Curse of the Blue Tattoo Read online

  Tilly blinks and nods and is out the door and gone.

  The door clicks shut and silence fills the room. I stand there nervously quiverin' while Mistress Pimm looks me over.

  "What is this, then?" she says sharply, reaching over and flicking her finger at my earring. I flinch back cause her fingernail caught my ear and it shocked me, the suddenness of it all.

  "It's ... it's ... just me ring, Ma'am. It's like a token from me intended husband, a weddin' ring, like. We're gonna use 'em when we finally gets married and..."

  "Take it off. Take it off, now."

  "I can't take it off, Mum," I says. "It's welded shut and please, Mum, I..."

  From somewhere in her dress she pulls out a thin rod, whips it back, and lays it against my leg. Even under the layers of cloth, my leg buckles under the pain. Damn, that hurts!

  "Listen to me, girl. The Rules: You will never call me anything but Mistress, not Mum, not Ma'am, nothing but Mistress," she says, standing straight upright as if a steel rod was run up her back. "And you will never talk back to me or raise your voice or even think to contradict me. Do you understand me, Miss Faber?"

  "Yes, Mistress, I do." I sobs, blinking back tears for me poor leg. "I do."

  "Good," she says, straightening up and turning to the serving girl. "You. Go get Mr. Dobbs."

  "Yes, Mistress," whispers the girl and darts out the door.

  "And tell him to bring his snips!" Mistress calls after the girl.

  While we wait for this Mr. Dobbs and his snips, Mistress continues to gaze upon me. She shakes her head and paces about the room. "I have grave misgivings about this. Unseemly. Most unseemly."

  The girl returns shortly with a dusty little man in work clothes bearing a look of put-upon impatience and carrying an evil-looking pair of sharp pliers.

  "What is it, then, Mistress Pimm?" he says, with the air of one who anticipates a long, disagreeable, dirty, and thankless job.

  "Take that barbaric thing out of her ear right now."

  Mr. Dobbs squints at my earring and lifts his pinchy tool. He seems delighted that it is such a simple thing and soon he'll be back in the hole where I'm sure he hides himself the livelong day. "Sure thing, Mistress. We'll have that out in half a moment."

  He lays his cold, vile snips against my cheek and peers at the offending ear and its ornament. I jerk back.

  "Please, Mistress, it's such a small thing and I..."

  The switch catches me on the leg again and I cries out, "Oh! Please don't..."

  "What did I tell you about talking back to me?" she says to me and "Cut it out of there!" to Dobbs.

  "Pardon, Mistress," says the vile Dobbs, scratching his bristly chin as he thinks about the job at hand, "but do ye wish me to cut the earring or the earlobe?" He opens his shears and puts my ear in its cruel mouth. I can feel the sharpness of the metal. "Earlobe'd be easier. Bit of a mess, though."

  She seems to consider the two ways of freeing the ring from my poor quiverin' ear.

  "Cut the ring," she says finally.

  I'm sorry, Jaimy, I promised I'd never take your ring out of my ear but there it goes I'm sorry, Jaimy, I'm sorry.

  Dobbs cuts the hoop and, none too gentle, twists the ring out of my ear and hands it to Mistress.

  "Very well, Dobbs, you may take Miss Faber's things up to the dormitory. And you," she says to the serving girl, "may resume your duties." The girl bobs and leaves, and Dobbs lifts my seabag and chest and heads down the hallway.

  "You will now follow me to my office."

  We enter a hallway and proceed down its length. There's more of them 'broideries on both walls. On either side I see rooms that are prolly rooms where stuff is taught. There's a room with a lot of little tables, and there—oh, my—there's a room full of musical instruments, fiddles and harps and things. This could be all right, I think.

  "This floor is classrooms and the dining hall. Upstairs is the living quarters. Downstairs is the kitchen and the household staff," she says, and with that she sweeps into a room and I follow.

  It is a dark room with heavy curtains pulled over the windows. It has a large desk with a chair in the middle of it and cabinets along the side. Mistress Pimm goes over to a window and reaches behind the curtain and pulls a cord. The drapes part and light spills into the room and I can see the harbor lying down there below. How I wish I was down there with Jaimy, or even just sitting on a pier and playing my pennywhistle. Or gutting fish. Or doing anything but this.

  Mistress comes back to the desk and sits down in her chair.

  "Do you see the line drawn on the carpet?"

  I look down and see that, sure enough, there is a thin white line drawn on the rug in front of her desk.

  "Yes, Mistress," I say.

  "Good. Now go up to it and put the points of your toes upon it."

  I step over and put the shiny toes of my new shoes on the line. This puts my belly about four inches from the edge of the desk.

  "Very well," she says and leans back in her chair. "Whenever you are called into this office, you will advance to that line. If you are here for punishment—and I cannot think of any other reason why you would be here—you will lay your upper body on the desk and lift up your skirts. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Mistress." I'm thinkin' fearfully that it's sort of like being bent over a cannon and having your pants pulled down and your bottom switched, which was the common punishment for ship's boys on the Dolphin. Never happened to me, though it was close a couple of times. Maybe this won't happen to me here, neither. I hope not. I didn't like the feel of that stick of hers.

  "All right, then." She picks up some papers and holds them up. "I have read an account of your recent life aboard that ship, provided by Mr. Tilden, and I find it neither amusing nor reassuring as to your moral character," she says, crossing her arms and looking at me intently. "Are you still innocent?"

  Innocent? Of what?

  She notes my confusion. She narrows her eyes even more and says, "Are you yet a maiden?"

  Oh. That.

  "Yes, Mistress," I stammers. If only just barely, I thinks, but I don't say it out loud.

  She is silent for a bit and then says, "Very well. I choose to believe you on that. I would not take you if I believed otherwise. It is reassuring that you can still blush, at least. You will, however, never speak with the other girls of your past life, as it smacks of the sordid and the unseemly. Is that clear?"

  "Yes, Mistress."

  Her gaze has never once left my face. "I have grave misgivings about taking you on as a student, given your origins and past life, but we shall see. Hold out your hand."

  I sticks out my trembling hand half expectin' her to give it a whack with her stick for my past sins, but instead she jams my ring into it. "I never want to see that, or any kind of ornament on you again. Is that clear?"

  "Yes, Mistress," I say in my misery.

  "And, Miss Faber, the most important thing of all," she says, standing and raising herself to her full height, "although you may know the name of this school to be the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, I want you to fully understand that those are the names of the founders and trustees but that it is my school and my girls and you will never bring disgrace down upon me and my school by your actions and comportment. Do you understand that?"

  "Yes, Mistress." I'm thinkin' that this is a lot like bein' read the Articles of War on the ship—every breakin' of a rule bein' punishable by death.

  "Good. We will go up and meet my girls now." She comes around from behind the desk. "You will find that my girls have a look about them that distinguishes them from the common run of girl, and you, Miss Faber, will try to cultivate that look."

  She comes up next to me. "My girls walk as if they were delicately balancing a book upon their heads. They keep their lips together and their teeth apart."

  I lift my head and drop my jaw down a bit with my lips mashed together.

  She sighs. "Relax the lips, Miss Faber. Make a cupid's
bow of them. Now drop your eyelids down halfway. That's better. Not even close to the ideal, but better." She lifts her rod and taps my shoulders with it. "Not so rigidly straight. Remember the book on your head. You are projecting a look of languid confidence."

  She steps back to look at me.

  "Eventually, Miss Faber, it is further to be hoped that you will learn to control your emotions so that they do not display quite so visibly on your face as they do right now. My girls have a look about them and appearing to be about to burst into tears is not part of that look. Let us go."

  "Yes, Mistress."

  There is a broad sweep of stairs at the end of the hallway and up it we do go, Mistress first and me behind watching the swaying hem of her skirt. At the top, we turn right and enter a large room that has beds lined up on either side. There are chests of drawers and windows curtained with light white drapes on each side. There are also about thirty girls of various sizes and ages, dressed just like me. They all get to their feet upon seeing Mistress Pimm enter.

  "Good day, Ladies."

  "Good day, Mistress," say the girls as one.

  "I've asked you to gather here before dinner to welcome a new girl, Miss Faber." She steps aside for me to come forward. "She is from England. Acquaint her with our ways and our rules."

  And with that, Mistress turns on her heel and leaves the room.

  Well. I breathe a bit easier with her gone. Maybe I'll find some warmth down here in the crew's quarters, but I dunno—all I see now is unsmiling faces turned toward me, lookin' all haughty and ... oh, right—the Look, that's what it is.

  Nothin' for it but to put on my most charmin' smile and beam it all around. "My name is Mary, but you can call me Jacky—everybody does," I pipes and looks around at their faces expectin'...what? Welcome, maybe. I don't see much in the way of that, though.

  I hear some snickerin' and mutterin' and my smile is startin' to feel foolish on me face. Then the crowd parts and a girl, a small blond girl not much bigger than me, comes forward, her face uplifted, her eyes hooded, her back straight. She has the Look for certain, and she brings it all up in front of me.

  She is perfect in all her parts. Her hair is perfectly piled on her head with perfectly coiled ringlets hanging down either side of her perfect face. She is a lovely cream color with touches of pink in the right places and her eyes are large and liquid and bright blue. Her nose is small and fine and her lips are full and red and shaped like a bow. Her neck is long and slender and her upper chest is soft and white without being powdered I know, and I know that her dress, which is the same color and cut as mine, is much finer in its material and drape and I feel suddenly shabby in my once-proud new dress. And in my pigtail and my tanned face and my freckles and my scarred, scrawny body.

  "My name is Clarissa Worthington Howe, of the Virginia Howes," says the girl, after looking in my face for a bit. "You may call me Miss Howe."

  By now my hopeful grin has slid completely off me face. Sweat breaks out on my brow and I know it makes me look like a scared scrub but frettin' about it only makes me sweat all the more—I can feel my armpits working up steam and sendin' the sweat tricklin' down over my ribs.

  Clarissa Worthington Howe looks at me and tilts her head to the side and looks as if she is about to decide something about me. Her blue eyes roam quite boldly over my face, and then her eyes stop and I can tell she is looking at my white eyebrow and its scar from where Bliffil got me with his boot that day. The perfect lips part and she says, "So you are a Tory, then?" Sweet and soft she says it. So you are ah Toe-ree they-un?

  I'm in total confusion. Tory? My mind races back for that word and I remembers it from when I was a child and riding Hugh the Grand's broad shoulders and reading the newspapers pinned to the print-shop walls for the amusement of the Fleet Street crowd. Tory? She's callin' me a conservative member of Parliament? I don't get it.

  "Tory?" I blurts out. "I ain't no Tory. I'm just a poor girl what's lately come from sea to study here and become a lady like the rest o' yiz." Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. As soon as it's out me mouth I know it's stupid stupid stupid and makes me sound like I just fell off the back of a Cheap-side turnip wagon. Stupid!

  "English, a Tory, and so very, very common, too. My, my," she says as she turns and floats away. "I'm afraid she won't do," she says to no one in particular, but the other girls turn away from me, too. "I'm afraid she won't do at all."

  Just then I hears a musical something from out in the hall and the girls, led by the perfect Miss Howe, follow the sound out of the room.

  So that's the way of it, is it? Now I've got a real threatenin' glower on my face and my hands balled up in fists, but I know that ain't gonna be the way of it here in this place where Clarissa Worthington Howe rules. Goin' at her with fists a-flailin' ain't gonna do it, no. I've got to learn to fight like a lady, and so I take a deep breath and put the imagined book on my head, and with my lips together and my teeth apart, I follow them.

  In the hall I discover the musical sound comes from a box what's got chimes in it that's bein' hit with a mallet by another serving girl—one who looks like the one I saw in the foyer, but not the same. Skinnier, but with the same saddle of freckles across her nose. Prolly her sister. She seems to be whackin' away at the thing with no sense or pattern but it sounds pleasant all the same, and as we all file down the stairs and into a dining room with tables set with dishes and glasses and cloths and such, it seems that it is the way the girls are called to eat.

  Clarissa Howe goes over to the center of one of the tables and sits down. Others begin to do the same, so I go over to that table and pull out a chair. Maybe this will go better, I thinks, as eatin' together tends to make mates of people.

  "I'm sorry," says a girl coming up to my side, "but this place is taken." She takes the chair and pulls it from my hand. I flush red in the face and go to another chair and pull that one out.

  "I'm sorry," says another girl, doing the same thing, "but this place is taken."

  I go to the other end of the table and try again there. The same thing happens. I try again. The same. Then I notice that there are more place settings here than girls and they are merely rotating around to deny me a seat at this table. I want to cry out at the cruelty and meanness of it all. I feel my eyes burning and I want to lash out and get one of 'em on the floor and pound her good, but I don't do it. Instead, I put my hands to my sides and I stand at attention and say to no one in particular, "Very well. Tell me where to sit and I will sit there."

  A girl near me smirks and hooks her thumb over her shoulder. She uses her other hand to cover her mouth to stifle her giggles. I can see her eyes glance over to that Clarissa Howe to get her approval, and I see that she gets it. I follow the point and see another table, one with a single girl sitting at it. There are many empty places. I turn on my heel and march over and pull out the chair opposite the girl and plunk myself down. The girl has her head down and does not look up as I join her. She has very dark hair that is put up in a bun with side curls that hang lankly by her face. She has a pug nose and is plump—not fat plump but like she ain't lost her baby fat yet. Her hands are folded in her lap.

  I put my elbows on the table and lean over and say to her all conspiratorial like, as if we're two prisoners in a jail, "They got me for bein' English, common, and a Tory, two of which things I am guilty of. What are you in for, Mate?"

  She looks up, confused. "Why, whatever do you mean?"

  "Why are you sittin' here alone, away from that pack of pampered princesses, is what I means," says I. She don't reply right off.

  I look at the things in front of me to see if I'll be able to handle 'em with any kind of confidence: plate, napkin, two spoons, knife, fork, an empty cup with a little dish under it, another little dish with a roll and butter on it, a glass full of water. A far cry from a mess kit and a tin cup.

  "They do not like me and I do not like them," says the girl with a sniff. She looks back down at her lap.

&nb
sp; "Well, maybe you'll like me. My name's Jacky Faber and I've just come from"—and then I remember that I promised Mistress that I wouldn't say nothin' about my past life to any of these girls so's they don't faint dead away at the unseemliness of it all or something—"from far away to study at this school and so become a fine lady. Tell me your name and why we have two spoons here."

  I'm lookin' real hungrily at the bread roll sittin' there next to the butter but I notices that nobody else is diggin' in yet, so I waits.

  "My name is Amy and there is to be a soup course," she says. She brings up a book and puts it on the table. So that's why she had her head down. She was reading.

  "Ah," says I, deciding to watch her and just do what she does and that way avoid trouble.

  I notice some older people have come into the mess hall and have seated themselves at the table by the door. Must be the teachers, I thinks. Then there's a rustle as Mistress strides in and everyone stands up and stops talking. She goes to her chair, which is in the center of the teacher table, and looks out across the room. When all is silent, she speaks.

  "We welcome into our company our new student, Miss Jacky Faber," says Mistress, and I redden at the notice. "She will now give us the grace."

  I feel like I've been hit in the belly with a cannonball. Grace? I don't know nothin about no bleedin grace!

  I look at Amy in my desperation. She sees my confusion and leans forward and whispers, "A prayer in thanks for the food."

  Oh.

  I scours me head for some graces and I comes up with a few and thinks to myself that I can handle this and maybe get a counterpunch in. Hey, is this not Jacky Faber, the saucy sailor girl who has played to lots tougher crowds than this? I tell myself this, but I don't quite believe it.

  I place my hands together in a prayerful attitude and cast my eyes to the heavens and belt out: "Oh, Lord, bless this food to our use and us to thy service." The Regular Navy one—short and sweet and gets you to your food quick, and now, "Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive through Christ our Lord." That's the Catholic one, which I learned by listening to the Irish sailors on the ship and which now causes two of the serving girls standing by the door to quickly look at each other and make that hand cross thing they do, and now for my own special one I just made up. "I thank you, Lord, for this wonderful school, which has taken in a poor lost orphaned lamb and so warmly welcomed her into its company. Amen."