...there's Amy...
I blink away the tears and head over to where she is sitting. Unlike the first time I laid eyes on Amy Trevelyne, she now has company at her table—Dorothea and Elspeth and Priscilla, among others—but again she has her nose in a book. Well, we'll soon fix that.
I see that I am attracting considerable attention. Heads are raised and elbows nudge ribs and pointed glances are cast my way, which is as it should be—I do love being the center of attention.
Dear little Rebecca Adams is seated next to Amy, chattering away, a chattering that stops mid-chat as I approach in all my tacky glory.
She looks up at me, her big eyes round, as I tap her on the shoulder and say, "Well, hain't ye the pretty one, Missy," loud enough for all to hear. "Yes, ye are, but roight now whyn't ye take yer pretty li'l butt outta that there chair so's a real laydie kin sit 'er arse down?"
The room is dead silent as a stunned Rebecca gets out of her seat and I plunk myself down in it.
Amy's nose is now out of the book and staring at what she can see of me 'neath this red mop.
"Allo, Miss," I says, echoing the first conversation we ever had. "Me name is Jacky Faber and I'm new 'ere and perhaps you'll be tellin' me why we gots two spoons 'ere?"
Her mouth drops open in a very un-Amy-like way as I reach up and pull off the wig, revealing my still-short locks and my very foxy grin. "Perhaps you'll be givin' yer old mate a bit of a hug and kiss, then?"
The place explodes with excitement. It's Jacky! She's back!
I rise and Amy throws her arms around me and I throw mine around her and Rebecca joins in the hug, too, and there are cries of welcome back! and hooray, Jacky! and...
There is the sound of two sharp raps of a cane on the floor—Mistress Pimm has come into the room. The noise stops. Ramrod straight as always, and no grayer than last I saw her, she casts her eye about till it finally falls on me.
"Take your places, all of you," she says, her voice low, her gaze expressionless, seemingly not surprised by my sudden appearance. The girls shuffle about to again stand behind their chairs. When all is quiet, she continues.
"I see that our wandering child has returned to us, and that is good. I will now ask her to give us the grace. Miss Faber, if you will."
I clasp my hands in front of me and begin. "Thank you, Lord, for this food that we are about to receive and for which we are most grateful," I say, about to sail into my usual glib performance. But this time, as I look out over their faces, I suddenly find I cannot do it. All my dear sisters ... I try, but I cannot. It's all too much ... too much.
I choke up.
"And th-thank you all for the kind friendship y-you have sh-shown me over the years ... and..."
I bury my face in my hands and sob away. I did not think this would happen, but it did. I thought I was hard, but I am not. I am not...
"Perhaps, Miss Howell," I hear Mistress say, "you will complete the grace, as Miss Faber seems overcome with rather unseemly emotion."
Miss Howell, Connie Howell, the very pious girl who has had very little use for one Jacky Faber in the past, steps up and delivers. "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for bringing our lost friend back into our midst. It needs must make us think of the parable that You Yourself spoke unto us, that of the Shepherd and his Lost Sheep—how ninety and nine sheep were safe in the fold but how the true shepherd went out looking for the one lost lamb, and when he did find it, he layeth it upon his shoulders, saying to his friends, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.'" She pauses, and then simply says, "Amen."
I always thought that I could sling scripture around with the best of them, but Connie sure nailed me this time.
"Amen!" chorus the other girls, and all take their seats.
"Thank you, Miss Howell," says Mistress before she herself sits down. "We shall all take our dinner, and after that we shall call upon Miss Faber for a recounting of her recent travels. I fear that scant other, possibly more worthy, instruction shall take place this afternoon, but so be it."
We have our dinner, and when we are done, I stand up and do it, and I lay it on.
"Oh, you my sisters, attend to me,
You who have braved both wild and stormy seas,
and suffered the cruelest of tyrannies.
And you who have suffered durance most vile,
Take a cup and offer it up and listen now
to a happier tale of work, song, and travail,
on a trip down the American Nile..."
I may not be Virgil, but I can lay it on good and thick.
Chapter 10
Lieutenant James Fletcher
Onboard HMS Dolphin
Approaching Boston Harbor
Massachusetts, USA
Jacky Faber
Onboard the schooner Nancy B. Alsop
Somewhere in that same Boston
Dear Jacky,
Well, I shall probably see you very soon, as we are no more than a day's sail from Boston. I say "probably" in the event you have been carried off by Hottentots, wild Red Indians, Pyrates, or some such, which, given the happenings of the past three years, is not entirely unlikely.
We had smooth sailing on the way over and I only hope that the mission to which you have been committed will play out as smooth, but I have my doubts as to that—there is talk amongst the officers about this device that is going to be loaded aboard and I have uneasy feelings about it. I overhear Dr. Sebastian saying things like "heavy atmospheric pressure" and "being so small, she won't need much air." Just what part this "device" will play in this supposedly purely scientific expedition, I do not know, as I have not been told. But I can imagine who the "she" is.
The ship's company did prove convivial—except for Flashby, of course, but he has kept his distance from me, at least for now. I believe he knows I shall not pass up an opportunity to call him out and he does want to provoke me. I know you would not like to hear this, Jacky, but the scoundrel has exercised what turns out to be his considerable, if false, charm, and is well liked by the other officers. Even I have found it hard to suppress a laugh at some of his stories and jokes told at the mess table.
Captain Hudson is an excellent commanding officer, firm but fair and a thoroughgoing seaman. He has told me that I will not be confined to the ship when we reach Boston, saying that Intelligence be damned, he's not going to treat a gentleman like a common unrated seaman, and for that I am grateful. When in Boston, I shall be able to take you out to dinner, if not to bed. I should greatly prefer the latter, but I must accept my lot.
Well, I must go on watch now, and so I will conclude. Should the Fates prove kind this time, I shall soon be able to place this letter in your hand, and that prospect soothes my worried mind somewhat.
In any case, dear one, till we meet again, I remain yr most humble and etc....
Jaimy
Chapter 11
"...and that is how I almost got married," I say, heaving a huge, theatrical sigh and wiping away an imaginary tear. "End of story. Sniff."
"I am sorry for you, Sister," says Amy Trevelyne. "But I am glad that you found your way back to us and have regained your good spirits in spite of it all."
We are up in the hayloft of the big barn at Dovecote, the estate of the family Trevelyne in Quincy, Massachusetts. It has always been one of our favorite places to lie about and talk and to tell each other our hopes and dreams. We have just gotten back from a fine ride about the meadows and fields in the late fall air and I am lying sprawled on my back in the still-warm straw and it feels oh so lovely. The horses we rode are being cooled and curried and put up by the stablemen below, and I feel a bit guilty about it—for one who was born common and raised as a beggar, I certainly find it easy to slip into the ways of the rich. I pick up a tasty-looking piece of new hay that still has its head of bearded barleycorn on it and I stick it between my teeth and chew on the end, musing on the happenings of the last six weeks—London, the outfitting of my vessel, the leave-taking, the journey over, and our arrival back in dear old Boston.
"Still, Amy, I wish the marriage had happened," I say, shaking my head to get it back in the present.
"You are only sixteen years old, Sister, you have time enough," says Amy.
"Lots of people get married at sixteen. Younger, even."
"Yes, but the quality do not."
"Oh? And I am suddenly of the quality?"
"You'll do," she says, and goes on. "Martha Custis married George Washington at age twenty-nine. Of course, she was a widow, but even before that, when she had wed Daniel Custis, she was two years older than you. And our second president, John Adams, became interested in Abigail when she was fifteen, but they didn't marry until she was twenty."
"Umm," I say, reserving judgment on that. "And what about you?"
"I am not ready for that sort of thing just yet," she says, as she has so often before. I take that with a grain of salt but hold my tongue, for now.
While I'm stretching in the warm straw, Amy sits cross-legged next to me with her portable writing desk balanced on her knees. She bends over the paper laid thereupon, writing away furiously, pausing only to ask me pertinent questions as I relate the happenings on my recent trip down the Mississippi River. Finally, we are done.
"And with a last, full-throated, stentorian bellow, Mike Fink disappeared around a bend in the river and I saw him no more. End of story, thank God."
"Well, there are a few gaps to be filled," says Amy, still scribbling away, "but I suppose that will do for now."
I put my hands behind my head and look off into the high rafters. "And just how scarlet will you paint me this time, Amy?" For one who has never yet been caught breathing hard in an amorous situation, she is certainly not loath to portray my poor fallible self in such a way.
"I only write down what you tell me, Jacky."
Uh-huh, and with a few literary embellishments here and there...
"Well, I'm sure Mother Fletcher will be delighted," I say, imagining the sheer joy that Jaimy's mother must have felt upon seeing my wedding to her darling son turn into a shambles. I look at my dear friend through narrow eyes. "You have become quite the literary sensation, Miss, both here and in London. I hear your works are to be translated into French, even."
"Well," says Amy, "my family is quite mortified, you'll be glad to hear. It's not done, you know. One such as I to publish, I mean." She writes down another few words and sniffs a ladylike sniff. "If the literary establishment will not publish my poetry, then it will have to put up with my ... prose efforts."
I knew that Amy had sent a sheaf of her poems to a Mr. Thomas Wentworth, the editor of a high-toned Boston literary journal, and he sent them back saying that she "ought not publish," for various reasons, chief of which was that she was a young girl of gentle birth and because of that her efforts could not possibly be up to snuff. Last week I was at my local bookseller's on Cornhull Street and I managed to find some of Mr. Wentworth's writing. I can tell you one thing—Thomas Wentworth may be a fine and righteous Abolitionist, but as a poet, he ain't a patch on Amy Trevelyne's snowy white drawers.
"Your very purple prose efforts, Sister," says I, squirming deeper into the wonderfully warm hay. "And speaking of marriage prospects, quality or not, how are things between you and our fine Mr. Pickering?"