Curse of the Blue Tattoo Read online

  "Oh, isn't it just the most precious little bit of a thing?" she breathes, and looks about as if for confirmation from the others. They all giggle and snort and nod and say that yes, I'm just about the most goddamn precious thing they've ever seen. The yellow woman's great dark yellow eyes soften and seem to mist up as they go all over me. She puts her long-fingered hands together and casts her eyes heavenward and says, "Thank you, Lord. Thank you." She says this like she really, really means it. I shrink back against the wall.

  The woman in yellow comes and sits down beside me and her perfume, which smells like the tropical flowers I had sniffed in Jamaica, wraps around my head and I don't know what to do 'cept sit there like a trapped mouse. Her eyes hold mine and I can't look away, I can't speak, I can't...

  "Precious. That is what I shall call you from now on, because you are the most precious little thing I have ever seen. Oh, it is trembling, poor baby. Here, Precious, let me hold your hand to calm you." She reaches out and takes my hand from my lap and folds it in both of hers. Her hands are cool and soft, unlike mine, which are sweating like little piggies.

  "I am Mam'selle Claudelle de Bour-bon of the New Orleans Bour-bons and none of that Baton Rouge Bour-bon trash, thank you, and I am your new best friend."

  I thinks that's what she says. 'Cept she says "frey-und" for friend. Then she drops her eyes and turns her head and leans into me, and I feel her face touch the back of my neck and I hear her inhale long and deep...

  "Ahhhh... The precious sweet smell of precious little schoolgirl neck just beneath her precious and lovely schoolgirl hair," she says, and breathes in again. "You are a little schoolgirl, aren't you, Precious? You are dressed as one and I, for one, find it most becomin' on you."

  She pauses, then sucks in some more of whatever my neck smells like and says, "But you have been a bad little schoolgirl, haven't you, Precious, to be put in a place like this. Tell me, Precious, just how bad have you been?"

  And then I feel her lips behind my ear and...

  And I leaps to me feet and whips me whistle out of my sleeve and tootles a couple of simple runs, and then I puts my arms to my sides and lifts my chin and says all in one rush of breath, "Ladies and Gentleman, you have the great good fortune to be present at an appearance of the fabulous Jacky Faber, famous in legend and song, who will be singing and playing many humorous and historical songs, some happy and some sad, and telling stories for your amusement and delight!"

  I goes into an easy tune and dances a few steps and gets some delighted "oh-ho's!" and claps for it, so I winds that up with a flourish and then says, "For my first number I'll be doin' the well-known favorite, 'The Maid of Amsterdam'! Sing along with the chorus now, ladies, sing it out loud and strong!"

  And they do. They are a good audience. Soon they're all singin' and linkin' arms and dancin' and bellowin' out the chorus.

  "A-roving...

  A-roving...

  Since roving's been my ru-i-in,

  I'll go no more a-roving with you...fair...maid!"

  All except for Mam'selle Claudelle, who sits twinkling on the bench with the air of a proud parent watching the performance of a beloved child. "Isn't my little Precious just the most talented thing?" she asks, comin' down heavy on thang.

  And then I gives 'em a fast jig, "The Hare in the Corn," and pounds the floor with some different steps, and then I slows it down with the sad ballad, "The Sally Gardens," and cranks it back up again with "The Flowing Bowl," and then I feels the need of a break but I know I can't stop so I tells 'em the sad story of "The Cruel Sister," wherein I tells the story and then sings the verses of the song and in between plays the melody with the whistle, and they're all sitting around like any classroom of girls and some of them are nodding off, which I don't think is a comment on my storytelling but rather on the drink, and I think it would be a good thing if they all fell asleep but no, Mam'selle Claudelle is beamin' at me as brightly as ever and my throat is getting sore and my voice is beginning to rasp and squeak when the door swings open and the constable comes in and says, "All right, Rummy, out with you. I won't be having you stinking up my jail anymore this night, but I catch you drunk in the street again, it will be the stocks for you and you'd better take me at my word."

  The prisoner don't say nothin', no, he just shuffles to the door of his cage and waits while Constable Wiggins opens the door, and then he steps out.

  "And the Lady Lenore?" says Gulliver MacFarland.

  The constable goes to a cabinet along the wall and opens it and pulls out a fiddle case and, without looking, flings it in the general direction of Gully.

  Gully lunges forward and catches the case just before it hits the deck. On his knees, he opens the case and pulls out the violin that rests within. He runs his hands lovingly over the curves of the fiddle's body and neck and he croons as if to a lover, "Ah, Lenore, did the beast have his filthy jailhouse hands on you, sweetness? Did the touch of his greasy fingers forever stain—"

  "Get out with you, you wowthless dwunkawd," says Constable Wiggins, and he pulls back his booted foot and aims a kick at Gully's retreating rump as it disappears through the outer door, the fiddle and her case clutched tightly to his breast.

  There is silence for a moment and I don't think I'll be able to get up for any more performing, and Mam'selle Claudelle is beckoning to me with her finger and patting the bench next to her and...

  And then from outside the tiny window, Gully MacFarland puts bow to the Lady Lenore and plays "Billy in the Low Ground" better than I have ever heard it played before, and I lifts the whistle and I play along in my poor fashion, but somehow it works together and the crowd is pleased and claps and stamps and hollers "More! More!" but then the outer door clangs open again and in steps a smallish woman dressed in sombre clothing that is nevertheless cut in the highest style and in the finest of tailoring. She is followed by Constable Wiggins and a pleasant-looking young man who wears a buff jacket and a fawn vest and white trousers in the new style. He also wears a slight smile on his round and pink face.

  "Missus Bodeen!" shrieks Miss Hortense, rushing forward and wringing her hands and whipping out a handkerchief from between her breasts and dabbing at her eyes. "We warn't doin' nothin', 'cept quietly entertainin' some generous gentlemens in the Plow and Anchor when Wiggins here comes burstin' in with his badge and club and hauls us off to the slammer! It warn't fair nor sportin' of him at all!"

  The women, except for Mam'selle, who continues to simper and wink at me, have forgotten all about me and have rushed to the bars and are joining in with their protestations of their innocence.

  Mrs. Bodeen does not reply but instead pulls out a packet and hands it to the young man, who, in turn, bows and presents it to Constable Wiggins, who takes it and slips it into his vest.

  The constable advances to the cage and unlocks the door. The women pour out the door and Mam'selle comes up next to me and whispers, "Get in the middle of us, Precious, and maybe we can get you out," and I do it and try to look small and hope arises in my chest, but it is dashed when Wiggins's hand reaches out into the gang of women and clamps around me neck and hauls me out and tosses me back in the cage.

  Resentful and without hope, I go whining and weeping and despairing back to the bench and sit down upon it. Mam'selle whispers something in the Bodeen woman's ear and she glances at me and reaches in her purse and takes out several bills and holds them out toward Wiggins and nods toward me, but he looks shocked and aggrieved and shakes his head as if to say you know it ain't done that way, and Mrs. Bodeen shrugs and puts the money away and Mam'selle pouts at the constable and then turns to me and says, "See you later, Precious. It won't be so bad, you'll see. And if they do hurt you, you come to see me and I'll make it better, I promise. I do have the most soothing and restorative salve. 'Bye now, Precious." A flutter of fingers and eyelashes and Mam'selle Claudelle de Bour-bon and the rest of them are gone and I am alone once again.

  I drop exhausted down on the bench, facing out so nothin'
can sneak up on me, and I turn on my side and pull up my knees. I put my hands together and put them under my cheek. My hipbone begins to ache, grinding into the hard wood of the bench. I would pray for deliverance if it warn't all my fault, which it is. Why can't I ever be good, why can't I ever think before I do something stupid? Why?

  I want to be back sleeping between the cannons on the ship. I want to be back in the hammock with Jaimy. I want to be back in my bed at school. I want to be anywhere but here, but here is where I am.

  Chapter 9

  I did not think I would sleep at all last night because of the worry and the hardness of the bench, but I do sleep in spite of all and I awake in the morning with a sickening lurch when I realize where I am and what is likely going to happen to me.

  I stand up stiff and aching and I think how used to sleeping in a bed I have become. My side hurts from where my hipbone spent the night grinding itself into the bench. Goody Wiggins has come in and shoved a tray under my cage and sits down in a chair by the door without a word. The breakfast seems to be a cup of weak tea and a bowl of thin gruel. I do not eat it.

  A while later, the young man I had seen last night with Mrs. Bodeen comes in and looks at me and says to Goody, "What is this, then?" He has the slight smile I had noticed, even in all my confusion the night before. I have the feeling the slight smile never leaves his face, at least not in public.

  Goody looks up from her breakfast, which looks a good deal better than mine, and says, "Lewd and Lascivious Conduct. Judge Thwackham's got a horse thief to deal with, then she's up."

  He nods and comes over to my cage and sticks his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat and leans back and says, "Would you like to tell me who you are and what has happened that brings you to this state?"

  I look up all scared and confused and say, "Are they really gonna whip me?"

  "I don't know, dear," he says. "I must know the circumstances before I can help you."

  Help me? Someone wants to help me?

  "I am Ezra Pickering. I am a lawyer and an officer of the court. I will speak for you in court if you so wish, Miss ... ah..." He lifts a questioning eyebrow.

  "Fuh ... fuh ... Faber," I manage to say. "Jacky Faber. I go to the girls' school on the hill and I want to go home." Then I start bawling. On the word home, that is, which is when I start in to bawling. I wanna go home and ride my pony that's all I wanna do ... that's all I waaaaaaa...

  He listens to me cry for a while and then he tells me to start at the beginning and I do, and I tell him everything from the day I was pitched out into the streets of London till yesterday when I was taken and put here for just playin' and dancin' down by the docks, which I didn't know was wrong, I didn't. Oh why oh why won't they let me go home? Mistress is gonna kill me, ain't that punishment enough, ain't I been punished enough for what I did, which wasn't so bad as to get me back whipped, it wasn't even...

  I tell him about the ship and the Brotherhood and the battles with the pirates and the treasure and how I almost got hanged and how I ended up here in Boston and he seems so nice and kind that I pours out all that's in me about how strict Mistress is and how mean most of the other girls are to me, a poor sailor girl what's lately come from sea, and how I just want Mistress to give me my money and let me go sos I can go back and see Jaimy and...

  There is a jangle of keys and I look up and see that Constable Wiggins has come in and is unlocking my cell. "They weady now. Let's go, you."

  The constable leads the way, followed by me and then Goody Wiggins and then Mr. Pickering. They take me down a hallway and I see a big room opening up ahead, and I pipes up and says that I got to go to the privy and Goody says, "Goddammit, why didn't you use the pot in the cell?" but Mr. Pickering shushes them and I am guided to a small room off to the side and get it done. I just couldn't use the pot in the cell, I ain't shy but I just couldn't, I couldn't.

  When I come out, the constable takes me by the arm into the court and puts me in the middle of the room on a little stand that has a polished wood railing around it. There is a little gate in the railing behind me and he closes it as he steps back. I grip the railing and look fearfully around.

  It is indeed a grand room with fine high windows all around, windows that go up at least two stories and let in a soft yellow light that falls on all within, and all within are up in high podiums and all are lookin' down at me standin' there all wide-eyed and open-mouthed and totally without hope. There's a man off to the left with a quill poised above a ledger, prolly to record my doom, and there's more men off in a balcony up to the right, all in black robes and white wigs, who look at me curiously as I am brought in and put in the dock.

  They all look fearsome and dreadfully stern, but the most forbidding of all is the person directly in front of me—he is seated at the highest and most massive podium of all, one that is worked in fine dark wood and marble columns and behind him is a white statue of a woman in a blindfold holding a scale. That this has to be the awful Judge Thwackham somehow gets through the fog of fear in my mind. My legs turn to jelly and I starts an all-over shakin', which can't be good for my case, as I must look like the very picture of sinful guilt. Judge Thwackham is a big man with a big nose and a red face with great hanging jowls. He wears a powdered white wig and an expression of extreme distaste and boredom and would look like a humorous drawing of a great old hound if this were a humorous situation, which, God knows, it ain't.

  The judge glowers down at my poor self cowering down here below and picks up this wooden hammer he has and gives his podium top a great whack. "What on God's green Earth is this, then?" he bellows. "More aggravation for the Court, I'll warrant!"

  One of the men with quills gets up and says in a very serious tone, "The Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus the Female Jacky Faber for the crime of Lewd and Lascivious Conduct, to wit: A wanton display of female parts in the commission of a song-and-dance performance on the streets of Boston, on the twenty-seventh of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and three."

  The words hang in the air. Wanton display! Female parts! What? I...

  "How do you plead?" says Judge Thwackham, leaning over his bench and putting the full force of both his office and his disapproval upon me.

  I open my mouth but nothin' comes out and I hear Mr. Pickering say, "She pleads not guilty, Your Honor." I turn my head and see that he is standing at a desk to my right, with some papers in front of him.

  "Ah," says the judge, sitting back in his chair. "Our own Mr. Pickering, God's gift to the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the morally suspect." This gets the judge a round of titters from the other members of the Court and this appreciation of his wit seems to please him.

  "As you wish, Your Honor," says Mr. Pickering, his slight smile never wavering. "I am representing Miss Faber in this matter."

  "Very well, Mr. Pickering," says the judge with an air of great weariness. "What is the State's evidence against her?"

  One of the coves in black robe and white wig stands up to my left and says, "Constable Wiggins will now give an account of the arrest of the defendant."

  Wiggins strides out into the open space in front of Judge Thwackham's bench and places his hand grandly over his heart and says, "I did appwehend this selfsame female yesterday at the end of Long Wharf engaged in a wild and wanton dance for the eddy-fick-cation of a group of low sailors wherein she did expose a female part, a knee, it was, to public view."

  "Hmmm," says the judge. "What do you say to that, Counsel?"

  "She is new to this country, Your Honor," says Mr. Pickering, "and unacquainted with our customs. May I ask some questions of the redoubtable Constable Wiggins?"

  "You may," sighs the judge. "But be quick. My dinner is calling."

  Mr. Pickering turns to face the constable and asks, "My Good Sir," he says, bowing slightly, "what sort of music was the accused playing when you apprehended her?"

  "Oh, you know," says Wiggins, "that I wish stuff. It all sounds the same t
o me."

  Mr. Pickering clasps his hands behind his back and circles slowly around the constable.

  "How big was the crowd that she was entertaining?" he asks.

  "Maybe six," says Wiggins, "but I..."

  "And do you think they were being whipped into a high state of carnal excitement by the performance by this girl?" He points to me and the eyes of the Court swing over to me. I make my eyes big and wide and innocent and I clasp my hands demurely before me.

  "Well, no, not by the music, but by the display of flesh."

  "Ah. Well. Let's get to that, shall we? How did you know that it was indeed a female knee that you did spy, and not a bit of light-colored cloth, or a petticoat or, say, a slip?"

  "No, Sir," says Wiggins, reddening. "It was indeed a knee, plainly wisible wight below the dwawers and wight above the stockings!" He nods his head decisively.

  "Very well, Constable, we will accept that you glimpsed her knee. Now, would you say that what she was performing was a simple country dance, one that you would see being done by simple God-fearing country folk at a country fair and not the same kind of performance one would see in a bawdy house?"

  "Objection, Your Honor. That calls for speculation on the part of the witness," says the white-wigged cove who introduced the constable.

  "Sustained," says Judge Thwackham. "What's your point, Counselor?"

  "I am merely trying to show that this simple country girl, far from her home in England and not knowing our ways, was merely engaging in a bit of good fun and had no desire to whip men into a fever of base desire with a display of wild and licentious dancing." Mr. Pickering turns around and grandly gestures toward me. "I mean, look at her, Your Honor. Does that look like a temptress?"