by L. A. Meyer
“All right,” I say, having heard enough. “Davy. Jim. Wrap her in that sheet, then pick her up and let’s get her out of here.”
As they go to do it, I walk over to the sniveling Mam’selle and say, “I am most definitely not pleased with what happened here, but I know she can be most willful and I forgive you, Mam’selle, I do.” I plant a kiss on her brow and turn back to Clarissa just as Mrs. Babineau bursts into the room, waving a sheet of paper.
“You may forgive, but I do not. That one,” she snarls, pointing at the unconscious Clarissa who now rests on Davy’s shoulder, her rump in the air. She waves the paper in my face. “That chienne owes me four hundred and seventeen dollars, for food, drink, gambling markers, and damage to my house. She will pay me back, either on her back or on her knees, but she will pay me back.”
I pause a brief moment to wistfully imagine Clarissa paying her debt in either of those positions, then I banish those lurid images from my mind and I reply to the outraged Mrs. Babineau . . .
“Mrs. Babineau, you have always been most kind to me in our past dealings and I thank you for it. Furthermore, I do not expect you to suffer for my friend’s transgressions, so this is what I propose: You were to pay me five hundred dollars to transport ten of your girls to Boston?”
She nods.
“You will not have to pay that. They will ride for free and Faber Shipping and the House of the Rising Sun will be square. Do you agree?”
She considers, then nods again. “Oui. As long as you get her out of here now.”
Done and done.
“Throw her on the bed,” I order as we enter my cabin back on the Nancy B. “Then prepare the ship to get underway. We have once again worn out our welcome in yet another town. All shore leave is cancelled. Let’s go home.”
I hear no protest on that as Davy flings Clarissa on my bed. Her arms and legs flop around, but still she does not make a sound. I begin to worry. Davy and Jim leave, to get on with things, as Joannie enters and looks at what lies on my bed.
“Wot . . . ?” she begins, but I cut her short.
“Go get Jemimah. We need her.”
As she flees, I put the palm of my hand to Clarissa’s forehead. Seems all right . . . but I don’t know what to do. I know how to sew up a wound, how to take out a bullet . . . but I don’t know what to do here . . . please . . .
In a moment, Jemimah comes in and regards the mess on the bed.
“Good Lord, what happened?” she exclaims.
“Too much bright lights, big city, and way too much of what New Orleans had to offer,” I reply. “Jemimah, I don’t know what to do.”
“Hmm . . .” she says, considering. “Back on the Hamilton Plantation, young Master Ashley Hamilton sometimes used to be brought back in a coach from Charleston lookin’ just like this, and we house nigras learned how to deal wit’ it.”
I look at her. “How?”
“You got to bring ’em back slow, else they go crazy,” she says. “Sister Girl, you go get some cloths and some cold water. Quick, now.”
Joannie scurries out, returning in a moment with a bucket in her hand and rags over her arm.
“Here, now, take a cloth, dip it, wring it out and hold it against her face, like this,” she says, “and over her brow, too.”
I pick up a cloth, wet it, and apply it to Clarissa’s face. It seems she moans a bit at the touch of the cold compresses, and I find that encouraging.
“Pull her top down and swab her chest, too. She’ll prolly start in sweatin’ pretty heavy, but keep swabbin’.”
I do it, dropping the cloth back into the bucket to keep it cool, for sure enough, Clarissa starts putting out a lot of sweat . . . and then . . . and then . . . she starts to speak . . .
“Mammy Josie . . . help me, Mammy Josie. Ah’m sick, Mammy Josie.”
“I t’nk she gone back to her child days in her mind now,” observes Jemimah. “But at least she can talk, which is a good sign.”
“Help me, Mammy Josie,” gasps Clarissa. “Ah . . . ah gotta go potty . . .”
“Not on my bed, you don’t!” I exclaim, horrified. “C’mon, let’s get her offa there!”
I grab one arm and Jemimah the other, while Joannie hauls down Clarissa’s drawers, and we get her in the chamber pot chair. After she’s done, we clean her up, leaving drawers and chemise on the floor, and then get her back in my bed, where she gets into some serious raving.
“I don’ wanna! No, I won’t do that! Let me alone, all of you, just let me alone!”
We don’t know just with whom she is talking, but then Jemimah says, “Time for a bath, now, which she sure could use. I t’ink a cold one would be best.”
I go to the door and shout, “John Thomas! My tub, filled with cold water, in here, now!”
Clarissa Worthington Howe shrieks as she is lowered into the cold-water tub. She thrashes about, but we manage to hold her down in it.
“What are you doing to me? Help! Help! Oh, please, help me! I am so c-c-c-c-cold!”
I think she is returning to her senses and say, “What we are doing is trying to return you to this world, Clarissa, whether you want to come back or not. Do you understand me?”
Her ice blue eyes look at me uncomprehending. “W-w-what? I’m c-c-cold. Why are you being mean to me? Why?”
“What is your name, girl?” I demand, grabbing a handful of her hair.
“I . . . I . . .” The baby blues still look at me without much sense in them. “I don’t know, I—”
I force her head down into the water and hold it there for a good long while, till she starts violently struggling, then I pull her head back up, with the water streaming over her gasping face.
“Now,” I say, all relentless, “what is your name and what is the name of this ship?”
“M-m-m-my name is Clarissa . . . Clarissa Worthington . . . Howe,” she gasps. “And . . . this is the Nancy B.”
“Right. And who am I?”
“You are . . .” she whispers, her teeth chattering, “J-J-Jacky Faber.”
“And what am I?”
“C-C-Captain of this g-g-goddamn boat,” she says with some of the old venom back in her voice.
“You’d better believe it, Clarissa,” I say, releasing my grip on her hair.
“Easy now, girl,” Jemimah says to me. “Lighten up a bit.” She is a little more sympathetic toward our unfortunate subject than I am. My crew and I had been looking forward to a few fine days in New Orleans and we did not get them because of this spoiled little Southern Belle.
“All right,” I say, relenting. “Joannie. Hot water now.”
Later, when the cold water in the tub has been replaced with the hot and steaming, Clarissa’s teeth stop chattering, but she still seems somewhat shaky. Heeding Jemimah’s advice to let Clarissa down easy, I take my bottle of Tincture of Opium, also known as Jacky’s Little Helper, and pour her a dram and hold it to her lips.
“Take this, my errant Sister, and drink,” I say. “It is one of those things you have been throwing into your body the last week or so. It will make you feel better. Tomorrow you shall get half a dram, the next day a quarter, and then nothing after that. Do you understand?”
She nods, her eyes sullen. She drinks down the dram and says, “Ummm . . .” as so many have before.
I once again grasp a hank of her matted hair and thrust her head down between her knees, but only for a short time, just long enough to wet her hair. When I bring her back up, I apply soap to her blond mop and begin to lather it up.
Jemimah and Joannie have gone off to prepare dinner, and I can tell from the movement of the ship that we are out on open water again.
“Do you know what could’ve happened to you back there when you were in that helpless state? You could now be carrying some drunkard’s child, or even worse, find yourself with a case of the pox. Do you know that?”
“Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care. Just leave me alone.”
“What makes you act the way y
ou do, Clarissa?” I ask, truly curious.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asks in a dream sort of way, plainly now feeling the beneficial effects of the Tincture of Opium.
“You are the daughter of a powerful family with enormous holdings of land and property, you have a high position in society and will never lack for money, and your marriage prospects are beyond the dreams of the majority of girls in this land, me included. Dip down to rinse.”
Her head goes under again and my fingers work at her scalp to free her hair of soap. She comes back up laughing, the water running out of her open mouth and over her perfect teeth.
“I have everything, right? Money, position, and power? Right. I have all of those things, but what I do not have is what you have.”
“Oh, come on, Clarissa, just what do I have that you might covet? This little boat? My silly little company that your father could buy ten times over and crush me like a bug in the process? Just what is it?”
She leans back, luxuriating in the steam and the warmth, and she smiles and says, “If I ask my daddy to buy me another fine horse like Jupiter, he will do it. Another slave to take the place of Angelique? He would buy me two. If I beg of Momma for more fine crinoline dresses, why of course, dear, anything you want in this world and it is yours, as your birthright . . .”
Clarissa straightens up in the tub and continues, “. . . but if I were to say, Daddy, please buy me a little boat like that Jacky Faber has so I could go out a-roving like she does, he would say, No, daughter, put such notions out of your head. There is a grand ball tonight and you must look your prettiest, for all the local swains will be there—the Randolphs, the Calhouns, the Wilkes, the Clays—why, the very flower of Southern manhood will be there at your feet.
“And they would be there, you may be sure, Jacky,” she says. “But I do not want that. What I want is what you’ve got.”
“And what is that, Sister?”
“Freedom. Pure and simple.”
Well . . . What can I say to that?
Chapter 18
“Mmmm . . . These are right good,” I say, bringing the Faber grinders down on yet another mouthful of salted roasted peanuts. Clarissa, who sits next to me at the mess table, grunts her agreement. We are both back in our sailor garb, after a fine three-day stay in Savannah, dressed in our best . . . or rather my best, Clarissa not having brought anything with her when she embarked on this cruise. There were some excellent inns, Peter Tondee’s Tavern being one, and we had a fine time, all our crew managing, for once, to avoid arrest.
Jemimah had fixed up a batch of the peanuts, first soaking the lumpy pods in brine, and then roasting them in her stove.
“Yes, m’am. And they will put some meat on your bones, girl, ’cause them goobers is full of oil,” she says. “Sister Clarissa could use some more flesh, too, as I see’s it.” Jemimah shakes her head. “Skinny white girls, I swear, how do they get on in this world? That’s why you two ain’t married up yet. You know that to be true.”
Clarissa and I exchange a glance and both of us forgo a second helping of the admittedly delicious beans. After all, I have to stay trim to climb the rigging, and she has to fit into ball gowns without the aid of corsets.
“But won’t it be kinda tedious, shelling all these peanuts just for a free handout at the Pig?” I ask.
“Don’t do it, girl. Your customers got hands. Let’m shell their own goobers, otherwise they’ll eat’m up too fast. Back in our quarters, we’d t’row the shells on the floor. They smell good when you walk on ’em, and easy to sweep up after.”
“And that’s what the Pig will do, Jemimah, and we’ll see how it goes.”
Joannie and Daniel have been loading up on hot peanuts at the stove, and Joannie paused long enough to say, “Auntie. We ain’t heard what happened to Brother Rabbit after he got himself caught by the Sheriff and tossed in jail.”
“Well, children, you ’member how Sheriff John Coon done caught Brother Rabbit stealin’ the Massa’s cabbage and throwed his pink butt behind bars . . .”
Three—no—four heads nod avidly.
“And Brother Rabbit he pleads, his head stuck through the bars, ‘Sheriff Raccoon, why you doin’ dis to me? You know I gots to feed my chillun?’
“‘I know dat,’ says Brother Raccoon, makin’ sure the door to the cage is locked tight, ‘but it don’t make no difference to The Man. I got my orders. They gone hang your sorry ass in the mornin’. Sorry, Brother, but that’s the way it is. Now, you want yore last meal now, or in the mornin’ jus’ before they strings you up?’
“Brother Rabbit thinks hard on this, then he say, ‘I’ll take it now, Brother, so’s I can enjoy it better, digestion-wise.’
“‘All right, then. Whatchu want to eat?’
“‘All I wants, Brother Coon,’ says Rabbit, ‘is a whole pile of God’s good goobers, roasted up nice and hot. I always liked ’em and I’ll be able to tell the Lord when I see’s him tomorrow just how thankful I was for Him providin’ ’em to me and mine.’
“‘Well, that won’t be too hard to do, Brother,’ says Brother Coon. ‘I’ll see that yore poor self has a whole mess of ’em right quick,’ and Brother Coon goes out to get ’em.”
“But, Auntie,” pipes up Daniel. “Wouldn’t Brother Rabbit ask for something a little more fancy for his last meal? I know I would.”
“That’s ’cause you ain’t as bright as Brother Rabbit, Brother Boy.” Jemimah sniffs. “Anyway, Sheriff Coon comes back in the jail and places a hot bushel of goobers outside Brother Rabbit’s cell. Then he goes out the door and strolls home to have dinner with Missus Coon, leavin’ Brother Rabbit alone.”
“And so this rabbit eats himself sick on the peanuts and then gets hanged in the mornin’, which he got coming?” snorts Clarissa. “Some story. Any rabbit steals the cabbages on our plantation would find his tail full of buckshot, and him on the dinner table, never mind the hangin’.”
“Well, that ain’t how the story goes, Cook’s Helper Clarissa, and you ain’t on your fine plantation now, so hush.”
Clarissa hushes, and Jemimah goes on.
“So as soon as Sheriff Coon is out the door, Brother Rabbit takes big bunches of the hot, oily goobers and, oh no, he don’t eat, no. He tosses ’em on the floor of his cell and commences to stomp on ’em with his big hind feet till he git a big, greasy mess. Then he pick up a handful of the slop with his little front paws and spreads it all over his body, startin’ with his head, then his shoulders, and finally to his narrow hips. He grease himself real good and then goes to the bars. He puts his head in between two of ’em and begins to push hard and pop! it slides right on through and Brother Rabbit knows he’s got it made now, ’cause his head is his widest part. He wriggles a bit and the rest of him comes slidin’ through.”
Jemimah pauses in her work and then concludes . . .
“Brother Rabbit slips out the front door of the jailhouse and then hops happily down the bunny trail, back to his wife and family, hummin’ a little tune . . .
If you get to heaven, ’fore I do,
Just cut a hole and pull me through.
If I won’t slide, then rub my hide,
With a whole mess of goober goo.
Take it easy, Brothers and Sisters . . .
. . . Go greasy.
Just then, Jim Tanner pokes his head in the door and says, “Ship, Missy, to the south, and comin’ on fast. She’s flyin’ the red colors.”
A pirate!
I am topside in a second, followed closely by the others. Jim hands me my long glass and I head up into the rigging. When I gain the crow’s nest, I put the glass to my eye and train it on our visitor. It looks like . . . But I can’t be sure. “Joannie! Go down and get our Jolly Roger, and fly him from the masthead. Quick, now!”
There are a number of the passengers on deck enjoying the fine day and I order them below. “There might be trouble, ladies, and you’re better off down there. Keep calm, now.”
Joannie rushe
s back into my cabin and returns with the flag, and soon the grinning-skull-and-crossbones is snapping from the mainmast above me.
Joannie appears at my side.
“What do you think?”
“Dunno. He might not be chasing us . . . but still . . . On deck there! Clear for action! Man the guns!”
I see the lads rushing to their battle stations below. Joannie does not have to be told; she, too, flies down to her duty as powder monkey.
Closer . . . closer . . . just who the hell are you . . .?
The ship, which appears to be a medium-sized brig, grows ever nearer . . . and then I can make out the flag . . . Ha!
“Don’t worry!” I shout down. “It’s just Flaco! But stay at your guns just in case.”
It is well that I said that, for, when I put glass back to eye, I see that Flaco Jimenez’s El Diablo Rojo is being chased by another, larger vessel. I have no doubt that Flaco has been up to no good, but still, I must go to the aid of my fellow member of the Piratical Brotherhood.
Damn!
I head back down.
“There’s another ship behind Flaco’s!” I say to Jim at the helm as my feet hit the deck. “Bring her about and we’ll see what we can do for him.”
Jim throws the wheel over and the Nancy B. heels to the left and comes about. The lads leave their guns to climb aloft to trim the sails for the new course, and then drop back down to resume their stations.
We are slowed by our turn and drift back on a southerly course, as the two ships draw abreast of us. I put the glass back to my eye, and sure enough, there’s Flaco Jimenez astride his quarterdeck, grinning at me and waving. Then there is a craaack! from the other ship and he ducks and is not grinning anymore.
“What’s going on?” asks Clarissa, who has appeared by my side.
“Oh,” I say. “It’s an old friend from my younger days. We spent a summer buccaneering in the Caribbean. He appears to be in a bit of trouble.”