The beggar in me reaches out and snatches the coin from the air without thinkin' and drops it down my front to free up my fingers and I hops off the piling and rips right into "New York Girls," a real rousin' tune that's sure to please this crowd.
It does. They whistle and stamp and some of 'em roar into the chorus of "Oh, you New York girls, can't you dance the polka" and John Thomas crosses his arms and starts in to dance, which causes his mates to cheer and shout, and so I starts into dancin', too, and that gets 'em cheerin' louder, and so I goes faster and faster and I had forgotten how much I love this singin' and dancin' and showin' off that I completely loses myself in it all, I love it so, and then John Thomas crows out with, "You can't match this step, girl!" and I taunts back, "Can, too!" and, though a part of me thinks that maybe I shouldn't be doin' this, I lifts up my skirts to show the steps and I does the step he did and then I tops it with one of my own and then...
And then I notice that they've all stopped dancin' and singin' and foolin' around and are slinkin' back and lookin' at somethin' over my shoulder. Then I feels a heavy hand on me shoulder and I hears a squeaky male voice that says, "Come with me."
I turns around and looks up into the sweaty face of a man with round, fat, pink jowls.
"Who are you?" I ask, all fearful and stupid and not likin' this turn of events at all.
His eyes are almost buried in the folds of his cheeks and they peer down at me with a feverish glint. He wears a black hat and a coat with a high collar that bites deep into the flesh of his neck. He carries a stout stick.
"I? Who am I, it asks? Well, I'll have it known that I am Constable John Wiggins, the High Sherwiff of Boston." He smugly chuckles. "And you, my girl, are a dirty little twollop what's under awest for Lewd and Lacsiwious Conduct!"
He's got me in the jail now next to the courthouse that I saw on my way down to mail my letter, back when I was happy and didn't know it, and he prodded and poked me with his stick the whole way here with me wailin' and beggin' for mercy but not gettin' any and once I tried to run away down an alley but he caught me and clamped his hand on me neck and I'm cryin', "Let me go let me go let me go..." And he says, "Let you go? I'll let you go when your back is stwipped and stwiped!" And I wails, "Stripped and striped, oh no!" and he keeps his hand on me neck the whole way back and again I see the stocks and the horrid whipping post, oh, please...
Now we're standin' in an open space in front of some cages and he goes over me top part and finds me shiv tucked up me sleeve and looks at it and gives a low whistle. "Well, you are a rum little tiger, ain't-cha? And with a sharp tooth, yet." And he grins and says, "We'll have to find out if you've got any more teeth on you, won't we now?"
"Oh no, Sir, please," I pleads.
He kneels down in front of me with a grunt and says for me to hold me damn tongue or he'll fetch me a whack alongside me head and so I shuts me mouth on the tears of shame that are rolling out of me eyes and down me cheeks as he sticks his hand under me dress and runs his hand up the inside of me legs and I gots to stand there and take it and take it till I thinks I'm gonna lose me mind and me chest is racked with sobs and I starts a high keening sound and my spinnin' mind thinks over and over Dirty and shameful yes, shame on you Jacky Faber the finest of ladies, oh yes just the finest of the ladies, and oh Jaimy I'm so sorry, this is so dirty and shameful, I'm so sorry, I can't help it I can't help it I—
"So. Up the skirts again, eh, you old dog?"
Dimly, I see through me shame and misery that a stout woman has come into the room.
The constable removes his hand from messin' with me lower parts and stands up to face the woman.
"Now, Wife, I was doing my duty checking the mis-cweant for contwaband," he says, all red in the face. "Just look at this wicked blade, Goody. We should stwip the female down, we should, as she might wewy well have another."
Missus Constable casts him a shrewd eye and says that we'll see about that. She pats me all around and sticks her hand in all me private places, then spins me around and does it again and says, "There's nothin' there, 'cept this toy." She holds up my pennywhistle for her husband to see and then flings it into the nearest cage, where it clatters across the stone floor. Then she puts her hand in the middle of me back and shoves me into the cage after me poor whistle.
"Get in there, you little hoor," she says. "And you can stop with yer caterwaulin', as your tears will buy you scant pity here." She takes a large key from a string around her waist and jams it in the lock to my cage and turns it home with a large clack. "This will be your new home, sweetie, at least till we take you out in the morning to Judge Thwack-ham's court. Then it'll be out to the whipping post with you, for sure!"
She gives me a big gap-toothed smile. "You sleep tight, now."
The constable and his wife have left the cell block and I am left alone to take stock of my surroundings and to contemplate my doom. Mistress is gonna kill me, of that there is no doubt. But will I be publicly whipped, too?
There is a narrow wooden bench along the back wall. Next to it is a slop jar. At the other end is a water bucket with a ladle in it. There is a tiny window up high and through it I can see nothing except that night has fallen. That is all. The shame the shame, why couldn't I just have mailed the letter to Jaimy and gone hack home, why cant I he good, why cant I ever he good, why cant...
I go over and sit on the bench and I reach down and pick up the whistle and put my fingers over the familiar holes, and it gives me some comfort as I sit there and wait for whatever's gonna happen to me.
I notice that there is another cage that butts up to mine and has the same bench and same slop jar in it. Other than that, there's a pile of dirty rags in the corner.
I don't want to think about what they're going to do to me or what Mistress is going to do to me, so I lift my whistle and play, as I have done so many times before when I'm down and feelin' low, my "Ship's Boy's Lament."
I'm about halfway through it and I'm hittin' the high notes as long and as mournful as I feel and—
"That's lovely, Miss, but maybe some other time as my poor head is throbbin' somethin' awful and a high tune ain't quite the thing for it right now and poor Gully MacFarland is more in need of a drink from your bucket than for a tune from your pipe."
The pile of rags in the next cell has risen up and become a man. Sort of a man. What once was a man. A very dirty and tousled man. A man who reaches out a grimy paw through the bars toward me.
I shrink back against the wall.
"Now, now, Miss. It's just a drink from that bucket of water that you have there and I have not and that I am wantin' right now. just a little drink of water to soothe the poor throat of Gulliver MacFarland, the Hero of Culloden Moor, who has fallen on hard times through no fault of his own, the good Lord only knows."
I look at the water bucket and its dipper and then I put my whistle back up my sleeve and go to it. The water don't look none too clean—there's a couple of dead spiders floating in the scum that sits on top of it. I pull up the dipper so that the spiders and the scum slide off the water left in it and I take the full dipper and walk across the cell. Being very careful not to have any part of me or my clothing within reach of his outstretched hand, I stretch out my arm and pass him the dipper.
He brings the ladle shakily to his lips, losing a lot of its contents on the way up. He sucks avidly at the water, some of which goes in his mouth and the rest of which runs down through the grizzled stubble on his chin, down his neck and into the filthy lace collar of his shirt. Then he stops suddenly and his ashen face turns a paler shade of white and his eyelids droop and he lets the dipper slip through his fingers and clatter to the floor. He staggers back to his bench and flops down and sticks his head in the chamber pot and throws up, long and loud with much cursing and horrible and disgusting retching sounds.
I'm looking him over, tryin' not to be sick myself. He's got on what was once a blue uniform coat and dirty brown knee breeches with loose buckles and torn stockings below, and, curiously, a tartan plaid sash across his chest.
At last he's done. He gets back to his feet and unsteadily comes back to the bars between our two cages and stands there weaving.
"Give me some more, girl."
I look down at the dipper. It is too close to his cage.
"Kick it over here and I will," I says.
He puts his leg through the bars and kicks the dipper, skittering it across the floor. I pick it up and fill it again, again without spiders, and hand it to him at arm's length. He drinks, and this time he keeps the water down. Satisfied, he flings the dipper back into my cell.
He leans his face against the cold iron bars and lets his arms dangle through. "So, what've they gotcha in for, my pretty little miss—"
I don't get to answer 'cause of loud shouting and laughter from outside the outer door through which the constable and his bride had disappeared after putting me in here, and the door bursts open and a gaggle of brightly dressed women are thrust into the room followed by Constable Wiggins with his club and his wife.
Goody Wiggins waddles over and unlocks my cell and starts shoving the women in. There has to be at least fifteen of them, and every one of them drunk and in high spirits, it seems. I retreat to my bench and sit down and try my best to look invisible.
The key once again locks the cell door and the women mill about and one of them, a large woman with a great expanse of chest and a huge mass of tightly curled bright red hair, spies the man in the next cell and bellows, "Well, if it ain't Rummy Gully MacFarland! Let's have a tune, Gully, damn your eyes! Wiggins busted up a fine party and we ain't done with our carousing yet!"
The other women shout out their agreement. Several link arms and dance about. The air is thick with the smells of perfume and ale, which have mixed with the smell of the man's sickness, and I don't think I've ever seen so much bright clothing in one room before and I'm getting dizzy with it all.
"Sorry, Hortense, my dear," says this Gully, "but that fat fiend over there has taken the Lady Lenore into his foul keeping and I am helpless to entertain you without her."
"Keep it up, Rummy, and I'll break your damned fiddle over your damned head and you'll never play the damned thing again," growls the constable as he and Goody take their leave. The man whose name is Gully don't say nothin' to that, so I guess he takes the threat with all its damnings for real.
"That one there can give you a tune, though," says Gully, pointing at me. The crowd turns as one to gaze upon me cowering on the bench, where I am trying my best to fade into the stonework of the wall.
The one named Hortense comes over and looks down upon me and grins widely, her hands perched on her ample hips. Her cheeks are rouged as red as her hair and she has a round black patch the size of a penny on one cheekbone. She is showing a lot of powdered chest.
"Hey, Mam'selle," she calls over her shoulder to someone in the rear of the bunch, "come see what we've got for you."
The crowd parts and a yellow apparition walks grandly through the hooting and whistling throng. She's tall and slender and is all in yellow, from yellow shoes to yellow stockings to a yellow dress trimmed in yellow lace, to a wide-brimmed yellow hat topped with a great yellow plume. She carries a folded-up yellow parasol and her hair is yellow, too, but I don't think it's natural-like. Her face is long and thin and her skin is smooth with the color of ivory and she wears an expression of wide-eyed wonderment as she brings her yellow eyes to gaze upon me.