Wild Rover No More: Being the Last Recorded Account of the Life & Times of Jacky Faber (34 page)

“Hear, hear!” There are roars all around as glasses are lifted in my direction. This is a
very
festive gathering.

“It was not hard, since that harness hurt like hell,” I retort, rubbing my armpits, which had taken most of the punishment from the drop. The Cordelia dress also had straps that went about the waist and between the legs, so I was a bit sore in those places as well. “The worst thing was having to hang there, perfectly still, hardly breathing, with the hood over my head and quite blind to what was going on all around me. There I was trying to guess . . . not knowing if the trick was working, nor able to watch what was happening twixt poor Randall and that Flashby.”

“And, oh! The bit with the shoe, such a nice touch!” enthuses Mr. Fennell. “Pure tragic poetry!”

“Really, my dear friends, I did nothing,” I protest, exhausted from the events of the day. “It was you who saved my poor unworthy self, and I mean that. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and soul.”

“Well, then a toast to the master plotter, the one who set the whole game afoot, our own Mr. John Higgins!”

“Hear, hear! John Higgins!”

“Please,” says Higgins, in all modesty, shaking his head in refusal of the honor. “I merely helped design the plot, but the deed could not have been accomplished without the help of all those involved.” He lifts his glass. “A toast to the Grand Conspirators!”

“Hear, hear!”

 

All, or almost all, of the conspirators are seated in riotous celebration, not in the grand dining room at Dovecote but at a long table in a side room, a room with many windows so we can watch for the arrival of anyone who might question the proceedings of the morning in Plymouth. Although I have been saved once again by my loving friends, I am not yet exonerated of the false charges against my name. We wait for nightfall, when I will go onboard the
Nancy B.
and be spirited away to safety somewhere in this world, as I cannot remain here long. Jim Tanner had brought the schooner down from Boston, and she is now anchored off the beach at Dovecote. Where I will go, I do not know, but I ain't thinking about that now. I'm just glad to be still alive and with my friends.

It was Higgins who opened the coffin after the wagon, surrounded by a company of soldiers, was pulled around to a side door of Dovecote's main house.

He reached in, lifted me out, and carried me up to Amy's room, with her following right behind. It might have been a bit of a shock to him, for I had fallen sound asleep in there, having had no sleep the night before. I must have looked the perfect hanged corpse—especially with that old neck welt I had long ago gotten courtesy of the pirate Le Fievre, all flared up and red, as it always became during times of stress. When I awoke to see his dear face above me, I cried, “Oh, Higgins, I
 
. . .
 
I . . . can't tell you . . .”

“There, there, Miss. A change of clothes and a little rest and you'll be your old self again.” I could say nothing, I could only sob and bury my face in his neck as I was carried in.

 

“And Mr. Trevelyne, what a great performance!” continues Mr. Fennell, quaffing yet another glass of wine. He is plainly in a congratulatory mood, and I fear for the Trevelyne wine cellar as I see glasses being filled and refilled around the table. “The pitiful drunkard who turns into the hero who saves the day!” Randall lifts his glass in acknowledgment of the praise.

“You all saved the day, and I cannot thank you enough,” says I, meaning it to the depth of my being and about to break into tears again.

“It was nothing, my dear,” exults Mr. Bean. “Fooling a bunch of country bumpkins, why, we do it all the time. Given the opportunity, we could have convinced them I was the King of Spain and Mr. Fennell was Madame Du Barry!” Much laughter and more toasts.

“But, Sirs, surely there was a real Marshall and a real Hangman?” I say, sniffing back a sob. “I mean, the Sheriff and the court at Plymouth would not simply have accepted you on your word that you were sent to officiate at my hanging!”

“Indeed, there were,” answers Higgins. He sits at my left side, while Amy sits, fuming, to my right. “It was Mr.Pickering who found out in court who had been assigned the task. He also found out when they would be leaving Boston and what route they would take. It was then an easy matter to waylay them, confine them, and take their papers. And it was Mistress Pimm who contacted two of ‘her girls' in Plymouth to join the Ladies Aid Society, to effect the exchange of dresses, and Mr. Trevelyne who, with his superb act as a drunkard, managed to deliver the Cordelia dress to the cell without its being examined by the Sheriff.”

“What I do not understand is why I was not let in on the plot?” demands Amy, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, and lower lip out in a pout, very much as I would have been had I been in her place. She is
not
laughing and carousing with the rest.

“Ah, dear sister Amy,” says Randall. “We thought you would give a much more convincing performance if you were kept in the dark. And you did, oh, yes, you did!”

“Yes, please forgive us, Miss Trevelyne,” says Mr.Fennell. “But the fewer people who know a secret, the better. As our Dr. Franklin once said, ‘Three people may keep a secret if two of them are dead.'”

“After all, Miss, you are a lady and not a trained actress,” purrs Polly Von. “And Randy thought it best.”

“Oh,
Randy,
is it, now?” snarls Amy, who is about to say more, when I step into the breach.

I put my hand upon Amy's arm. “I myself didn't know until last night, when Randall brought in the Cordelia dress and I recognized the dreaded Hangman as dear Mr. Bean. You and Randall were tossed out, so I could not tell you. As I put the dress on and Mr. Bean adjusted the straps, he whispered details of the plot and how I was to play my part in it. You see?”

Amy nods, and then smiles at me. “I know I should still be angry, but the joy of the outcome of this day overwhelms all other feelings.”

And you, Sister,
I think,
so willing to follow me over to the other side . . . tsk! And when you climbed into the coffin with me, you put your knee in my belly and I almost let out an
ooof,
which would have ruined everything. If you ever try something like that again, I will shoot you myself. But, yes, let the joy of this day banish all else.

Then a thought occurs to me. “What about that open grave up on Daisy Hill? Suppose someone looks and finds me not there? Should I not be laid out in the parlor or something?”

“We have put Gulliver MacFarland in it. It is a fresh grave,” replies Amy. “No one will be suspicious.”

I nod, still too exhausted to do any more crying.
Poor Gully. You did try to make things right, Gully, at the end, you did.

Blount refills my glass, and I shake off sad thoughts of magic fiddlers and say to Higgins, “Did you think me not alive when you opened the coffin and looked in on me, my eyes closed and looking dead to the world?” I tease, the wine beginning to warm me and make me bold.

“No, Miss, I did not, as I heard you lustily snoring in there before I lifted the lid,” he says right back at me to great laughter and applause all around. “But it was a very delicate, quite ladylike sort of snore, Miss, you may rest assured.” More guffaws at my expense.

I give him my best I'll-get-you-for-that look and turn to Randall. “A very picturesque wound you have there, Lieutenant Trevelyne. You wear it well. The fact that you received it while defending what was left of my good name, as well as that of your family, makes me doubly grateful to you.” I lift my glass to him. “Having to hang silently there, not knowing what was happening to you, hearing only the words spoken and the clash of swords, was one of the worst tortures I have ever endured.”

Randall lifts his glass to me. Polly has cleansed his wound and tied a white bandage around his brow, and he somehow manages to look all the more roguish for it. A spot of red has appeared on it, but the blood flow seems to have stopped. “A mere trifle, my dear, one that will hardly be noted in the annals of great moments in the history of love and war.”

I don't know about war, but as for love, I do know that Polly is right at his side, looking up at him with those great glorious blue eyes fairly brimming with tears of love and admiration. I know that Amy thinks it's all an act on her part, but I don't. I've known Pretty Polly since she was six, and I believe I know her quite well, her faults as well as her virtues. Randall's arm is carelessly thrown around Polly's shoulders but, I perceive, not all that carelessly. I see his fingers gently stroking her cheek as he banters with me and the rest of the company.

“Can you not see Mr. Trevelyne trodding the boards as Prince Hal in
Henry the Fifth
?” asks Mr. Bean. “Or as the bold Hotspur?”

“Oh, indeed, Mr. Bean,” retorts Mr. Fennell. “After the recent contretemps, it could not be much of a stretch for him.”

As the accolades shift from me to others, I signal to Blount and ask of him a piece of paper and a pen. It is immediately supplied.

“How about as Romeo opposite our Jacky as Juliet?” counters Randall, grinning widely, as he gets a mock glare and a poke from the real actress who sits close beside him. “Excuse me. I meant, of course, my dear Polly. How could I have . . .”

As they all laugh, I pen my quick note. While I put an address on the outside, I do not bother with any on the letter itself. Instead I draw my grinning skull and crossbones up at the top and write . . .

 

Dear Captain Blood,

Never, ever write me off till you see me actually hanging in a gibbet.

And if ever we shall meet on the High Seas, Edgar, I shall blow you out of the water. Count on it.

Yo, ho, ho.

 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

 

I blow on the note to dry the ink, then fold it up and hand it to Blount with a request to see to it that the letter is delivered. I purposely did not date it, so that Edgar will have to wonder whether I wrote it
before
or
after
the execution. Serves him right, and maybe it will stimulate his very active imagination.

The talk rambles on till there is the rattle of hooves and a commotion outside the door. It is roughly shoved open, and before anyone can react, an officer in full uniform enters. Higgins, the first to recover, gets to his feet and says, “May I present the Commander of the company of infantry that captured the unfortunate Marshall and Hangman, Captain Clarissa Worthington Howe.”

I shoot to my feet and gasp in wonder.

Clarissa? Captain
Howe?

She is dressed in a fine red riding habit cut in the military style, with white turnouts and gold braid, a gay red bonnet on her head, and, of course, looks splendid. On her shoulders rest the epaulets of a cavalry captain. In her hand is her riding crop, which she slaps into her palm as she gazes into my eyes.

“So it worked,” she says, turning about to cast a queenly look down her aristocratic nose at the assembly. “Good.” She turns to Randall. “I assume I can release those two awful men now and take my company back to Virginia?”

“Best wait a few days, Captain,” says Randall, leaning back languidly in his chair and looking not overly impressed with the new arrival. Virtually everyone here shares some sort of history with Clarissa Worthington Howe. “Till we can get her safely away.”

“Well, good,” she says as a chair is pulled out for her and she settles her perfect body into it. “It is very pleasant to once again enjoy the hospitality of dear old Dovecote . . . and the pleasure of Miss Jacky Faber's sparkling company. How good to see you, and so glad that my men and I have been able to be of service to you, Jacky, dear.”

All the pent-up rage I have ever felt for Clarissa, my great enemy and sometimes friend, comes bubbling up in me and I clench my fists in helpless fury. However, now I owe her a lot, and so I seethe and I fume. Then all I say is . . .

“
Captain?
Clarissa? How . . . ?”

She looks off, bemused. “Daddy promised me a company of militia if I would agree to leave New Orleans and come back home. And so I did. And here they are, armed and ready.”

“Was there anything left of New Orleans,” I ask, “when they threw your skinny ass out?”

“They will recover.” She sniffs.

“But what if there is trouble with the federal government over this?” I persist.

“Who cares? If they want to start a civil war, let it begin here,” she replies with a toss of her blond curls. “Oh, and Blount, two glasses,” she says as the butler puts a glass in front or her.

“My husband will be in directly,” she says to me with a slight smirk. “He's seeing to his men.”

It is then that I notice the ornate gold ring that rests on the third finger of her left hand.

Clarissa is married!

Amy notices at the same time and we exchange looks.
Oh, the poor man, who could—?

The door opens and Cavalry Major Lord Richard Allen strides in, resplendent in his scarlet regimentals.

“Cheerio, all!”

Richard!

I leap up and throw myself upon him.
Oh, Richard, I am so glad to see you, so glad . . .

“Princess!” he exults, gathering me to him and swinging me around.

I poke around at the site of the wound he had received at Vimeiro, weeping and asking, “Are you all right? You have completely recovered? But . . . but . . . what are you doing here?”

“Well, Sergeant Bailey and the lads and I thought we might like a little respite from the heat down in Jamaica, so we took up Clarissa's invitation to come north for a bit. Quite bracing, I must say. And then we found that Prettybottom had gotten that same bottom in a bit of a mess—her ass in a sling, as it were—so we were glad to come up to help out. And do some other things.”