by L. A. Meyer
I arrived at the assigned spot at fifteen minutes before eleven in a great state of anticipation, and waited in vain until noon. Nothing . . . Nothing but the ringing of the hours at the Old South Church to mock me for my gullible stupidity . . . ding-dong, noon, naught but gloom; ding-dong one, she’s done and gone; ding-dong two, you silly fool . . .
I had put the letter on her shelf three days ago, but she has shown no sign of receiving it. I know she got it, for I saw the open and discarded envelope lying by the cash box when I went later that day for my dinner. Could she be so heartless as to disregard it so entirely? Am I nothing to her that she does not even favor me with a reply?
I do not know. All I know is that she went gaily about her business—even when enlisting my help in rescuing her little lad Ravi. Out in the town with the Gurkhas and all I saw from her in the way of affection was her laying a kiss on the face of that sonofabitch Arthur McBride! She seems to have no thoughts of me.
No! I am done with it and I am done with her! The Ciudad de Lisbon is ready to sail and sail she shall. And I shall be on her, and quit this unhappy country!
I sit down now ready to pen a letter to Charlie Chen, thanking him for his offer of a captain’s post on this ship, but declining that honor, as I must get back to England to see what can be done to salvage the shreds of my Royal Navy career, as that seems to be the only avenue to any sort of settled existence for me. I have heard of a possible pardon for my past transgressions. If true, fine. If not, also fine. If they want to hang me, I do not care. There is one thing I do know for certain—a rose-covered cottage with a certain Miss F. is definitely not in my future.
I have finished writing that letter to Mr. Chen, informing him that I have left his company in good hands and have found a suitable captain for his ship, and that I will accompany said officer as far as New York to make sure he is a good seaman. The Ciudad de Lisbon, which carries a full cargo of rum, will drop off the few passengers that have paid for passage to that port, and then will return to Rangoon. I, myself, will take passage on another ship for London, and to hell with the consequences.
There is a sudden commotion outside, and I rise to see what is the matter. Upon gaining the street, I hear alarm bells ringing all across the city and see a small boy rushing up the street.
“Where are you going, boy, in such a hurry?” I ask of him.
“To the courthouse, Sir!” he shouts over his shoulder without slackening his pace. “The whole town’s going!”
“But why?”
“They are going to whip Jacky Faber today!”
Chapter 43
I am taken from the cell by a grinning Goody Wiggins and led outside to the courtyard. My hands are bound before me and there is a hobble about my ankles so that I don’t try to make a run for it. I blink in the sudden bright sunlight. My eyes are clear and I see the whipping post there ready to receive me, with a very satisfied Constable Wiggins standing by with his rod held in his fist, slapping it against the palm of his other hand.
It seems the whole city has come to watch this spectacle. Bells are tolling and alarms sound from Beacon Hill to the lower Twelfth Ward. Oh, well, I hope I will make a brave show of it, but I know I won’t. I never was really very brave . . .
My trial, if you can call it that, was held this morning. I was brought in dressed in a grim gray linsey-woolsey prison dress that had been found for me—my burglar gear, which I had been wearing, had been confiscated. I was allowed to confer with my lawyer for a short while. I find I am to be charged with witchcraft. Ezra told me what kind of evidence would be brought against me and then asked . . .
“What do you have to say to that, Jacky? Remember, never lie to your lawyer.”
So I sighed and told him all about my magic mushrooms and my plot against Pigger O’Toole and my drugging of Judge Thwackham’s tea. He looked at me, considering.
“Maybe you really are a witch,” he said, at length. “But no matter. Listen to me now. What you must do every time you see me put my hand to my brow, like this, is to say, ‘I decline to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me, as is my right as provided by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.’ Have you got that?”
I replied that I did and repeated it back to him.
As we waited for the Judge to appear, I reflected back on last night’s stay in the slammer . . .
Wiggins and his thugs were none too gentle in dragging me into their paddy wagon and then into the cell. Once there, I was made to strip down, to put on the prison dress, and to suffer the japes and jeers of him and his deputies while doing so. “You’ll notice, Sweetie, that this here dress buttons up the back,” said Goody Wiggins as she roughly fastened me up. “And I think that’s gonna come in right handy come whippin’ time.” I hope with all the rage that’s in me that this pair will pay dearly for their treatment of Jacky Faber someday. I really, really hope that.
It had not been an easy night, what with a cage full of roaring drunks on one side of me and Pyro Johnny’s jabberings on the other.
He has been tried and condemned to hang for murder next week, but he does not seem overly concerned. In fact, he informed me that he asked to be burned at the stake, so’s he could spend his last minutes on this earth with his beloved flames, but was told that, no, that just wasn’t done anymore. They would agree, however, to cremate his body when it was brought down from the gallows, if that would make him feel any better. It did. I had never before met anyone who actually looked forward to the Fires of Hell. I gave him the names of several men I know to be residents in that place, such that he might give them the regards of Jacky Faber, my being the one what caused ’em to be down there in the first place. He said he would do so.
No, the night was not easy, but I got through it and was glad to see the dawning of the day, whatever that day might bring.
A rap of a gavel and a call of, “All rise! The Municipal Court of the City of Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is now in session, Judge Lemuel Tragg, presiding!” began the important part of my day.
As this new Judge took his place behind the Bench, Ezra whispered to me, “Judge Thwackham is enjoying a long rest at his summer home on the shore at Scituate. It is expected that he will retire soon.”
I gave an innocent arching of the eyebrows and a shrug at that, and Ezra snorted, “Sic Transit Jacky,” a Latin phrase he has sometimes said before in regards to me.
I look above at the gallery and see that Amy Trevelyne is there on the arm of John Higgins, who gives me a warm, stiff-upper-British look, which does lend me some strength. Amy looks stricken, but stares forward. Hey, Amy. Where’s your notebook? Should be some pretty good stuff coming up soon.
Now this Judge Tragg is a different kettle of jurist from his predecessor. While Thwackham, the Mad Bull, was obese, garrulous, cantankerous, and abusive to all about him, this man is thin as a whippet, and his gaze sharp, piercing, and unforgiving. He is large of nose but small of stature, measuring no more than five feet in height. I cannot tell about the hair on his head, said head being covered with a white wig, but I suspect it to be gray and sparse.
“So, what have we here before us today, Counselor?” he asked of Attorney Hamilton Brown, newly rescued from exile as a Blue-bottomed Baboon and restored to his former position as Chief Prosecutor of this court. He knows the particulars of this case and glances at me with a knowing look that does not contain a lot of love for the soon to be formally accused. I put on the big-eyed, poor waif look in return and wait.
“This is a hearing to determine if one Jacky Faber, present here in this court, should stand trial on a charge of witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft? I thought we were done with all that, and all the witches are now dead and gone,” said Judge Tragg, “thanks to the good people of Salem.” He said this with a slight smile, and he gets a few titters from the courtroom.
Ah, a man who enjoys his own wit. Good to know, I’m thinking . . .
“Ahem.
Yes, Your Honor,” said Attorney Brown. “However, when you hear the particulars of this case, you might change your mind.”
“We shall see, Sir,” opined the Judge. “Miss Faber, please stand up.”
I did so.
“Do you understand the charges lodged against you?”
“I do, and maintain that they are false.”
“So you plead not guilty?”
“Yes.”
“Then, sit down. Counselor, call the first witness for the prosecution.”
“I call Constable Wiggins to the stand.”
The despicable Wiggins waddled up to stand before the Judge, holding a bundle under his arm.
Uh-oh . . .
He was sworn in, then testified . . .
“Your Honor, I was pwesent at the place called Skivareen’s on State Street on Saturday last when a small crate was brought in, bearing the mark of Faber Shipping Worldwide, as you will plainly see from this piece of board.”
He then produced the side of the small crate, which did, indeed, bear our label. “And in that crate was this bottle.”
He held up the bottle with my nice label still on the side. There were a few droplets of purple liquid left at the bottom of it.
“And what was the significance of that, pray tell?” asked Prosecutor Brown.
“Well, Sir,” replied the Constable, “right afterwards, Captain Tooley and his lady Gloria Wholey, began acting in a very bizarre way, and I believe we all know how that turned out, the good Captain being reduced most cruelly in his circumstances.” That gets some titters from the crowd, for every one of them knows that story.
Ezra was immediately on his feet and in front of the Bench.
“Your Honor! I object! There is absolutely no evidence pointing to that bottle being in that particular box. Furthermore, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that what was in that bottle was in any way harmful to anyone. In fact, I see from the top of the crate that it was addressed for delivery to Governor Gore. If there is any fault here, it is in the so-called Captain Tooley’s misappropriation of a gift intended for someone else!”
Good lad, Ezra, press on!
“Your objection is duly noted, Counselor,” said Judge Tragg. “But you are reminded that this is only a hearing and not a trial, so things are a bit more relaxed here. Prosecutor Brown, you may proceed, although I cannot see where this is possibly leading.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Mr. Brown, with an obsequious bow to the Judge. “But I think things will become more clear. Constable Wiggins, you may step down, and thank you for your testimony. I now call up Uriah Beamer.”
Wiggins stepped away and a mousy little man stepped up, quivering before the majesty of the court.
“You are Uriah Beamer, servant to Judge Hiram Thwackham, are you not?”
Uh-oh . . .
“Yes, Sir, Yer Honor, Sir,” quavered this Beamer, stooped over with cap in hand.
“Judge Thwackham, two days ago, did suffer an attack of madness. Did you serve him his midday meal on that day?”
“Yes . . . It was the usual . . . a few joints of roast fowl, some bread and cheese, and . . .”
“And what else?”
“A pot of tea, Sir.”
“What did you do after you placed this tray on the table in his chambers?”
“I went around the corner and waited till he was done eatin’. When he went back into the court, I picked up the tray and took it away.”
“And what did you do with it?”
The man Beamer looks down sheepishly. “What I always done—I et up the scraps and drunk down the rest of the tea.”
“And what happened after that?”
“About an hour later I was thrown off the balcony of Mrs. Bodeen’s whorehouse, stark naked.”
“Is this an example of your usual behavior, Uriah Beamer?”
“No, Your Highness. I don’t know what happened and I don’t remember much, neither.” The poor man stands there all miserable, forced to listen to the laughter from the gallery. “I’m a good family man, I am . . .” He paused and shook his head ruefully. “But of course me missus is right pissed at me now.”
The gallery explodes in laughter at the poor man’s distress, but is quickly pounded into snickering silence by Judge Tragg’s insistent gavel.
I am beginning to think that the Municipal Court of Boston in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has become the center of a mean sort of spectator sport . . . Geez, have you Colonials not heard of cricket . . . or football? I hear crowds gathering outside for some sort of spectacle and I worry at that . . . They have already built the gallows for Pyro Johnny, but could they not also use it for me? My hand goes to my poor defenseless neck.
The unfortunate Mr. Beamer was dismissed, slinking out the side door with the aforementioned wife having him firmly by the ear.
“I now call the prominent scientist, Mr. Donald Sackett, to the stand,” intoned Attorney Hamilton Brown.
WHAT? My own dear Mr. Sackett to stand against me? Has the world gone mad?
Mr. Sackett, my science teacher at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls and husband to my friend Dorothea Baxter, went to stand before the Bench, looking somewhat confused at seeing me in the dock, as it were.
“Mr. Donald Sackett, were you not given two different samples of liquid, one from a bottle labeled Exhibit A, and one from a teapot, marked as Exhibit B?”
“Yes, I was,” replied Mr. Sackett, clearly flustered by the proceedings.
“Did you examine those samples?”
“Yes, I put them under my microscope.”
“And what did you find?”
“That both of them contained spores of the mushroom Amanita muscaria, these spores growing somewhat differently from the usual in that they had a distinctively purple cast to their nucleus, and that—”
Damn! I bought you that microscope, Mr. Sackett!
It was at that very moment that Dorothea rushed in the side door, crying, “No, Donny, that is our Jacky up there! Stop talking!” But it was too late.
“Miss Faber, to the Bench!”
I rose, bereft of hope, to stand before the Judge.
“Did you, Jacky Faber,” asks Prosecutor Hamilton Brown, leveling an accusing finger at me, “contrive to put any foreign substance into the beverage served Judge Hiram Thwackham on the afternoon of July thirty-first of this year?”
I looked to Ezra, and his hand went to his brow.
“I decline to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me,” I answered, my head up but fearing the worst, “as is my right as provided by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”
“That’s enough for me,” said the Judge. “I remand this person over for trial, bail to be set at two hundred dollars! Take her away!” He brought down his gavel. “Next case!”
“Begging Your Honor’s pardon, but there is another little matter here,” said State Counselor Brown, still smarting under his tenure as Court Baboon.
“And that is?” questioned Judge Tragg.
Attorney Brown cleared his throat and said, “Several years ago, the esteemed magistrate Judge Hiram Thwackham did impose a sentence of a dozen lashes of the cane to the back of this female, a suspended sentence conditional that she should never appear in this court again. She is, obviously, in this court again.”
“Lashes?” asked the Judge. “Do we still do that?”
“We did then, Your Honor,” said Mr. Brown, with grim satisfaction. “And the sentence still stands. I suggest that it be carried out. Today.”
Judge Tragg considered this. “Hmmm. I do hate suspended sentences—unless the suspension is at the end of a rope—as they tend to clutter up the books. Hmmm. Whip her now and hang her later. I rather like the neatness of that. Has a certain judicial finality.”
He thought further on this, then pronounced, “Very well, take her out and administer the strokes, and—”
Someone opened the side door and yel
led out, “They are going to whip Jacky Faber!” The crowd out there greets that news with a roar of dismay.
“Sergeant at Arms, do your job and close that damned door!” shouted Judge Tragg. “Is there no security in this place? Has Boston descended into complete anarchy? Has it gone completely mad?”
The Sergeant at Arms manfully tried to get the door shut, but the crowd outside pushed back against him. Finally, with two of his cohorts, he got the job done.
The Judge, seeing what has just happened and hearing the cries of the crowd outside, changed his order.
“The execution of the order to administer twelve lashes to the back of this female shall be performed today at two o’clock this afternoon. Take her away and put her in a cell until such time. Make her ready for her punishment. Bailiff, go to the State House and have Governor Gore send down a contingent of militia to maintain order during the proceedings.”
He brought down his gavel hard on his Bench. “Court is adjourned till two o’clock!”
Chapter 44
James Emerson Fletcher
About to Abandon Boston
and Jacky Faber Forever
Journal Entry, August 3, 1809, continued
Having received the crushing blow of J. F. refusing to meet with me or to even acknowledge my presence, and having been informed of her impending whipping at the courthouse this afternoon, I have shaved my face, cut my hair, cleaned out my rooms and caused all my personal belongings to be carried down to the Ciudad de Lisbon for my possible imminent departure.
I say “possible” for I will most probably be under arrest for Obstruction of Justice, and I do not care if I am, for, no matter what she is, I will not see her beaten in public. Putting the remains of my costume on—cloak, hump, eye patch, and slouch hat—I take my Bo stick, call for Ganju Thapa and his Gurkhas, and go out into the street and turn, with grim determination, up the hill to the courthouse, with my Gurkhas behind me. I look up at the tower clock and see that it says one fifteen. Must hurry to see this done.