Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (27 page)

Amy notices my miniature I did of Jaimy that I hung on my bedpost so it is the last thing I see at night before I snuff the lamp and the first thing I see when I wake.

"That is your young man?" she asks, and I say yes, but it's not a good likeness 'cause he's much more handsome than that and my poor skill does not do him justice at all.

"He is a lucky young man," says Amy, and she turns to looking at my books. She picks up one and reads the title, "
Barnabas Bickford, a History of Wantonness and Dissolution.
" And then another, "
The Rake's Progress.
"

She considers these for a moment and then asks, wonderingly, "Where ever did you get these? Surely not from the school library?"

"No. I got them from dear old Mr. Yale, who has the
bookseller's shop on School Street. He lent me the books in return for me sweeping up a bit when I can," I says.

"No moss ever grows on you, does it, Sister?"

"Well, I was down there the other day, and I figured, why not give it a try?"

"You were abroad in the town again and you were not arrested?"

"I am not always arrested, Sister, as I know my way around."

"Why did you go, other than pure contrariness?"

"I had to find out when Gully was getting out of the slammer so as to know when we're gonna put on our act again."

"And when is that?"

"Friday night. Then Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. Three full sets."

"I wish you would not do it, Jacky, I really do wish that. You are going to get in trouble. Again." She wrings her hands, and I know that she is genuinely distressed.

"I must do it, Amy. I must get some money together so I can leave if I have to. Have I told you that Mistress means to marry me off as soon as a 'suitable match' is found?"

"That is horrid and wrong," she says. "I cannot believe it. Not even Mistress would do that."

I snort out a quick bark of a laugh. "When you fall in Mistress's eyes, you fall hard and far, that's for sure. A 'suitable match' indeed! Prolly to some no-account scoundrel who'll take my money and work me to the bone and then turn me out when I'm broke down and useless. Well, believe me, Sister, it's not gonna be that way. I'll run away first, I will, and if I have to cut and run because of it, well, I'd
rather have some money in my pocket than to go out in the world all penniless again."

"Where would you run to?" asks Amy.

I consider this and say, "If I didn't have enough money to book passage back to England, I would go to New York, I think. I hear they might be more tolerant of my ways than Boston seems to be. I would work the taverns there till I had enough money to cross the pond."

I lean over and turn the wick on the lamp down as low as I can without it going out, as I don't want to have to creep down to the fireplace in the dormitory to light it again. "So you see that I must do what I must do. Come, let us go up on the widow's walk."

I rise and go over and pull down my stairway to the stars.

And stars there are. It is a brilliant night and the moon is just rising and the stars are as jewels in the heavens and I name them and point them out to Amy. I especially point out my old friend Orion and Polaris, the North Star, which always tells the poor sailor where north is and what latitude he is on.

We both lean on the railing and look out over the town, struck by the beauty of the tiny lights that twinkle in the city and the moonlight gleaming on the harbor beyond.

We are silent for a while and then Amy asks, "What do you want out of life, Jacky?"

I don't have to think hard on that, as it's what I always wanted since first I stepped on the
Dolphin.
"I'd like to have a small ship, one that could take cargo here and there around the world. So I could get my Bombay Rat and Cathay Cat, and see the Kangaroo."

"And what does that mean?

"It's just a line from a song I heard sailors singing back in London when I was on the streets. It sorta summed up for me the yearning I felt to better my condition and see the world and all its wonders. That yearning I feel yet, strong as ever."

"And if your Mr. Fletcher wants you to stay at home and keep house?"

I smile at that. "Ah, Jaimy knows me better than that, he does. He knows I got a streak of the wild rover in me and would soon get restless and unhappy in a calm and settled life."
My Mr. Fletcher,
I think, the smile slipping from my face,
is he really?
It's been almost two months and still no letters.
What's wrong, Jaimy?

"And what do you want out of your life, Sister?" I ask Amy in return. I suck in the cool night air, looking out over the water to where Britain lies. She is quiet for a time.

"I want to write poetry and prose and I want to publish it, and I want to lecture about my writing and the writing of others before halls of educated people and I want..." She stops. "It does not matter what I want, because it is not going to happen. Women do not publish, as it is
unseemly.
It is just not done—their sensitive natures, you know, and the disgrace to their families, well, it is just not done, not in New England, anyway, and I do not want to talk about it anymore."

"Seems to me you could publish what you want to publish, if you've got the money to pay the printer. I know there's women in England who write novels and sell them," says I, a little mystified as to what one can and cannot do in this world. Seems to me that money drives what you can
and cannot do. "Mr. Yale has a print shop next to the bookstore, should you need it."

Amy cuts her eyes to mine. "As a matter of fact, I
do
have a project in mind—"

"Hush! Amy, get down! He's there!" and I pull her by her sleeve down to the deck of the widow's walk and we lie there and peer out through the railing posts at the Preacher's lighted window.

First he opens the window and leans out and peers intently at Janey's grave and then he pulls back and the arm and the finger start pointing and he starts into talking and he starts saying words like
demon
and
devil
and
Satan
and
Babylon,
and Amy and me, whose faces are right close together, look at each other in amazement.

Then the Preacher goes into his thing of talking to someone not in the room and we hear snatches like "
Grandfather, I know!
" and then "
Something will be done, I swear!...
" and then he steps back into the room and we can hear only muffled sounds. After a pause, he lunges back to the window and says, "
I know she is one, too, and she will pay, oh I swear it, Grandfather, I swear it!
" and I get the feelin' that he ain't talking about poor Janey now, and I wonder what I'm guilty of. Besides the usual, that is.

I look over toward janey's grave and I shudder, 'cause I know for certain that if he gets me over there I will soon lie beside her.

I look at the overarching oak tree and resolve that I will hear the Reverend Mather a lot more closely tomorrow night.

After the Preacher subsides and turns out his lamp, Amy and I get up and go back down to my room.

"Please, Sister," I say as we come back into the small circle of my lamp, "stay with me tonight, as I feel the nightmare coming on."

Soon we are abed and I snuff out the lamp and I burrow into her side and the nightmare does not come.

I take the packet of black powder and open it and iJp^pour the contents into the steaming pail of water I have prepared and then I take a stick and stir. This done, I take the britches that I got off poor Charlie the night he died and plunge them into the dye and poke them down with the stick and swirl them around. I'll leave the whole thing sit for an hour or two and then I'll pour off the dye and rinse out the britches and hang them to dry. It won't be a great dye job, but it will do for my purposes.

I had been keeping the pants in my seabag 'cause, though they are tight, I can still get them on. There's a New England homily that I heard Peg say one day that goes "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," and I holds to that motto, as it appeals to my practical nature.

I got the dye this morning at the chemist's at the end of Sprague's Wharf when Abby and I were sent down to the market to get some fresh-killed chickens. We don't usually kill our own hens, as long as they keep on laying eggs, but we do kill the roosters when we get too many of them or when we have a pressing need. A while back I was taken out and shown the ax and the chopping block with its two nails
stuck in it about an inch apart, which is where you put the chicken's head and then stretch out his neck out and then ... I couldn't look, and one day when Peg said, "Jacky, go kill two chickens. I need 'em for the broth," I took the ax, but I dragged Annie outside and begged and pleaded for her to do it and she did. In spite of the nickname I picked up on the ship, Bloody Jack don't like killin' and she ain't particularly partial to blood.

I also bought a watch cap, one of those black knit woolen things that sailors wear rolled up on top of their heads when it gets a bit chilly and pull down over their ears when the weather turns harsh. I've already got one, of course, but I'm going to need another. Abby looks at me funny when I pays a penny for that, but I just say that winter is coming.

"It ain't exactly the fashion," says Abby, with a laugh. It's always a joy to come to town with the plump and jolly Abby, she of the red curls stuffed up in her cap, she with her wandering eye for the lads—won't be long before she's married and dandling a fat baby on her knee, I'll wager.

"Don't matter," says I.

This morning, too, I gather up some sooty ashes from the edge of the fire and put them in an old cracked jar, and, let's see, I'm going to need an extra bucket of water in my room and some old ragged towels that no one will miss, an old mop.

I get all these things and I sneak them up to my room and stash them in the shadows where the roof rafters meet the floor.

Then I go down and attend to my duties.

***

I am easy in my duties now. I know how to make bread and am skilled in washing and ironing, and under Peg's sweet guidance, I am learning to cook. I keep up with my studies on the sly and steadily improve in my painting and my music—I can read the little musical notes now and Maestro Fracelli is showing me some things on the fiddle as I have shown interest 'cause of listening to Gully. I'm even doing some embroidery. Mistress would be proud, if she knew, but if she knew she'd prolly beat me for neglecting my duties, so it's better she don't know.

In turn I've been helping Rebecca with her reading and writing and math, she being the little girl I talked to my first day here as we sat all miserable doing our samplers. Poor thing, she's really too young to be here and seems so lost. So, anyway, I'm paying back in instruction for the instruction I've been getting, and that seems fair to me.

Clarissa doesn't bother much with me anymore, now that I have been, in her eyes, completely destroyed, and am no longer worthy of her steel—though she does keep a wary eye on me since that little thing with Randall at the Grand High Tea. The serving of the meals is no longer the humiliation that it was at first. I am used to it now, and so is everyone else. It is merely a job to be done and, it is to be hoped, done well.

We do the noon dinner and then clean up, and later I help Dolley, Miss Frazier, that is, serve the afternoon tea, as it is her turn. She is gracious and charming and she orders me about with a brisk but kind manner that I hope I will be able to show someday if I ever have servants, which ain't likely. Dolley is going to be a fine lady, I can tell. She already is one.

***

When I help serve the evening meal, I notice how the Preacher's eyes seek me out every few minutes for a split second and then dart away. Not plain enough for anyone else to notice, of course, he is much too careful about that. But I do, and if I had any doubts as to which girl he was talking about last night, I don't have them now.

What I can't figure, though, is how he can appear almost sane now, in the daytime, and then turn into a raving lunatic at night.

Maybe he's a werewolf.

This night I sit and talk with Amy and I give her
The Rake's Progress
to read and I say for her to take it with her downstairs but she says no, Mistress will take it if she sees her reading it—
unseemly,
you know—and so she will read it only when she is upstairs here with me.

And so we each curl up with our books and we read till we hear the call for prayers downstairs and I tell Amy not to come back up 'cause I'm going to be all right with the nightmares tonight and she shouldn't risk getting caught hanging about with the servants—
unseemly
you know—and she agrees and goes below.

I read for a bit and then when things go completely quiet in the school, I get out of bed and take off my nightdress and pull on Charlie's pants that are black now and quite tight from the dye bath, but that's good 'cause I don't need any extra fabric flappin' around me tonight. I put on my black sweater and over that my black vest. I think about shoes, but I know I can climb better without 'em, so I stick to my bare feet, which have always served me well in the past, no matter what the rigging.

I cram my faithful old black watch cap down over my hair and low on my brow. Then I go to my jar of soot and take some and rub it over my face to take the white shine off of it and I do the same to my feet.

Then I go and pull down the stairway and go up to the widow's walk.

He is not yet at his window, but somehow I feel he will be tonight, because of the glances he sent my way at supper this evening, so I put my foot on a stout branch of the overarching oak tree and begin to climb.

The moon is rising and that makes it easier for me to make my way through the branches, but it also makes it easier for me to be spotted in spite of my burglar's gear and so I am careful to move slowly.

Soon I am over the trunk of the tree, midway between the two buildings, and I pick out the branch that will lead me to the church. I begin to climb out on it and it sinks under my weight until it touches the roof and makes it easy for me to step onto the tiles of the church roof. When I get off, the branch lifts a bit, so I will have to leap up for it on my return.