Chapter 1

It was a hard comin’ I had of it, that’s for sure.

It was hard enough comin’ up from the brig, the cell down below where they had me kept these past few weeks, squintin’ into the light to see all of the dear Dolphin’s sailors lined up along the spars of the great masts and in other parts of the riggin’, all four hundred of ’em, bless ’em, my mates for the past year and a half, all cheerin’ and hallooin’ and wavin’ me off.

It was hard, too, walkin’ across to the quarterdeck, where the officers were all pulled up in their fancy uniforms and where the midshipmen and side boys made two rows for me to walk between on my way off the ship, and there’s Jaimy all straight and all beautiful in his new midshipman’s uniform, and there’s Davy and Tink and Willy, the boys of the Brotherhood to which I so lately belonged, and there’s my dear sea-dad Liam lookin’ as proud as any father. The Bosun’s Mate puts his pipe to his lips and starts the warble to pipe me off the Dolphin, my sweet and only home, and I start down between their ranks, but I stop in front of Jaimy and I look at the Captain and I pleads with my teary eyes. The Captain smiles and nods and I fling my arms around Jaimy’s neck and kiss him one last time, oh yes I do, and the men cheer all the louder for it, but it was short, oh so short, for too soon my arm is taken and I have to let go of Jaimy, but before I do I feel him press something into my hand and I look down and see that it’s a letter. Then I’m led away down the gangway, but I keep my eyes on Jaimy’s eyes and my hand clutched around his letter as the Professor hands me up into the carriage that’s waitin’ at the foot of the gangway. I keeps my eyes on Jaimy as the horses are started and we clatter away, and I rutch around in my seat and stick my head out the window to keep my blurry eyes on him but it’s too far away now for me to see his eyes, just him standin’ there at the rail lookin’ after me, and then the coach goes around a corner and that’s all. He’s there, and then he’s not.

That was the hardest of all. I put my fingertips to my lips where his have just been and I wonder when they will again touch me in that place. If ever . . . Oh, Jaimy, I worry about you so much ’cause the war’s on again with Napoleon and all it takes is one angry cannonball, and oh, God, please.

I leave off what has up to now been fairly gentle weeping and turn to full scale, chest heavin’, eyes squeezed shut, open mouth bawlin’.

“Well,” says Professor Tilden, sittin’ across from me, “you certainly have made a spectacle of yourself today, I must say.”

. . . don’t care don’t care don’t care don’t care . . .

“You should compose yourself now, Miss. The school is not a far ride from the harbor. Here,” he says, handing me a handkerchief, “dry your eyes.”

The Professor is taking me to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, which is where they decided to dump me after that day on the beach when my grand Deception was blown out of the water for good and ever and I was found out to be a girl, which was against the rules. Being a girl, that is. They being the Captain and the Deacon and Tilly. I felt that I should have been allowed to go back to England with them. I wouldn’a caused no trouble—they could have kept me in the brig the whole time if they wanted. But, oh no, that would have been too easy, too reasonable for the Royal Navy. No, far better to kick me off thousands of miles and an ocean away from my intended husband, that being Midshipman James Emerson Fletcher, Jaimy for short. I take Jaimy’s letter and put it in my seabag for readin’ later, ’cause I know that if I read it now, I’ll break down altogether and be a mess.

I know old Tilly, who was the schoolmaster back on the Dolphin, sure liked me much better as a boy. He gets all nervous and fussy around me now, now that I’ve become a girl. He’s right, though. Must pull yourself together now, Miss. Can’t show up at the school, where they’re gonna make a lady out of me, lookin’ like a poor scrub what just crawled out of a Cheapside ditch, and so I takes the bit of cloth from his hand and dabs it at my eyes. I wants to blow my runnin’ nose on it but don’t want to mess up Tilly’s handkerchief so I just snarks it all back and swallows with a big gulp. Tilly shudders and shakes his head.

Right. I’ve got to put my mind on other things, like this, my first carriage ride . . . imagine . . . Jacky Faber, ragged Little Mary of Rooster Charlie’s gang of beggars and thieves runnin’ all wild through the streets of London, the same sorry little beggar here now, in her first carriage ride, her bottom sitting on a fine leather coach seat. That selfsame bottom is also sitting in its first pair of real drawers it’s seen since That Dark Day when my parents and my little sister died and I was tossed out into the street to either live or die. These drawers come down to just above my knees and got flounces on ’em, three on each leg. The dressmaker said that the ruffles were there to keep the dress from clinging too close to the legs. Can’t have dresses clinging too close to the legs in oh-so-proper Boston, now, can we?

My dress, now, is surely a fine thing—all black as midnight and waisted high up under my chest and falling in pleats down to the tops of my feet. The bodice comes down low—much lower than I would have thought for Boston, but I’ve given up trying to figure out that kind of thing as there never seems no sense to it—I mean, we got drawers with ruffles to keep the legs from being too noticeable down below, yet we have the chest in danger of spilling out up top. Don’t ask me to explain, ’cause I can’t. Anyway, the sleeves are long and end in a bunch of black lace at the wrists. It is the school uniform and it’s the finest thing I’ve ever had on me and I got to say I’m proud to be in it, and I know Jaimy was proud to see me decked out this way on the quarterdeck today. I could see it in his eyes when he looked in mine and the way his chest puffed up under his tight black broadcloth jacket with all the bright gold buttons gleamin’ on it.

Deacon Dunne took me out the first day we were docked in Boston, to get me fitted out, as Tilly warn’t up to the challenge of being alone with the female me in a female dressmaker’s shop. The seamstress there was amazing fast, with her tape whipping all around me up and down and all around. Pins put here and there and chalk marks, too. She got all of my stuff to the ship today—two pairs of drawers, two pairs of black stockings, one dress, one nightshirt with nightcap, one black wool sweater, one chemise, and one black cloak with bonnet—and two hours after it arrived, I was off the ship. They couldn’t get rid of me fast enough, the sods.

Everything that I ain’t got on is packed away in my seabag with my other stuff that I’ve picked up along the way—needles, threads, awls, fishing lures, my concertina, my blue dress that I made myself and my Kingston dress, my pennywhistle, and, yes, me shiv, too, ’cause I can’t figure out how to keep it in its old place next to my ribs in this dress. Not yet, anyway. And my sailor togs are in there, too—my white dress uniform that I made for myself and the boys and my drawers with the fake cod and my blue sailor cap with HMS DOLPHIN that I’d stitched on the band. And Rooster Charlie’s shirt and pants and vest that delivered me from the slums of London and my midshipman’s neckerchief and even a midshipman’s coat and shirt and britches and cap that I’d got off Midshipman Elliot, who’d outgrown them. I think about that middies uniform and how everyone on board thought it was such a great joke that I was made a midshipman before they discovered I was a girl. Everyone but me. I earned my commission, I did, and I didn’t think it was a joke. Still don’t.

Ain’t no money in my seabag, though. After paying for my clothes, they gave the rest of my share of the money from the pirate gold to the school to pay for my education in ladyhood. Wisht they had just given me the money and let me make my own way in the world like I always done, but, no—I’m a girl and too stupid to take care of money. That’s a man’s job, they say. Like I’d be gulled out of my money, me what’s as practical and careful with a penny as any miser? Not bloody likely.

Oh, look. There’s a row of taverns at the end of that pier. They look like places where I might be able to play my penny-whistle and concertina and maybe make some money after I get settled and know the lay of the land . . . and look there—there’s one called The Pig and Whistle and it’s kind of seedy lookin’ but it’s got a sign with a fat jolly pig playing a whistle just like mine and he’s dancin’ about and he looks right cheerful.

Ah. There’s a bookseller’s. And a printer’s next to it. Maybe I could pick up some work there, if I have any time off from the school. I wonder how confined I’m going to be. The school couldn’t be as tight with its students as the Navy is with its sailors, though, could it? Wonder if the school has lots of books. Coo, wouldn’t that be something—all you ever wanted to read right at your fingertips? It’s a school. It’s got to have a lot of books.

Now we’ve turned right and a big brick church is out my window to the right and a big graveyard, too, and to the left is a large open field with horses and sheep wanderin’ about in the grass. Cows, too. Pray for me, cows, as I’m feelin in need of it and you look right sympathetic with your big brown eyes.

“It’s like havin’ the country right in the middle of the city. London for sure didn’t have nothin’ like that,” I says.

“It’s called the Common,” says Tilly, when he sees my interest. I think he’s glad that I’ve stopped crying, and he goes on in his teaching voice. “It was set aside by the forefathers because Boston is essentially an island and it would be hard to get the animals off and on for purposes of grazing. I think it’s wondrous restful to the eyes after the hubbub of the town. Do you not find it so?”

I nod. I know he’s talkin’ just to keep my spirits up, and I appreciates it. But don’t worry, Tilly, there’ll be no more cryin’.

We’re climbing quite high on a hill now—“Beacon Hill,” says Tilly—and the horses are slowing down under the strain of it.

I look down at my feet and wiggle my toes inside my shiny new shoes. These are the fancy kind with hooks and eyes and laces that run up the ankle. I also got a pair of black pumps what slip on and off and what I think I’ll like better cause my feet are used to being bare and my toes ain’t accustomed to being all crammed together like this.

The coach lurches around to the left and . . .“Good Lord! What’s that?” I say, my eyes wide as any country rube’s. A huge stone building with white columns and grand entrances and a solid gold dome has come into view on my right.

Tilly peers out the window. “Oh. That is the Massachusetts State House. They hadn’t finished the dome when last I was here. It is magnificent, is it not?”

It is indeed. I’m going to be going to school next to a bleedin’ palace. If the gang could see me now.

We leave the State House behind us and continue along the edge of this Common for a while. The whole city is spread out below me—the buildings, the wharves and piers. It is for certain a seafarin’ town. There must be at least fifty wharves stickin’ out into the harbor and a hundred ships moored at them. Can’t see the Dolphin, though, she being tucked up close to the land and hidden by the buildings. Prolly best I can’t see her as it would just get the tears goin’ again.

“This is Beacon Street,” says Tilly. “And here is your new home.”

My belly gives a queasy lurch. Steady down now. Steady. You’ve been through a lot worse than this.

We’ve pulled up in front of a large building. It is three stories high and has a large entrance with a lot of stone steps and two heavy wood doors dark with old varnish so that they look like they’ve been there forever and have closed behind many a poor, scared girl. There’s a road off Beacon Street to the right of the school and there’s a church there that’s built in the same style as the school—stone foundation below, white wood running sideways above. There’s this big tree between the church and the school, so big its lower branches touch the roofs of both, and on the roof of the church is a sharp steeple with a bell hanging in it, and on the roof of the school is a porchlike thing with a railing around it that’s painted white, too.

The coachman goes over to the rack on the back of the carriage and gets my seabag and chest and brings them to the entrance and then goes back to his seat to wait for Tilly to get free of me.

Tilly lifts the knocker on the door. It is opened by a young girl in service gear—black skirt and black lace-up weskit, white blouse, white apron and cap.

“Yes, Sir?” she says, all big eyed and meek lookin’. “May I help you?”

“Yes. Harrumph,” says Tilly, “I am Professor Phineas Tilden and I bring Mistress Pimm her new student.” The girl gives me a quick up-and-down with her eyes, then slips out of the room through a door at the far end to fetch this Mistress Pimm. I look around, jumpy as a cat.

You calm down now, you. Right now.

The room is empty of furniture and rugs—prolly ’cause this is where people track in snow and mud in the winter. But there are things on the walls. Wondrous things. Flowers and leaves all twisted around each other—words, alphabets, apples, oranges, urns, and weeping willow trees—all made out of thread on white cloth and framed with fine wood and . . .

“Yes. Mistress Pimm’s girls are noted for their embroidery,” says Tilly, when he notices me lookin’.

Embroidery! I don’t know nothing ’bout no ’broidery, Tilly, you should’ve told me about this. I don’t know how to do this stuff. I can sew a straight line, yes, but this I can’t . . .

The serving girl opens the door and stands aside to let Mistress Pimm stride in. The schoolmistress advances to the center of the room and brings her gaze to rest on the Professor. She is as tall as he and as thin as he is stout. Her hair is the gray of a brushed iron cannon and is pulled back hard and gathered in a bun at the back of her head, which makes her sharp features look as if chiseled from stone. She, too, is dressed in black, but her dress goes all the way from ankle to throat where it is tightly fastened by a shiny black brooch. Her sleeves end in black lace above her white hands.

“Dear Cousin Phineas,” she says. She does not look at me. She does not smile at either of us. “How good to see you again.” She extends her hand and touches the outstretched hand of the Professor for the briefest of moments.

“Yes. Harrumph,” says the Professor, reddening. “Good to see you, too, Miranda. May I present Miss Jacky Faber, the girl you have so graciously taken on as a new student? Jacky, this is Mistress Pimm.”

She slowly turns her head and brings her gaze to bear upon me cowering down below.

What am I ’posed to do? Oh Lord, Tilly, you should’ve thought to teach me what to do in things like this. I don’t know, should I hit a brace and snap off a salute and case my eyes or should I knuckle my brow and look down all humble or should I. . .

The serving girl standing behind Mistress Pimm sees me in all my confusion and she takes a bit of her skirt in each hand and moves one foot behind the other and dips down, spreading out her skirt with her hands as she looks down at the floor and then rises back up and brings her eyes back to mine and nods at me and silently mouths, Do it.

I do it, or at least I tries, and I almost falls over sideways when I squats down but I don’t, and I comes back up and puts my eyes on her brooch ’cause I don’t want to meet her steely eyes and I says, “Pleased to meetcha, Mum.”

Tilly sighs and says, “She’s going to take a bit of work, I’m afraid. But she is a good boy . . . ah . . . girl, that is, and she is a willing worker and a quick study and she . . .”

Mistress looks me over. “I am sure she will prosper here,” she says, finally, but she is not smiling and she don’t sound like she believes it. I don’t believe it, neither, not right now I don’t.

She looks back at Tilly. “I believe our business is concluded, then. I bid you good day, Cousin Phineas.” The serving girl goes to open the door for him.

“Right. Well, then,” says Tilly to me, “you be a good girl, now.”

“I will be, Sir, and I thank you for your kindness to me and the other boys. You were just the best teacher.”

Tilly blinks and nods and is out the door and gone.

The door clicks shut and silence fills the room. I stand there nervously quiverin’ while Mistress Pimm looks me over.

“What is this, then?” she says sharply, reaching over and flicking her finger at my earring. I flinch back cause her fingernail caught my ear and it shocked me, the suddenness of it all.

“It’s . . . it’s . . . just me ring, Ma’am. It’s like a token from me intended husband, a weddin’ ring, like. We’re gonna use ’em when we finally gets married and . . .”

“Take it off. Take it off, now.”

“I can’t take it off, Mum,” I says. “It’s welded shut and please, Mum, I. . .”

From somewhere in her dress she pulls out a thin rod, whips it back, and lays it against my leg. Even under the layers of cloth, my leg buckles under the pain. Damn, that hurts!

“Listen to me, girl. The Rules: You will never call me anything but Mistress, not Mum, not Ma’am, nothing but Mistress,” she says, standing straight upright as if a steel rod was run up her back. “And you will never talk back to me or raise your voice or even think to contradict me. Do you understand me, Miss Faber?”

“Yes, Mistress, I do.” I sobs, blinking back tears for me poor leg. “I do.”

“Good,” she says, straightening up and turning to the serving girl. “You. Go get Mr. Dobbs.”

“Yes, Mistress,” whispers the girl and darts out the door.

“And tell him to bring his snips!” Mistress calls after the girl.

While we wait for this Mr. Dobbs and his snips, Mistress continues to gaze upon me. She shakes her head and paces about the room. “I have grave misgivings about this. Unseemly. Most unseemly.”

The girl returns shortly with a dusty little man in work clothes bearing a look of put-upon impatience and carrying an evil-looking pair of sharp pliers.

“What is it, then, Mistress Pimm?” he says, with the air of one who anticipates a long, disagreeable, dirty, and thankless job.

“Take that barbaric thing out of her ear right now.”

Mr. Dobbs squints at my earring and lifts his pinchy tool. He seems delighted that it is such a simple thing and soon he’ll be back in the hole where I’m sure he hides himself the livelong day. “Sure thing, Mistress. We’ll have that out in half a moment.”

He lays his cold, vile snips against my cheek and peers at the offending ear and its ornament. I jerk back.

“Please, Mistress, it’s such a small thing and I. . .”

The switch catches me on the leg again and I cries out, “Oh! Please don’t . . .”

“What did I tell you about talking back to me?” she says to me and “Cut it out of there!” to Dobbs.

“Pardon, Mistress,” says the vile Dobbs, scratching his bristly chin as he thinks about the job at hand, “but do ye wish me to cut the earring or the earlobe?” He opens his shears and puts my ear in its cruel mouth. I can feel the sharpness of the metal. “Earlobe’d be easier. Bit of a mess, though.”

She seems to consider the two ways of freeing the ring from my poor quiverin’ ear.

“Cut the ring,” she says finally.

I’m sorry, Jaimy, I promised I’d never take your ring out of my ear but there it goes I’m sorry, Jaimy, I’m sorry.

Dobbs cuts the hoop and, none too gentle, twists the ring out of my ear and hands it to Mistress.

“Very well, Dobbs, you may take Miss Faber’s things up to the dormitory. And you,” she says to the serving girl, “may resume your duties.” The girl bobs and leaves, and Dobbs lifts my seabag and chest and heads down the hallway.

“You will now follow me to my office.”

We enter a hallway and proceed down its length. There’s more of them ’broideries on both walls. On either side I see rooms that are prolly rooms where stuff is taught. There’s a room with a lot of little tables, and there—oh, my—there’s a room full of musical instruments, fiddles and harps and things. This could be all right, I think.

“This floor is classrooms and the dining hall. Upstairs is the living quarters. Downstairs is the kitchen and the household staff,” she says, and with that she sweeps into a room and I follow.

It is a dark room with heavy curtains pulled over the windows. It has a large desk with a chair in the middle of it and cabinets along the side. Mistress Pimm goes over to a window and reaches behind the curtain and pulls a cord. The drapes part and light spills into the room and I can see the harbor lying down there below. How I wish I was down there with Jaimy, or even just sitting on a pier and playing my pennywhistle. Or gutting fish. Or doing anything but this.

Mistress comes back to the desk and sits down in her chair.

“Do you see the line drawn on the carpet?”

I look down and see that, sure enough, there is a thin white line drawn on the rug in front of her desk.

“Yes, Mistress,” I say.

“Good. Now go up to it and put the points of your toes upon it.”

I step over and put the shiny toes of my new shoes on the line. This puts my belly about four inches from the edge of the desk.

“Very well,” she says and leans back in her chair. “Whenever you are called into this office, you will advance to that line. If you are here for punishment—and I cannot think of any other reason why you would be here—you will lay your upper body on the desk and lift up your skirts. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mistress.” I’m thinkin’ fearfully that it’s sort of like being bent over a cannon and having your pants pulled down and your bottom switched, which was the common punishment for ship’s boys on the Dolphin. Never happened to me, though it was close a couple of times. Maybe this won’t happen to me here, neither. I hope not. I didn’t like the feel of that stick of hers.

“All right, then.” She picks up some papers and holds them up. “I have read an account of your recent life aboard that ship, provided by Mr. Tilden, and I find it neither amusing nor reassuring as to your moral character,” she says, crossing her arms and looking at me intently. “Are you still innocent?”

Innocent? Of what?

She notes my confusion. She narrows her eyes even more and says, “Are you yet a maiden?”

Oh. That.

“Yes, Mistress,” I stammers. If only just barely, I thinks, but I don’t say it out loud.

She is silent for a bit and then says, “Very well. I choose to believe you on that. I would not take you if I believed otherwise. It is reassuring that you can still blush, at least. You will, however, never speak with the other girls of your past life, as it smacks of the sordid and the unseemly. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Her gaze has never once left my face. “I have grave misgivings about taking you on as a student, given your origins and past life, but we shall see. Hold out your hand.”

I sticks out my trembling hand half expectin’ her to give it a whack with her stick for my past sins, but instead she jams my ring into it. “I never want to see that, or any kind of ornament on you again. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I say in my misery.

“And, Miss Faber, the most important thing of all,” she says, standing and raising herself to her full height, “although you may know the name of this school to be the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, I want you to fully understand that those are the names of the founders and trustees but that it is my school and my girls and you will never bring disgrace down upon me and my school by your actions and comportment. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Mistress.” I’m thinkin’ that this is a lot like bein’ read the Articles of War on the ship—every breakin’ of a rule bein’ punishable by death.

“Good. We will go up and meet my girls now.” She comes around from behind the desk. “You will find that my girls have a look about them that distinguishes them from the common run of girl, and you, Miss Faber, will try to cultivate that look.”

She comes up next to me. “My girls walk as if they were delicately balancing a book upon their heads. They keep their lips together and their teeth apart.”

I lift my head and drop my jaw down a bit with my lips mashed together.

She sighs. “Relax the lips, Miss Faber. Make a cupid’s bow of them. Now drop your eyelids down halfway. That’s better. Not even close to the ideal, but better.” She lifts her rod and taps my shoulders with it. “Not so rigidly straight. Remember the book on your head. You are projecting a look of languid confidence.”

She steps back to look at me.

“Eventually, Miss Faber, it is further to be hoped that you will learn to control your emotions so that they do not display quite so visibly on your face as they do right now. My girls have a look about them and appearing to be about to burst into tears is not part of that look. Let us go.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

 

There is a broad sweep of stairs at the end of the hallway and up it we do go, Mistress first and me behind watching the swaying hem of her skirt. At the top, we turn right and enter a large room that has beds lined up on either side. There are chests of drawers and windows curtained with light white drapes on each side. There are also about thirty girls of various sizes and ages, dressed just like me. They all get to their feet upon seeing Mistress Pimm enter.

“Good day, Ladies.”

“Good day, Mistress,” say the girls as one.

“I’ve asked you to gather here before dinner to welcome a new girl, Miss Faber.” She steps aside for me to come forward. “She is from England. Acquaint her with our ways and our rules.”

And with that, Mistress turns on her heel and leaves the room.

Well. I breathe a bit easier with her gone. Maybe I’ll find some warmth down here in the crew’s quarters, but I dunno—all I see now is unsmiling faces turned toward me, lookin’ all haughty and . . . oh, right—the Look, that’s what it is.

Nothin’ for it but to put on my most charmin’ smile and beam it all around. “My name is Mary, but you can call me Jacky—everybody does,” I pipes and looks around at their faces expectin’. . . what? Welcome, maybe. I don’t see much in the way of that, though.

I hear some snickerin’ and mutterin’ and my smile is startin’ to feel foolish on me face. Then the crowd parts and a girl, a small blond girl not much bigger than me, comes forward, her face uplifted, her eyes hooded, her back straight. She has the Look for certain, and she brings it all up in front of me.

She is perfect in all her parts. Her hair is perfectly piled on her head with perfectly coiled ringlets hanging down either side of her perfect face. She is a lovely cream color with touches of pink in the right places and her eyes are large and liquid and bright blue. Her nose is small and fine and her lips are full and red and shaped like a bow. Her neck is long and slender and her upper chest is soft and white without being powdered I know, and I know that her dress, which is the same color and cut as mine, is much finer in its material and drape and I feel suddenly shabby in my once-proud new dress. And in my pigtail and my tanned face and my freckles and my scarred, scrawny body.

“My name is Clarissa Worthington Howe, of the Virginia Howes,” says the girl, after looking in my face for a bit. “You may call me Miss Howe.”

By now my hopeful grin has slid completely off me face. Sweat breaks out on my brow and I know it makes me look like a scared scrub but frettin’ about it only makes me sweat all the more—I can feel my armpits working up steam and sendin’ the sweat tricklin’ down over my ribs.

Clarissa Worthington Howe looks at me and tilts her head to the side and looks as if she is about to decide something about me. Her blue eyes roam quite boldly over my face, and then her eyes stop and I can tell she is looking at my white eyebrow and its scar from where Bliffil got me with his boot that day. The perfect lips part and she says, “So you are a Tory, then?” Sweet and soft she says it. So you are ah Toe-ree they-un?

I’m in total confusion. Tory? My mind races back for that word and I remembers it from when I was a child and riding Hugh the Grand’s broad shoulders and reading the newspapers pinned to the print-shop walls for the amusement of the Fleet Street crowd. Tory? She’s callin’ me a conservative member of Parliament? I don’t get it.

“Tory?” I blurts out. “I ain’t no Tory. I’m just a poor girl what’s lately come from sea to study here and become a lady like the rest o’ yiz.” Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. As soon as it’s out me mouth I know it’s stupid stupid stupid and makes me sound like I just fell off the back of a Cheap-side turnip wagon. Stupid!

“English, a Tory, and so very, very common, too. My, my,” she says as she turns and floats away. “I’m afraid she won’t do,” she says to no one in particular, but the other girls turn away from me, too. “I’m afraid she won’t do at all.”

Just then I hears a musical something from out in the hall and the girls, led by the perfect Miss Howe, follow the sound out of the room.

So that’s the way of it, is it? Now I’ve got a real threatenin’ glower on my face and my hands balled up in fists, but I know that ain’t gonna be the way of it here in this place where Clarissa Worthington Howe rules. Goin’ at her with fists a-flailin’ ain’t gonna do it, no. I’ve got to learn to fight like a lady, and so I take a deep breath and put the imagined book on my head, and with my lips together and my teeth apart, I follow them.

 

In the hall I discover the musical sound comes from a box what’s got chimes in it that’s bein’ hit with a mallet by another serving girl—one who looks like the one I saw in the foyer, but not the same. Skinnier, but with the same saddle of freckles across her nose. Prolly her sister. She seems to be whackin’ away at the thing with no sense or pattern but it sounds pleasant all the same, and as we all file down the stairs and into a dining room with tables set with dishes and glasses and cloths and such, it seems that it is the way the girls are called to eat.

Clarissa Howe goes over to the center of one of the tables and sits down. Others begin to do the same, so I go over to that table and pull out a chair. Maybe this will go better, I thinks, as eatin’ together tends to make mates of people.

“I’m sorry,” says a girl coming up to my side, “but this place is taken.” She takes the chair and pulls it from my hand. I flush red in the face and go to another chair and pull that one out.

“I’m sorry,” says another girl, doing the same thing, “but this place is taken.”

I go to the other end of the table and try again there. The same thing happens. I try again. The same. Then I notice that there are more place settings here than girls and they are merely rotating around to deny me a seat at this table. I want to cry out at the cruelty and meanness of it all. I feel my eyes burning and I want to lash out and get one of ’em on the floor and pound her good, but I don’t do it. Instead, I put my hands to my sides and I stand at attention and say to no one in particular, “Very well. Tell me where to sit and I will sit there.”

A girl near me smirks and hooks her thumb over her shoulder. She uses her other hand to cover her mouth to stifle her giggles. I can see her eyes glance over to that Clarissa Howe to get her approval, and I see that she gets it. I follow the point and see another table, one with a single girl sitting at it. There are many empty places. I turn on my heel and march over and pull out the chair opposite the girl and plunk myself down. The girl has her head down and does not look up as I join her. She has very dark hair that is put up in a bun with side curls that hang lankly by her face. She has a pug nose and is plump—not fat plump but like she ain’t lost her baby fat yet. Her hands are folded in her lap.

I put my elbows on the table and lean over and say to her all conspiratorial like, as if we’re two prisoners in a jail, “They got me for bein’ English, common, and a Tory, two of which things I am guilty of. What are you in for, Mate?”

She looks up, confused. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Why are you sittin’ here alone, away from that pack of pampered princesses, is what I means,” says I. She don’t reply right off.

I look at the things in front of me to see if I’ll be able to handle ’em with any kind of confidence: plate, napkin, two spoons, knife, fork, an empty cup with a little dish under it, another little dish with a roll and butter on it, a glass full of water. A far cry from a mess kit and a tin cup.

“They do not like me and I do not like them,” says the girl with a sniff. She looks back down at her lap.

“Well, maybe you’ll like me. My name’s Jacky Faber and I’ve just come from”—and then I remember that I promised Mistress that I wouldn’t say nothin’ about my past life to any of these girls so’s they don’t faint dead away at the unseemliness of it all or something—“from far away to study at this school and so become a fine lady. Tell me your name and why we have two spoons here.”

I’m lookin’ real hungrily at the bread roll sittin’ there next to the butter but I notices that nobody else is diggin’ in yet, so I waits.

“My name is Amy and there is to be a soup course,” she says. She brings up a book and puts it on the table. So that’s why she had her head down. She was reading.

“Ah,” says I, deciding to watch her and just do what she does and that way avoid trouble.

I notice some older people have come into the mess hall and have seated themselves at the table by the door. Must be the teachers, I thinks. Then there’s a rustle as Mistress strides in and everyone stands up and stops talking. She goes to her chair, which is in the center of the teacher table, and looks out across the room. When all is silent, she speaks.

“We welcome into our company our new student, Miss Jacky Faber,” says Mistress, and I redden at the notice. “She will now give us the grace.”

I feel like I’ve been hit in the belly with a cannonball. Grace? I don’t know nothin about no bleedin grace!

I look at Amy in my desperation. She sees my confusion and leans forward and whispers, “A prayer in thanks for the food.”

Oh.

I scours me head for some graces and I comes up with a few and thinks to myself that I can handle this and maybe get a counterpunch in. Hey, is this not Jacky Faber, the saucy sailor girl who has played to lots tougher crowds than this? I tell myself this, but I don’t quite believe it.

I place my hands together in a prayerful attitude and cast my eyes to the heavens and belt out: “Oh, Lord, bless this food to our use and us to thy service.” The Regular Navy one—short and sweet and gets you to your food quick, and now, “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive through Christ our Lord.” That’s the Catholic one, which I learned by listening to the Irish sailors on the ship and which now causes two of the serving girls standing by the door to quickly look at each other and make that hand cross thing they do, and now for my own special one I just made up. “I thank you, Lord, for this wonderful school, which has taken in a poor lost orphaned lamb and so warmly welcomed her into its company. Amen.”

“Amen,” says the congregation, and sits down, and the clatter of silverware and a gentle buzz of conversation is heard. From the corner of my eye I see Mistress looking at me, but I don’t meet her eye as I sit back down.

“Well done, Miss,” says Amy, an almost smile playing about her lips. She takes her cloth and puts it on her lap.

I take my piece of cloth and do the same. I want to grab that roll real bad, ’cause cryin’ and bein’ treated miserable always sets up a fierce appetite in me, but since Amy ain’t doin’ nothin’ yet in the way of eatin’, I holds back and waits. Soon one of the serving girls comes up and puts a bowl of yellowish soup in front of me and then one in front of Amy. She picks up a spoon and so do I.

“The other one,” she says.

“The ‘other one’ what?” I says.

“The other spoon. You use the one in your hand for your tea.”

“Oh.” I switches spoons and dips the right one in and starts to shovel in the soup.

“Ohhh,” I breathes, “that’s prime, that is.”

It is so good I want to just pick up the bowl and drink it all down that way, the way I would have done with my mess kit, but I don’t. I think I’m doin’ pretty good using the spoon, so I’m workin’ away when I notice that this girl Amy’s holding her spoon like she would a pen and she ain’t makin’ any noise in the eatin’ of the soup, either, while I’ve got my spoon gripped full in my fist and am slurpin’ away lustily, and so I change my grip and tries to be more daintylike in my takin’ the soup on board.

That biscuit has been tauntin’ me too long, I’m thinkin’. I pick it up and give it a couple of raps on the table but no weevils fall out of it, so I rip it open and look inside and nothin’ comes out but a little steam and so I rub it in the butter on the little plate and take a bite. It is wondrously soft and warm and my eyes roll back with the goodness of it.

“Mmmmmm. That is soooo good,” I say, my eyes closed in rapture.

She looks at me a little funny. Easy for you, Miss, I thinks. You ain’t lately been eatin biscuits hard enough to crack your teeth and make your gums bleed for an hour after mess call, and full of bugs, to boot. And that was a helluva lot better than what I had before. But she don’t know about that, and she ain’t gonna find out, neither, ’cause I told Mistress I wouldn’t, and I won’t.

Now the girl what showed me that dip-down thing in the front hall comes up next to me, holding a platter of what I think are pork chops, and she stands there expectin’ me to do somethin’. I raise my eyebrows in question to Amy.

“Use the tongs there to take what you want.”

Take what I want? Why not just tip the whole tray in my plate? But I am good and take up the pinchy things that are resting on the edge of the platter and choose a fat one and manage to get it to my plate without disaster.

“Thank you,” I say to the girl. “And thanks for savin’ my neck this morning when I came in.”

She blushes like she ain’t used to being thanked and says, “’Twas nothing, Miss.” And she scoots off to be replaced by her sister, who has a platter of vegetables and potatoes with tongs like before. And then a thing of gravy is put on the table.

“Good Lord!” I say. “It’s a wonder that everyone here ain’t fatter than pigs if you eat like this all the time!" I regrets it instantly, as Miss Amy ain’t exactly skinny.

“This is the big meal of the day,” she says, appearing to take no offense. “The evening supper is much smaller. Breakfast is tea and toast or oat porridge or eggs and bacon.”

A pang of guilt runs through me. I wonder what Polly and Judy and Nancy and Hughie are eatin’ today, there under Blackfriars Bridge, if they’re still there or even still alive. But what could I have done for them, a nothing girl like me? Nothin’. Still, sometimes I feel I shouldn’a left them. But my greed overcomes my guilt over leaving them to their fate and I eye the spread hungrily, waiting for Amy to pick up a tool and dig in.

She picks up the gravy thing and pours out a little over her potatoes and then takes her knife in her right hand and her fork in her left and cuts one piece of meat out of the chop and then puts down the knife and switches her fork to her right hand, spears the small bite of meat, and puts it in her mouth. Why not cut the whole thing up at once and why do you have to change hands? I dunno. Anyway, I do it like she does, ’cept I cuts a much bigger hunk and I pours the gravy over everything. Then I digs in, and soon I’m makin’ my usual sounds of contentment that I make when I’m eatin’ somethin’ really good.

When I’m done, I take my last bit of bread and sops up the rest of the gravy in my plate and pops it in my mouth. I’m eyeing the pork chop bone lying in my plate and it’s still got some tasty-lookin’ fat glistenin’ on the side, and I want to pick it up and stick it in my gob and let my teeth and tongue do the cleanup detail but I don’t ’cause Amy don’t do that with hers.

Our plates are picked up and I watch the remains of the chop go off, with great regret. A glass of a brownish juice is put in front of me.

“What’s that?”

“It is apple cider. It is the time of year for it.” She lifts her glass and tastes it. “Please don’t faint from the joy of it,” she says, lookin’ at me all mock serious.

I laugh out loud, loud enough for Clarissa’s table to hear. Good. Let them know I am not cowed. “I’m sorry, Miss,” I manages to say to Amy, “but this is all so new to me, and I would purely appreciate it if you show me around a bit ’cause I don’t know when anything is and where I’m supposed to go and what I’m supposed to do and . . .” And I’ve got that old feelin’ in the bottom of my gut.

“. . . and I don’t know where the head is.”

“The head?” she asks, all mystified.

“I got to go powerful bad and I don’t know where to do it.”

“Oh,” she says, and looks over to the teacher table. “Well, we cannot leave until Mistress does, but it should be soon. Ah. There she goes. Come, and I will show you.” With that, she gives her lips one last pat with her cloth and rises. I pat my own mouth and follow her out of the dining room, book on head, lips together, teeth apart.

 

Amy leads me back upstairs and through the dormitory room to a door at the other end. “This is the privy,” she says. “Do be quick. We must be in class soon.”

I open the door and go in. It is a long room with six stalls on the far wall. I open one of the stall doors and peer in. There is a bench with a hole in it and I look down the hole to see a white chamber pot below. To the left is a sink with a pitcher of water next to the basin. There is also a basket with clean bits of cloth in it, and on the floor, there is a basket with a top on it and I figures that’s where you put them after you use ’em. So that’s how the job is done around here, then. I take a small bit of cloth.

When I plunk myself down, I notice that there’s a latch on the inside of the door. Privacy, even. My, my. Sure beats the stinky old head back on the Dolphin.

When I am done, I put the lid on the pot, grab its handle, and head out into the dormitory and say to Amy, “So where do I dump the pot, then?”

“Oh. My. God.” I hear that from a gaggle of girls who have come into the room when I was in the privy. They giggle and crow and run out of the room to tell Clarissa and the rest about my latest botch of things. I realize I have made a big mistake.

“Put it back,” says Amy, wearily. “The downstairs staff takes care of things like that.”

I go back and put the pot under the bench and then go sheepishly back to Amy.

“I’m sorry, Miss,” I say. “As soon as I get my sea legs under me and know my way around here I won’t bother you no more.”

We go to class.

 

The first class is the dreaded Embroidery, taught by Mistress, herself, and it’s true I have no skill in this regard and am discovered right off and sent to sit with a little girl who is working on her first sampler. The others snicker at my disgrace and turn their backs to me as I take my place at the foot of the class. I hear giggles and I think I hear the words Lady Chamber Pot whispered about.

A sampler, I find, is a bit of cloth on which a girl shows how good she is with a needle by doing the alphabet and then her name and then some gloomy verse or saying with a pretty border all around, and when she’s all done, she frames it up and hangs it on the wall. I guess so possible future husbands might see it and nod in approval of her skill and maybe marry her on account of it. There’s all sorts of them in frames up there on the wall, with one really big one that just has a poem on it.

 

I Pray that Risen from the Dead,

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 class 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 cocked 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 hell none of the rest of ’em is gonna help me.” We are heading down the hall to our next class.

“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, flashin’ 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 offshore 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 clustered 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 cockles 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 class 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 nobody 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, “Charmé. 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 assured, 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 ship 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 refreshingly primitive, don’t you think?”

“Ah oui, Miss Howe. Definitely right out of ze bog. Are we not trèes 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 class 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 nobody gonna mess with this dress, by God.

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, Massachusetts, United States

 

My Dearest Jacky,

 

By the time you read this letter you will be put ashore 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 midshipmen 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 midshipmen’s berth exults in the bully’s disgrace and absence!

Today, we all went into the town to have one last day ashore, 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 ship 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, Massachusetts, United States

August 30, 1803

 

James Emerson Fletcher, Midshipman
9 Brattle Lane, London, England

 

Dear Jaimy,

 

I dont know nothing about writing letters, Jaimy, this being the first one I ever wrote and I dont know how to do it so I am just going to plunge ahead and hope you will forgive me when I make a mess of it which I will.

I dont know if I like it here, Jaimy, I dont know at all. Tilly and the Captain and Deacon Dunne all put out their reasons for what they were going to do with me, but I still dont get it. Why couldnt they have put me off in London? They could have kept me in the brig for the crossing, I wouldna minded. I wouldna caused no trouble just cause I was a girl. In London I woulda at least had a chance to see you or could at least known I was in the same town as you, but no . . . You dont know this, Jaimy, but when the Dolphin was warped out of the harbor today with you on it and me not, I could see it from a window at the school, it being up on a hill and I could see the harbor all spread out below and the ship with all its flags flying and guns saluting and looking so glorious that it fairly tore my heart out, it did.

Its my first day here and already I cant wait to get away. Oh, the bunks are clean and the grub is good, but I dont know if I like the company of girls very much. These girls here, youd think theyd be a bunch of prim pampered little princesses but, no, they aint, theyre like any bunch of thirty or so cats thrown in to a sack and shaken up good. Theyre mean in ways that boys never even thought of being. I am all at sea about this becoming a lady business, too, and I dont know if Im ever going to get any better at it. I wish with all my heart that they would just give me back my money and let me go back to you.

I know I am whining and I am sorry, but all I really want to do is bury my face in your neck and whimper and cry and have you pat my back and say everythings all right, Jacky, in your lovely deep voice, and then I would forget about everything else and be happy. I loved it when I heard you say my name. I miss it more than you could know, a simple thing like that. I loved your letter, too, Jaimy, I did and I live only in hopes of getting another one soon.

Please keep me in your thoughts and speak kindly of me to others if you can, especially your mum and dad. Give my regards to the Brotherhood and all the other seamen on the Dolphin. Liam especially. Tell that Davy to be good.

I regret to report that your ring is no longer in my ear as befits a proper sailor, it being forcibly removed by the school’s Mistress and an evil one she is, I can tell you. The ring now is on a string around my neck and it rests against my breast, close to my heart. Know, Jaimy, that every night I go to sleep clutching it in my fist and thinking only of you. I will pray for your health and safety, and worry about you constantly, not being there to watch your back myself and keep you from charging pirates and challenging people to duels and otherwise risking your brave foolish neck, not that I was able to stop you before but at least I was there.

I know. I am a mess and I am making a fine mess of this paper with my tears running off the end of my nose and blurring the ink, but I cant help it. I will write again in a few days.

Oh, Jaimy, I just wish we were back in our lovely hammock on the dear Dolphin and I was just your secret girl again, I do.

 

Yours forever,

Jacky

 

The chimes calling us to supper ring out as I am carefully blotting my letter. I fold it and put it up my sleeve as I have neither pocket nor purse. I wipe my nose and eyes, and hoping I don’t look a total mess, I go and join Amy in the dining room.

The grace is given, not by me this time, thank God, but by a bloke at the head table, sitting next to Mistress. Supper is, as Amy said, a much smaller affair than dinner, but it is still quite good. We have a pie made from some sort of bird with vegetables and gravy all in it. I’m getting better with the tools and don’t have to watch Amy so closely this time. These biscuits are sinfully good.

“So where do you come from, Miss?” says I to break the silence. “Do you have a family? A mum and dad, like, brothers or sisters?”

I know she still does not quite know what to make of me. “Yes,” she replies, “we have a farm in Quincy. I have a brother and his name is Randall. He attends the college across the river.”

“Ah,” I says, “a poor farm girl with a poor scholar for a brother. No wonder the little princesses won’t have nothing to do with you. And where’s this Quincy, then?”

“It is to the south. About fifteen miles.”

“Ah,” I say, and let the talk peter out. She is sure a gloomy one, she is.

I notice that the teachers don’t come to this meal, just Mistress and that cove what said the grace and what’s got on a white collar like two square wings on the throat of his black coat. All the rest of his clothes is black, too, but that ain’t nothin’ new around here. The other teachers prolly live close by and only take the noon dinner with us, I figures, and takes breakfast and supper with their own families.

“Who’s he?” I ask, pointin’ him out with my fork.

She glances over and says, “That is the Very Reverend Richard Mather. He is our Spiritual Advisor. He has the church next door. He is also a trustee and member of the board of this school. We go over there for services on Sunday morning and prayer meeting on Wednesday night. He takes his suppers here. He has no wife.”

I see that one of the girls is eating with them, Mistress Pimm and the Reverend sitting side by side and the girl sitting across from them, her back toward us. That selfsame back is being held rigidly straight and it does not seem to be enjoying itself, overmuch.

“That girl there?” I ask, nodding toward the head table. Amy looks over.

“That is Dolley Frazier. Each night, one of us is invited to dine with them. It is not supposed to be a pleasure. It is a test—a test of your manners, comportment, knowledge of etiquette, demeanor, and spiritual depth. And you get no warning as to when it is your turn. You will be expected to rise to the occasion.”

“Ah.” I look over at the unlucky girl. I know she wants desperately to be back with her mates and I note how she holds her shoulders and feet and elbows ’cause I know it’ll be my turn over there someday soon.

 

After supper, lamps are lit in the tea room and we are left to ourselves again. Clarissa and her crew chatter and giggle, but Amy don’t do nothin’ but read and so I study my French book till the words begin to slide off the page and my head starts in to noddin’.

I feel myself fallin’ over to one side and Amy says, “It must have been a long day for you,” and I snap my head up with a jerk and weaves back and forth and says, “Right. But, I’m all right. What are you reading?”

“The Federalist,” says Amy. “It is political matter.”

“Myself, I like the novels,” I says. “I just finished Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe and some of Captain Cook’s writings about his voyages and—”

“Wherever did you get those books?” she asks, and seems to be in genuine wonder.

“Don’t you have those books here?” I don’t want to tell her that I sort of borrowed those books from the midshipmen’s berth. “How ’bout Poor Nell, A Girl of the Streets? And A General History of the Most Notorious Pyrates?”

Her eyes widen. “No. We have no such books here.”

“Well, don’t worry,” I says, all cheerful. “I saw a bookseller’s on the way here today, so we’ll get some soon and we’ll curl up with ’em right here.”

I close my French book and put my head back against the soft leather of the chair. I close my eyes and ask, “What do we do tomorrow?”

“Equestrian in the morning. All morning,” she says. “Art, Penmanship, Arithmetic, and Music in the afternoon.”

Music!

“But what’s this ’questrian?” I asks.

“Horses,” says Amy. “The riding and management thereof.”

I shudder and turn back to my studies.

 

At the ringing of a handbell, we march back to the dormitory and there is a great rush for the stalls in the privy to wash up and change. Each girl takes her bedclothes from a chest of drawers next to her bed and I pull mine out of my sea chest and wait till there is a free washroom and then go in and latch the door and pour some water from the pitcher into the basin. There is a piece of soap in a little dish. I doff my clothes and wash and dry and then get into my own gown and cap. I let the water out of the basin and notice that it runs out the bottom through a pipe that goes through the wall. Isn’t this just the most amazing thing, I thinks. Prolly goes out into the garden, or something.

I warily poke my head out of the stall, sure that Clarissa and her bunch ain’t layin’ for me with somethin’ nasty planned, like soaking me down with water or holding me down and beating me, but they don’t. They’re off chattering in a circle around Clarissa and paying me no mind. Good.

I take my regular clothes back to my chest of drawers and I carefully lay my uniform dress out in a drawer of its own. There is a net bag in the bottom drawer and I do not know what it is for but I’m sure I will find out. I hang my towel on the hook at the head of my bed.

Amy comes back from the privy decked out in her own nightclothes and I look to her to see what to do next. Climbing into my bunk and going to sleep seems much too simple, and I am right. Mistress comes briskly into the room and taps her rod once on the deck and says, “Prayers.”

There is the sound of knees hitting the floor as all the girls kneel next to their beds, and so I do the same. I glance around and see that everybody has their hands in prayerful attitude and is mumbling away, and I do the same. I figures “Now I lay me down to sleep” will work and then the Lord’s Prayer, can’t go wrong with that, and then I hear some of the nearby girls blessing their mums and dads and sisters and brothers so I sets in to blessing Jaimy and Tink and Davy and Willy and Liam and Snag and Captain Locke and Mr. Lawrence and, yes, even Mr. Haywood and the rest of the Dolphins and then puts in a word for the ones passed on like Benjy and Rooster Charlie and Grant and Spence, and then I’m mentioning Johnny No Toes and Hugh the Grand and Polly and Nancy and Judy of the Blackfriars Bridge gang when I notice Mistress standing next to me and I stops reelin’ off the names. I guess I’ve blessed enough.

She taps her cane twice on the floor and the girls pile into their beds.

Mistress says, “Good night, girls.”

“Good night, Mistress,” we all say.

Mistress herself goes about and snuffs the lamps. Soon all is darkness.

 

A great wave of weariness sweeps over me even though I ain’t done no real work today, and with the weariness comes the hopelessness of homesickness, too, that awful feelin’ that things ain’t never gonna get any better than they are now, and I’m startin’ to wet my pillow with my tears but I got to stop it. I can’t let them hear me cry, I can’t. You got to look on the bright side of things now, I tells myself. The truth is no one tried to hang you today or even threatened you with it. You were not thrown naked into the street. You were beaten but not insensible. All those things have happened to you before, but not today. True, you’ve got to contend with horses tomorrow and I know you ain’t lookin’ forward to that, and that Clarissa is hateful and awful but at least she’s not tryin’ to actually kill you. Mistress is as stern as any Bo’sun or officer, but did the First Mate come to you every night on the Dolphin with a glass of warm milk and a kiss to tuck you in? No, he did not. So stop your complainin’.

I burrow down under the covers and curl up in a ball and clasp Jaimy’s ring in my hand, and having already prayed for his health and safety, I start to fall into sleep. It is hard to believe that only this morning I woke from such sleep on the Dolphin. Such a long time ago, a world away it seems.