleep if we don't quiet down and let a poor workingman get his rest and why was he cursed with daughters, and we do it, we blow out the candle and quiet down. We settle into the big bed with the big fat feather-tick blanket over all of us. Feeling all their bodies, both big and little, snugged in around me, their
breathing growing slow and even, reminds me of the old kip neath the Blackfriars Bridge in London, with Polly and Judy and me and the rest, 'cept it's warm and clean here and our bellies are full, and there it warn't like that at all.

As I fall asleep with Jaimy's ring in my fist, I hope with all my heart that he and I still got an understanding. My letter is on its way to him, the one where I told him about my disgrace and told him I ain't never gonna be a lady, and he ain't gonna like that, no, he ain't gonna like that at all. Oh, I could've written lies about how good everything was going but I don't want to lie to him, not now, not ever. And if it comes out that he don't want me no more because of it all, well, I'll deal with that when I find out for sure.

Tonight I resolve to check out the widow's walk, which is what the girls tell me the porch thing on top of the school is called. I had spotted the stair rig hanging up in the rafters overhead in the shadows at the other side of the long attic room the first time I was brought up here but hadn't worked out how to get it down. I had thought the ladder was fixed up there permanent to keep people from going up there, but tonight, when I bring the candle over for a closer look, I see that the whole thing is counterbalanced with weights and that a pull on the rope hanging from it brings the whole thing smoothly down to my waiting foot. I climb up toward the hatch above my head and when I reach it, I give it a shove. To my surprise, it opens and I see stars above me. I go up through and stand and look about.

Annie says porches on tops of houses like this are called "widow's walks" 'cause that's where women whose husbands are at sea pace about and worry and fret and look out across the ocean in hopes of seeing their husbands come home safe. The name, of course, hints at the fact that many of those husbands don't come back safe, or even come back at all.

I stand there and look out over the sea and hope I ain't a sort-of widow. I hope with all my heart that Jaimy is safe and has warm clothes and is in good health. I hope he's got a plate of good food in front of him and a glass of good wine in his hand. I hope all that, I do, and if you want to call that a prayer, so be it.

The town is all spread out beneath me, lights in bedroom windows twinkling and going out, one by one, and the sea glinting under the light of the full moon, which has just risen and sits low over the water. It is a lovely, warm night and a slight breeze blows my skirt about my knees as I stand there and hope my hopes and dream my dreams.

I look for faithful Polaris, which should be right—

A light in the church catches my eye. The window is right below the belfry, and in the light stands the Reverend Mather. He seems to be shouting and gesturing wildly with his arms.

I duck down so he don't see my silhouette against the bright moonlit sky and I watch him through the branches of the big tree that stands between the church and the school, touching the roofs of both.

Sometimes he's at the window and sometimes he steps back, but he keeps coming back and waving his arms and pointing, always pointing at something outside, and I can see that he's shouting and his face is contorted but I can't hear the words. Maybe he's practicing his sermon for Sunday? No, he can get real worked up in those when he's telling us what sinners we are and how we're going straight to hell, but he don't get this worked up, no he don't.

By the way he snaps his head around it looks like he's
talking to someone or arguing with 'em, but I get the creepy feeling that there ain't nobody in that room but him.

Now he's back at the window and he keeps pointing and pointing and jabbing his finger over and over again, and this time I try to follow his point and my eye goes over the churchyard and over the wall and it lands on the unmarked grave that Amy and I had seen that day by the churchyard, now a little mound of moon shadow in the gloom.

We've just finished serving dinner and we're piling back into the kitchen with the dirty dishes, chatterin' and banterin', and I takes my position at the steaming tub and starts in to washing the dishes when all of a sudden there's a silence and I look sideways and I see that Amy Trevelyne has come up next to me. She does not look as if she has been sleeping well. She pokes me in my side and says, "You said you were going to be my friend. You were my friend. And now you are not."

I lower my head and say in a low voice, "We can't, Miss. I'm downstairs, now. Surely you know that things have changed?"

"That should not matter. What about all your talk of sisterhood? What about the spitting and the joining of those hands? The oath? Was that all false? Was it all a game? All a lie?"

"It was in a different time and place, Miss. I ain't complaining," I say, not looking at her. "Why should you?"

I put the scouring pad to the pan and start in to scrubbing. "Please, Miss. You're making me and the others nervous."

She sucks in her breath and I hear the rustle of her skirts as she rushes out.

We get the dishes done and are about to do some laundry when Peg up and says, "Jacky. That lawyer friend of yours was by today and said for you to drop by to see him when you get a chance, his office bein' on Union Street, right next to the Oyster House."

Hmmm,
I thinks.
What's up?