Curse of the Blue Tattoo Page 8

  A torrent of words pours out of Clarissa's mouth. How she was merely disciplining the girl for not doing her duty, how shocked and distressed she was to be assaulted by me and treated most cruelly—at this Mistress glances over at the nail marks on my cheek and the teeth marks on my arm—how someone like me, so lowborn, a common a gutter girl that shouldn't even be in this school, how her father will certainly be told of this incident and—

  Here Mistress cuts her off with a sharp slap of her rod on the desktop.

  "I would give more credence to your story, Miss Howe, if I did not see you spit into Miss Faber's face with my very own eyes. If I did not see, with those same eyes, the considerable damage you have inflicted upon her. And you will listen to me, Miss Howe, and you will listen carefully," says Mistress, with the iron back in her voice. "If you think for one moment that your family's stature will have any influence in this matter, you are sadly mistaken. If your father withdraws you from this school, then so be it. Adieu, Miss Howe. I will have one less student, and that will be that." Mistress leans across the desk and looks into Clarissa's now perplexed eyes. "I run a superior school here, Miss Howe, and I am happy in what I do. But I would walk out of here tomorrow rather than let my judgment in how I run my school be dictated by anything other than my own convictions!"

  Mistress stands to her full height and looks down her nose at us.

  "For your disgraceful behavior you will both receive no dinner or supper today. You will instead each stand in a corner of the dining hall during the dining hour, facing the wall, during which time it is hoped that you will each reflect on what it means to be a lady." Again the rod comes down on the desktop. "The Position!"

  I immediately flop over the desk and pull up my skirts. Thank God, I thinks, she's not gonna put me out!

  She gives me four. Four hard ones. So hard I cry out on each, and my knees buckle on the fourth and I have to grab the edges of the desk to keep from sliding off the desk. But I don't. It's over and I stand up and wipe away at my tears.

  Mistress folds her arms and again says to Clarissa, "Did you hear me, Miss Howe? Do you want me to call in Mr. Dobbs and have him stretch you across the desk? The Position, Miss Howe."

  Clarissa stands there, mouth agape, not believing that this is going to happen to her. She looks over at me. It's gonna happen, Clarissa, believe it. I run my sleeve under my running nose and shrug. Better get down and get it over with, I thinks. She shudders and bends over the desk. She don't have to lift her skirts 'cause she ain't got any on.

  Mistress swings. Clarissa gasps and bolts upright on the first one, she shrieks on the second, she goes into a high howl on the third, and on the fourth, Miss Clarissa Worthington Howe, of the Virginia Howes, falls to the floor, sobbing.

  And even though Clarissa's meaner than a snake, I didn't like seein' her get it. Not really.

  At dinner, before the others come in, I am placed in one corner and Clarissa is placed in another. I'm sure neither one of us would care to sit down, anyway, not just yet. I try to present a military attitude—head up, back straight, arms held straight to my sides. I don't know how Clarissa's handling this, 'cause I can't see her, being crammed in the corner as I am, but I'm sure her back's as straight as mine. Clarissa's a nasty piece of work, but she is game, I gotta give her that— who'd of thought she had that much fight in her? She whupped the hell outta me, that's for sure, and me an old Cheapside scrapper.

  Hello, wall. I sigh and suspect I'm gonna be real familiar with every spot and crack in this corner.

  I hear the chimes being rung for dinner and I hear them all tromping in and settling down. Then I feel a hand lightly placed on my arm.

  "Miss Trevelyne," I hear Mistress say from her place at the head table. "You will please sit down, unless you, also, wish to stand in a corner in disgrace."

  Amy withdraws her hand. Thanks anyway, Amy, I thinks, for the kindness.

  Then there is a hush. Then a stir. What's going on? I duck my head and risk a look and what I see brings tears welling up in my eyes. Amy has placed herself in an unoccupied corner and stands there, presenting her back to her classmates and to her teachers. Through my filmy eyes, I resume my study of the wall and think on friendship.

  During supper that evening, which was only marked by the loud rumblings in my belly, Amy again assumed her post. No one stood up for Clarissa.

  Later, as we readied for bed, I took Amy aside and said, "You did not have to do that," and she said, "Yes, I did."

  I was silent for a while and then I took her hand and turned it palm upward. "Spit in your hand, Amy." She is mystified, but she does it, looking at me with questioning eyes. I take my own hand and spit in it and then I lay my hand over hers, joining the spits and say, "This is the beginning of the Dread Sisterhood of the Lawson Peabody. We will now swear to always look out, each for the other, for whatever dangers might lie before us, to never betray the other in any way, and only to help the other to find happiness and joy in this life."

  I clasp her hand tightly and say, "So sworn, Sister?"

  "So sworn, Sister."

  I had thought this day was over, but it wasn't. As we knelt for prayers that night, I noticed that my pillow was lumped up strange. I put my hand under it and found a package, neatly tied up. After all were in their beds for the night, I nudged Amy and we crept into the hallway and opened the package. It was fresh bread and butter and thin cuts of choice meat and some cheese and two little jars of pudding. On top was a slip of paper on which the simple words "Thank you" were written.

  The Dread Sisterhood of the Lawson Peabody sat down in the light of the moon and had a feast, and I, for one, knew that I would never again taste one quite as fine as this.

  Chapter 6

  The morning after the fight, when we are all at breakfast, the girl Rachel gives me a note and I open it and it's from Reverend Mather saying I must come over to the church for counseling and guidance after classes today.

  Just what I need, I thinks. I look over at Clarissa to see if she got a note, too, but I don't see her reading one.

  "I'm to get counseled and guided by the Preacher today," I tell Amy.

  "I do not envy you, Sister," says Amy.

  I knock on the door of the church and then push it open and enter. It is the main door and it opens on the back of the church, such that one is looking down the central aisle to the pulpit. The Preacher is standing at the pulpit, reading his Bible. I walk down the aisle toward him. I stop and wait, my hands at my sides.

  "You will kneel down right there," he says, pointing to a spot directly in front of him. There is no rug on the polished wood floor and it looks right hard, but I march over to the spot and kneel down.

  "You will put your hands in a prayerful attitude and pray silently for fifteen minutes, asking forgiveness for your disgraceful behavior yesterday."

  I put up the hands and close the eyes and pray for deliverance from this place. The knees set in to aching right off, and I find that fifteen minutes can be a long, long time.

  "Very well, you may stand," he says after an eternity of boredom and pain. I climb to my feet and put my hands behind my back and wait for what's next.

  "What have you to say for yourself?"

  "I got in a fight and I am sorry for it, Sir," I say.

  "That's all? That you are merely sorry for having savagely attacked an innocent girl."

  Innocent girl? Clarissa?

  "Sir, there was two of us in that fight," I say. Just look at my face, Preacher, for evidence of that! Innocent, indeed!

  "The girl you assaulted is an extremely well-bred young woman of the highest refinement. She would not have willingly entered into combat with you had you not physically engaged her."

  "So you ain't gonna counsel and guide Clarissa Howe?" I asks, almost gagging with resentment.

  "I gave her my condolences and conveyed my concern for what she had been through," he says. He sets his mouth in a prim line and folds his hands before him. "We prayed togeth
er for your salvation, so that you might see the error of your ways."

  I roll back my eyes at the injustice of it all. Please, God, let this he over soon.

  "You will maintain a respectful attitude, young woman!" he warns. "Remember where you are!"

  "Yes, Sir," I say, dropping my hands to my sides and coming to attention, my eyes straight ahead.

  "That is better," he says. He looks at me carefully for signs of disrespect, but I let none show. He looks at me for a long time and the silence hangs in the gloom of the church. Presently, he leaves the pulpit and comes down to where I'm standing in the aisle and walks slowly around me. I hold the military posture, but I don't like him behind me where I can't see him. What if he should hit me? What if...

  I'm relieved to see him come back into my sight.

  "While I would usually ascribe an incident as occurred yesterday to the hysterical vapors common to the female," he goes on in a musing way as if he'd been thinkin' on it a while, "in your case I believe it is different. I believe the sordidness of your early life has affected your judgment, your character, and perhaps even your very soul."

  He goes back up to the pulpit. "We must pray together. Back on your knees."

  Thump.

  It went on for hours, it seemed—praying and reading from the Bible and more praying and sermons on evil and sin and me, always back to me, me and my early life, me on the ship, me and how I got here, me and the devil that's in me till I was dizzy and ready to keel over in a dead faint.

  Finally, after one last long prayer delivered with his one hand on my head and the other stretched out toward Heaven, he freed me and I ran back to the safety of my school.

  Chapter 7

  Jacky Faber

  General Delivery

  U.S. Post Office

  Boston, Massachusetts, USA

  September, 1803

  James Emerson Fletcher

  Number 9 Brattle Lane

  London, England

  Dear Jaimy,

  I'm going to be writing this letter in little bits and pieces 'cause I know I can't send it out till I see a British ship come in the harbor 'cause that's the only way I can think to get a letter to you 'cause Mistress won't mail my letters to you 'cause she don't think it's right somehow. If you're going to write letters to me, please send them to the address up there on top.

  A lot of the schoolwork here is stupid and useless and I get switched a lot even though I've been nothing but good, but I do like some of the things we do. I specially like the painting class with old Mr. Peet—he's ever so sweet and nice to me. He says I have talent, hut I don't know. He's showing me how to do miniature portraits on disks of ivory—it's marvelous fun slipping the colors around on the slick surface till it looks right and you can get really really fine with it because we've got brushes so tiny there's only like three hairs in them and if you make a mistake you can wipe it off. I'm doing one of you, dear boy, from my poor memory and I know I haven't done you justice but I'm still working on it. When I'm done I'll tuck it in close to my heart. Then I'll do one of me and send it to you and I hope you still want to look at it when you get it.

  They have taught me how to ride, too. I never thought I'd like getting close to horses, from my time in London when it was all I could do to keep from being stomped to death by them, they being such huge beasts with mean tempers, but I find I do like the riding of them, after all. I've been assigned a sweet little mare named Gretchen and though we eyed each other most suspiciously when first we met, we are getting along right well. I often slip over to the stables and pet her and feed her bits of apple and such. Henry Hoffman saddles her up for me and gives me instruction and lets me take her out by myself into the fields behind the school, and it didn't take long at all for me to get good enough to join the rest of the girls in the circle.

  Riding classes are held in this huge round arena that has a dirt and sawdust floor and we get up on our horses and go around in a circle with Herr Hoffman standing in the center snapping his whip and barking out commands. Like, for a while we'll trot, in which we have to post, which is having your bottom make a bump-paddywaddy-bump rhythm on the saddle, then Herr Hoffman shouts "Canter!" and we do that for a while and it's a kind of slow gallop, and then we gallop and that's fast and scary hut exciting. When he says "Halt und veel!" we pull back on the reins and the horse stops and we wheel and go in the other direction. But then you probably already know all this because you're a nob and were born to this stuff and are laughing at me for my greenness, so go ahead and laugh.

  We also go outside and get taught how to jump with the horses—there's a course laid out with low jumps and high ones. I'm just up to the lowest ones now, but that Clarissa is wondrous good at it, I got to admit. She says it comes from being brought up civilized in Virginia, not in some slum like me, and riding to the hounds and all that fox-chasing stuff. I don't know how civilized she really is though. I found out that one of the reasons that Amy won't sit with the other girls at dinner is that she won't sit at the same table as slaveholders and Clarissa's family owns slaves. I thought when I first got here that all these girls were just bits of fluff, but I'm finding that they are pretty political and this country ain't easy with itself in some things.

  Clarissa sure looks good, though, in her scarlet riding habit with the black lapels and the white lace spilling out at her throat and black gloves on her hands. Her jacket has little gold epaulets on the shoulders and is tailored perfectly to her form. She has a high bonnet in the Scottish style that sits up on top of her upswept hair instead of coming down low and tying under the chin like every other bonnet I've seen around here. My own bonnet ties under my chin, and upon seeing Clarissa's, I like mine less. I know that don't say too much for me, but there it is. Clarissa looks splendid, and I hate her for it.

  Clarissa ain't the only one all decked out for Equestrian—every other time, whether for class, meals, or church, the girls got to wear the black uniform dress—but here, I guess they're allowed to dress the way they want to, and given the freedom, they really do it up. Though Clarissa looks the best, there are many others who are close seconds in the way of finery, all in greens and purples and blues and every other color, and all in the finest of weaves and fabrics. I have to be content with putting on one of the dusters, which keeps my dress from getting dusty but also makes me look like a perfect washerwoman. But I am content and do not seek to rise too quickly above my station in life.

  We had a bit of a tiff, this Clarissa and I, and I'm afraid she came out on top, but my wounds have healed. We stay away from each other because Mistress has warned us that we both will be expelled if we get into that sort of thing again, and neither one of us wants that. I know you're a little ashamed of me for this, Jaimy, but I'm being as good as I can be, and I hope you'll understand and forgive me.

  Hark! There's the chimes for supper. More later.

  Back again.

  The only thing I don't understand about the riding is, why do they make us ride sidesaddle? It seems it'd be a lot more stable if we could just throw a leg over on either side, like you boys do. Amy says it's because it looks more ladylike and I says it ain't very ladylike to fall off and roll in the dirt because you can't grasp the horse between your knees and get a proper grip, like. She says it's also because they think we'll hurt our female equipment and not be fit for marriage or able to have babies and such. I think it's a bunch of nonsense—ain't I wrapped my legs around many a spar and never yet hurt myself? Amy says I should stop talking about my knees and legs and such as it ain't ladylike, neither.

  Amy is my new mate. She's a bit stiff and a gloomy Puritan to the core, but I know she's got a good heart. Maybe I can loosen her up a bit and she can give me lady lessons and we'll be good for each other.

  Anyway, I've been going over and taking Gretchen out during some times I can get free and we ride through the fields on Beacon Hill. Beyond the row of houses on Beacon Street it's almost all open field and meadow and it's wondrous pretty in
this fall time. Henry comes along sometimes and he's good company. But don't worry, Jaimy, I'm being good.

  Arithmetic is easy after all that navigation figuring we had to do on the ship, and the French teacher, Monsieur Bissell, is patient with me. I've found that not all the froggies are bad.

  Penmanship and writing is good 'cause I get to write letters like this one in there and Miss Prosser, the teacher, gives us pointers like using those little apostrophe things and how to spell stuff right. That and how to write so it looks pretty.

  And we have Geography with Mr. Yale who also does some history with us and it looks like good stuff for me to learn, like for when I have my little merchant ship {don't you laugh, Jaimy) and I'll need to find my way about. A funny thing—we were all up looking at a map of the world and Mr. Yale asks us to point out where we've been and Clarissa had been the most traveled because she comes from Virginia and had been to the Carolinas and was proud of that, but then I pointed out England and then the Rock of Gibraltar and the Arab lands on the north coast of Africa and then Palma and then the Caribbean Sea and Kingston and Charleston. Mr. Yale said, "A cruise, then?" and I said, "Sort of." Clarissa looked at me all narrow-eyed at that. You can tell that Clarissa and I don't get along all that well.

  I've discovered that the classes are not quite so fixed as I'd thought when I first got here. Like, you might be in Embroidery but leave sometimes for an individual music lesson with Maestro Fracelli, or you might step out of Art for a private lesson in horsemanship. In other words, they don't always know where you are. Heh, heh. And you know me, Jaimy—If they ain't got Jacky Faber lashed down tight, she's apt to be up and off. And I was. I made a trial run yesterday, pretending to be going to the stables, but instead walked a bit down toward the docks. Not all the way, just enough to know I could do it, as do it I must when a ship comes in, to mail these letters. That's how I found the post office. I went out through the kitchen and came back the same way so the staff down there gets used to me going in and out.