by L. A. Meyer
Toasts are drunk—in the rich houses, great bowls of wine that have spices like cinnamon and clove and nutmeg in them, and little pieces of toast floating, a piece of which is gathered up with each cup, and hence, a toast is said and drunk—and eaten, if the chunk of toast ends up in your mouth. In the poorer houses, some simple cakes are offered and we accept them in the spirit in which they are given. When we go, we leave more than we take.
Amy says that in the country, this custom is not just for fun—though I do find it great, glorious fun to be crammed in the back of a crowded sleigh, wrapped up in mufflers and scarves, thigh to thigh with Randall, his arm around my shoulders, all of us singing at the tops of our lungs, our breath, puffs of white fog in the cold winter's night. No, another reason for this practice is that it is an excuse to check on your neighbors without them taking shame or offense, to see if they are going to get through the winter all right—for we stop at the poor cottages, too, as well as the rich ones. To see if old Widow Crenshaw has enough wood stored in her shed, or if the Winslow family has enough food put up in their root cellar to feed the four children till spring, and if not, then steps are quietly taken to make things right—stacks of wood cut the proper size for the fireplace for some, sacks of potatoes, beets, and a few hams brought in for others. I find I like my country friends more and more, day by winter day.
Christmas Eve comes and we decorate the tree in the Great Hall and sing more carols, and all the people of Dovecote come with their children and we have a huge roaring party. The hall has a small stage on one end, and it doesn't take long for Jacky Faber to be up on it and doing a set. When I finish with a flourish of fiddle and dancing feet, I get generous applause, which, as always, warms the very depths of my show-off soul.
Christmas Day is quieter, with just family and me. We have a great feast, then later, when we are seated about the fireplace, we exchange gifts. I get some lovely dress fabric from the Colonel and his missus, a fine new fiddle bow from Amy, and a silver comb-and-mirror set from Randall. I protest that it is all much too much, and I can only give them something small and worthless: To each, I give a piece of the whalebone scrimshaw I had made on my whaling voyage. A naval battle scene goes to Colonel Trevelyne, an angel playing a harp to his wife, and a spouting whale to Amy. All say they like them and shall display them proudly.
When I give Randall his, I ask him to unwrap it in private, and he looks intrigued and slips it in his pocket, but the Colonel will hear nothing of it—"Come, come, let him open it now! We'll have no coyness here! Say you will allow it, my dear!"
I blush and nod.
The piece that I gave to Randall pictures a very saucy mermaid sitting on a rock. She is playing a pennywhistle, and, well ... maybe she looks a bit like me.
Part II
Chapter 10
The holidays are behind us and we are back at school.
Being January, it was too cold to take the Star, so we had to come by coach, and we clattered up Beacon Street and piled out at the front door of the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. The vile Dobbs came out, surly and ill-tempered as ever, and carried our bags inside and put them in the foyer, whereupon they were carried up to the dormitory by the serving girls, all of whom I warmly embraced, having once been one of their number and treated very kindly by them as well. The vile Dobbs was not allowed up there without Mistress being with him, thank God. He gave me an especially black look, me having caused him some trouble in the past.
More coaches were pulling up, and other girls were getting out of them, and many fathers and mothers were saying farewell to their daughters, the mothers primping them up and the fathers shaking fingers in their faces, no doubt telling them to be good. As if we could be anything else but good here.
Now there is another, louder clatter of hooves from outside and I peek out the little side window and see that it is none other than Clarissa Worthington Howe, being delivered in a full coach and four. It seems that I am not to be spared the joy of her company, after all. The door is opened and out steps a large man, finely dressed and one plainly aware of his own importance. He reaches up a hand and it is taken by Miss Clarissa, a vision of pink-and-white silk-and-chiffon loveliness as she floats to the ground, light as a feather. That big fellow must be her father, poor man.
Father and daughter see each other off with bow, curtsy, and quick peck of a kiss, while five large trunks are put on the pavement. Dobbs begins hauling them inside.
I step away from the window and wait for her to come in.
"You be civil, now, Jacky," warns Amy, who stands by my side.
"Oh, I will be, Sister, and I will be careful, too. I well remember our past encounters." I have a neat, semicircular scar on my forearm, a mark left upon me by Clarissa's perfect and oh-so-well-bred teeth when she sank those selfsame teeth into me. I don't really blame her for that, though, since at the time, I was trying to beat her senseless myself. But I do blame her for plying me with strong but oh-so-sweet-and-smooth bourbon liquor at the great ball at Dovecote, she pretending that we would be friends from then on, and me, stupid me, believing her and drinking down what she offered to my trusting self. Oh, yes, I do blame her for that, and I know that things ain't over between us, count on it.
"...and don't scratch my things, my man, or I'll see your pay docked. Damn, could you be any more clumsy and slow? The help here, I swear." I hear Clarissa say this to the bent-over and mumbling Dobbs as she sweeps into the room before him. He puts down the trunk and heads out for another. "You, there," she says to Annie and Sylvie, who have just come back into the room. "Take this trunk upstairs. You know where it goes. Do it."
"Yes, Miss," murmurs Annie, and she and Sylvie each take an end and struggle up the stairs with it. I give them a sympathetic wink, and I know they appreciate it, especially when I hold my nose and glance toward Clarissa.
Clarissa senses something going on behind her. She spins around and spies me standing there, hand brought quickly off my nose and back to my side. Not quickly enough, I suspect. She starts but quickly recovers, a little spot of pink appearing on each of her flawless cheeks.
"So. You, again. I would have thought they would have hanged you by now," she says. She looks me up and down. "A pity they have not."
"So good to see you, too, Clarissa dear." I give the very slightest of dips without taking my eyes off hers. "I am sure that since last we met, you have been passing the time in doing good works that bring relief to your fellow man and reflect honorably on your name"
"I am as sure of that, Jacky dear, as I am sure that you've been off whoring," she says shortly.
My hands hook into claws, but Amy's hand is on my arm and I hold back. I ready a retort, but then I say nothing, for there comes into the foyer something that makes my jaw drop in disbelief: It is a young black girl, simply dressed in a maid's uniform of white linen dress, apron, and cap. She stands there, hands folded, and awaits instructions from her mistress. Clarissa has brought a slave back with her. How could she do that? How could...
Clarissa sees my reaction and turns to the girl. "Go upstairs and put my things away. You know how I like things done."
The girl nods, bobs, and turns to leave.
"Till later, then," says Clarissa, with a nod to Amy. "I must go greet Mistress and tell her that I have arrived. And register my protest that scum such as she has again been allowed into our midst." And then she, too, leaves.
I am astounded and speechless. For a while, anyway.
"How can she get away with that?" I ask Amy, whose stand against slavery is well known to all who know her. "This is Massachusetts!"
"Yes, it is, but Massachusetts outlawed slavery only two years ago—and then only by a judge striking the practice down, not by a popular vote, you may count on that."
I'm standing there steaming, and Amy takes my arm and gives me a bit of a shake. "Come, now, we'll talk about that later. Right now, here comes Dolley ... yes, and Martha, too."
And as they come in, joyo
us greetings are exchanged. Dear, dear Dolley, you who are the absolute best of us! And Martha, so good to see you! Oh, please, come and embrace me, for you could not be more well met!
All thirty of us arrive. I greet the ones I know and am introduced to the new ones. Exclamations of gleeful surprise—"It can't be you." "Oh, yes, Jacky it is!"—at seeing me back in black dress and back in school. And from my own amazed mouth: "Rebecca, little Rebecca, how you have grown!" Everything is a whirl of ribbons and bows. Everything is joyful, giddy, and gay.
But I just can't get that black girl out of my mind. Damn that Clarissa! Damn her straight to Hell!
Chapter 11
"In the classic Greek play, we have the stage divided into the following parts: the proscenium, which is where the main action took place, the ... Ahem! Miss Faber, could that be your head that is nodding in slumber? Ah. I thought not. Forgive me. Well, then, to continue..."
Yes, we have settled in, all of us, friend and foe alike, back into the rhythm of the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. Classes did begin again and I turned myself to my studies, while January turned to February, and February turned to March.
Most things are as they were when I left—all the teachers are back, and all the same courses: French, Art, History, Geography, the Classics, Math, Science, and Music. Yes, and Embroidery and Household Management are still there, too.
I know most of the girls, and everybody certainly knows me, or of me, anyway, because of Amy's book. There are some who have moved away—none have died, thank God—and there are a few new ones. One of these is Elspeth Goodwin, who has just moved to the city with her family, from Philadelphia. She's a bright, cheerful, pretty girl, who quickly attached herself to me, which was all right. I liked her, and accepted her early invitation to spend a weekend at her house. We had a gay time of it and it was good to get out of the school, at least for a short time. Her parents could not have been nicer to me and they are certainly proud of their daughter, her going off to a fine school and all. She is the very apple of their eye, and she plainly loves them very much, too. Amy finds her a bit flighty, a bit shallow, all ribbons and bows, but what the hell, Amy, not everybody can be as deep as you, and Elspeth's girlish, bubbly enthusiasm gives me cheer.
Another of the new ones is Hepzibah Van Pelt, from New York, who came to the school expressly to study with Maestro Fracelli. She is totally devoted to music and quickly becomes Signor Fracelli's trusted assistant. I am in a string quartet with Hepzibah, she being first violin, and me being second. That makes my Lady Gay mad, but not me and I tell her, You be a lady now, Gay, and we'll follow these little bugs on the page, and we do it. It is very satisfying to play in this group, seated in a circle, to come in at the right time, and to hear the Lady Gay's sound blend and meld with the others, her single sound mixing to make something different, something more than the sum of the parts. Christina King, a quiet, decent, modest girl, is on cello, and Caroline Thwack-ham is on viola—and, yes, she is the granddaughter of that very same Judge Thwackham who sentenced me to be publicly whipped for indecent behavior, but who, thanks to Ezra Pickering's excellent lawyering skills, suspended the sentence, conditioned on me not getting in trouble again. The sentence still hangs over my head, though, should I mess up, which is always possible. We work on Herr Mozart's String Quartet in B Flat, the Hunt Quartet, and some of Herr Haydn's stuff, too. There sure are a lot of Germans in this business, I'm thinking as I grimly saw away on poor Lady Gay, but, hey, they seem to be good at it, so why not? But what are we Brits especially good at? Architecture? No, the French have it all over us on that. Art? No, we ain't a patch on the Italian artists when it comes to painting and sculpture and stuff. What, then? Ah, I conclude glumly, it's war, bloody war, and mostly war at sea, at that.
"...in the theater at Athens, the chorus would be located..." Mr. Yale drones on and on, and I try to keep my forehead from hitting the desk again. It's not that I find the classics deadly dull—actually I like all that stuff about those fighting Greeks. We are going to put on one of the ancient plays. We'll get all dressed up in white robes and stuff and wear laurel wreaths around our brows and I know I'll like that. It's just that we've had a few almost warm days and I've got the urge to be out and about so bad I can hardly stand it. I can hear Lady Gay, in her fiddle case up under my bed, calling out to me: Jackeee ... Jackeee ... Let us be away to the merry dance ... There are taverns down below where we haven't yet played, where we haven't yet sung, where you haven't yet danced. Come take me up, Jacky, pick up your bow and let us fly ... Jackeeeeeee...
You be good, Gay, and I'll sit here and try to be good, myself. Cheer up; Art is next.
And speaking of being good, or at least making a show of being good, we all go to church every Sunday morning, and prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings. Since it is not far, we march in two columns along Beacon Street and then down Center Street to the Old South Church, where the girls of the Lawson Peabody now go to get their souls scrubbed clean, their last church having burned, and—ahem—the less said about that the better. Since all thirty of us attend this church, there are plenty of young men who have suddenly decided that this is the very congregation where they wish to do their praising of God. So, eyeing the boys, and them eyeing us, makes church almost fun. When I'm not looking over a particularly fine stretch of britches over a well-turned male tail—Look at that one over there ... Coo, he's a fine one, pretending to be reading his prayer book while he's cutting his eyes over here. Hah! Caught you, you dog! Here's a wink for you, lad—when I'm not doing that, I look about the interior of the place. Amy tells me there was a lot of revolutionary stuff that went on in here before their revolution from us awful Brits—fiery speeches and raucous meetings and such. This is the place where a bunch of Bostonians dressed up as Indians and went out hallooing into the night to dump a lot of perfectly good tea in the harbor, all over a silly tax. I notice that they dumped the tea and not the rum, and I am sure there was a tax on that, too. I said this to Amy and she didn't say anything to that. The place is plain, but pleasing in its proportions: high windows, big raised dais for the preacher to lecture at us from. There's lots of fine, polished wood in the pews, like what's under my hands right now, smooth as butter. It sure ain't a lot like Saint Paul's Cathedral back in London, with its stained-glass windows and huge high dome. Me and the gang weren't allowed in that place, 'cause they thought we'd rob the poor box, and they were right in thinking that. We did get in, but not during regular hours, oh, no. It was hard getting into Saint Paul's. It would be easy getting in here. Already I've spotted a couple of ways—cellar windows easily cracked open; hell, our Hugh the Grand could've ripped that door off its hinges with one hand—and we probably could have gotten in through that belfry up there, for the Lord knows we weren't afraid of heights ... and there's the poor box over by the door and it looks full ... Now, now, that was then and this is now. Be good.
Ah, my poor, good, simple Hughie, where are you now? When I was back in London I found out what happened to some of the old Rooster Charlie Gang, but not you ... only that you had been taken by a naval press gang. Well, I've been taken by a press gang, too, so I know what it's like, Hughie, and I hope things worked out for you. Are you out at sea, where I wish I was right now instead of sitting here listening to some old preacher yell at me for sins I ain't committed yet? Are you happy? I hope so.
It was on one such Sunday that Amy took my arm as we came out of the church and said, "Look down that street there. See where those streets come together?" I replied that yes, I did see that. So what? "That is where the massacre took place, right there in front of that building. Before the Revolution, some patriots had assembled to protest acts of the British government and a squad of Regulars was called out to put down the demonstration. Snowballs were thrown at the soldiers and the order was given to fire on the crowd. Five men were killed, and six wounded..."
"I, myself, have always found it a good policy not to throw things at men in uniform who are carrying
guns."
"That is not my point," she said, giving me a poke. "My point is that the first one to fall in the Boston Massacre, the first man to die in the American Revolution, was a black man. A black man named Crispus Attucks. Now look over there."
I followed her gaze, and over there stood Clarissa Howe with her slave. She had brought the girl with her that day to wait outside the church till services were over.
"I take your point, Sister." I sighed and thought, What I can't understand is why Mistress Pimm would allow this to go on in her school. Well, it was not my place to ask, and so I didn't.
I grow ever more restless. I cannot go to The Pig. I cannot go and act in Mr. Fennel's and Mr. Bean's theatrical company, even though they have asked for me. I cannot go anywhere without a suitable male escort. Me, who's had upwards of two hundred men under my command. I cannot go pulling traps with Jim, for there have not been any more school holidays that would allow Amy and me to escape back to Dovecote for a spell. Randall, of course, could serve as escort as far as I'm concerned, but not for Mistress, as she is not stupid and knows Randall for what he is—a straight-out rake.
Yes, I chafe under the confinement. While it is true that Little Mary, orphan of the streets, is glad of a safe, warm bed and good food, to be sure, and it is also true that Jacky Faber, student, apprentice lady, and sometime sailor is glad of the fine instruction and warm companions, Tonda-lay-o, Queen of the Jungle and the Ocean Sea, ah, that one, she is not happy at all.