From the fourth "Bloody Jack" book, In the Belly of a Bloodhound. Another story that Jacky tells the girls when the flaps go down at night in hold of the slave ship. Just as L.A. Meyer did in the book, present times are in regular font, and past times are in bold...
"Jacky, won't you tell us another story? Please." Rebecca's little voice peeks out of the darkness as we all tried to get comfortable on the hard wooden deck in the hold of the slave ship.
"Rebecca, we're all pretty tired." I try protesting. Sure, I love to be the center of attention every night, well, at all times to be honest, but I know there isn't anybody who really wants to listen to me right now. "I just don't think…"
"Go ahead and tell your lies, Jacky." Clarissa's voice pipes up. "They're halfway interesting if nothing else." Well.
"They aren't lies, Clarissa." I say, glaring at her. It doesn't make any difference to me that it was too dark for her to see me. "But, fine, I'll tell another story." I say, unsure of what to tell them. Yeah, I'd told them a few stories of me living on the streets of London, and of when I tried taking care of the baby Jesse. But other than that, there aren't many other stories to tell. Well, I guess there was that one time when we almost caught the smithy on fire…
"Back when I still lived under Blackfriar's Bridge in London, winters were real harsh for a little orphan like me…"
"Come on, hurry it up all of yiz." Rooster Charlie yelled for all of our gang. "If we don't get to th' smithy before the blacksmith closes up, then he ain't gonna let us stay there for the night and we're likely to freeze our butts off."
"We're commin', Charlie, hold yer horses." Polly and I yell to him, as we stood up from our spot on the street. We'd been on beggin' duty for the day, and with little Polly sittin' there real pretty holdin' out 'er hand with tears spillin' out of her big blue eyes, we'd managed to get two pennies that day! Two! We were gonna have a regular Lord's feast tonight!
"Did ye get anythin'?" Judy asks as Polly and I finally join the rest of the gang. We was all there now, me, Charlie, Judy, Polly, Nancy, an' Hughie.
"Two pennies!" Polly squeals with delight, holdin' the copper treasures up in the air. She hands 'em to Charlie, who quickly puts the two coins in his pocket.
"Alright, Mary, you come with me to the pie shop over on Fleet Street an' we'll get the meat pies. Hughie, you take the rest of the girls on over to the smithy to make sure we're not gonna be icicles in the mornin'." Hughie nods, and they began to walk down the street, headed for the smithy.
"We're gonna have two pies to split tonight for dinner Charlie, ain't it grand?" I grin as the shop comes into view. It wasn't often that we managed to get one pie, let alone two, for the six of us. Charlie doesn't say nothing, but I could see 'im smiling. We get closer to the shop, and I starts gettin' a little worried. The shop is lookin' kinda dark, and that ain't real encouraging to me rumblin' belly.
"It's closed up already." Charlie groans as we stepped up to the door.
"We ain't gonna get our pies." I says sadly, lookin' down at me feet.
"I never said that." Charlie looks down at me. "Mary, see that window that's broken in the back? We'll sneak in, take two pies, and leave behind the two pennies."
"We're gonna sneak in?" I asks. "But what if we get caught?"
"It ain't gonna matter if we get caught, 'cause we're payin' for 'em. It'll be real legal like, see?" Charlie begins pullin' me back toward the window.
"You sure?" I ask raising my eyebrow. It doesn't sound so legal to me…
"Of course." He insists. "Now, up you go."
"But, Charlie, I still don't think this is gonna work."
"Its fine, Mary." Charlie shakes his head.
"But, the pies ain't even cooked!" I hold the pie up to his nose. The raw meat sure ain't too appetizing of a smell, and his face surely shows it. "How are we supposed to eat raw pies?"
"Look, we're just gonna cook 'em in the smithy. It can't be too hard to do. Just start a fire, an' put 'em in it." Charlie shrugs. Well, you've always been right before, Charlie. I guess you're right 'bout this, too.
"Those pies sure are lookin' good!" Polly says, as me an' Charlie walked into the smithy. During the winter, the blacksmith lets us stay in the smithy to keep from gettin' the chills. We wouldn't mess with anything, an' as long as we kept not messin' with anything, he'd let us keep stayin' in the smithy.
"Just don't smell 'em." I says, handin' em over to Judy.
Charlie watches the pie exchange and says, "Hughie, you and me are gonna go out an' see if we can't find a few coals, that way we won't use none of the blacksmith's. Girls, all of yiz can look around to find where we can start up the fire. There's got to be a fireplace in here somewheres." We all nod and start on our jobs. There ain't much light in the smithy, but we can see well enough to keep from runnin' into one another.
"Ye think this looks like a fireplace?" I hear Nancy say, and I walk over to where her voice came from. Judy and Polly are there, too, and we all stand lookin' at a little cave-like thing in the wall.
"I think it's where the blacksmiths put the hot iron so's it can cool off when they're done makin' it into a sword or some horseshoes or somethin'." Judy says, shruggin'. None of us knew what it really was, but it was made out of stone and stone wasn't likely to catch fire so we figured it would work right fine for us. Hearin' the door open, we all turned around to see if Charlie and Hughie found any coals out in the street.
"We found six coals." Charlie says. "I guess they'll work well enough to cook the pies." My stomach answered with a loud growl. Sure they'll work! Now, get those pies a'cookin'!
"Did ye find a fireplace?" Hughie asks, lookin' 'round in the dark smithy.
"We couldn't find no fireplace, but we found this thing over here." I pipes, pointin' to our little cave-thing.
"What is it?" Charlie asks, peerin' over at it.
"Don't know, don't care." I says, takin' a coal out of Hughie's hand and puttin' it in the cave. "Let's just get them pies cookin' before body and soul start to separatin' and Muck comes and takes our little selves to the doctors."
"Who is Muck?" I hear one of the girls ask while I'm telling my story.
"Just the vilest man to ever walk the earth." I answer with a shudder. "He was a corpse seller. He would take the bodies of orphans like me to doctors who would cut us open and study us to learn about the human body." Silence from the girls. "Back to the story, then?"
Hughie nods and puts the rest of the coals down with the one I put down.
Judy bends to look into the cave and with her voice all echo-y, she says, "How're we gonna light it?" I turns to look at Charlie.
"Don't worry 'bout it, I'll handle it. Yiz just stand there an' wait, awright?" We watch Charlie gropin' 'round in the darkness 'til he came back. I warn't too long before we saw a spark and the coals lit up real hot. I ain't so sure how he done it, but I guess he used one of the blacksmith's tools to do it. It don't really matter to me how he done it, though, just that we were gonna be able cook them pies now!
Judy starts to put 'em in the cave near the coals, and Charlie says, "Put the pies right there next to the burnin' coals. Not too close, we don't want to catch 'em on fire." She does just what he says and 'fore too long we can smell 'em. Now, the raw pies ain't much for smell, but cooked pies is another story.
"When'll they be done?" Hughie says, almost causin' a drool puddle to form on the floor. I have to say, I was droolin', too, and, aye, it's true I had to wipe a bit of drool of me chin.
"They sure are takin' a long time." I says, watchin' the glowin' coals. "Can't we move the pies a little closer, just a little, so's they'll cook faster?"
Charlie shrugs. "I guess it won't hurt nothin'." He says after a bit. I take a step closer to the cave and real careful so's I won't get burned, I push the pies closer to the hot coals.
"Just be careful, now, we don't want 'em to catch fir…" He starts, but he stops talkin' when flames started formin' on one of the pies.
"Oops…" I says. I guess I might'a pushed it against one of them coals and it just got too hot and caught on fire. I ain't really sure how it happened, but it did, and none of us was too happy about it.
"Mary!" Charlie yells, but I don't know what to do, I don't, and I just stands there lookin' at it 'cause there goes part of our dinner, but that don't work for Charlie, no it don't. He pushes me out of the way and reaches right into the cave and pulls out the burnin' pie and starts to blow on it. But it's real hot, that pie, and 'fore too long, Charlie can't hold it, and he accidentally drops it on the floor. And if that ain't bad enough, there was hay on the floor where we was standin' and when the burnin' pie fell down on the floor, that started catchin' fire too!
"Quick! Find some water or something!" Charlie yells and we all runs to find what we could.
"Why didn't you just stomp the fire out, Jacky? That would have been a lot easier than trying to throw water on it." Another one of the girls asks.
"Well, we didn't have any shoes. We barely had clothes, really." I explain. "Stopping that fire wouldn't have been worth burning our feet."
I runs as fast as I can, searching around for a bucket of water. I knew there had to be one somewhere, 'cause the blacksmith had a donkey with 'im during the day to work the big machines and stuff. If he was in his right mind, he wouldn't just toss out the old water, he keep it for the next day…aha! A bucket, sloshin' full of water! I reach down and pick it up, but it's real heavy and it takes longer than I would'a thought to get it back toward the fire. It was really startin' to get big!
"Hughie!" I says, still strugglin' with the water bucket. "Help!" The boy comes runnin', and I points to the water bucket. He picks it up with ease, and tosses it out on the fire. Hughie might not be the brightest boy, but he's got muscle, that's for sure. We all gathers around the smokin' hay and stare at the little pie, just layin' there all black and crispy.
"Well, we ain't never gonna try this again."
"So, no one ever found out about what happened?" The girls ask incredulously.
"No." I shake my head. "We cleaned it up, and no one knew any better. I did hear the blacksmith, though, the next day. He was talking with one of his friends and for the life in him, he just couldn't figure out why his smithy smelled like burnt pies…"