by L. A. Meyer
"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 a
ll 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.