Higgins was having a glorious time fitting out the Emerald's cabin and galley, while I went off to see about the prize money. He had taken virtually all of the late Captain Scroggs's stores, as well as a good deal of the choicest of the wines and foodstuffs from the stores of the captured prizes. He left the Captain's place settings to Captain Trumbull, but resupplied us with Dutch plates and French silver and Austrian crystal that he had been ... requisitioning ... from the prizes. It seems that Higgins, for all his fine manners, also has the soul of a pirate.
After Higgins had settled in and had arranged everything to his liking, I gave him a few jobs. One was to take the prize money that the men had given me to give to their wives and sweethearts and to get it to them. A most pleasant task, Miss, he said as he took the pouch and the list of addresses. He had taken off his white steward's coat and was dressed in a fine suit and vest—My uniform when I served Lord Hollingsworth, Miss. Another job was for him to go to Jaim—Mr. Fletcher's home on Brattle Lane and find out what happened to my Judy.
Then I dressed in my uniform, wrapped myself in a cloak that Higgins had purchased for me in a store right off the dock, and went to see Sir Henry Dundas, the First Lord of the Admiralty.
'Course he doesn't see me right off. Why should he, him being the highest man in the Royal Navy and me being a mere girl? Ah, but a girl with a packet of very important papers.
I had gone in the front door of the place and there were crowds of men standing about in various degrees of military finery. Elegance everywhere. Fine legs, fine bows. And a definite frost when I, pulling back the hood of my cloak, marched in and went up to the secretary and said, "My name is Jacky Faber. Lieutenant J. M. Faber. I wish to see the First Lord."
Snorts and snickers all around. The secretary bows to me with great insolence and says with a smarmy smile, "Perhaps you'd like to place your name on a list..."
I whip open my cloak and reach in my jacket front and pull out a letter and stick it in his face. "Perhaps you'd like to give the First Lord this letter? You might first run it by his Intelligence Officer if you are afraid to approach the great man himself." I look out at the clock on the Tower of London and see that it is 11:45. "I will wait for fifteen minutes, no more. If the First Lord reads this and then finds that I have already left, then you will be in serious trouble. Count on it."
He stands there and thinks on this. I take off my cloak and throw it over a chair. No, I am not wearing the white trousers I wore on the ship—I didn't want half the room to faint away—no. Higgins had procured for me a blue lieutenant's jacket, a real one this time, with a high collar and gold piping with military lace threaded through the lapels with a riding skirt in navy blue to match. Lace foams out at my throat and at my wrists. The skirt is flat in front but gathered in the back so that the folds sit up on my rump and then spill down in a graceful way. The toes of my boots peek out beneath.
The secretary shrugs and hands the letter to a man next to him and the man takes it and leaves the room.
I look out the window and down on London. Funny ... Three years ago I was a penniless orphan running around those streets below and now ... Now, what, exactly? I don't know, we'll see. And thinking this, my knees start into shakin'. I suddenly am gripped with fear—What am I doing here? I ain't much different now from that urchin I was then! They'll see through me, they'll ... Calm down. Calm down now. If they see you weaken, they'll eat you alive. Pretend you're acting a part, like you did with Mr. Fennel and Mr. Bean's acting troupe back in Boston. Portia! That's it! From The Merchant of Venice when she went into the men's world dressed as a lawyer to save Antonio's life. That's it. An act. This is just a play and everyone here is just an audience, like any other. Good, my Lord. No, that's Ophelia ... too old-fashioned ... Thank you, My Lord... That's better ... Breathe ... in and out ... slowly ... there.
The letter I gave the man described the happenings on the Wolverine and the dealings with the spies. It mentioned the names Kopp, Luce, Boland, Defiant, and some of the French names contained in the various papers: Devereaux, Caillbotte, Dufy ... but nothing else. The remainder of the papers rest with my lawyer, a Mr. Worden. If I do not return to his office by tomorrow morning, he is directed to turn the papers over to the newspapers on Fleet Street, because in that case I will almost certainly be dead and no longer in need of them.
In ten minutes, another man comes into the reception room and says, "Miss Faber?"
I turn around and frost him with the Look. "Yes?"
"If you will come with me?" and he bows low and directs me through an open doorway. There is a disappointed and highly resentful hum from the other gents waiting to gain an audience. Before going through the doorway, I turn and give the room a deep curtsy and my most insolent Look. Then I turn and sweep through.
I am led up endless hallways and finally into an office, wherein sits a large man behind a desk piled with papers. There is another man in the room, thin, and dressed all in black. He wears spectacles and looks at me with what appears to be no interest at all.
"Where did you get these names?" rumbles the man at the desk. He is large and florid and has a Scots accent. A thick Scots accent.
"A well-born Scottish gentleman does not rise when a lady enters a room?" I ask in a musing sort of way. "And no introductions? Why, I fear the culture is being debased." I ask myself how I could be talking in this way to so noble a personage and I tell myself, Hey, you've talked to captains and commodores and such, so what's the difference? They are merely men, after all. And these men need what I got.
He glowers at me for a while and finally stands up and bows slightly. "My name is Henry Dundas, First Lord of the Admiralty, and this is my adviser on matters of intelligence, Mr. Peel. Will you be seated, Miss?"
In answer to his bow, I whip off one of my grandest curtsies—this is, after all, the first Lord that I have met—and, after the black-clad gent pulls out the chair, Jacky Faber, formerly Little Mary of the Rooster Charlie Gang, places her bottom in that same highly polished and doubtlessly very fine chair, the chair of Sir Henry Dundas, known also as Viscount Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty.
"I will now tell you what happened on HMS Wolverine, my Lord," and I do it.
It takes me about twenty minutes to finish. Then I sit back and wait for their questions. They are not long in coming.
"Why do you think these papers would be of value to us?" rumbles the First Lord.
"Well, my Lord, for one thing, I know you recognized many of the names on that paper I have given you, or you would not have invited me up. Further, I think that you would like to know more about the names on the list that you don't recognize."
"Ummm...," he says, without saying either yes or no, not giving an inch.
"And," I say, puffing up a bit and looking him square in the eye, "I think what is contained in those papers is nothing less than the early plans for Napoléon's invasion of Britain."
"What?" he snorts. "And what makes you think that?"
I think for a moment on what I had read in several of the papers, then I say, "I know, for instance, that Lord Bellingham's Regiment of Foot has taken up quarters at Dover—out of sight behind the cliffs but not out of sight of spies. And I know that the Highland Regiments have been given secret orders to decamp from Peterborough to Folkstone next month. Somewhat secret orders..." I finish with a slightly insinuating smile.
That gets a reaction. Lord Dundas shoots a look at Mr. Peel. "Damn traitors!" he snaps.
"I believe the enemy would find that information very useful, don't you? The Dover area being the narrowest part of the Channel, and it's plain he'd take his army across there. In barges, it seems to be planned, after Boney's fleet manages to destroy ours, or so he hopes."
"How much have you read of these papers?"
I c*ck my head as if I'm thinking. "I've read all the stuff that's in English and French. I can't read much Latin or any German and some of it seems to be in that. And much of it's in code."
"Hmmm...," he says, and looks again at the man in black.
"Does that seal my death warrant then, Sir?"
He doesn't answer the question. Instead, he asks another: "Where are these papers?"
"They are sealed and in the care of my lawyer. He is directed to give them to the newspapers in Fleet Street if I don't return from this interview by five o'clock today."
"You had reason to think we would harm you?"
"You would harm me, or any thing or any body you had to harm in order to win this war. I know that. I am not stupid." I gulp and take a shaky breath. "But if you were to tie me to this chair and torture me to find out the location of the papers, I believe I could hold out till five o'clock. I believe I could."
Viscount Melville is quiet for a while, just looking at me, and then he gives out a short bark of a laugh and says, "I believe you could. Now, what do you want in return for these papers?"
"Besides the joy of knowing that I have served my country? Nothing, except for the matter of the prize money for my men. You can authorize that with one stroke of your pen, Sir. Do it and you shall have the papers on your desk in the morning."
"And that is all? Nothing for you?"
"Will you say, 'Well done, Lieutenant Faber! You are a credit to the Service and good luck on your next posting!' Will you say that?"
He snorts. "No."
"Will you give me my share of the prize money? A Captain's share, for that is what I earned?"
"I cannot."
I shrug. I expected nothing more. "Well then. Just a Letter of Marque, then. It is nothing to you to grant such a request."
He barks out a laugh. "A Letter of Marque? A document authorizing you to be a privateer? Whatever will you do with it?"
"I just might find a use, Sir..."
Sir Henry Dundas looks at the other man. He shrugs and nods. The First Lord looks back at me. He is silent for a while, sizing me up, I think, and then he says, "That is quite a tale you tell. Do you know that you are not unknown to us? That we have received word of you and your actions?"
I am shocked. "Commodore Shawcross has already made..."
"Not Commodore Shawcross. We have been getting reports from our French contacts ... reports of one Captain Jacky Faber, the Female Pirate, who wears a sword and two crossed pistols and who is the Scourge of the Normandy Coast."
My mouth hangs open—it's been less than a week! He goes on.
"La belle jeune fille sans merci, 'the beautiful young girl without mercy,' they call her, she who laughs as she tortures and kills prisoners..."
"That is a lie! I told you what I did there! And I wasn't a pirate. Those were legal prizes!"
"Rumors, Miss, rumors that become stories, stories that become legends." The First Lord of the Admiralty leans back and smiles. "We will meet all your demands, Miss Faber. We shall have all the necessary paperwork drawn up by tomorrow. Please bring the papers you have in the morning. You have my word of honor that there will be nothing untoward done as regards your personal safety."