I take up the knife again and cut the chest and back pieces into four small parts each, so we can better divide the remainder among us.
"Here, Lissette, try the ribs—ain't much meat but they crunch up real good."
"Ummm," she says in appreciation. In the near silence, we can hear her fine, wellborn teeth crushing the ribs.
"I could see this in some nice gravy," says Katy, chewing on her own bones.
"Some gravy yes, Kay-tee, but maybe also a fine Bordeaux, non?" says the French aristocrat to the raw frontier girl crouched next to her. I doubt Katy has ever tasted a fine wine like that, or any wine at all, for that matter, but she nods in reply. I think also that Lissette de Lise has never before eaten a rat, but, hey, I have tasted fine wines, as well as rats, and I, too, nod in agreement.
"We could call it raton au vin, eh, Lissette?" I say, and she laughs, then notices Rebecca crawling into the circle on hands and knees, looking at the remaining pieces. "Here, ma petite, try this," says Lissette, picking up a chunk of back and holding it under the girl's nose. Rebecca inhales deeply and then opens her mouth.
Well, that's six of us, at least, to divide up the three millers coming tomorrow.
Conversation ends and there is heard only the crunching of bones and smacking of lips and grunts of pleasure. Were it not for the fact that we do not growl and snap, we are like any pack of wild wolves around a kill.
***
Late that night, long after Storytime—wherein I told them some more about my wild roving in the Emerald, which got me some hurrahs from my more adventurous sisters and a muttered "Not only a tramp but a thief, as well," from Constance Howell's direction—yes, late that night I found myself back in the storeroom for the sole purpose of trying that damned latch again. I had left word to be awakened at one thirty in the morning, figuring all sailors not on watch would be dead asleep by then. I felt my way down to the Rat Hole and found Hyacinth and Frances carving away. We lit the candle and in I went, my shiv in my hand. I stood and put the candle on the workbench and shielded the flame with a box between it and the door. Wouldn't want someone outside the door seeing a glow of candlelight around the edges.
I slid the knife through the door crack, next to the latch, and lifted up, hoping that maybe it was a simple up-and-down thing, but no ... nothing. I pulled the door inward, and no, nothing. Damn!... All right, calm down, you ... I next put the point of the knife on what I thought might be the metal slug of a cross-latch and tried to pull it sideways, bit by bit. Still nothing. Damn!
What I wouldn't give for a look on the other side!
I give up for now and go back through the Rat Hole. Tomorrow is another day, and I must content myself with that.
I crawl out of the Pit and climb back up into my kip, where I snug up next to Annie and Sylvie and Rebecca and so settle myself to bed.
Good night, Jaimy, I pray that you are well...
Chapter 34
Word of our progress has cheered the girls mightily and it is an eager bunch that gathers for breakfast after we stand down from Sin-Kay's inspection line, but my failure to loosen the latch last night does not cheer me. Ah, well ... begone, dull care, I'll try again tonight. I go up and take my bowl of burgoo from Hughie.
"That's a real good story you're tellin', Mary," says Hughie. "I like it a lot."
"Thanks, Hughie," I say, reaching through and ruffling his hair.
"I think it's stupid," sneers Nettles. "Story about some stupid girlie jumpin' around with a pig sticker, thinkin' she's somethin' hot. But she ain't 'cause she's just a stupid girl and girls ain't good for nothing but one thing, and you know what that thing is, don't you, girly?"
"Sod off, Sammy, you stinking little snot-bag," I snarl back at him. I hand off my bowl to Rebecca and thrust my cup through the bars. "Shut up and give me my water."
"Tell me what that thing is, then I'll give you your water, Smart-mouth." He giggles and does not give me the water.
"Give me the water or I'll yell for Sin-Kay."
"All right, here's your water," he says, smiling at me. He dips my cup and hands it to me. "But now I'll tell you what girls are good for..."
And he proceeds to mouth a string of obscene fantasies starring him and me.
"...and then, after you do that for a while, I'm gonna—"
"You need your mouth washed out, boy!" I shout and dash my cup of water into his face. He rears back shocked, the water dripping down his face and onto his shirt. Then he lunges at the bars, his arms reaching through to grab at me.
"I'll get you, you little bitch!"
I dance just outside his reach. "No, you ain't, Sammy! You ain't gonna get me or anyone like me, ever! You know why? It's 'cause you're a disgustin' little slug what even your mother couldn't love! When did she throw you out? As soon as she saw your ugly face, I bet! And I bet she washed her hands three times when she saw the back of you for good!"
His face is against the bars, twisted with rage, and his fingers strain to get me, but they can't and he knows it. Finally he pulls back his arms and wipes off his face. When he removes his hands, the rage in his face has been replaced with one of low animal cunning.
"Hey, Smart-mouth, you like this here Dummy?" he asks, punching Hughie in the shoulder. He saw me give Hughie that pet before. I shouldn't have done that in his sight, I shouldn't have done it, I realize now with growing dread.
"He's a good boy. Leave him alone," I say, knowin' it ain't gonna do no good. He punches Hughie's shoulder again, hard.
"How do you like it when I hit your Dummy?" This time he balls up his fist and bashes Hughie full in the face. Hughie cries out, and Nettles hits him again. And again.
I rush up to the bars. "Hit him back, Hughie, hit him!" I cry, furious with Nettles and with myself.
But Hughie does nothing; he just rocks back and forth, saying, "Can't. Mister said can't. Can't." And then he starts crying. He doesn't even hold up his hands to protect his face. Blood begins pouring from his nose.
Nettles keeps hitting him and looking over to watch my anguished, helpless reaction. I know what I have to do.
I turn away and say, "Wilhelmina." I catch her eye and look to the door. She nods and soon all Nettles can see is a wall of girls' backs as they eat their burgoo.
Having no audience, he soon tires of his sport, and with a final taunt of "How's that, Smart-mouth?" he leaves.
I weave my way through the wall of girls to the gateway and reach through and pull Hughie's weeping, bloody head to my chest, as close as I can, what with the bars between us.
"Don't you worry, Hughie. He's gonna get his," I say, and pet his curly hair. "He's really gonna get his, and it's gonna be soon, I promise you that."
Other girls join me in laying on hands and murmuring soothing sounds, and his crying slowly ebbs, then stops.
Later, when Hughie's all calmed down and is, in fact, asleep, I go down to check on the work at the Rat Hole.
All about me, in that space below the Stage, are hanging not only the petticoat strips from before, but now full petticoats and drawers because of the laundry soap I found in the storeroom. I push my way through them, and though dry, mostly, they are stiff as boards from the salt water in which they were washed. Well, better clean than soft, is the general feeling.
"How's it going?" I whisper when I reach the work site.
"Real good," says Annie, handing the shiv to Rose for her turn. "I'm sure everyone could fit through now, and we're squaring it off so it won't be noticeable from either side when we get the boards up."
"Ummm," I say, inspecting the job. "Right, the boards. I can't wait to get them up. We could be discovered so easily. The first blow, we do it"
I stand back up. Katy's over setting up the extra bows. There are girls about her, rounding off arrows with the file, then lashing down arrowheads and feathers. Good.
"Hooks down!" comes the call from above, and I roll out from under the Stage and into the Pit. The hooks come snaking down. I nod to Clarissa and to Rebecca, and they nod back. They are ready. Rebecca comes down with me to the tubs.
"'Ello, Mick and Keefe!" I crow. "'Ow good to see your 'andsome, smiling faces!" We fasten the hooks.
"Never mind that," says Mick, "just get on wit' it."
"Now, now Mickey, it never does no good to rush a girl. You should know that, bein' a well-traveled man o' the world and all. First, the tubs, then the Main Event."
By way of answer, the tubs are jerked out of sight and return streaming with salt water, and clean. Good boys.
I undo the drawstring of my drawers and give them a bit of this ... and maybe a little bit of that ... I like to think that I'm being artistic-like about this whole thing, swirling about and all, and in a kind of dance—I sure would like to have some musical accompaniment, though, as that would really help the act out a lot. Maybe an oud and a bouzouki or two, and a djembe drum, like that time in Morocco when I ... well, never mind. When I'm done and I pull up my drawers and pull down my camisole, I feel that I've given them their money's worth. I have always tried to do that when I am in performance.
That's usually the end of it, but today it ain't. As I'm buttoning up, I follow the gazes of the two men above me and see that they fall on none other than Clarissa Worthington Howe, who has chosen this moment to be sitting on the stairs leading from the Stage down into the Pit, washing her feet and lower legs. She does it very slowly and very carefully. When she gets to washing her upper calves, she rolls her drawers up over her knees ... well up over her knees.
"Coo, look at that," breathes Mick.
"Eh, Jacky," says Keefe, "y'think that blondie there would ever do what you do?"
I look over as if surprised to see Clarissa doing her act on the Stage stairs. The act we had, in fact, rehearsed.
"Wot? Wot's the matter with me bum, then, that you want to look at others? I thought mine was lookin' 'specially pert and sassy today."
"Aye, it's looking right fine, it is. But ... that blondie. Y'think she'd do it?"
"Ah, nay, Mick, she's much too pure and beautiful. If you were to see her bare arse, yer eyes would start out of yer head, and you'd be blind forever by the creamy goodness of it all, you would, and ye'd never be able to speak again. You'll have to make do wi' me scrawny butt," I say, my hands still on my waistband. And then I say, in a musing sort of way, "But y'know, Mick, she has lately been talking about takin' a bath, she has—half out of her mind with it, she is. Y'see, back at her castle—she is a princess, you know—she took a bath every day, twice a day in summer, and once a week in milk, and doing without here on the ship is about to drive her balmy, it is ... So stick around, lads, she might give you a show yet."
Clarissa, pretending not to hear all this, gets up, stretches, and languidly goes up the stairs to the Stage, slowly rotating her hips.
"Ooooh, my...," says Mick and Keefe in wonder.
"Nay, nay, put it out of your heads, lads. Stick with a nice, easy lady like me," says I, looking for an opening.
It comes.
"Yer a loony, you are. Talking like that and showing yer-self to us that way. You ain't no lady at all. Yer a loony," says Mick, disappointed now that Clarissa has taken her exit.