Part 5 (2/2)

”It's my own little tune, 'The s.h.i.+p's Boy's Lament' I call it. I made it up as a lament for a mate of mine what died. Now it serves as a lament for a poor girl what didn't get to be no older than seventeen.”

We stand there for a while and then turn to go. I look up at the windows in the church. They are curtainless and blank, like the eyeholes in the Death Angels. ”That's where he lives, then.”

”Who? Reverend Mather, you mean? Yes.”

We leave the churchyard through another break in the stone wall and enter the open meadow. I stop. There is another grave here, outside the wall, in the meadow. It is not old and it does not have a stone.

”What do you think this is?” I asks Amy.

”A grave. But being outside the churchyard and having no stone ... Maybe a criminal...” She s.h.i.+vers. ”...or maybe a suicide.”

I look up at the vestry windows and in one of them I think I see someone there, someone who ducked back upon seein' me look up.

”Our hair is dry enough. Let's go.”

Why am I not shocked to hear that I am to be the one to join Mistress and Reverend Mather for supper? I am delivered of the note by Betsey, who doesn't miss my groan of despair when I open it and read it. ”It will be all right, Miss,” she says. I have the feeling that the downstairs staff has somehow adopted me in my feeble attempts at ladyhood.

The chimes ring out and I walk into the dining room and advance to my place at the head table and stand there at attention while all the others file in. Amy gives me a sympathetic glance as she goes by to her lonely post.

At last Mistress and the Reverend Mather walk in and I hear the rustle of the other girls rising. Mistress does the introduction and I bob and say my part as I have been coached by Amy, and the Preacher says his and nods stiffly and then pulls out the chair for Mistress and she sits down. I hear the rustle behind me again and I sit down, and then the Preacher reaches out his arms and does the grace, and it is long and long.

At last he sits down and the serving begins.

I have time to examine him before they start in on me.

His face is long and squared off at the jaw. His hair is black and speckled with gray and cut very short, prolly 'cause he wears a powdered wig for any big occasion like when he's preaching in his church on Sunday. His black frock coat is in need of a brus.h.i.+ng and looks quite old and out of style, even to my eye. The skin of his face is very white and his cheekbones poke out through the skin stretched across them. His lips are thin and purplish and held in a tight line the way a man bearing the pain of a toothache will hold his mouth. His jaw has been sc.r.a.ped clean of beard but is still dark from the stubble that is left in the whiteness of his face. In his temple, a blue vein pulses. Beat. Beat. Beat...

Abby appears with the meat platter and serves Mistress first, then the Preacher, then me. I don't take a lot 'cause I know I ain't gonna feel much like eating. It's Annie who brings the potatoes and greens.

”You come to us by a strange path, Miss Faber,” says Reverend Mather.

”Yes, Sir,” I say. I wonder how much Mistress has told him. As to that, I wonder how much she herself was told about my past.

”What possessed you to get on the s.h.i.+p in the first place?” He carefully places a forkful of food in his mouth and chews evenly and slowly and does not speak until he swallows, his Adam's apple working up and down in his neck. ”With over four hundred rough men.”

How to put this in its best light?

”I was a penniless orphan, with no relations to help me, Sir.” I decide not to put on my Poor Little Orphan bit, but instead play it straight, as I think that might go down better with Mistress. ”In my desperation, it seemed the best way for me to better my condition.”

And I was right, I reflects to myself.

”Have you ever received any religious instruction and guidance?” Chew, chew, swallow, Adam's apple bob, beat...beat...beat of the vein in the temple.

”Deacon Dunne, the Dolphin's chaplain, was very good to me and the other boys and tried to steer us onto the path of righteousness.” He did try, and some of his teachings even took.

”The 'other boys'?” he says, giving it a nasty twist. ”I cannot imagine that you came through that experience without some stain upon your virtue?”

I am bringing up some food to my mouth for appearance's sake but instead put it back down. What's he getting at?

”I tried to be as good as I could be, Sir. I have always tried to be that,” I says. I push my food around on my plate and wish I was someplace else. ”And I had the good luck to have good friends who looked out for me.”

”Hmmm,” he says, a flush rising from his collar. His eyes travel over me quite frankly. I feel a blush rising to my own cheeks and I put down my fork and stare at my hands folded in my lap. I don't like this. I don't like it at all.

”She has given me her word that her honor is intact,” says Mistress. She looks sideways at the Preacher with a definite chill in her voice. ”I have accepted her at her word.”

Thank you, Mistress, I say to myself.

But he is not to be cowed. ”Perhaps we should continue your religious education, then.” He pats his thin slash of a mouth with his napkin and makes a grimace that I take to be a smile. ”Individual instruction might be the best thing in this case.”

That night, when Amy and I are in for the night, I say, ”That preacher cove gives me the creeps, for sure.”

She is silent for a bit and then says, ”There are things said about that man. Be careful, Jacky.”

Chapter 4.

We are in Music and most of the chorus has come down from its perch and Maestro Fracelli is gathering up his music sheets when Clarissa decides to have a little fun with me. She approaches me with Lissette de Lise and a few others in tow and says, ”Jacky, dear. We have heard that you can play upon some sort of fife. Will you favor us with a tune?” Fake smiles and the beat-beat of the eyelashes.

I can tell right off that they mean to make sport of me, but the whole chorus is listening in on this so I says what the h.e.l.l, I've faced tougher crowds than this, and so I pull my whistle from my sleeve and place it on my lips and I starts in on ”The Eddystone Light.”

First I play the melody on the whistle and it's a right sprightly bouncy little jig and then I throws back my head and sings out the first verse: ”My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light,

And he slept with a mermaid one fine night!

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