Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (34 page)

"The
Dolphin
ain't in, Jacky, and you should calm down. The
Dolphin
's crew was broke up as soon as we got to England. Too much hidden damage—she had to be put in dry dock and they scattered us out to the nearest ships around. I'm on the
Raleigh,
Tink's on the
Endeavor,
and Willy to the
Temeraire.
"

As my stunned mind is soakin' this in, Davy's pals wave off and head down the street to one of the open taverns, thinkin' the only dolly-mop in sight is already taken up by their mate Davy, and my crew looks Davy over and figures things out pretty much and we all start moviri' again toward the Pig.

"And Jaimy," I say, full of dread. He could be killed, or dead of some fever, or...

"He's on the
Essex,
on station off Toulon, last I heard," says Davy, putting his arm around my shakin' shoulders. "Now, you just forget about Jaimy, 'cause he's sure forgot
about you, the snob. Now let's me and you go get married and have a fine toss in the hay and then we'll talk about other things." Davy looks out across the crowd. "Let's us lovers find a preacher." He points at a tall man in a black coat. "Sir! You there! Are you a preacher? Well, who cares, you'll do, now just say the words, now..."

Then I starts blubberin' and put my face in my hands.
For one moment I really thought I was gonna see Jaimy again and now no ... no...
and Davy sees my cryin' face and says, "Ah, now, I was just foolin' wi' ye. The last time I saw jaimy, all he could talk about was you—it fair made me sick, it did ... disgustin', I can tell you."

"He did?" says I, through my tears, "Really? I ain't got no letters..."

"Really, Jacky. Now let's have some fun. I'm back to sea in three days and if you think I'm gonna spend any of my liberty in talkin' about your Jaimy Fletcher, then you don't remember your old pal Davy very well. I means to rack up some memories to hold me when the wind blows cold. Who's all this, then?" and I introduce him to Ephraim, who don't look like he's got a whole lot of use for him, and Henry, who don't know much about the world and is glad to meet anyone who's seen some of it, and John Thomas, who sees Davy as one of his seagoin' brethren and claps him on the back, and we all surge up the street and put the ladder back up at the Pig and the girls' faces are lookin' down at us in relief that we got back without damage and we climb up and I do more introductions and then Davy's lookin' at Annie and Annie's lookin' at him and I come back to my senses and say, "No. No, Davy. She's a nice girl. You stay away from her."

I get between them. "Annie, don't..."

But it is too late.

Well, at least I can keep them to hand-holding tonight. But there's so much I want to ask him! I guess it will have to wait till later, after they're done with the sparkin'.

Amy comes over and stands next to me and puts her hand on my arm to bring some sense back to me, I guess, and then I hear a call from down below and there's Ezra, and Amy looks at me with narrowed eyes and I just shrug and feign ignorance, but of course I did send word to him that we would be up here tonight. I direct him to the ladder and he comes up and bows to Amy and she dips in return. Ladies and gents, even on the sloping roof of a tavern in the middle of a night of devilment, I swear.

Then I turn around and notice that I have lost my own escort. Henry and Sylvie are over on the roof beam, sitting together, holding hands, and looking into each other's eyes. Ah well.

The street revels are winding down and the Popes and Devils alike are being thrown onto the bonfire on Cobb's Hill and it's safe enough for Maudie to send up a trayful of ales and we gratefully quaff them, our throats dry from shouting and singing. And then Ezra buys another round and we sing and dance and...

Lord, what a night!

On the way back, I look at the couples in the moonlight and it strikes me that unlike on the
Dolphin
when I was the only girl with a boy, here I'm the only girl without one.

We turn up the road twixt the school and the church and we're startled to see a man with a dog on a leash, patrolling
the graveyard. The Preacher has hired a watchman! All who are in on the plot exchange glances: Changes will have to be made in our plans. I shiver a bit—I could have been so easily caught. I was lucky to have seen him this night.

When we go round the school and arrive at the kitchen entrance, most get into amorous embraces till Amy coughs, "Ahem," and the lovers part. Paul and his brother go off down the hill and I go and get between Davy and Annie, which ain't easy. With a final squeeze of his hand, she turns and gives him a wave and then she joins the other girls, who all go in the kitchen door, opened by Peg in her nightgown, clucking over her girls like any mother hen. Sylvie, I'm sure, would go into the hayloft right off with Henry but good sense prevails, and after a long good-night kiss, she, too, disappears through the kitchen door, and Peg's strong arm reaches out and pulls the door shut. There is the sound of a latch being thrown.

Henry, in a daze, wanders back to his bed after what has to be the finest night of his young life. Ezra and Davy escort us around to our rung ladder and look at our rope trick and Davy says something like, "Can't keep that one down, for sure." Ezra takes Amy's hand and bows over it and kisses it. Amy lets him do it and then turns and goes to the rope. When Amy goes up, shinnying up like I taught her, Ezra looks away like a gentleman. Davy don't, and I 'spect he won't look away when I go up, neither. I can't wait to get that little weasel alone for a while, but it ain't gonna happen now, I know.

"I gotta talk to you, Davy," I whispers.

"I know, Jacky, I know," says he, "but I got the duty tomorrow and they won't let you on the ship, not to talk to
the likes o' me, they won't. But it will all keep. I'll see you on Monday. I'll come here."

I bet you will,
thinks I. I've got to get that Annie aside and tell her some of the facts of life. And of sailors.

I go up the ladder, and Ezra and Davy walk back downtown together, seaman and lawyer, brothers at least for this night.

"But I like him," says Annie.

I had gotten up close to her on Monday morning, when we're in the kitchen scrubbing up the breakfast pots.

"You don't know the little weasel like I do. You'll catch something from him. Or he'll give you a baby and run away to sea."

"I can't believe that," she softly says.

"What's he promised?"

"That he'd think of nothing but me when he's out on the sea."

"That's prolly true," I admits, "but that don't mean much. Will you give him any token?"

"A lock of my hair, braided and tied up in one of my ribbons."

"Aye, and it's lovely I'm sure, Annie, and he'll show that to all his mates so they'll think he's a mighty lover what's broken many a young girl's heart, yours included, you can be sure of that, too."

"But what's the harm in that? I know that I'll probably never see him again after tomorrow, but it's nice to dream on things, sometimes."

"Harrumph," I grumps. It occurs to me that I'm prolly acting a lot like Mistress right now.

"He said he'd swing in his hammock at night with the lock clutched in his hand and next to his heart and all fear banished from his mind, knowing I was safe and warm back on land, no matter what cruel fate awaited his poor self."

"Oh,
please,
that's what they all say. Davy does have a gift of gab, I'll own, if nothing else," I say, thinkin' back to when he talked himself aboard the
Dolphin
when there was plenty more boys bigger and stronger than him. Then again, I done the same thing. But he's prolly not lyin' about lying there in the dark with the token to his breast, for it does get cold and lonely out there. "All right. Just you be careful is all. The Davy I remember don't think with his head, that's for sure. What's the rascal got planned for today?"

"Just a walk in the Common. Then a bite to eat, and then I got to go home at my usual time, you know that, or else my father would kill me."

"Well, you mind the tall grass in the Common, Annie."

"I know how to be careful, Jacky. You're the one what needs to be more careful, from what I've heard."

I ain't got nothin' to say to that.

Davy comes up the hill at about eleven in the morning and I'm layin' for him. I've been about jumpin' out of my skin all yesterday and today, I'm so keen to talk to him.

I head him off at the kitchen door. "Come with me," I say, and we go around to the side and then we're up in my room.

"Keep your voice down and if anyone tries that door, you dive out the window, you hear?" I had put a small wooden wedge under the door to keep us from being surprised.

"Pretty nice kip," says Davy. "How come you're separate from the others?"

"I got busted down from lady to serving girl," I say, makin' myself not hang my head.

"Sounds like something you'd do." He tests the bed. "Why don't you call down for Annie to pop up here for a bit?"

"She's a good girl and a nice girl and a good friend to me and I don't want the likes of you to hurt her—"

"Ah, Jacky Faber, the Mother Superior, lookin' out for her little flock, ain't that sweet..."

"I mean it, Davy..."

"Still the bossy one, ain't you, Jacky?
Now boys, dress up in these pretty little uniforms I made for ye! Now boys, stand up all straight in a line here! Now boys, wear the cute little caps! Now boys.
..." He looks at me all serious. "Look, Jacky, she's the first real girl I've met since I got on the
Dolphin—
you don't meet many of 'em in my line of work, you might recall—and, hell, I've only been ashore about a week and a half total since I signed on to this jolly seafarin' life."

"Still..."

He sneers and pokes me on the breastbone with a stiff finger. "No real girls, 'cept for you, of course, but you never did me much good in that way, savin' it all for Jaimy like you was ... and is, I reckon. Aww ... is that your Jaimy up there on your wall now?"

Davy and I are back in our old stance—nose to nose, eyes narrowed, lower lips jutting out, fingers pointing, each at the other, and snarling.

"You don't know what it's like to be me, Davy, then or now."

"Maybe I don't care what it's like to be a bossy, pigheaded little Cockney chambermaid what thought she was gonna be a lady."

That hurts me and I jerk like I've been hit. I got nothin' to say to that. He knows he hit home 'cause he looks a little ashamed and he don't follow it up with any more jibes.

I make an effort to settle down. Fighting with Davy over female virtue ain't exactly what I had planned for this morning. "I'm sorry. I just don't want you to hurt her is all."

"I'm not going to hurt her, Jacky." He says this gently and I half believe him.

"All right," I say, calm now. I sit down in my chair and fold my hands in my lap. "Please, now tell me what's up with jaimy."

Davy goes over and flops down on my bed. He
has
gotten longer and leaner, for sure. He is turning into a fine-looking man and it is easy to see why Annie is taken with him. "All right, jack, I'll tell you." He picks up my pillow and sniffs it and then crams it back under his head. I'm glad to see there is no tar in his hair.

"On the way back to England, he was Mr. Midshipman and Tink and me and Willy was Ordinary Seamen, so our paths didn't cross much anymore, but I will say that Jaimy never lorded it over us but always found a way, like if he had to give us an order, to do it in a way that didn't make us feel like dirt. And, sometimes, if we was some of us on watch in the middle of the night, we'd sit and talk and joke like in the old days. Then we rounded Margate and were taken into the docks on the Thames and little men with notebooks swarmed over the
Dolphin
and declared she was not fit for sea, her knees having been weakened by the blast
of the pirate's fireship that day," says Davy. "You got something to drink here?"

I had sat on the edge of the bed to listen and I got up and got him a glass of cider from the jug I had put up here for just such a purpose. It is a little bit hard, and I figure, shamelessly, that it might loosen his tongue a bit.

"Ummm," he says. "Good."

He puts the glass down on my bedside table and taps it with his finger. I fill it up again. "I like you as a servin' girl, Jacky," he says. I give him a low growl. He goes on.

"Anyway, we're back and the
Dolphin
's crew is bein' broke up and Tink and Willy and me volunteer to go on the
Raleigh,
and bein' seasoned man-o-war's men we are taken on, and we're happy that at least some of the Brotherhood is still together, but then some brass hat from the
Endeavor
comes aboard and he outranks our Captain and he takes a bunch of men, includin' Tink, to his ship, and then two days later
another
bleedin' Captain comes up and takes Willy and some others for the
Temeraire.
Pissed us off, it did, but what could we do?

"But anyway, the
Raleigh
is layin' next to the
Essex,
which Jaimy is posted to, and he comes over and says to come to his house and where's Tink and Willy, but I says they're gone to sea, it's just him and me now, so we go off together, brothers again as soon as we're out of sight of the Royal Navy and we gets in a coach and I'm feelin' like a proper nob, I am, and we're laughin' and rememberin' old times, but then we get to his house, which is a pretty fine place, I can tell you, and we go in and I meet his mother, and that dragon takes one look at me and I'm off to the servants' quarters for a meager bite with cold tea and then I'm out the
back door by myself. I ain't seen Jaimy since then as the
Raleigh
made sail the next day and I was gone."

"He didn't try to find you after his mother sent you off downstairs?"

"He was going upstairs to change clothes and I'll wager when he come back down his dear mother had some sort of story for him. Like I ran off after a scullery maid, or got sick or something." Davy draws a long breath. "It was like she didn't want Jaimy to have anything to do with his past life or anybody who was in it. Which is funny considerin' the money that put her family back on its feet come from the likes of us."