Curse of the Blue Tattoo

by L. A. Meyer

  I look at it and my heart sinks. At the top of the paper is written "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," and underneath that is a bunch of lines with little black bugs and squiggles on em and I ain't got the foggiest idea of what they mean and I shakes me head and me throat starts to tighten up and me eyes start to fill and I'm startin' to shake all over 'cause once again I'm found wantin' in every class and I'm so backward in everything here and I don't want them to see me cry, but two days of being the dummy is just too much and I'm losing control of everything and I'm about to run up and get my seabag and run off down to the docks and ... me mind hears Amy say, "Pardon, Maestro, a moment, please," and she puts her arm around me and she hustles me out into the hall.

  She takes me by the shoulders and says, "It's not so hard. I will teach you. You do not have to already know everything. Now, go back in there and stand where he tells you and just hum along for a while until you get it. He is a really nice man and he will help you. Now, just do it."

  I'm still shakin' and cryin' and about to dissolve into a puddle on the floor. Music! The thing I love the most and still I'm the fool and I was stupid enough to think I would stand out in this 'cause I thought I was good at it and I ain't I ain't I ain't good at nothin...

  "Here. Dry your eyes. Put on the Look."

  "Thank you, Miss, for your kindness." I gulps. "I won't forget. I promise you, I won't forget."

  We go back into the music room and I walk across and Maestro points out my place and I take it and stand there with my useless folder in front of me. Incredibly, the girl next to me on my right gives me a nudge and a wink. It is the girl Dolley. I almost burst into tears again at that little kindness.

  I am saved by Maestro Fracelli, who taps his stick on his podium and says, "From the beginning, one two three and four," and the girls burst into song and it is one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard. I am astounded that such beauty is coming out of the throats of these hateful girls, and I follow along the words and now that I got the tune, I sings along and adds my voice to the beautiful sound.

  Amy's right. It will be all right.

  I don't know if it was the tension of the past two days or just hearing some French being spoke, or maybe it was the constant rocking back and forth in the last few days between despair and joy—the despair of not knowing how to read their music and the sheer joy of hearing the beauty of the girls' chorus, the terror of my first time on a horse and the hope of someday joining the pounding ring of riders—or I don't know what, but he comes for me again tonight.

  He comes to me as he always does when he comes to me, leering out of the darkness with the rope coiled over his arm, the noose dangling down. He reaches for me and I shrink back but my feet sink in the sand and my hands are tied behind me and I can't move and I can't get away and I keep foundering in the sand and I keep trying and the harder I try the more I'm sucked down and he reaches out and his hand goes around my arm and he draws me to him and I smell his foul breath on me and it smells of the grave and he puts the noose around my neck and it's rough and hairy and it scrapes at my neck and then it tightens and I'm standing on the keg again and it is unsteady and rocks beneath me and LeFievre looks up at me and his head becomes the head we had nailed to the bowsprit and the eye sockets are empty and black where the birds picked them out and the lips rot away and fall off and the teeth gleam in a hideous grin and then he kicks away the keg and once again I feel the rope come up hard against my neck and my own weight pulls me down against my neck and I hang there and I can't breathe dear God help me I can't breathe I choke I choke I choke and...

  And then Amy's face comes swimmin' out of the darkness in front of me and she's got me by the shoulders and is sayin', "Jacky, please wake up it is just a dream," and sense comes back to me in a rush. I must have been screamin', 'cause everybody's sittin' up in their beds and lookin' at me like I'm crazy, which I reckon I am, 'cause I got tears runnin' all down me face and I'm shiverin' even though I'm covered in sweat and I'm gulpin' down great gobs of air and I shudders and then I lets out a great sob and buries me face in the front of Amy's nightgown.

  After a while I calms down and Amy gets up and goes back to her bed. I lie there quiet in the darkness, but the terror is still in me and won't go away. I try to be brave but I'm not, I'm not, I'm just so lonely and scared that finally I fling back the covers and go over to Amy and I crawl in and burrow beside her and say, "Please, Miss. I'm not good at sleepin' alone, as I ain't done it much and I just can't do it right."

  If she says anything to that, I don't hear it 'cause I'm so lulled by her nearness and the gentle sound of her breathing that I slips right off the edge of the cliff into deep and peaceful sleep and he don't come for me again this night, neither.

  Chapter 3

  Amy is struggling and thrashing about as I stick her head in the basin of suds. "Get it in there, Amy. If we're gonna be sharin' an occasional pillow, you've got to wash your hair a bit more often." My own hair is already done and up in a towel.

  "But, Jacky, I—"

  "I know, I know, you just washed it last month. I knows the old chant, 'Onc't a year, whether it needs it or not.' Well, it needs it right now, Amy, believe me."

  I scrub away, workin' my fingers in her thick, black hair, gettin' the soap down to the roots. Her hair is surprisingly long and glossy, when it's taken out of that schoolmarmish bun she's been keepin' it in. We can work with this, I'm thinkin'.

  "We've got to get you shaped up, Amy. Won't be too long 'fore you're lookin' for a proper husband, and not one from back on your farm—a real gent, like."

  There's a tap on the washroom door and one of the serving girls, a girl with dark eyes and dark hair and a quiet and shy demeanor, who I know is named Sylvie, comes in with a fresh pitcher of water and I take it and say, "Thanks, Sylvie," and she dips and leaves. I pour the rinse water over Amy's head and say, "All right, let's wring it out and then wrap it in this towel."

  "That is nonsense, Miss," says she, her eyes squinted up against the soap. "No one will want me. I am fat and ugly and no one will ever love me and I do not care that they will not." I twist her hair into the towel, as she ain't very practiced at it. "Besides, I'm not ready for that sort of thing yet."

  Does she blush just at the mere mention of a husband?

  "Well, I loves ye, Amy," says I, and plants one on her cheek, "and you ain't fat, just a bit plump, and there's coves that likes 'em that way. Besides, it's just baby fat—stick with the Jackaroe and you'll be beatin' the boys to the foretop in no time, you will. And as for ugly, why, your teeth are good and I finds your pug nose downright charmin'. Better than my pointy beak."

  We drop the towels and head outside to let our hair dry in the sun. It's a wondrously warm mid-September day. We go down through the kitchen and out the back—the less Mistress sees of me, the better, I figure. I wave to Peg and the girls as we pass through.

  Amy and I go out into the sunlight and across the road to the field across the way, next to the church. The sun warms our damp hair and we fluff it out to dry, and it's so warm and beautiful that I twirl myself about, making both hair and skirt blossom out, and then I flop down in the grass and look up at the sky.

  It's so nice to be out of the school for a bit. I've been here for about two weeks now and I'm starting to feel more easy in the place. Today is Saturday and so it's a lot quieter around the school—a lot of the girls live locally and they can go home for the weekends if they sign out and are picked up by their families. I saw Clarissa go off in a carriage with Lissette this morning, so I guess she's staying with her. There's no classes on Saturdays and we're free to do what we want. Sort of what we want. I figure I'll write a few more things to Jaimy and then take Gretchen out for a ride.

  I'm getting much better at the riding—Henry's been ever so helpful and patient with me and he says I have come along in an amazing way, which pleases me no end. I had him show me how to saddle Gretchen myself so's I wouldn't bother him all the time, and even though he
said it was no bother—"Not for you, Miss"—I learned how to do it. I find I like being off alone on her, looking out over the city and its harbor and buildings and marshes and fields and such, and now I can go and get her myself, without having to ask.

  Tomorrow we will all troop over to the church again and have the Preacher shout at us for a couple of dreary hours. When he gets all worked up about sin and stuff, it's like he don't know how to stop, shouting and jabbing his finger at us, and me in particular, it seems. Wonder why? I don't know what he thinks we could be up to in the way of sin, living in this convent as we do. I usually let my mind wander off to think about Jaimy when the Preacher rants on and on. I wonder if impure thoughts count as sin? Prolly do, and I do think up plenty of those when I'm daydreamin' about Jaimy. Don't seem like sins to me, though. Just love, is all. Oh, well, at least we get Sunday afternoons off, too. Pretty soft, I thinks, remembering the one-in-three watch schedule we had on the Dolphin, night and day, day in and day out. Still rather be there, though. And then on Wednesday mornings we put our dirty drawers and shifts, all our underclothes, in those net bags that I wondered about when I first got here and we leave them at the foot of our beds for the serving girls to pick up and wash. Pretty sinfully soft, that, too. Wednesday being wash day, the beds are stripped and we will have fresh sheets that evening. Don't I feel a little guilty, though.

  "Ain't it grand, Amy, so warm and nice and all."

  "Best enjoy it, for the fall will be short. Indian summer will come and go and winter will come around, count on it," says Amy, ever the happy one. She already looks better, I'm thmkin', even with her hair wet and hangin' down all straight.

  "So you have Red Indians here?" I say, thrilled with the thought of seein' one all decked out with tommyhawk and war paint and feathers. "Where are they?"

  "Mostly out to the west now." She pauses, and then goes on. "Surely you know the British gave them guns and money to kill our poor settlers during the Revolution. They paid them by the scalp. There were the most awful massacres. On both sides, Indians and us."

  Hmmm, I thinks, prolly best to skip this line of conversation. I can't believe my country would do such a thing, but then I can't believe that the child that was me was tossed out into the streets of London with no help nor mercy nor Christian kindness. I get up and stretch and say, "Let's go and look through the churchyard."

  We go through a break in the low stone wall that surrounds the church and its graveyard.

  "Do you think it is wise?" says Amy, all doubtful. The church looms high above us.

  "Why not? We have nothing to fear from the dead, as we ain't done nothin' to harm em," I says. "It's the livin' you got to fear." I lean down to peer at the carving on a stone. "What do those skulls with those wings stickin' out of em mean?"

  "Those are old stones from a hundred years ago. The carvings are called 'Death Angels' and they are supposed to depict the person that died." Amy wraps her arms about herself and shivers. "You can see that each one is different."

  "And what does that 'Memento Mori' mean?" I've got some Latin, but not much.

  "It means 'Remember Death.'"

  "Which means?"

  "It means you can have all your parties and songs and dances and you can pursue all your schemes and endeavors and ambitions and fancies and pride but..."—and here Amy tosses her head and looks almost defiant—"but remember Death is coming and you'd better be ready at any time. That is what it means. Can we go now?"

  "Ah," I say, and walk on. I stoop down and read another stone. "Oh, Amy, look. How sad. It is the grave of a girl not much older than us." The inscription under the Death Angel reads:

  Here lyes ye body of

  Constance Howard, Beloved Daughter

  Who Departed This Life on May 2nd, 1679

  in her seventeenth year

  Death is a Debt to Nature...

  The gray and weathered stone is at a tilt and the rest of the verse is hidden by the high grass and I can't make it out, and so I kneel down and pull at the grass clumps and dirt till the words are revealed and I read them out loud:

  Death is a Debt to Nature Due

  Which I have Paid

  And So Must You

  Well, that rocks me back on my heels. Talk about a message from the beyond!

  I think for a moment and then I stand up and pull out my pennywhistle from my sleeve and I puts it to my lips and I play.

  When I'm done, Amy says, "That was very nice. What is the name of it?"

  "It's my own little tune, 'The Ship's Boy's Lament' I call it. I made it up as a lament for a mate of mine what died. Now it serves as a lament for a poor girl what didn't get to be no older than seventeen."

  We stand there for a while and then turn to go. I look up at the windows in the church. They are curtainless and blank, like the eyeholes in the Death Angels. "That's where he lives, then."

  "Who? Reverend Mather, you mean? Yes."

  We leave the churchyard through another break in the stone wall and enter the open meadow. I stop. There is another grave here, outside the wall, in the meadow. It is not old and it does not have a stone.

  "What do you think this is?" I asks Amy.

  "A grave. But being outside the churchyard and having no stone ... Maybe a criminal..." She shivers. "...or maybe a suicide."

  I look up at the vestry windows and in one of them I think I see someone there, someone who ducked back upon seein' me look up.

  "Our hair is dry enough. Let's go."

  Why am I not shocked to hear that I am to be the one to join Mistress and Reverend Mather for supper? I am delivered of the note by Betsey, who doesn't miss my groan of despair when I open it and read it. "It will be all right, Miss," she says. I have the feeling that the downstairs staff has somehow adopted me in my feeble attempts at ladyhood.

  The chimes ring out and I walk into the dining room and advance to my place at the head table and stand there at attention while all the others file in. Amy gives me a sympathetic glance as she goes by to her lonely post.

  At last Mistress and the Reverend Mather walk in and I hear the rustle of the other girls rising. Mistress does the introduction and I bob and say my part as I have been coached by Amy, and the Preacher says his and nods stiffly and then pulls out the chair for Mistress and she sits down. I hear the rustle behind me again and I sit down, and then the Preacher reaches out his arms and does the grace, and it is long and long.

  At last he sits down and the serving begins.

  I have time to examine him before they start in on me.

  His face is long and squared off at the jaw. His hair is black and speckled with gray and cut very short, prolly 'cause he wears a powdered wig for any big occasion like when he's preaching in his church on Sunday. His black frock coat is in need of a brushing and looks quite old and out of style, even to my eye. The skin of his face is very white and his cheekbones poke out through the skin stretched across them. His lips are thin and purplish and held in a tight line the way a man bearing the pain of a toothache will hold his mouth. His jaw has been scraped clean of beard but is still dark from the stubble that is left in the whiteness of his face. In his temple, a blue vein pulses. Beat. Beat. Beat...

  Abby appears with the meat platter and serves Mistress first, then the Preacher, then me. I don't take a lot 'cause I know I ain't gonna feel much like eating. It's Annie who brings the potatoes and greens.

  "You come to us by a strange path, Miss Faber," says Reverend Mather.

  "Yes, Sir," I say. I wonder how much Mistress has told him. As to that, I wonder how much she herself was told about my past.

  "What possessed you to get on the ship in the first place?" He carefully places a forkful of food in his mouth and chews evenly and slowly and does not speak until he swallows, his Adam's apple working up and down in his neck. "With over four hundred rough men."

  How to put this in its best light?

  "I was a penniless orphan, with no relations to help me, Sir." I decide not to put on my
Poor Little Orphan bit, but instead play it straight, as I think that might go down better with Mistress. "In my desperation, it seemed the best way for me to better my condition."

  And I was right, I reflects to myself.

  "Have you ever received any religious instruction and guidance?" Chew, chew, swallow, Adam's apple bob, beat...beat...beat of the vein in the temple.

  "Deacon Dunne, the Dolphin's chaplain, was very good to me and the other boys and tried to steer us onto the path of righteousness." He did try, and some of his teachings even took.

  "The 'other boys'?" he says, giving it a nasty twist. "I cannot imagine that you came through that experience without some stain upon your virtue?"

  I am bringing up some food to my mouth for appearance's sake but instead put it back down. What's he getting at?

  "I tried to be as good as I could be, Sir. I have always tried to be that," I says. I push my food around on my plate and wish I was someplace else. "And I had the good luck to have good friends who looked out for me."

  "Hmmm," he says, a flush rising from his collar. His eyes travel over me quite frankly. I feel a blush rising to my own cheeks and I put down my fork and stare at my hands folded in my lap. I don't like this. I don't like it at all.

  "She has given me her word that her honor is intact," says Mistress. She looks sideways at the Preacher with a definite chill in her voice. "I have accepted her at her word."

  Thank you, Mistress, I say to myself.

  But he is not to be cowed. "Perhaps we should continue your religious education, then." He pats his thin slash of a mouth with his napkin and makes a grimace that I take to be a smile. "Individual instruction might be the best thing in this case."

  That night, when Amy and I are in for the night, I say, "That preacher cove gives me the creeps, for sure."

  She is silent for a bit and then says, "There are things said about that man. Be careful, Jacky."