Curse of the Blue Tattoo

by L. A. Meyer

  I makes sure the latch is off and then I step out into the light, and there below me all Boston is laid out on this fine late August day, the Common all green with its beasts scattered about, the buildings of the town all neat and orderly, and the harbor sparkling in the distance. There is a slight breeze that blows the hair that's got out of my pigtail about my face and if I close my eyes I'm up in the rigging and we're one day out from Boston and it's, let's see, about six bells in the Four-to-Eight watch and ... no, stop it.

  I open my eyes and it occurs to me that this is the first time I have been free in a long, long time. I could walk down into that city and disappear forever, as far as the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls is concerned. Sort of free, that is ... free to starve to death ... or to Fall into Iniquity as Deacon Dunne would have it ... and all my stuff is inside and how could I make my way without my whistle or me shiv or ...

  Click!

  The door has locked behind me! Someone has ... That Clarissa! She must have seen me leave the dormitory and followed me! Damn!

  I go up to the door in a panic. Already I can feel the cane on the backs of my legs. I dare not pound on the door 'cause Mistress might answer it and where would I be then? Stretched across her desk with my skirt up, that's where. I've got to find another way in.

  I run around the side of the school and see nothing on that side and then run around the back—nothing! I continue pounding around to the other side and there! The land slopes down and away and at the bottom there's a door to a lower level. I careens down the slope and tries the door. It's open and I go in.

  I find myself in the kitchen and it is filled with the smell of frying bacon and toasting bread and there are girls chattering and laughing and scurrying around getting ready to cart it all upstairs and serve it to the ladies and in the middle of it all is a large woman in an apron standing at a huge stove and directing who's to take what.

  "Betsey! The bread baskets! Get 'em up there and see if they're ready to eat yet. Annie, take up the tea!"

  "Yes, Peggy, we got it we..."

  That's when they notice me and the place goes quiet. There are two other girls seated at a table finishing up their own breakfasts and they stand up upon seeing me. The cook asks me, "Yes, Miss, how can we help you?"

  "I'm sorry," I stammer. "But I locked myself out the front door. Could you..."

  "If it pleases you, Miss, just follow Betsey there. She'll show you the way up."

  The girl with the bread turns and heads out of the kitchen and I follow. I do not put on the Look. I do, however, take note of what's down here. After the kitchen we go through what appears to be the laundry with big washtubs and a wet floor. There's a room with brooms and mops and buckets. Also tools and a coil of rope. Then we go up a flight of stairs and the girl Betsey sticks the breadbasket on her hip and opens the latch on the door at the top and lets me through and I'm back in the classroom hallway, again.

  "Thank you, Betsey," I say, and she just blushes and nods. She is the shyer of the two sisters, I see, but I make her talk by asking, "The front door. Is it always kept locked?"

  "Yes, Miss."

  "And if I were to go out and came back later and rapped on the knocker, you or one of the others would come and let me in?"

  "Yes, Miss," she says. "Or sometimes Mistress."

  Oh.

  "What about the kitchen door? Downstairs."

  "That's not locked, Miss. Not till after we clean up after supper and go home. Then Peg locks up."

  I have gotten some useful information.

  I get to the dining hall and says, "Hey, Mate," and sits down across from Amy yet again. I look around the room and it seems that this meal is a good deal less formal than the others, as the girls pile right into the tea and toast and there ain't no grace. I see some of the girls put their hands together and mumble one to themselves, but I figure I prayed enough yesterday to hold me for a long while and so grabs a roll as soon as Betsey sets 'em down. The teacher table is empty. I guess Mistress doesn't do this one. Prolly back in her room with a pipe and a cup of coffee.

  I look for some sign in Clarissa that she was the one what marooned me outside, but I can't see none. She serenely holds court, the center of all attention, a goddess in her heaven. She and some of the other girls have on what I reckon are riding clothes and they look quite smart, damn them.

  "What's the rule on going outside the school?" I asks of Amy.

  Once again she looks confused. I find that I am good at confusing her. But then she answers.

  "But of course we could never go out without an escort, so I imagine that has never been stated as an actual rule." She thinks for a bit more and then goes on. "Of course, our parents can take us out for holidays, and the local girls go home for the weekends, generally. I suppose my brother could escort me if I ever wanted to go anywhere ... Not that he ever would."

  "Oh yes. You said you have a brother."

  "Yes, Randall. He is eighteen. The college he attends across the river, in Cambridge, is a real school. Not like this." She sniffs.

  "Well, Mate, maybe someday he can come over and escort us around the town," I says. "There's some taverns down on the docks I'd like to check out."

  I don't catch her reply to this 'cause a platter of eggs is brought up to me and I scoops up a couple and slides 'em on my plate and snags a brace of bacon strips to keep 'em company. I looks at the eggs in all their yellow-yolked beauty lying there on my plate.

  "And what's your name, then?" I ask of the girl holdin' the platter with the eggs and bacon. She was one of the girls sitting at the table when I came in the kitchen door.

  "Abby, Mum," says the girl.

  "Well, thank you, Abby, and please tell Peggy I think she's some cook."

  Abby smiles and says, "Yes'm."

  I tears into the helpless eggs and soon am patting my belly in satisfaction. "Now, Miss Amy, I'm ready to meet those horses."

  On the way down the hallway Annie comes up to me and says, "Beggin' your pardon, Miss, but Mistress wants to see you in her office. Now."

  Dread crawls up my soon-to-be-beaten legs and into my belly and makes my eggs sit less easy there than they was before. Somebody must have peached on me for being outside. Damn!

  Clarissa sweeps past with a jaunty bonnet on her head, a riding crop under her arm, and a slight smile on her face.

  I grimace at Amy and leave her side as we pass Mistress's office. The door is open and she is seated at her desk. I walk inside, bob, and put my toes on the white line and wait.

  "Good morning, Mistress," I manage to say. 1 hope my Look is all right. I case my eyes and stare over her head, expecting the worst.

  "Good morning," she says. "Here." And she hands me a letter. I recognize it as my own that I wrote to Jaimy yesterday and put in the mailbox outside her door. "This letter is addressed to a man to whom you are not related. It is not seemly for you to be carrying on such a correspondence, and I will not send it on. I advise you to be more careful in your actions and comportment in the future."

  "But, Mistress, we are to be married as soon as I finish school. Surely—"

  "Surely you remember what I said about talking back to me," she says with a warning in her tone. "Now. Do you have a formal engagement? Anything in writing?"

  "No, Mistress, but I believe his intentions are true."

  "That's not enough. I direct you to put aside these girlish dreams and attend to your studies here. If you are successful in these studies, I assure you there will be a good match for you in the future. All my girls make good matches. Certainly better than casual alliances with sailors. You are dismissed, Miss Faber."

  "Mistress," I says, knowin' I'm pushing my luck here, "but if I were to get a letter from this young man, would you—"

  "I believe we are through discussing letters, Miss Faber, and we shall mention them no more," says Mistress, with menace in her voice. "Dismissed, Miss Faber."

  I dip and do an about-face and head out the door, glad not
to be beaten, but still steamed. She answered my question, all right—ain't no way she's ever gonna pass on any of Jaimy's letters to me. I am glad I made my explorations this morning 'cause I will go out and I will mail my letter to Jaimy 'cause I don't want no other match but him. I just got to think about how to get that done.

  Amy has waited for me, and together we go out the front door and around the corner and up the small road between the school and the church. As we leave the school building behind us, I look back and notice that the ends of the school are not the usual white clapboards but are instead completely brick, being like enormous chimneys. We leave the churchyard to our right, there is a meadow, and we come to the stables.

  "Heinrich!"

  "Ja, Papa."

  "Fräulein Faber hast not bin on eine horse before. Give her teachings."

  "Yes, Papa."

  I am standing there stupidly, once again judged hopelessly behind and backward. The other girls, including Amy, are taking their mounts from the handlers like they was born to it, mounting, and forming a circle around the inside of this huge circular barn that is floored in wet sawdust and roofed in soaring wood rafters and thick wood beams. Sort of like the hull of a ship from the inside, upside down. With a snap of Herr Hoffman's whip and a whoop! from some of the girls, they are off at a full gallop, round and around.

  Not for me, however, as I must follow Heinrich into the stables.

  The boy has his light brown hair tied loosely in the back with a black ribbon and he wears a dark green jacket with gray frogging on the front and tight, tight white breeches and knee-high shiny black boots. He has a light fuzz of hair on his upper lip and this is the first time I've been next to a boy and not under armed guard for about a month, and ... no, you stop that now. Concentrate on what he's tellin' you.

  He goes into one of the stalls and comes out leading a horse.

  "This is Gretchen, Miss Faber," he says. "She will be your horse while you are here." He doesn't talk the way his father does. Must have been born here, or at least brought up here. "She is a very nice little mare," he goes on when he sees my look of fear.

  It don't look that little to me.

  It is of a light tan color with a white mane and tail. It has big brown eyes and it looks at me and I look at it. Horses to a street kid like me are big stupid lumbering things that'd crush an orphan as soon as look at 'em, but I reach out my hand and pat it on its hard slab of a forehead and it snorts in a friendly way.

  Maybe we'll get along, I think, and I get the feeling she thinks the same.

  The young man lets me and the beast get more acquainted while he fetches a saddle. "You might want to put on one of those dusters, Miss. To protect your dress." There is a row of light cotton cover-ups hung on pegs along the wall and I choose the smallest one and put it on. I button up the front as he flings the saddle over the horse's back and cinches it up, and then he hands me the reins. I take them, trying to keep my hand from shakin'.

  "Gather them together and reach up and grab the saddle right here and put your right foot here and up you go." And I am in the saddle and looking down at the ground and thinking how much it would hurt to fall off and hit that ground.

  "Heinrich," I say, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice, "wouldn't it be easier if I were to throw my leg to the other side of the horse?" Both my legs are now on one side of the horse and I'm feelin' right precarious.

  "I'm sorry, Miss. It just isn't done," says he. "And please call me Henry, if you would. Now put your right limb about the pommel there." That feels a bit better, now that the pommel thing in the front of the saddle is sort of holding my thigh above the knee. Henry adjusts the stirrup for my right leg till it feels right. "Now take the reins—no, don't hold on to the saddle, and if it pleases you, Miss, sit back a bit so that your backbone is directly over hers. Please forgive my frank language, but it's the only way to say it." I believe he is flustered over calling my backbone a backbone. "Now let us go outside."

  We go out into the sun and Henry takes the horse by what he calls the bridle and he walks me and the horse around a bit and I get used to the smooth roll of the horse's muscles beneath mine and that's all right, a bit nice, really. Henry shows me how to pull on the reins to make it go right and then left and then stop.

  Henry ain't content to let it go at that and just let me enjoy the warmth of the morning, oh no, he says, since I'm doing so well, we must now go to trotting. He has me take the horse to a small fenced-in spot and he puts a long thin line on the horse's bridle and stands back and says, "Now, Miss Faber, firmly pull your heels up into her side and say, 'Hup!'"

  I do it and the horse starts this jiggy way of going that about jars the teeth out of my head and I grab for the pommel of the saddle.

  "No, no, Miss. You must never do that. It makes you look like ... an inexperienced rider."

  Makes me look like a scrub, you mean, I thinks, vowing never again to touch the saddle.

  "Get into the rhythm of her motion. Let your ... back arch a little, back and forth."

  I try to do it and, little by little, by getting my back and my bottom into it, I start to get it.

  "Very good posting, Miss. Very good. I think you are a natural rider."

  I glow under his praise and try even harder.

  Henry holds the line so that the horse goes about in a circle around him, sort of a small version of the circle inside the barn, and round and round we go. "Now lean forward and chuck her again with your heels!" and I do it and she slips into this easy, loping thing that's a lot easier on my tail and I get into the rhythm of that, too, and it feels so right and easy that my heart starts poundin' in me chest from the joy of it all.

  Henry has me go from the canter to the trot to walk and back again and again till it's as easy as walking a spar and swinging down to the ship's deck on a futtock shroud.

  When we are done, Henry has me dismount and walk Gretchen around the field to cool her off.

  "If you put her up wet, she's likely to take the colic and die, and we wouldn't want that."

  No, we wouldn't, I thinks to myself, running my hand through Gretchen's mane with growing affection, we wouldn't want that at all.

  I take her bridle in my hand and walk her about for fifteen minutes or so, till I can reach down onto her chest between her front legs and find it is no longer steamy with sweat. I take her back to her stall and feed her an apple from the barrel that's kept in the stable for just such a purpose. Her lips take it ever so delicately from my hand.

  I have taken my first equestrian lesson and Henry says I have done well. Very well, even. I know that I have tried hard, for I hate being the baby and the odd one out and I cannot wait to join that wild circle of riders pounding about that barn.

  Dinner, and then Art, which I am going to like, and then Penmanship, which is all right, too, 'cept now my hand is all cramped up and is as sore from the writing as my bottom is sore from the riding. Now on to Music.

  All day I've been thinking about how I'm gonna get my letters to Jaimy—and his letters to me, since sure as hell that Mistress ain't gonna pass 'em on to me. Wouldn't be seemly.

  So what I've decided is that I'll save up everything and when a British man-of-war comes into port and is bound back to England, I'll put together a packet and then go down and ask them to take it for me, and I'm sure they will do it. At the same time I'll figure out an address he can send stuff to me. I'll ask Amy, later. She might know the way of it.

  "Amy," I says, as we head for the music room, "what is this bit with Clarissa calling me a Tory? I don't know what to say when she calls me that. Where I come from, Tories are just part of a political party. That can't be what she means."

  "That is not what she means. Here 'Tory' refers to an American who remained loyal to King George before and during the Revolution. Clarissa is calling you a turncoat, a traitor."

  "Now, how can I be that when I'm born English and can't help it?" I exclaims all baffled.

  "We were all Englis
h twenty-five years ago. Emotions still run high, especially in light of the recent troubles with Great Britain."

  "Troubles like what?"

  "Impressment of seamen, for one. The stopping of American ships on the high seas and the taking of seamen to fight for the crown. Mostly British sailors, but sometimes our own. And there's the British agents out west stirring up Tecumseh and his Indians to kill our settlers on the frontier."

  "Oh," says I.

  We enter the music room. My classmates arrange themselves in two circular lines facing a podium in the center, and at the podium is a round little man who is leafing through a stack of papers.

  Amy takes me up to him and says, "Maestro, this is Miss Faber. She is new. Miss Faber, this is Maestro Fracelli."

  I do the curtsy and then stand there as Amy takes her place in the second rank. I know that is an assigned place 'cause she's standing right next to Clarissa and I know she'd never stand there on her own.

  Maestro Fracelli is done with his papers and turns to me and says, "Sing something, please, so that I may place you."

  Place me?

  I think quick and pick one that might show my range and not scandalize em too much, and I straighten out my shoulders and I lift my head and sings out:

  "Oh, hard is the fortune

  Of all womankind.

  She's always controlled,

  She's always confined.

  Controlled by her parents,

  Until she's a wife,

  A slave to her husband,

  The rest of her life."

  There is a dead silence. Maestro clears his throat and says, "Very nice. A curious choice of material, but delivered con brio. I think I will place you with the altos on the left." He picks up a folder and hands it to me. "Please sing the first stanza of this."