Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (20 page)

I spread out a handkerchief on the bed and then put my bunch of coins on it and look at it. The start of my ticket back to England and Jaimy. I tie up the four corners of the kerchief and put it in my seabag.

It was a good night and my blood still pounds in my veins. They loved us! How they clapped and hooted! I sit on my bed and I put my arms between my knees and rock back and forth in joy. They really liked me, they really did!

It's Thursday and I'm on the breakfast serving crew and I slide the bowl of oatmeal in front of Amy and with it I slide a folded note. The note says:

Thanks for keeping Miss Howe from beating me. If you really want to still be my friend then you will come down to the town with me after the noon meal. Meet me at the front door.

Jacky

I've set it up with Peg to get the afternoon off 'cause I got to see Ezra again and I got some other stuff in mind. The girls will take up my slack 'cause they know I'll make it up to them, and I will.

The morning goes quickly and I'm excited about getting out in the daytime. I was out last night again and Gully and I blew 'em out of the water for sure. The word had got around about us and we had twice the crowd and made twice the money. The place was full and Maudie had a real glow to her cheeks as she dealt out the tankards and scooped in the coins. I had got the feeling she was about to lose the
Pig before and now she's got hope and it brings joy to my heart.

I had gotten back late last night and added my coins to my stash and stuck it down deep in my seabag. Then I went back up on the widow's walk to think and calm down from the rowdiness of the night.

I glanced over at the Preacher's room, but his usual haunt was dark. Maybe he slept. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he was out visiting with sick parishioners.
Whatever he is doing,
I thought,
he ain't after me right now.
I looked back over my shoulder to make sure of that. It made me wonder how Ezra's going on my case.

I had put my hands on the railing and looked out over the city and thought: This school is my ship, I now realize, and I've got to ride her, at least for now. There is nothing from Jaimy or the others. Nothing. I am alone and cast adrift. So. The front of the school is the bow and the side with my window is the starboard beam and the blind side close to the church is port and the stern points toward the stables and the whole thing is carrying me along through this part of my life and I have just about as much control of it as I did of the
Dolphin,
but it is what I have. This widow's walk is my foretop now.

One thing that was a bit sour last night was that Gully drank too much toward the end of the evening and turned surly. Maybe he had got into some spirits at another tavern, or maybe he had a bottle stashed. He kept going on about being the Hero of Culloden Moor and how the King's soldiers had gone about after the battle and killed the vanquished Scottish wounded where they lay and how the awfulness of that day haunts him every waking hour. The
drink didn't affect his playing none, 'cause he didn't really start actin' bad till late in the evening when our act was nearly done, but still ... It was like he wanted to fight with the whole world. Even with me, I found, as I had to duck the back of his hand as it came toward my face. I stayed out of his way after that by helping Maudie clean up. Bob finally had to put him out.

"Don't worry so, Miss," I says to Amy. I give her a nudge to get her out the door. "We're just a lady and her maid going downtown to do some business. What's the harm in that?"

"If Mistress catches us we will be whipped in front of the other girls and I will cry and be humiliated."

"Did she say you weren't allowed out?"

"No..."

"Well, there you go."

"But we do not have an escort," she says, and I look over and see that she is trying to be brave but she quavers. "I have never been out in the city without my parents."

Oh, you
are
a baby, Miss Amy.

"Don't worry, Miss Amy, nothing's going to happen to you today."

She takes a breath and tries to compose herself. "Do not call me 'Miss Amy,'" she says. "You sound like a slave when you do that. Call me Miss. Call me Amy. But do not call me Miss Amy."

"I will call you Amy as soon as we step off the school grounds, Miss," I say. "When I am in the school I am Jacky Faber, Chambermaid, but when I step off the grounds I am Freebooter Jacky Faber, Seaman, Musician, and Wild Rover."

"There," I say as I step onto Beacon Street. "
Amy
"

We cross Beacon Street and head across the Common. We wade through a flock of black-faced sheep, pushing their fat butts out of the way as we go. At least she is easy with animals. She did say she was a farm girl.

We come out onto Common Street and head down through the city, first on Winter Street, then Marlborough, then on to Milk Street. She looks down every alley as if expecting trouble, but she is game and we press on, and as we do I tell her some of what happened when I was taken to jail and to court and how Ezra was so kind and good to me and how he tried to help me in my darkest hour when my heart was so low and I was liable to be beaten in public, and she asks how could I survive something like that and I says you just do, is all.

Then I tell her what Ezra told me about the death of Janey Porter and she makes the connection with the unmarked grave that we had seen that day in the churchyard and my suspicions about it and about the Preacher and how he has designs on me and my money and my future and all.

And then I tell her about the Preacher's petition and how Ezra is trying to prevent it from happenin' and she is astounded. Now Amy don't seem so worried about her own self. I can tell she's thinkin' deep about all I tell her.

"So the girl Janey Porter was solely in his care when she died?" she says.

"Yes. It must have been awful for her in that place. With him." I tell her about me spying on the Preacher from the widow's walk and how strange he acted and all.

"You've been busy," says Amy, looking at me sideways.

You don't know the half of it, Miss,
I say to myself, thinking about Gully and the Pig and Mrs. Bodeen and the girls
and all the other stuff I ain't told her. But what I say is, "I've got to be busy as he wants me over there to take poor Janey's place."

"That is true," says Amy. "We cannot let that happen."

"It won't happen, believe me, Amy, I'll run away first. My seabag is always packed and I can be gone in a minute," I says firmly. Then I tells her about what Betsey said.

"So we go to see Ephraim Fyffe?"

"Even so, Sister."

The furniture shop to which young Ephraim Fyffe is apprenticed is not hard to find, after a few discreet inquiries. The showroom fronts on Milk Street, so named because in addition to the many shops and factories, there are a large number of cows, and, consequently, a lot of milk—milk in buckets, milk in tubs, milk being made into butter and cheese, and probably milk that will soon appear on the table of the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, and some of that milk will disappear down my neck as well.

The showroom has many pieces of their craft displayed within, and once again I am astounded. When I heard furniture shop from Betsey yesterday I thought rough tables and chairs like in the Pig, but, no, these are the finest examples of the craft—willowy little sticks and boards that somehow come together to form strong chairs that seem to be made of the weakest of sticks but are not and tables with legs carved to look like the legs and feet of lions, tables polished to an impossible sheen. It reminds me of a showroom I saw last week when Peg sent me out with Rachel to get several big joints of meat down at Haymarket. Rachel took me on a route that I did not know and we went by a silversmith's shop and we looked within and I, expecting clumsy little tankards and plates, was amazed to see the silver worked in such intricate ways in grand bowls and servers and ladles and such, and Rachel says that it is the work of our own Mr. Revere, Hero of the Revolution, and I ask whether he really was a hero or not and Rachel says that yes he was 'cause he warned the people of Lexington and Concord of the coming of the British Regulars. But it ain't for all that war stuff that she thinks he's a hero. It was one time, years ago, when the smallpox was sweepin' through Boston and all his children come down with it and the people from the pesthouse came and told Mr. Revere he's got to give up the children to them and he came on that porch up there and says, "
You ain't takin my babies!
" and they don't and the kids all got better, and that's why he's a hero to her.

I thought upon that and I gave Rachel a light punch on her shoulder and said that then he's a hero to me, too.

Around the back is the working area full of sawdust and shavings, and there Amy and I find Ephraim Fyffe. He is taking his midday meal at a table with benches set up outside. He is a solid-looking young man, with a good growth of reddish brown hair on the back of his strong forearms, that same curly hair being flecked with pieces of sawdust. He has a broad forehead and a thick head of hair that is tied in back with a black ribbon.
A black ribbon like in mourning,
I'm thinkin'.

He looks at us in a guarded but not unfriendly way.

I bob and say, "Your pardon, Mr. Fyffe, but I have this note from Betsey Byrnes." I hand it over.

Suspicion is written all over his face, but he picks up the scrap of paper and reads it. One thing that amazes me about
this town is that almost everybody can read and write, enough at least to get along. All the downstairs girls can. On our way down here, when we were on School Street, we passed the Chambers School where the children were out on playtime. Amy told me that it's a state law that all children shall be taught to read and write.
All
children.
Thanks, London, for nothing.

I know the note says, "
Ephraim, you can trust her as she is trying to help about poor Janey. Yrs. Betsey.
"

He looks up and says, "Would you like something to eat?" He offers to share the bread and butter of his noon meal with us but we say no, to please eat.

I tell him our names and we sit down at the table across from him. He does not rip up the note or crumple it but instead folds it up carefully and slips it into a pocket of his vest. Then he says, "What do you want to know?"

"Tell us about Jane Porter and what happened to her."

His face darkens. "She was a good girl what never did nothin' wrong." He pauses and then says in a voice full of sadness, "She ... died and they came and got me and made me look upon her poor body."

At this I look at Amy and she nods and says, "It is our custom. If a person is suspect in a murder, he is brought forward and forced to look upon the deceased in all their gore, the thought being that the horror and guilt will be too much for him to bear and he will confess to the crime."

"Oh," I say, with doubt in my voice, having known some accomplished liars in my time, including myself, who might've got through such a thing without confessin'.

"Sometimes," continues Amy, "it is done right then and sometimes..." She pauses and looks down at her hands
clasped in her lap. "And sometimes later.
Much
later ... weeks ... sometimes months ... later. With the contents of the grave exhumed."

I reflect on
that
and think it'd be hard for any person, guilty or not, not to react in some way to such a sight as the dug-up contents of a grave that is no longer green.

"Did Reverend Mather help you?" I ask.

"
Help
me? He put the police on me, that's how he helped me!" says Ephraim, glowering at his now forgotten bread.

"Why would he do that?" I ask. I know the answer, but I ask it anyway 'cause I want to hear him say it.

"'Cause me and Janey had an ... understanding, and he knew it. We were going to marry in the spring when I finished my apprenticing here."

"What did you do when you looked upon her?" I hate to ask but I do.

He takes a breath and I see that his eyes have welled up. "All I did was stand there and cry. Her all twisted like that. They hadn't even straightened her out and made her proper, even. Just all twisted..."

"Do you think she killed herself?" Amy gives me a bit of her elbow for my cruelty.

His eyes may be tearing, but the look behind them is pure rage. He glowers at me. "She did not do that to herself, Miss. I know that."

"How do you know it?"

"Because she was a happy girl. She was happy we were going to be married. She was happy until..."

"Until the last month or so of her life. I have heard that. Is it true?"

"What is your interest in this?" he says, looking at me
intently. "Is it for fun? For excitement? Is it a girlish lark? What?"

"I don't like seeing injustice done, for one. For two, he is after me now."

"Ah," he says, and considers this. He looks down at his strong hands knotted in fists on the tabletop. My answer seems to satisfy him, and I don't blame him for asking the question, 'cause I would ask it, too.

"Yes," he says after some thought. "Yes, her unhappiness and loss of cheer was a sudden thing and I figured it out after a few days even though she wouldn't say nothing about it and I went through hell but I told her that it didn't matter 'cause it wasn't her fault—him being a big and powerful gentleman and her being a poor helpless girl caught in his house all alone with him but she still wouldn't say nothing, just shake her head and weep."

"What about her being with child?"

Amy hisses and warns me with
Jacky
and pokes me again, but I press on. "Could she have killed herself over that?"

Ephraim rises to his full height over me and says low and even, "She didn't kill herself. She didn't kill herself over what he did to her. She didn't kill herself over a baby. She didn't kill herself over
anything.
She
didn't
kill herself, Miss Faber..." He sits back down, with the veins in his forearms still standing out over the clenched muscles in his arms.