"All right, Higgins. Take it all tomorrow and bank it. And take two hundred pounds as your own pay out of my shares."
"That is most generous, Miss. Thank you. I will take the opportunity to visit with Lord Hollingsworth's family and my own father who lives nearby."
Higgins, being written onto the Emerald's books as chief steward, gets a share like the others, but I know that somebody like him don't come that cheap and I intend to see that he gets what's coming to him.
"Of course, Higgins, and please, take an extra day with your visits and give my regards to your dad."
"...And that's the end of Jacky Faber's adventures in the New World. After that, I hopped aboard a whaler and you know the rest," I say in finishing my story. "And I sure hope you ain't handy with a pen, Higgins, for I know I ain't ready to have another book out there about me and my free and easy ways."
Higgins had returned from Colchester and I had a bank draft in the amount of four thousand pounds sterling in my strongbox. I didn't bank all I had—we do have to re-victual in Waterford and the bowsprit repairs ain't gonna be cheap—and I still have my money belt with its stock of gold coins that encircles my waist every moment that I'm not in bed. That, and my emerald, of course.
Higgins's aged father was well and was even better after his son had laid some coin of the realm on him. His visit with the Hollingsworths was joyous, with all the girls tugging at his sleeve and begging him to come back to them and stay, but Higgins said he told them that now that he was a bold sea rover, it would be quite impossible, however charming were their entreaties.
"Quite a tale, Miss, and I enjoyed it hugely, for you are, without a doubt, without equal as a storyteller. And rest assured that I shan't abuse your trust in a literary way," says Higgins, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. "I suppose Boston and its inhabitants have by now recovered from your visit?"
"I guess so, but Boston was burning right cheerfully as I left."
Higgins laughs. "You, Miss, are nothing less than a modern Visigoth, lacking only a two-handed broadsword. Perhaps the next item we should purchase for you is a Viking helmet, shiny gold, for sure, and complete with fur-trimmed horns."
"Well, I hope I'm not as bad as all that. I try to be good, but sometimes things don't seem to work in that direction."
"One mystery, though, if you don't mind?"
"Shoot."
"How did you learn to speak French so well in only three-quarters of a year? I know you received some instruction when you were on the Dolphin but that could not have been much. And I know you are a quick study, but..."
I consider this. "Well, the Boston winter was long and my friend Amy and I would have contests, dares if you like, wherein we would speak only French to each other for a certain period of time. Sometimes for hours, then for days, and once for a whole week. You learn a language fast that way."
"Ah," says Higgins, "I see. I also see you miss your friend Amy from the way your eyes mist up when you talk of her."
"Aye, but that's over. Like a lot of things," I say. "But now, let us be merry." I lift my glass. "Thank you for coming back to me, Higgins, and I really mean that."
As I get undressed for bed, I wonder how they are on the Wolverine tonight—my friends, I mean, Robin and Tom and Ned and Jared and the rest of the Werewolves. I hope they are well. Yes, and Amy, too.
When all of my clothes are over a chair, I take my emerald out of the money belt where I have made space for it. I hold it up and watch the facets glimmer in the lamplight. Beautiful ... I try to get the emerald into my belly button and, by stretching the skin around a bit, I do force it in so that it stays. I look at myself in the mirror. Well, my girl, if you ever fall out of favor with Dame Fortune again, and I'm sure you will, you can become a hoochie-coochie dancer. I mean, I do all those other dances—Irish jig, Scottish sword dance, English hornpipe—why not hoochie-coochie as well?
I go over to the wardrobe and take my white shawl and I tie it low down on my h*ps like a Hindoo belly dancer might wear it and go back to the mirror. I put my palms together over my head and try out a few wiggling moves, and as I do it, I hum the tune to the song that those rascally boys back on the Dolphin used to sing when they wanted to get themselves worked up over the thought of women with no pants, and further thought that they were sounding like Indian snake charmers when they were singing it. There's a place in France where the women wear no pants. And the dance they do, it is called the hoochie-coo ... Hmmm. I puff out my belly, but that still doesn't seem to do it. Well, better stick to buccaneering, Jacky. I don't think Hindoos prize scrawniness highly in their nautch dancers.
I read once in a newspaper that Lady Hamilton, love of the great Lord Nelson's life, started out as a hooch dancer, dancing nak*d behind sheer curtains, on the other side of which old men would lie in beds hoping to be cured of the ailments of old age by the dancing of young girls amid braziers smoking with aromatic herbs. Men sure are strange, no matter what the age.
You'd think the press'd be a little nicer to Lady Hamilton, she being the consort of the Great Lord Nelson, him who's the darling of the British Fleet and the one most likely to keep Napoléon's feet off of British soil, but they ain't. They're downright mean, showing her in cartoons as a strumpet and as fat and ugly, which she once wasn't. I've got some respect for her, though. She started out no better than me and now she's Lady Hamilton, can you imagine that? Married to a Lord ... Well, not exactly married, for she ain't Nelson's wife, but she might as well be—she's got a daughter by him. Go figure.
Well, enough of this ... I tighten my belly and out pops the emerald and on goes the nightshirt and so to bed. Tomorrow we will weigh anchor and the Emerald will head back to our home port of Waterford, on the Emerald Isle, to refit and replenish.
Chapter 33
Waterford is a fine, bustling port city and it bustled even more when the Emerald came in on the morning tide with her loot and her boisterous crew. We warped her in next to the pier and soon the ship swarmed with workmen repairing the bowsprit damage and loading new stores aboard. The ship swarmed also with the wives, children, and sweethearts of the crew, and a proud lot they were, those boys and men of my crew proud to be able to put money in the hands of their wives and mothers, proud to know that their children would not starve through yet another cold, miserable winter but would instead have good food in their bellies and new clothes on their backs.
The repairs are going slower than I hoped and, of course, are costing a lot more because of it. Liam has been overseeing the work while Higgins has been watching over the money end of it—to make sure we are not swindled by those cheatin' weasels.
Those damned cheatin' weasels, damn ... No, wait. Calm down. Take a deep breath ... I've got to put that out of my mind and let others handle it. I've got enough other stuff to think about, like noticing that Higgins doesn't go ashore any more than he has to when he's here in Waterford. In Harwich he was all over the shops looking for neat new things for the Emerald's living spaces and such. I ask him right out about that, and he says the people here are very cold to him and so it is not pleasant to go out so he doesn't. Hmmm. That steams me a bit, but Higgins doesn't seem to want to talk anymore about it so I drop it.
But I don't drop it for good.
"Liam, Higgins tells me the people in this port have been mean to him—look at him with narrowed eyes and such. I won't have it. There're other places we could spend our money. Is it because he's ... the way he is?"
Liam and I are at the rail looking out at all the activity on the wharf. There're barrels being rolled and hogsheads being hoisted and crates being stacked, and there's Arthur McBride strolling by in a new suit of clothes and a girl on each arm—'tis plain that lad will not have his money for very long, but he will have some tales to tell, I'm sure, and I'm sure his mates will listen to those tales and admire him for both the doing and the telling.
Liam takes a long drag on his pipe and says, "No, lass, that ain't it. We've got as many like him as any other people. No, it's that he's British and he is so plainly British—the way he dresses, the way he speaks, the way he carries himself, even. To the people here he looks like the very picture of an English nob."
"So?"
"So, about six, seven years ago there was a big uprising—it was called the Rebellion of Ninety-Eight, when the Society of United Irishmen rose up to throw off the yoke of their British oppressors. A lot of the battles were fought hereabouts, especially up around Wexford, about twenty miles north of here, up near where I lived."
His pipe makes burbling noises and works up a great head of smoke as Liam pauses, looking out over the rooftops of the town. I know he's thinking back to those troubled times. I don't say anything, not yet. I just wait.
"Terrible, terrible things were done. The British put down the rebellion, and they put it down ruthlessly ... without any mercy. Thousands were killed ... tens of thousands ... there was scarcely a pike or fence post hereabouts without a severed head stuck on it for the beaten Irish to look on and admire."
His voice has taken on a real edge. His eyes narrow, but it is not against the smoke from his pipe. Geez ... I think, how did I get from Higgins being uncomfortable to this? Liam goes on.
"Did you ever wonder, Jacky, just what I was doing on the Dolphin, in the British Navy, as I was?" He manages a rueful smile at this.
I figured that he was there out of poverty as I was, or that he had been pressed, as so many others were, and I tell him this.
"Nay, Missy, it was to keep my own head from resting on a spike. I had to hide out for a bit and it seemed to me that the best place to hide from the Beast was in his very belly. And so I joined as a man-of-war's man and met up with you and here we are. Ain't life strange?"
"It is that, Liam," I say, and I put my hand on his arm. "I am sorry for your poor friends and for your poor country."
Liam puts his hand on mine and pats it, gently. "Now, girl, banish these thoughts from your mind. 'Twas none of it your fault. And tell Higgins it's nothing personal, just politics ... just bloody politics."
I think on the things that Liam has told me. Many things are plain now—how the older men like John Reilly are uncomfortable in an English port like Harwich, and how the younger ones like Padraic and Ian and Arthur are always ready for a fight with the Brits. And 'tis plain now why Liam's wife, Moira, did not receive me with open arms when first I burst into their little farmhouse all those months ago. Why should she—to her I was English, and girl or not, kin to the murderers of her kin.
Sad thoughts as these are dashed from my mind as I see a flash of red curls sticking out from under a bonnet down below on the pier.
"Jacky!" she cries out, waving. "I've been let out!"
"Mairead!" I call back and wave in turn. "Come on up!"
In a moment she is dashing up the gangway and onto the deck. She sees her father and gives him a kiss on his grumpy cheek and then clasps my hand and we dive down to my cabin to plot out the afternoon. Away, dull care!
Liam had moved his family from the farm and into the town as soon as we arrived back—and why not? He had the money and the potato crop, what there was of it, had already been brought in. Mairead and I lose no time in becoming fast friends in the short time we have been here together in Waterford—it is natural, after all, as we are of the same age and temperament, and sometimes I don't want to be the Owner of a Fine Ship or a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy or a Pirate Queen, La Belle Fille sans Merci. Sometimes I just want to be a kid, out on the town with a friend. Being out with Mairead reminds me of being out and being bad in Boston with Amy or Annie and Betsey and the other girls of the Sisterhood.