Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (44 page)

I think she's going to faint away. Good for her, stupid old biddy. What does she know of bad influences?

"If anyone here is a bad influence on the minds of young girls, it is you, with your failure to welcome a stranger in your land."

She recovers and throws back her head and spits, "For all your fine words, you are naught but a common thief!"

"For all your fine airs, you are naught but a common scold! I bid you good day, Madam!"

Later at dinner I think about things and say to my grandfather, "You know ... what that woman called me? I hope you know that I am not one ... a bad girl, I mean. I am free and easy in my ways, but..."

He reaches out and pats my hand and looks at me with a serene expression. "I hope you are a good girl, Mary, and I think you are one. But it is not for me to judge you. I care only that you are alive and in the world."

Well, good,
I'm thinking. "Now tell me about my mother when she was little, and how she grew up and all."

"I will," he says. "And gladly, but first..." He puts his hand into his waistcoat and pulls out something carefully wrapped in velvet cloth. He hands it to me.

I unwrap it and find that it's a miniature portrait. It's of a young girl wearing a blue collar trimmed in lace. Her sandy hair is tied back with matching blue ribbon, and from the look on her merry face, it looks like she's been up to some mischief.

"It's her," says my grandfather. "That's my Nancy."

It is like looking into a mirror...

And then he starts to tell me about her.

The bell of St. Nicholas peals off its seven notes at seven o'clock like always. It's getting to be the time of the year when that's around dawn. We're up and having breakfast for there's lots to do on this, our last day in port.

Mairead is looking a bit grumpy, I guess from knowing she's going back to face the wrath of Moira. Grandfather, however, is quite cheerful and in high spirits. Our talk last evening went far into the night, so far, in fact, that we went out on the deck so Mairead could turn in.

One thing I found reassuring was that, even though my mother looked exactly like me, she managed to have two children without dying. I always imagined that I would probably die in childbirth, because of my narrow hips and all, and it was a bit of a relief to find out that I might not. Not that it matters, for I intend to live single all of my life, but still...

"So what will you do now, Grandfather?" I ask. "Will you go back to your parish?" Higgins refills our cups, and I nod my thanks.

He thinks for a moment before answering. "No, I have been on the road and have had a taste of adventure and now I have no desire to go back. I'll leave the vicarage to Reverend Stewart. I don't suppose you'll let me join your crew?" he says, smiling, already knowing the answer. "No, I thought not. Well then, I think I will go to London and set up as a letter writer as Nancy's Jack did before me. Maybe I'll get some tutoring jobs. I am not so old that there is not another adventure in me. I believe I will set up near to where my child died so that I might feel a bit closer to her."

I put my hand on his arm and am unable to speak for a moment. Then I do.

"Grandfather. I have a much better idea."

But I do not get to tell him of my Grand Plan, not yet anyway, as there comes a pounding on the door and John Reilly's voice calling out, "Miss! Come quickly! There's trouble!"

I fly out the door, followed closely by Mairead. The look on Reilly's never-cheerful face does not bode well.

"What happened?"

"The young men of the Starboard Watch. They were taken by the police late last night. There was a fight."

"Who?"

"Delaney, McBride, McConnaughey, Duggan, Lynch, Hogan, and O'Hara."

"Where's Liam?" I demand, fuming.
The idiots!

"He's below, loading his pistols," says Reilly, darkly. "He says he won't let his son rot in no English jail."

Damn!

Just then Liam comes out of the hatchway, armed to the teeth and a look of grim determination on his face.

"Liam! Stop! We've got to talk!" I say, stepping in front of him.

"Get out of my way, girl," he says through clenched teeth. He pushes me aside and heads for the gangway.

I leap up and get my arms around his neck and hiss in his ear, "Liam! You've got to calm down! We've got to plan! Get in my cabin, now!" But he keeps on going. "Liam! Hear me out! Then if you still want to go commit suicide, then do it, with my blessing, but hear me out first!"

Liam stops and he lets his shoulders sag.

"I was happy," he says in a low voice. "I was back at sea and making money. I was able to put food on the table for my wife and family. Now my own two oldest children are conspiring to drive me stark-raving mad."

"Ah, Liam, and just how happy and content did you make your own parents, going off and being a bold rebel and all? Now into my cabin. All is not yet lost."

We get him down into the cabin.

"All right. How did it happen?" I ask when all are gathered about my table.

"Apparently Padraic was seen talking to a local girl in the afternoon—out on the quay—they went walking for a bit...," begins Reilly.

Great, just great, Jacky, you idiot: "Oh, do come down to my ship for a tour, girls, it will be ever so much fun." It was the brave girl from the picnic, I just know it—I guess she decided to come for her tour. Damn!

"...and they were seen by some local boys. Last night at the Bull and Rooster some of the local toughs told our young hotheads to leave their girls alone. McBride then got up on his hind legs and told them that he and his mates would kiss what girls they wanted to and if the local boys had nothing to kiss, well then they could kiss his fine Irish ass, and the fight was on. Not just with fists, either—swords were drawn and used. None of our boys were hurt, but some of the locals were cut. Nobody's died yet."

Uh-oh...
more serious than I thought. Not just a simple bar fight. If someone dies ... I think of that gallows tree ... and a judgment of five hundred lashes, where a man is turned into a bloody side of beef—that can be a death sentence, too.

I shake those thoughts from my head. Action now, not worry.

"Higgins. Take money—lots of it. Go up there and see what can be done to buy them out. It's Saturday, so they can't be brought up before a judge till Monday."

Higgins nods and goes over, pulls out the money drawer, and unlocks the strongbox. He loads up his pockets and prepares to leave.

"Use all your charm and cunning, Higgins," I say.

"I will try, Miss," he says, and he leaves on his mission.

I flop into my chair. "If he is successful, each of those stupid ...
boys...
shall work a year for nothing!"

But he is not successful.

"I am sorry, Miss, but it can't be done. I did use a few shillings to pry a little information out of the jailer, though," says Higgins. He puts back the money and stands up. "They will be arraigned on Monday, and charged with aggravated assault, if not murder. A primary reason that money won't work its usual magic is that a Mrs. Constance Grindle, wife of Reverend Grindle, has insisted that the letter of the law be met."

Hmmm ... I know that one, too. She's the old biddy who called me a whore.

"There is also a bog-draining project on the outskirts of the town that they are having trouble finding laborers for. Apparently it is nasty work, and it is for that place the boys are headed, if not for..." He lets that go in deference to Liam.

Liam starts to get up, but I put my hand on his shoulder and push him back down.

"What is the lay of the land in there?" I ask.

Higgins considers, then speaks. "There is an outer chamber, where the jailer sits. Behind him is a locked cage. Behind that is another locked cage and that is where the lads are. Such is the power of this Mrs. Grindle, that the jailer has only the key to the outer cage, and not the inner, so as to keep him from temptations such as ours. It is a pity, for he seemed perfectly willing to yield to that temptation, and was, in fact, somewhat miffed at being denied his lawful graft that goes with the territory."

"How far is the outer door to the inner?"

"About eight feet."

"Describe the main cell itself." I get up and go over to one of my cabin windows and look out. I can see the jail up there on the hill where our lads are held. Mairead joins me and I give her hand a squeeze.
Steady down, girl. I know that he's in there.

"It is about twenty feet square. Only the front of it is iron bars. The rest is the stone masonry of the building itself. No windows."

"Are there beds? Benches? Mattresses?"

"Benches around the perimeter of the room, and what appear to be rough straw mattress pads."

"Were you allowed to talk to them?"

"No, Miss. But they did see me there, and I gave them the thumbs-up sign to show them we were doing what we could. Ian McConnaughey stood and gave a thumbs-up back to show they were in good spirits." Mairead lets out a whimper on this.

"Hmmm..." I think for a bit and then say, "Well, we've got to get them out, and to do that we've got to get a message to them. I think that naught but a priest could get close to them now, so a priest we shall have."

I go briskly around the table and start counting off on my fingers. "First, we need a Roman collar. Higgins, if you could find one or make one up?" Higgins nods and says consider it done.

"Then we'll need a Bible. Try to get an old one, one that looks like it's been used, and you're not liable to find
that
on the
Emerald.
"

"I have a Bible, Nan—Mary. I am surprised that you do not," says my grandfather.

You would be surprised over a lot of things about me, Grandfather. One of which is that I seek the face of God in the sky and in the waves of the ocean, not in some book or on my knees in some dusty church.

"I know, Grandfather, but I don't want you to lose your Bible in this endeavor. And, Grandfather, it might just be easier if you call me Jacky like everyone else."

"Well, all right ... Jacky," says he, "but it's a shame you didn't keep your given name, it is such a beautiful one."

"Well, I had my reasons. Now, listen up, Grandfather, and everybody else, too. Here's what you're going to do..."

***

Higgins has jury-rigged a collar such that a Roman Catholic priest might wear—it's close enough for all these Anglicans know—and he has fitted my grandfather out in it.

"Liam, show him how to do the sign of the cross."

My grandfather turns white—that he should be doing this, he of all people, a vicar of the Anglican Church. I see that he might faint straight away.

"Grandfather, you must think of this as an adventure," I say, my hands on his shoulders. "You will be playacting. It will not be real."

"You know, my Nancy was a headstrong girl—that's why she and Jack went off to London, to seek something different than same-old Saint Edmunds," he says, straightening his back. "I'd like to think she got that independence of spirit from me. What do you want me to do, dear?"

"Well, first I want you to give me an apt quotation from the Bible, concerning prison..."

"Hmmm. How about Isaiah forty-two seven ...
I have given a light to the nations ... to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
"

"Good enough," I say, and I turn to that passage in the Bible and I begin to write, very lightly, in the margin with my pencil ...
Tomorrow, at dawn, on the first stroke of the Saint Nicholas bell, you will make yourselves ready. On the second stroke, you shall casually pick up your mattresses, and on the third stroke, you shall place your miserable carcasses up against the wall farthest from the harbor, and on the fourth and fifth, you shall cover up your worthless selves with those mattresses as best you can, and on the sixth, you shall wait for our signal.

"Now," I say to Mairead, who is still standing by, both Liam and John Reilly having gone off to make the new chocks that we will need, "teach my grandfather how to say, 'Page seven hundred and fifty-three, you ignorant Irish clods' in Gaelic."

She sits down and does so, very patiently, repeating the phrase over and over till he gets it down perfectly.

Higgins now throws a sheet around my poor granddad, fastens it at his neck, and picks up the scissors from the barber's kit laid out on the table. In a few minutes my grandfather, who only this morning had long flowing locks, is now closely shorn.

"Sorry, Granddad," I say, "but you've got to
look
like a priest."

"It is my joy to be doing my part, dear," says my gallant grandfather. He does have a fine profile, I'll give him that.

We give him his instructions and when all is done, we put the newly minted and ordained Father Francis X. McSweeney into our liberty boat and he is rowed ashore to do his duty.

It is two hours later and we see the boat returning with him. He is not halfway up the ladder when we are on him with our questions.

"Don't worry, dears," he says, waving his hand in a Shakespearean actor sort of way. "The job is done, and, I hope, done well."

Down in my cabin, he regales us with what went on in the jail.

"Well, when I first went in, I was greeted with the utmost suspicion by the jailer, who called me a damned Papist, but, clasping the faithful Bible to my breast, I began blessing everything in sight, the jailer, the desk, the spittoon, and praying out loud in Church Latin, and I think I was able to wear the superstitious man down." Here he pantomimes making the sign of the cross in the air and saying some things that I know to be Latin but that I don't understand.

"Then, I requested that I be allowed to see the boys. That request he denied. But I pleaded, 'Some of these lads might be going to meet their maker soon and shouldn't they be havin' the solace of the Bible, now?'"

John Reilly casts his eyes heavenward at the crudeness of the Irish accent, but Grandfather goes on.