"It ain't exactly the fashion," says Abby, with a laugh. It's always a joy to come to town with the plump and jolly Abby, she of the red curls stuffed up in her cap, she with her wandering eye for the lads—won't be long before she's married and dandling a fat baby on her knee, I'll wager.
"Don't matter," says I.
This morning, too, I gather up some sooty ashes from the edge of the fire and put them in an old cracked jar, and, let's see, I'm going to need an extra bucket of water in my room and some old ragged towels that no one will miss, an old mop.
I get all these things and I sneak them up to my room and stash them in the shadows where the roof rafters meet the floor.
Then I go down and attend to my duties.
***
I am easy in my duties now. I know how to make bread and am skilled in washing and ironing, and under Peg's sweet guidance, I am learning to cook. I keep up with my studies on the sly and steadily improve in my painting and my music—I can read the little musical notes now and Maestro Fracelli is showing me some things on the fiddle as I have shown interest 'cause of listening to Gully. I'm even doing some embroidery. Mistress would be proud, if she knew, but if she knew she'd prolly beat me for neglecting my duties, so it's better she don't know.
In turn I've been helping Rebecca with her reading and writing and math, she being the little girl I talked to my first day here as we sat all miserable doing our samplers. Poor thing, she's really too young to be here and seems so lost. So, anyway, I'm paying back in instruction for the instruction I've been getting, and that seems fair to me.
Clarissa doesn't bother much with me anymore, now that I have been, in her eyes, completely destroyed, and am no longer worthy of her steel—though she does keep a wary eye on me since that little thing with Randall at the Grand High Tea. The serving of the meals is no longer the humiliation that it was at first. I am used to it now, and so is everyone else. It is merely a job to be done and, it is to be hoped, done well.
We do the noon dinner and then clean up, and later I help Dolley, Miss Frazier, that is, serve the afternoon tea, as it is her turn. She is gracious and charming and she orders me about with a brisk but kind manner that I hope I will be able to show someday if I ever have servants, which ain't likely. Dolley is going to be a fine lady, I can tell. She already is one.
***
When I help serve the evening meal, I notice how the Preacher's eyes seek me out every few minutes for a split second and then dart away. Not plain enough for anyone else to notice, of course, he is much too careful about that. But I do, and if I had any doubts as to which girl he was talking about last night, I don't have them now.
What I can't figure, though, is how he can appear almost sane now, in the daytime, and then turn into a raving lunatic at night.
Maybe he's a werewolf.
This night I sit and talk with Amy and I give her The Rake's Progress to read and I say for her to take it with her downstairs but she says no, Mistress will take it if she sees her reading it—unseemly, you know—and so she will read it only when she is upstairs here with me.
And so we each curl up with our books and we read till we hear the call for prayers downstairs and I tell Amy not to come back up 'cause I'm going to be all right with the nightmares tonight and she shouldn't risk getting caught hanging about with the servants—unseemly you know—and she agrees and goes below.
I read for a bit and then when things go completely quiet in the school, I get out of bed and take off my nightdress and pull on Charlie's pants that are black now and quite tight from the dye bath, but that's good 'cause I don't need any extra fabric flappin' around me tonight. I put on my black sweater and over that my black vest. I think about shoes, but I know I can climb better without 'em, so I stick to my bare feet, which have always served me well in the past, no matter what the rigging.
I cram my faithful old black watch cap down over my hair and low on my brow. Then I go to my jar of soot and take some and rub it over my face to take the white shine off of it and I do the same to my feet.
Then I go and pull down the stairway and go up to the widow's walk.
He is not yet at his window, but somehow I feel he will be tonight, because of the glances he sent my way at supper this evening, so I put my foot on a stout branch of the overarching oak tree and begin to climb.
The moon is rising and that makes it easier for me to make my way through the branches, but it also makes it easier for me to be spotted in spite of my burglar's gear and so I am careful to move slowly.
Soon I am over the trunk of the tree, midway between the two buildings, and I pick out the branch that will lead me to the church. I begin to climb out on it and it sinks under my weight until it touches the roof and makes it easy for me to step onto the tiles of the church roof. When I get off, the branch lifts a bit, so I will have to leap up for it on my return.
I quickly pad over the roof to the gable above the window from which he holds forth, and I nestle down into the shadows of the gutter to await his arrival.
It occurs to me while I sit there and wait that most girls might find this a strange and scary thing to do, but to me it ain't much different from being on watch at three in the morning and sitting astride the main royal yardarm and taking in a line to trim a sail that don't want to be trimmed 'cause of shifting winds.
Then, too, I reflect on how me and the gang in Cheapside would climb to the tops of high buildings—first up on a low shed, then up to a low roof and then to a higher one, then higher and higher as the buildings were all close together and we could jump from one to the other till we got to the top of the highest one. We did this sometimes for safety, like when some of the bigger gangs was at war and we needed to stay out of the way, or when the police was keen on nabbing us, 'cause of what we'd been up to, but mostly we did it 'cause when we was up there we could spy out any profitable mischief down below—a pie cooling on a windowsill, or some clothing hung out to dry that we could pinch and sell to the ragman. And we did it 'cause it was fun.
I don't have to wait long. I hear a shuffling down below and then a lamp is lit and light pours out the window. I crawl to the end of the gable, straddling it with my legs to either side like I am riding a horse.
I sit and listen. I hear the window opening.
The arm and the hand at the end of it come thrusting out of the window so suddenly that I start back. I could lean over and touch the hand with the pointing finger, I am that close.
"There that one lies and well it should and the other one shall lie beside her and so shall all the evil witches in this hellish world by the living God I will make it so ... what? Grandfather, what did you say?"
It chills me to hear these words, but I make not a sound. The hand is withdrawn and I hear a clink like ... like what? Ah ... like the clink of a bottle on a glass. Ah yes.
"Yes, Grandfather, in your day she would already be hanged ... or burned ... or drowned ... but in these unholy times I must have proof or they will take me and end my ministry. Satan's minions control the courts. That damned popinjay of a lawyer she has enthralled, he thwarts my every move ... that damned little man, he mocks me to my face!"
Good work, Ezra, I thinks, high up above on my perch.
Again I hear the clink of bottleneck on rim. I think I can even hear the gurgle of the spirits sloshing into the glass. I'm thinking that this explains a lot—it is the drink that pushes him over the edge into lunacy at night.
It is a pity. I much preferred him as a werewolf.
"I have been gathering evidence, Grandfather, I have learned that she carries the very mark of the Devil—a pitchfork!—on her belly, she does, and I am gathering other evidence, oh, do not mistake me..."
Now, how the hell did he find out about my tattoo? Which, by the way, you demented lunatic, is an anchor, not a pitchfork. And its on my hipbone, not on my abdomen. I think on this ... it had to be that louse Dobbs, who surprised me one day when I was taking a bath. Peg warned me to hurry up and get out 'cause Dobbs was comin' soon with wood for the fires, but me in my contrary way said don't worry I'll get out in a minute and I sank back into the lovely suds but he did come burstin' in just as I was gettin' out and I thought I got the towel up in time, but I guess I didn't. So the vile Dobbs is in the Preacher's pocket ... Good to know.
"Yes, Grandfather, there will be the judgment. First the discipline, then the judgment. Just like the other one."
So there we have it. From his own mouth.
I have heard enough and make ready to make my return when I have a idea. When he starts in to ranting again, I lean over and say real low in a wee, sad voice, "Please, Sir, don't..." just as I imagine janey Porter did when first he came at her, she in all her innocence and he with worms crawling in his brain. Then I leap back over the roof beam of the church, the pads of my feet silent on the roof slates.
For sure that stopped his ravings real quick, and though I can't see him, I know he's craning his head around tryin' to see where the sound come from, but I also know he can't see nothin' but blackness.
I hadn't planned on doin' that tonight, it just come to me, but I figure it was a good opening shot across his bow.
Sleep well, Preacher.
When I am back in my room, I sit on the edge of my bed and breathe deeply and think for a while. I had stayed up there on the church roof until the Preacher turned off the lamp and even a little longer after that to make sure he wasn't sitting there waiting to hear something like me getting back into the tree, which I can't do totally silent, and, sure enough, a little later I hear the window slide shut. Only then do I creep back into my tree.
I get up and take off my black clothes and scrub my face and ankles and feet with the water from the bucket and towel off with the ragged towels and hide them. Tomorrow I shall wash them on the sly.
Then I wash teeth, armpits, and parts in my usual way and get my nightclothes on.
But instead of turning to sleep, I turn up my lamp a bit and take out my new watch cap and my needle and thread. Then I take the old mop and, with my shiv, cut strands of it off, some long, some quite short, and I begin sewing on the whitish strands. The long ones on the sides and back, the short ones on the front.
Like bangs.
Chapter 25
"Jacky, please don't go," implores Amy. We're up in my room, after supper, and I'm getting ready to go out.
"I got to go. Gully expects me," I says. "We've been making some serious money. After this weekend I may have enough to buy a cheap passage to London and Jaimy. The fleet's in and we play tonight and then twice tomorrow, and it should be good."
I've made a small bag built like a sling and it goes over my shoulder easy, and into it I'm stuffing my concertina and some stuff we use in the act, like my sailor shirt, the doll, and my Dolphin cap.
"But I worry about you so, out there all alone in the night," she says, low and whispery.
"So, come with me, then. It'll be fun."
Amy sits back down on the bed.
"But I'm scared," she says.
"Me, too. But if you're going to be poor like me, soon you'll have to go out in the world, scared or not."
"I suppose."
I lace up my weskit and slide in my pennywhistle and my shiv.
"What will you do if you're put out in the world, Sister?" I ask.