I bet you will, thinks I. I've got to get that Annie aside and tell her some of the facts of life. And of sailors.
I go up the ladder, and Ezra and Davy walk back downtown together, seaman and lawyer, brothers at least for this night.
Chapter 32
"But I like him," says Annie.
I had gotten up close to her on Monday morning, when we're in the kitchen scrubbing up the breakfast pots.
"You don't know the little weasel like I do. You'll catch something from him. Or he'll give you a baby and run away to sea."
"I can't believe that," she softly says.
"What's he promised?"
"That he'd think of nothing but me when he's out on the sea."
"That's prolly true," I admits, "but that don't mean much. Will you give him any token?"
"A lock of my hair, braided and tied up in one of my ribbons."
"Aye, and it's lovely I'm sure, Annie, and he'll show that to all his mates so they'll think he's a mighty lover what's broken many a young girl's heart, yours included, you can be sure of that, too."
"But what's the harm in that? I know that I'll probably never see him again after tomorrow, but it's nice to dream on things, sometimes."
"Harrumph," I grumps. It occurs to me that I'm prolly acting a lot like Mistress right now.
"He said he'd swing in his hammock at night with the lock clutched in his hand and next to his heart and all fear banished from his mind, knowing I was safe and warm back on land, no matter what cruel fate awaited his poor self."
"Oh, please, that's what they all say. Davy does have a gift of gab, I'll own, if nothing else," I say, thinkin' back to when he talked himself aboard the Dolphin when there was plenty more boys bigger and stronger than him. Then again, I done the same thing. But he's prolly not lyin' about lying there in the dark with the token to his breast, for it does get cold and lonely out there. "All right. Just you be careful is all. The Davy I remember don't think with his head, that's for sure. What's the rascal got planned for today?"
"Just a walk in the Common. Then a bite to eat, and then I got to go home at my usual time, you know that, or else my father would kill me."
"Well, you mind the tall grass in the Common, Annie."
"I know how to be careful, Jacky. You're the one what needs to be more careful, from what I've heard."
I ain't got nothin' to say to that.
Davy comes up the hill at about eleven in the morning and I'm layin' for him. I've been about jumpin' out of my skin all yesterday and today, I'm so keen to talk to him.
I head him off at the kitchen door. "Come with me," I say, and we go around to the side and then we're up in my room.
"Keep your voice down and if anyone tries that door, you dive out the window, you hear?" I had put a small wooden wedge under the door to keep us from being surprised.
"Pretty nice kip," says Davy. "How come you're separate from the others?"
"I got busted down from lady to serving girl," I say, makin' myself not hang my head.
"Sounds like something you'd do." He tests the bed. "Why don't you call down for Annie to pop up here for a bit?"
"She's a good girl and a nice girl and a good friend to me and I don't want the likes of you to hurt her—"
"Ah, Jacky Faber, the Mother Superior, lookin' out for her little flock, ain't that sweet..."
"I mean it, Davy..."
"Still the bossy one, ain't you, Jacky? Now boys, dress up in these pretty little uniforms I made for ye! Now boys, stand up all straight in a line here! Now boys, wear the cute little caps! Now boys...." He looks at me all serious. "Look, Jacky, she's the first real girl I've met since I got on the Dolphin— you don't meet many of 'em in my line of work, you might recall—and, hell, I've only been ashore about a week and a half total since I signed on to this jolly seafarin' life."
"Still..."
He sneers and pokes me on the breastbone with a stiff finger. "No real girls, 'cept for you, of course, but you never did me much good in that way, savin' it all for Jaimy like you was ... and is, I reckon. Aww ... is that your Jaimy up there on your wall now?"
Davy and I are back in our old stance—nose to nose, eyes narrowed, lower lips jutting out, fingers pointing, each at the other, and snarling.
"You don't know what it's like to be me, Davy, then or now."
"Maybe I don't care what it's like to be a bossy, pigheaded little Cockney chambermaid what thought she was gonna be a lady."
That hurts me and I jerk like I've been hit. I got nothin' to say to that. He knows he hit home 'cause he looks a little ashamed and he don't follow it up with any more jibes.
I make an effort to settle down. Fighting with Davy over female virtue ain't exactly what I had planned for this morning. "I'm sorry. I just don't want you to hurt her is all."
"I'm not going to hurt her, Jacky." He says this gently and I half believe him.
"All right," I say, calm now. I sit down in my chair and fold my hands in my lap. "Please, now tell me what's up with jaimy."
Davy goes over and flops down on my bed. He has gotten longer and leaner, for sure. He is turning into a fine-looking man and it is easy to see why Annie is taken with him. "All right, jack, I'll tell you." He picks up my pillow and sniffs it and then crams it back under his head. I'm glad to see there is no tar in his hair.
"On the way back to England, he was Mr. Midshipman and Tink and me and Willy was Ordinary Seamen, so our paths didn't cross much anymore, but I will say that Jaimy never lorded it over us but always found a way, like if he had to give us an order, to do it in a way that didn't make us feel like dirt. And, sometimes, if we was some of us on watch in the middle of the night, we'd sit and talk and joke like in the old days. Then we rounded Margate and were taken into the docks on the Thames and little men with notebooks swarmed over the Dolphin and declared she was not fit for sea, her knees having been weakened by the blast of the pirate's fireship that day," says Davy. "You got something to drink here?"
I had sat on the edge of the bed to listen and I got up and got him a glass of cider from the jug I had put up here for just such a purpose. It is a little bit hard, and I figure, shamelessly, that it might loosen his tongue a bit.
"Ummm," he says. "Good."
He puts the glass down on my bedside table and taps it with his finger. I fill it up again. "I like you as a servin' girl, Jacky," he says. I give him a low growl. He goes on.
"Anyway, we're back and the Dolphin's crew is bein' broke up and Tink and Willy and me volunteer to go on the Raleigh, and bein' seasoned man-o-war's men we are taken on, and we're happy that at least some of the Brotherhood is still together, but then some brass hat from the Endeavor comes aboard and he outranks our Captain and he takes a bunch of men, includin' Tink, to his ship, and then two days later another bleedin' Captain comes up and takes Willy and some others for the Temeraire. Pissed us off, it did, but what could we do?
"But anyway, the Raleigh is layin' next to the Essex, which Jaimy is posted to, and he comes over and says to come to his house and where's Tink and Willy, but I says they're gone to sea, it's just him and me now, so we go off together, brothers again as soon as we're out of sight of the Royal Navy and we gets in a coach and I'm feelin' like a proper nob, I am, and we're laughin' and rememberin' old times, but then we get to his house, which is a pretty fine place, I can tell you, and we go in and I meet his mother, and that dragon takes one look at me and I'm off to the servants' quarters for a meager bite with cold tea and then I'm out the back door by myself. I ain't seen Jaimy since then as the Raleigh made sail the next day and I was gone."