Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (25 page)

"Nice horsie," I says, givin' him my best smile. "Here, have an apple."

"Jacky, be careful," I hears Amy warn from behind me.
Careful of what?

I holds out the apple and he pulls back his lips over his huge teeth and he bites me.

"Damn you!" I cries, clasping my bitten hand to my breast. "You bit me!" And without thinkin' I takes that same hand and swats him across the nose with it.

"Miss! Please! You can't treat him so!" pleads the head hostler. "He's too—"

"You miserable piece of..." I growls, and then launches into a string of sailor's curses that cause the stable hands to wince and cover the ears of the younger onlookers. I don't remember much of what I said 'cause of my shock and pain in bein' bit, but I'm afraid I took the Lord's name in vain a few times in wishing the damned nag to the lowest levels of Hell, and I think I might have said a few bad things about his mother.

The Sheik looks confused and abashed—it's plain he ain't used to bein' treated this way. He ain't near so fierce lookin' now.

I jump to the ground and pick up the spurned apple and hop back up to confront the horse again. "Now, horse," I says, "let's try it again. Have an apple, and if you bite me again, I will smack you again. And, remember, this is Cheapside Jacky talking to you, horse." I offer the apple on my open palm.

The horse looks at the apple and then looks nervously up at my other hand raised and ready to strike him on the nose should he be so bold as to try another assault on my poor hand. He looks back down at the apple and then, very gently, the Sheik of Araby takes the apple.

"That's better," I say, reaching back and combing his mane through my fingers. "We will get along."

"Amy."

"Yes, Jacky."

I put my face down on the hay and look over at her. It is raining on this Sunday, our third day at Dovecote, and, after having gone to church, we are lying above in the stable hayloft where it is warm and dry and redolent with the smell of the horses. Faithful Millie lies down below at the foot of the ladder, whimpering because she can't come up.

There is a small piece of board missing on the side of the barn and we lie side by side looking out across the autumnal fields. The fields set up quite a pleasing pattern as they roll down to the sea, and the rain has brought a blush of green back to the earth. The rain has also kept us here another day, which is all right with me.

I'm thinking back on Jaimy and what he wants me to be and on Mistress and on my demotion and I asks, "Am I crude, Amy? Others have said I am, which is why I'm asking."

She waits a little too long in replying.

"I
knew
it," I says, and flips over on my back. "I
am
crude and common and awful and I'll never be a lady. I shall
go down and slop the hogs as that is my station in life and I should be glad of it and not try to get above myself."

Amy looks at me for a while, thinking. "It is not so much that you are crude, as it is that you are ... impulsive ... simple ... straightforward ... and maybe a bit too direct and plainspoken for our society. In a charming way, of course," she adds quickly and puts her hand on my arm to show I ain't to take offense. "An unpolished gem, as it were."

"Oh?" I gets up on one elbow to face her direct. "And what do I do wrong that makes me all those things?"

She considers the question, and, at length, she plunges forward. "When you hurt, Jacky, you cry. When you are unhappy, you whine. When you are mad, you curse, and when you are threatened, you resort to violence. You talk with your mouth full and lean over your plate. You dash madly about when an impulse takes you, and you never walk when you can run. You say the first thing that comes to your mind, and the profanity, like with the Sheik yesterday, oh, Jacky, you have just
got
to stop that."

As if recognizing his name spoken, the stallion wickers and snorts down below. "You hush up, horse," I orders, "or I'll see you salted down in a barrel and served up to poor sailors who'll curse you for your toughness and lack of flavor, I will." I have already cajoled my way onto the back of the Sheik—the stable hands are finding me hard to deny, 'cause of my persistence.

She pauses to take a breath and then goes on. "And that way you have of grinning with your mouth open, looking like a vixen that has just killed a poor goose and is reveling in the blood that drips from her jaws, well ... There, you're doing it right now. Stop it. Please."

"Shall I make that prissy little Clarissa smile?" I screw my lips up into a prune shape and cross my eyes.

I can see she is warming to her task in spite of my clowning. "And your references to your personal things: It is
not
your petticoats, nor your shifts,
definitely
not your underpants, it is your
linen.
As in, 'I must have my
linen
cleaned,' not, as you would have it, 'Oi've got to scrub out me drawers!'"

For this I give the sad-eyed, abashed look and say, "You must be very ashamed of me, Sister."

"Not at all," she says. "I love you as my life. But you did ask..."

"All right, all right. Go on." I sprawls on my back again. "Lay on, Amy, and get it all out."

"Well. Then there's that right there. You should never lie or sit with your limbs apart like that."

I snaps my legs together.

"And they are your
limbs,
Jacky, and that is how you should refer to them, not as your legs or arms or anything else."

"Even when it's just us girls?"

"Even so." Amy's mouth is set in the same thin line as Mistress Pimm's.

"Farewell, legs. Hello, limbs," I says. "What is this, then?" I point.

"Your
knee.
Part of your limb. And, yes, your
thigh,
too, is part of your
limb,
and never discussed."

"And me rump?" I asks, pointing to my bottom.

"Your
derriere.
The less said, the better."

"And these?"

"
Décolletage
would be best. Or
breast,
but singular, never plural."

"And this?"

"That is your
abdomen,
dear, not your
belly
nor your
stomach.
Discussed only with your doctor." She knows that she is being played with, but she goes on. "And no more picking of the nose, should you get around to pointing to that part. And as to that, a lady does not point, either."

I take a deep breath and let out a long sigh. "Farewell, nose, friend of my idle hours. Farewell, too, my belly. Maybe as Miss Ab Domen you will not trouble me so much with your wants."

I grin what I now know is my foxy grin and lift my hand and am about to point to the really good stuff when she drops her head and says, "Now you are going to shock me and it is not fair, for I am such an easy target."

She looks down at her hands wringing in her lap and doesn't say anything more. I see from her expression that I was about to go too far with her.

"I'm sorry, Amy." I rustle about and straighten myself out on the straw and say, "I don't want to be a lady like Clarissa, but I do want to be a lady like you, and I will listen to you and learn."

In spite of all my foolery, she seems touched by what I say.

I lift my hand to my brow and make a salute. "I, Jacky Faber, Maiden First Class, await your further instructions, Ma'am!"

I thinks then about Jaimy and our hammock and then adds, "Better make that Maiden
Second
Class," and I wrap my arms about myself and rock back and forth, giggling.

"I do not believe you are one at all," she blurts out. "There. I have said it." Her face is blushing furiously.

"Are one what?" I asks, wondering what she's gettin' at.

"A ... a maiden," she whispers in mortification.

I drop the smile and give a low whistle. "What you must think of me, Miss," I say.

"No, no ... I am sorry. Forgive me. It is just that ... that I worry about you, Jacky. Things you have said, things you have done ... I'm sorry," she says, and covers her face in shame. "Let us talk about something else, please, Sister. I am sorry."

I gaze upon her and remember Mistress telling me to keep my mouth shut about my past, but that was before I was kicked out of the ranks of the ladies.

I consider that and then I says, "Would you like to hear my little story, then?"

"I would, yes, I suppose I would," she says in relief and in, I think, some dread.

"Even the rough parts?"

She gulps and then nods.

"All right, then," I says, lying back. "And if afterward you want to put me out, I'm all right with that and won't hold it against you. I know I'm free and easy in my ways, and I know that might not sit right with someone like you who was brought up proper. My seabag is always packed and I can be gone in five minutes. Agreed?"

"I would never put you out. Never."

"Never say never, Amy. It has a way of coming back on you.

I put my hands behind my head and look off into the high rafters of the barn, and back through the Caribbean and the Mediterranean and the
Dolphin
and Jaimy and the
Brotherhood and Cheapside and Charley and the gang and back to that day, That Dark Day.

At last I close my eyes and begins to speak.

"
My name is Jacky Faber and in London I was born, but, no, I wasn't born with that name. Well, the Faber part, yes, the Jacky part, no, but they call me Jacky now and it's fine with me. They also call me Jack-o and Jock and the Jackeroe, too, and, aye, it's true I've been called Bloody Jack a few times, but that wasn't all my fault. Mostly, though, they just call me Jacky.

"
That wasn't my name, though, back on That Dark Day when my poor dad died of the pestilence and the men dragged him out of our rooms and down the stairs, his poor head hanging between his shoulders and his poor feet bouncin on the stairs, and me all sobbin and blubberin and Mum no help, she bein sick, too, and my little sister, as well.

"
Back then my name was Mary.
"

It was much harder to tell than I thought it would be and much, much later when I am finished and I lie shuddering and sobbing in her arms, Amy says, "How silly we must all seem to you."

And then, as I quiet down and subside, she says, "Never,
ever
again think that you are less than any lady."

J. Faber
General Delivery
U.S. Post Office
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
October 18, 1803

Dear Jaimy,

We're back at the school, Amy and me, and I'm mooning out the window, watching the clouds roll by like great big puffy sailing ships and putting together in my mind the stuff I'm gonna tell you about in this letter. All about Amy's farm, Dovecote, and how beautiful it is and what a great time I had there. And about how on Sunday, after church—can you believe it, Jaimy, the place is so big it has its own little chapel—after church, they put a saddle on the Sheik, he's this big Thoroughbred, and were walking him around the paddock just to give him a little exercise, and after a little begging, they let me get up on him and you wouldn't believe how big he is and how strong. He'd a little jockey-type saddle on him, the kind where the stirrups are real high so that your knees are right up by your chin when you're sitting, but you don't sit, you stand in the
stirrups and put your bottom in the air and your face over the horses neck. Or rather, your limbs and derriere and visage. I'm trying, Jaimy, I am trying to become a lady, even though I ain't in the lady school anymore.

Anyway, we're walking around and around and I'm thinking of kicking him up to a trot, what could it hurt after all, when a breeze comes up and the paddock gate swings open he-cause it wasn't latched proper. Now, I swear it wasn't me that took the horse out that gate, that it was the horse his own willful self, but nobody believes me, but one thing for sure, we are out and gone. The Sheik gathered himself and leaped straight into a full gallop and we were off across the yard and down the road, my face bein' whipped by his flyin' mane, my lower limbs clutchin his back, and we fly. How we did fly!

We were pounding down the road and I saw the main racecourse up ahead and I managed to steer him toward it 'cause I thought it'd be better to run him there 'cause I didn't want him stepping in a hedgehog hole out in the fields and breaking one of his precious legs, and we got on the track and I knew this is a place he knew real well 'cause he got right up against the rail and he flew, Jaimy, he flew! The white fence posts flickered by in the corner of my eye as he roared along, hooves pounding and throwing up great clots of turf and the foam from his mouth and the snot from his nose blowing in my face but I didn't care for wasn't I having the ride of my very life!

Once around, twice, and still he showed no signs of wanting to stop but I thought it might be best that he don't burst his noble heart just now and I started pulling back on the reins and at first he resisted, but then he gave in and started to slow and I saw the stable hands running toward us with ropes and I pulls him back harder and he reared up on his hind legs and I yelled
in his ear, "Scream, Sheiky, Scream!" And he did. He screamed out all his defiance and his rage and his joy and everything that's wild and wonderful in him. Glory!

Then I slid off his back and took the reins and led him over to George, who gave me a murderous look and took the reins and led the Sheik back to his stall, but not before the Sheik of Araby looked back at me as if to say, "See, little human? See?
"

So now you can put Horse Stealer next to my name along with liar, murderer, mutineer, beggar, thief, and, I suppose, lewd and lascivious dancer, but I swear I didn't take the horse out. But then, I don't want to swear on anything too sacred, either.

I met Amy's brother Randall, too, when I was at Dovecote. He's quite a dashing young man, a lieutenant in the Yankee militia and about the same age as you, dear, but not nearly as handsome. Actually, if you two ever were to meet, I think you'd be at sword's point in no time, as he is a bit of an arrogant rotter. But not without some charm, I think. On the second day I was there he was a bit more civil to me and even called me by my name, even though I am merely a serving girl now. I told him howl got demoted and he seemed to feel for me in my distress over the incident. He even showed me around a bit.

Amy and I left Dovecote to go back to school on Monday and we did it the same way we came down—with me in full fig as Midshipman Jack Faber—and all went well on our return ride.

When we got back to the Lawson Peabody Amy wanted to sneak in quietly but I would have none of it. A delicious situation like this and we should waste it? "Oh no, my Sister, we must launch you into legend and song," I said, and I led us clattering into the street behind the school, where the dormitory windows look down but Mistress's windows do not, and I wheeled us about in grand fashion, with the horses' whinnies
and their hooves making a great loud show of it, till I spotted a few faces in the windows and then I bounded down and gave up my hand and helped Amy off of Hildy. I escorted her to the top of the back stairs and bent over in an elegant bow and kissed her hand, saying, "Your reputation is made, my dear, just keep up your end of it—if anyone asks about that young man, just smile all mysterious and shake your head, as if you could not possibly tell.
"

Waving farewell, I leaped back on Gretchie and galloped off, hallooing like any love-struck lad. You should have seen it, Jaimy. It was grand.