Curse Of The Blue Tattoo Part 2

I may in Glory stand-

A Halo, perhaps, upon my Head,

But with a Needle in my Hand.

They sure take this stuff seriously, I'm thinkin'. Cheerful bunch, too-a lot of the verses up there go as you read this I am now dust and suchlike. I would sit there with a cloud of gloom over my head, 'cept the little girl next to me is even gloomier. She seems to be about twelve years old and looks to be the youngest one here. We're about the same size, 'cept I've come out a bit on top and she ain't yet.

I see from her sampler that her name is Rebecca. Rebecca Adams.

"What's the matter?" I whisper to her. "I wish I was dead," peeps the squeaker, not looking up from her toil.

"What?" I asks back at her.

"'I Wish I Was Dead,'" she says, finally looking up at me. "That's what I'm going to put at the bottom of my sampler." She gives a few sniffs. "And then I'd be an angel up in heaven and not here."

"Here's so bad?" I say, plunging my needle in to start the ABCs on my own first sampler. The white cloth is stretched over a frame to keep it taut, and it's all clean and bright and it seems a shame for me to come along and mess it up.

"I'd rather be home playing with my dog."

I can understand that. I'd rather be on the Dolphin playing with Jaimy. I take advantage of the nature of this cla.s.s to take a piece of the black string and put Jaimy's ring on it and hang it around my neck and drop the ring down inside the front of my dress. It is cold on my skin for a moment and then it ain't. I think of his letter upstairs burning a hole in my seabag, but I must wait till the proper time.

"Well, you'll be an angel by and by, but I wouldn't rush it if I were you. This world has many charms, you know."

"But I don't know how to do this stuff."

"Neither do I, Rebecca. But maybe we can learn to do it together. Hmmm?" I gives her a c.o.c.ked eyebrow and a wink, and I get a weak smile out of her as we both turn to our labor.

French is next and better. Tilly had given us some French lessons on the Dolphin, thinkin' that since we were fightin' them we might end up captured by them and so it would be good if we could talk to our captors. Maybe on that awful day on the beach, maybe if I could have talked to the pirate LeFievre in his own language, he wouldn't have put that noose around my neck and hauled me up. I doubt it, though.

I'm behind the others, but I'll get it. The teacher is Monsieur Bissell and he gives me a book to study, and I will learn from it and catch up.

"I really appreciate it, Miss, you showin' me around like this. Sure as h.e.l.l none of the rest of 'em is gonna help me." We are heading down the hall to our next cla.s.s.

"I'm sorry you were treated so badly this morning," she says. "They were abominable. And I am sure Mistress was not much better."

"It warn't so bad," I says, flas.h.i.+n' her my best grin and showin' that I have a naturally cheerful nature. "At least they didn't strip off all my clothes, beat me up, and try to hang me, all of which has been done to me before." This raises her eyebrows and breaks her stride a bit. Oops, I thinks. Not supposed to talk about that.

"I wanted to smack that one so bad," I growl, glaring over at Clarissa Howe.

"It is good that you did not. You might have been asked to leave the school."

Hmmm. So that's one way out of here, I thinks. Just pop Miss Howe one on the nose. But I bet they'd toss me out and keep my money.

"Right," says I. "I reckon I'm going to have to learn to fight like a lady, then. What's next?"

"Manners and Decorum," says Amy, as we follow the others down the hallway. "Again taught by Mistress and ... whatever is the matter?"

We had come to a window and by chance I looked out over the city and down to the water and I am stunned to see the Dolphin standing out of the harbor. She has an offsh.o.r.e wind behind her and has all her lower sails set, and at the very moment I spy her, all three royals are dropped and quickly fill, just as quickly as my eyes fill with tears. There is a bank of puffy white clouds out on the horizon and soon she will be tearing along beneath them. She holds all that I hold dear and she is leaving without me.

"Nothing," I say to Amy, and wipe my eyes on my sleeve. "Just a little homesick."

And so we have Manners, Decorum, and Household Management, with Mistress, herself, teaching. Not that I get to see much of it-as soon as I walk in, I'm taken aside and put in another room with a girl named Martha to teach me how to do a proper curtsy, that dippy thing that girls do instead of bowing like the boys. She don't like it much, having to be with me instead of cl.u.s.tered around Clarissa, but she does it. Guess you don't say no to Mistress. She shows me how to put the feet and how you spread out the dress when you go down and how to come up all smooth and graceful. And how there's degrees of curtsies, depending on whether the person you're doing it to is higher in station than you, or lower. And how to do it in front of boys or gents, them's you like and them's you're just bein' polite to.

Right. Just you wait, Jaimy Fletcher, just you wait till Lady Jacky tries this out on you. It'll melt the c.o.c.kles of your highborn heart for sure, as I know you like your ladies bein ladies and not crude tomboys like I was. Am.

After we practice for a while and Martha is satisfied that I can handle this drill without looking totally green, we go back to cla.s.s and Martha tells Mistress that I got it down sort of all right, and Mistress says, "Very well. Miss Faber, please thank Miss Hawthorne for the instruction."

I understand.

I dip down in the required way for doing it in front of someone higher than you 'cause there sure ain't n.o.body lower than me around here, and as I come up I say, "Thank you, Miss Hawthorne, for teaching me," and Martha dips down, but not so far as me, and says, "You are welcome, I'm sure."

Mistress watches the performance with the same narrowed eye Captain Locke used when watching his gun crews exercise the great guns. "All right," she says, apparently convinced that I will not bring total disgrace to her school in the matter of curtsies. "Now, Miss de Lise and Miss Howe. Please take Miss Faber out and teach her how to do a simple introduction." Take her out and shoot her is what everybody's thinkin', I know.

It's plain that Mistress don't think too much of my conduct upon arriving this morning. The three of us march out, books on heads, chins up, lips together, teeth apart, and eyelids at half-mast.

After we enter the room I had just left, being newly trained in the matter of curtsies, I stand there and wait, watchful as any hapless mouse in the close company of two fierce and very interested cats.

Clarissa smiles upon me and turns to the other girl and says, "My dear Miss de Lise, please permit me to introduce you to Miss Faber, of the no-account English Fabers. She's a Tory, don'cha know? Absolutely devoted to that crazy King George."

Miss de Lise does something with her mouth that I suppose is a superior smile, and she nods ever so slightly and stares over my head and says, "Charme. Such a plaisir. I have heard so very much of ze swamp-dwelling Fay-bears."

She is French!

Clarissa turns to me and says, "Miss Faber, I present to you Mademoiselle Lissette Maria Theresa de Lise, daughter of the Comte de Lise, the French Consul. Rest a.s.sured, this is as close as you will ever get to an actual audience with one such as her. Or with me, for that matter."

French! One of Napoleons wicked crew! Right here!

I'm startin' to burn real good now. I had heard on the s.h.i.+p that our King was a bit off his head, but these two ain't got the right to say so. I make a very small dip and say to Lissette de Lise, "My dear Mam'selle Lissette de Froggy, please permit me to introduce you to Miss Clarissa Howe, she of the Virginia Howes, she what's gonna have her nose busted if she don't let up on me, don'cha know?" I smiles at her. "But then you are already acquainted, nest pas, being one of her chief toadies for all your airs? Toad? Frog? What's the difference?"

"Doesn't it have the most charming ways, Miss de Lise?" purrs Clarissa. "So refres.h.i.+ngly primitive, don't you think?"

"Ah oui, Miss Howe. Definitely right out of ze bog. Are we not trees fortunate to have her here?" But our Miss de Lise is not purring-her face is dark, and if looks could kill, I'd already be sewn up in my canvas with the words said over me and my poor body dumped over the side.

Clarissa comes up to me, nose to nose, so close I can feel her breath on my face. All traces of her false smile are gone and her perfect mouth turns down at the corners and her upper lip curls up and shows a row of perfect but curiously small teeth. She says, barely above a whisper, "If you are threatening me with physical violence, you would be well advised that if you as much as lay a finger upon my person, you will be taken out and whipped and expelled from this school, a school to which, I might add, you so obviously do not belong."

It is to my shame that I can't think of nothin' to answer her back. I only watch as the two of them whirl around and walk out of the room, leaving me to follow behind. I got off a couple of shots across their bows, but I got a lot to learn about fighting like a lady.

After I spend the rest of the hour studying place settings till my eyes cross, the cla.s.s finally ends and we go into yet another room that has many comfortable chairs and low tables and I flop down in a chair next to Amy. We are to be served tea and sweet tarts.

Well, this ain't so bad, I thinks, dispatching a sweet cake in two bites before I thinks to watch Amy. I brush the crumbs off my lap and look about.

The girls are in small groups and one of the ladies, whose name is Elizabeth, is pouring the tea to some and directing the serving girl Betsey to pour for the others. I ciphers it out that the girls take turns being the hostess, like she was in her own house, and Mistress over there is watching her like a hawk. Looks like you're always onstage here.

Elizabeth comes over to the group next to us and she's chattering gaily, but I can tell she's sweatin' blood. I got to be specially watchful that this Elizabeth don't dump a pot of tea on my new clothes to teach me my place, as if I don't know my place already, so when she comes up to me to pour me a cup, I got my napkin on my lap and I'm ready to spring up and out of the way if I see some unwanted liquid comin' my way. Ain't n.o.body gonna mess with this dress, by G.o.d.

But she don't. She's as nice as pie and we swap false smiles and then I take my tea and load it up with sugar and slide it down my throat. It's good and gives me the strength to ask of Amy, "What's next?"

"Now we have Free Study, which means we can work on what we like until supper. I plan to read. You can work on your embroidery, your French, your-"

"Letter writing?" I ask.

"Yes. That, too."

The tea being over and Mistress having left, I rush up the stairs and rip open my seabag and whip out Jaimy's letter.

James Emerson Fletcher

Number 9 Brattle Lane

London, England

August 29, 1803

Miss Jacky Faber

The Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls

Beacon Street, Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, United States

My Dearest Jacky, By the time you read this letter you will be put ash.o.r.e and I will be making preparations for getting under way, if not already at sea. It saddens my already lonely heart to think that the distance between us will grow, day by day, ever more vast. I am heartened, however, and will take great comfort in remembering the words of love you so recently and ardently expressed to me. That you should love me is the finest gift I have ever been given, or will ever yet receive.

The other mids.h.i.+pmen have wholeheartedly welcomed me into their company and they are all thoroughly decent fellows and I know that they all hold you in the highest esteem-Jenkins, especially, for your help in confronting the vile Bliffil-and how the mids.h.i.+pmen's berth exults in the bully's disgrace and absence!

Today, we all went into the town to have one last day ash.o.r.e, but I could take no joy in my liberty, knowing as I did that you were cruelly confined in that miserable brig for the crime of merely being a girl. So later, as the other lads were holding forth in a tavern, I wandered off alone and walked through the town and into the meadow they call the Common.

Boston is a curiously small town for all its reputation-hardly twenty-five thousand souls, I am told. It is hard to believe that this small city could rise up and stand alone in open rebellion to Britannia in all her power and might. Not that I approve, mind you, but still you must admire the audacity of it all.

Presently, I crossed the Common and stood in front of the school you will be attending. I believe you will find it a pleasant place, Jacky, with large, well-shaped trees all about, and neat, well-tended grounds. There is a church next to the school, and it is my hope that you will find comfort and solace there in times of need.

I stood there gazing at the school for a long time. Tomorrow the Dolphin shall leave Boston, heavy laden with treasure, but depend upon it, Jacky, when the s.h.i.+p leaves the harbor, my eyes will be fixed on this house upon this hill, for I will know where my true treasure lies.

Please write to me, Jacky, at the above address. I shall count the days till I receive your first letter, having now only this lock of your hair, bound up in a ribbon, to remind me of you.

I remain, and will always remain Your most obedient & devoted servant, Jaimy I fling myself across my bed and stuff my pillow against my face so the others can't hear me cryin'. After I subsides a bit, I rise and refold Jaimy's letter, and I put it back in my bag. I know that I will read and reread this letter till the edges fray and the ink blurs and the very letter itself falls apart in my hands. I know that.

I go into the privy to splash some water on my face and then I go back downstairs to find pen and paper to begin my letter to Jaimy.

Jacky Faber

The Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls

Beacon Street, Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, United States

August 30, 1803