Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  Anna stared as Madame Bonaparte turned her head, a quick, graceful movement, and reached to touch the top of the First Consul’s hand as she spoke. Her face betrayed the lines of age, and she pursed her mouth in the way people did who wished to hide their teeth, but even so, especially as Anna gazed at her straight back, at the beautifully shaped head framed by soft dark curls, she understood what Lady Hamilton had said once after her attitudes: “The pose is easy, but getting to it, ah, that’s when you must catch their eye!”

  In the carriage ride back to Madame de Pipelet’s, Anna consciously tried to set her head at Josephine’s angle, to move her hands and arms the same way. The muscles of her arms felt different, and she remembered the childhood lessons in dancing that had been given the palace children. “That is what I need,” she stated to the lurching canvas wall of the equipage.

  “What is your need, child?” Madame asked, breaking off her conversation.

  “The First Consul’s wife. I wish to learn to move the way she does.”

  “Ah!” Madame exclaimed, nodding in approval. “If you can succeed in learning that, you will be elegant even when you are an old woman. But how does one go about it? Perhaps it is a gift of nature.”

  Anna had to admit that that might be true. Yet there was the evidence of her arms and back muscles. Only did she really look different?

  She kept that to herself, as she had other things to think about. Madame one morning presented to Anna the astonishing news that she was very, very lucky: she had been granted an opportunity to audition at the famous Lyri-Comique.

  “But is that not earning a living as a common performer?” Anna asked.

  Madame de Pipelet was going to return a tart answer, but she knew Anna well by then, and saw no pride or presumption in her face. The girl was heeding, as best she knew how, the precepts given her by her dead mother.

  “Oh no,” Madame said. “Not if you audition as a mere student. You might appear on stage, but this is how you gain training that is far superior to anything I can get for you!”

  Anna was content.

  Like the rest of Paris, the Boulevard du Temple was in the midst of changes. After 1791, when the controls against the numbers of theaters had been lifted, the street had proliferated with stages. Anna soon learned that this was one of the most popular streets in all of Paris.

  She stared in amazement at the grand edifices—many in various states of repair or rebuilding—as Madame’s carriage took her for her first interview.

  She was nervous, her palms damp and her heartbeat fluttering in her throat, but the moment she walked in and was greeted by the manager, she began to understand how very lucky she had been. Her being Madame’s protégé seemed to have cleared the way: in a short time she stepped for the first time on the stage, looked over the candles into the cavernous house, then turned uncertainly. “What shall I sing?”

  “Sophie’s song will do,” someone called from the back, and the voice lowered, still audible, “How old is she? Fourteen? Fifteen? If she sings half as well as you say, she will do.”

  Feeling very much on her mettle, Anna took in a deep breath, and sang.

  “Fine voice, but light,” was the verdict when she was finished. “She will do nicely in the chorus.”

  She was given brisk directions about rehearsals and what type of costume she must procure, and by the end of the week she had met all her fellow performers.

  By month’s end, Anna stood on stage in the heat of hundreds of candles, bringing to life a two-act opera for the dimly-perceived, rustling, whispering crowd in the seats. And at the end, amid resounding applause, ‘Signorina Bernardo’ joined the rest of the cast in bowing; next time, she hoped, it would be she taking a personal bow.

  When she retired to change, she found Parrette with her arms tightly crossed as she stared with furrowed brow at the stool Anna usually sat upon to have her hair done.

  “What is amiss?” Anna asked. “Is there bad news?” She looked around the crowded little alcove that functioned as her dressing room, as if the evidence lurked in the shadows behind the flickering candles.

  “No,” Parrette said. After a short struggle, she said in Neapolitan, “I know you have spoken to few. They think you are a young girl, and innocent, and in many regards it is true. But there is something you need to know.”

  Anna put her hands up to her ears. “Oh, if it is rumor and scandal about Madame, I don’t want to hear it. I hate such things. I will not believe any of it.”

  Parrette shook her head. “No, no, I have heard nothing ill about Madame, though perhaps a little about her play.”

  “Sappho? That was her great opera.”

  “No, this is a play, Camille, which was to be performed at the Comédie-Française, in the rue de la Loi.” Her eyes widened as she repeated this prestigious address.

  “She never mentioned a word of this,” Anna murmured wonderingly.

  “Charlotte says because they refused to do it. She says the true reason is because she is a woman, that the freedoms of the revolution are coming to an end, but that is not what I wished to tell you.” Parrette drew in a deep breath as she extracted a bit of carefully cut newsprint from her pocket.

  Anna read it in astonishment. The article smugly crowed over the fact that the English frigate of 20 guns Danae had been taken by its crew, the officers killed or imprisoned, and the ship restored to France.

  “Is Captain Duncannon dead, then?”

  “It says nothing about that.”

  “A mutiny! Like those other mutinies the English had. I remember the Hamiltons talking about it. They said it was because of terrible captains who flogged and hanged seamen on whim. He must have been another such terrible captain.”

  Parrette shook her head. “Surely a terrible captain would not have written back to you about Michel.”

  That surely silenced them both; there was nothing more to be said. Conjecture was futile for want of fact. But afterward, Anna noticed that Parrette no longer referred to The Captain.

  6

  Captain Duncannon had by necessity been carried to Gibraltar again and thence northward, after beating against recalcitrant winds for so long that, as often happened, news of events he had left behind him reached London before he did.

  He read about his former ship in the English newspapers when he reached Portsmouth just before Christmas. Where the French had been smug, the English deplored, the more in light of the mutinies two years previous.

  Captain Duncannon also read the less sensational account in the Naval Chronicle, and shook his head over the grim tidings, wondering what his replacement had done to the capable crew that he had left behind.

  He did not have time to think about it long. He had exactly two days of liberty, one of which he spent in a fruitless journey to London. There, he set about finding where the Hamiltons were living, just to discover that no Mrs. Duncannon was numbered among the company.

  He obtained an interview with Nelson himself, who professed surprise and concern. “Did I not issue specific instructions? But Keith has been my determined enemy, I fear. That must explain it. You must put your question to the Admiralty,” he said, peering earnestly at Duncannon through his one good eye. “There you will no doubt be put in possession of the intelligence that no one has seen fit to report to me.”

  Duncannon thanked him profusely, refused another glass of canary, and took a hackney to the Admiralty, where he was kept waiting among a parcel of lieutenants and beached captains hoping for placement.

  There, he discovered not only was there no communication, but nothing known of his missing wife, much less news of the progress of his annulment. “That sounds like Whitehall,” he was told by a senior clerk. “That has their stamp all over it. You must put your questions there.”

  By now Duncannon suspected what he would hear at Whitehall, but he was determined to carry through the business until it was honorably resolved. He had turned his back on everything connected to his life before the navy, ex
cept his good name.

  He took another hackney to Whitehall, just to find himself balked, and by so junior a clerk that he knew his efforts were for naught. But he wrote out the facts as directed, was assured that his question would be sent up the chain of command, and he walked out into the frigid air. Darkness had closed in early. He was forced to admit defeat.

  He returned to his hotel in a disgusted mood. The next morning, the prospect of quitting London for Portsmouth in order to read himself aboard his new command improved his spirits. He penned a letter to the new legate in Naples asking the whereabouts of his wife, posted it, and then mounted his horse.

  By Christmas he was beating futilely against gales as the fleet fought to gain westing enough to round Ushant.

  o0o

  The rest of Europe celebrated Christmas, but in France, this was the month of Nivôse.

  The calendar at first confused Anna. This one talked about the Year Eight, that one referred to the year 1801, a third scrupulously recorded the ten-day weeks of the republican calendar. Most, however, betrayed the habit of a lifetime, more frequently reverting to naming the days of the week from the Gregorian calendar, as the mobs likely to string you up from a lamppost for such errors had largely vanished.

  Many theater managers insisted on the very latest fashions, which actresses were expected to find themselves. It was easiest when the wealthy leaders of Paris donated their gowns, but there were never enough to go around even if you were able to wangle a way to find out when some might be coming.

  Parrette, having foreseen this, had assured Anna’s success at select concerts with her gowns modeled on those she had seen Madame Bonaparte wearing.

  By mid-winter, Anna had sung thrice in the chorus at the Lyri-Comique, without being invited into the company. She was content, as that was the agreement.

  She had also performed at private concerts given by several other high-ranking individuals in the Consulate government, culminating in a spectacular evening at the Chateau de Neuilly at a soiree hosted by Madame Grand, who (it was rumored) would soon marry the Foreign Minister Talleyrand.

  Anna was sent back to Madame’s in a sumptuous carriage, her arms full of flowers, her ears full of praise. But when she reached her room, Parrette took the flowers to find vases, saying, “Was there any money in it?”

  “No,” Anna said.

  “This is the third such,” Parrette said, arms crossed in the way that Anna had learned meant she was keeping something back. “It is a very bad precedent, but what can be done? Perhaps there is a way to secure gifts that we do not know about. They say Talma is always sent back with fabulous treasures, gold, and the like, when he gives recitations for the First Consul.”

  “That’s the First Consul,” Anna replied, but she was thinking, Madame Grand is nearly as high.

  Parrette then said, “I believe you should be trying at the large houses.”

  “The performers are all professionals.” Anna studied Parrette’s averted gaze. “Am I to understand that you no longer object?”

  “Yes, I object.” Parrette lifted her chin. “But I have been considering. I owe your mother my life, and I promised her as she died in my arms that I would care for you as she would wish. And so I have tried to do. And yet I am afraid that Madame de Pipelet is soon to be married, and you know that the Count has no use for music, anymore than he does for Paris.”

  “That is true,” Anna said slowly. Though the Count had obligingly hired her for her first concert, it had been apparent that he had done it only to please Madame de Pipelet.

  Parrette went on. “The fact is, English rules are no use to us here—we are not in English society, as there is no English society. If Madame does marry, I do not think the Count will take us, and we must live. I have repaid Madame’s loan, but only just, with your earnings, meager as they are.”

  She made no mention of the fact that Anna was not paying Parrette at all, but Anna felt the pressure of obligation just the same, as Parrette said gently, “Perhaps it is time to think of joining a company. It will be no different than what you do in the chorus at the Lyri-Comique, and you can still live as a respectable woman.”

  Anna straightened her back and tightened her ribs. She thought about Captain Duncannon with increasing rarity, and never without conflict. Even supposing he had survived, it was true that he had put them in the way of locating Parrette’s long-lost son—if Michael Deflew and Michel Duflot were even the same person—but what kind of man would cause his men to mutiny?

  “I want to sing,” Anna stated firmly. “And that is what I mean to do. And we must live.”

  When she got up the next morning, the wedding ring joined her trinkets in their box. She consulted Madame about auditions—who promptly agreed, with a betraying smile of relief, as she promised she would do her best to arrange auditions.

  Unfortunately, in spite of all the praise Anna heard at the private concerts, her auditions were dispiritingly unsuccessful. At the major theaters, she heard variations on the same judgment: “Excellent range, but no volume,” and “Fine phrasing, vocal purity, but inaudible from the gallery.”

  Finally, after great exertion on the part of her patroness, she was invited to audition before the great Talma. In trepidation she dressed in her finest, walked timidly onto the great stage at the Théâtre de la République and gazed wonderingly out at the tiers of boxes.

  She could make out no more than a shadowy form among other nameless faces in the middle of the theater. Below the stage, a violinist and a cellist struck up the bars of the music Madame de Pipelet had chosen for her, from her friend Jeanne-Hippolyte Devisme’s Praxitèle. “Modern is good,” Madame had said—and reminding great people of her friend’s opera would be even better.

  Sing with a light heart, and tight middle. Anna straightened up, tried to lift her heart and tighten the top of her ribs . . . and though she could hear her singing was pure, perfectly phrased, true to each note, she felt it dissipating like steam in that enormous cold space.

  At the end, she was not surprised when the actor’s rich, powerful voice echoed with apparent effortlessness back to the stage: “Thin. Thin person, thin voice. Come back again when you’ve achieved some substance.”

  Blinking against the sting in her eyes, Anna walked off, the only sound the quiet thud of her footsteps. She made it to the street door before the tears overwhelmed her.

  Not two days later, a short, round, balding little man attended Madame’s salon, and after Anna sang for the company, he was introduced to Anna as Monsieur Dupree.

  “Very fine, Signorina, ah, Citizen,” he said, bobbing his head. “I think you would sound well at my theater, the Théâtre Dupree. On the Boulevard, you know. Intimate. My wife is the principal singer, but we need a new young soprano for Madame de Pipelet’s Sappho. Our Lorette is too old for a soubrette, and at all events she prefers the breeches roles.”

  Anna had been all along the boulevard by then. She remembered the Théâtre Dupree as one of the smallest, in a ramshackle barn of a building that probably had been old when Louis XIV came to Paris to attend the theater. Old, she knew, meant abysmal pay, but poor pay was better than no pay at all.

  She thanked M. Dupree gratefully, and discovered the following day that though the theater was indeed exactly as old as she had feared, its size was perfect for her voice. Madame, taller and larger than her husband, joined M. Dupree in their enthusiastic praise.

  Anna had become a professional.

  o0o

  “Listen, Duncannon, the Prince of Denmark appears to be as decisive as a shuttlecock,” Captain Fremantle said as they stood on the deck of the Ganges, overlooking the smoke-filled harbor at Copenhagen.

  Captain Duncannon coughed, blinking his stinging eyes. The smolder from the sea battle and the subsequent fires wreathed them, blurring Fremantle’s round countenance, though he stood not two paces away.

  “Nelson is to go ashore in the morning,” Captain Fremantle said. “I will stay and oversee finishi
ng the burning of the captured ships.”

  “All of them?” Captain Duncannon asked in surprise. The Danes built beautiful ships. Though one had blown up, and others were severely damaged, that was after fighting every bit as intense as the Battle of the Nile.

  “We can’t spare people to man the prizes,” Fremantle said. “We are stretched thin enough as it is. Speaking of orders, I want you to inspect the wounded taken ashore. I need someone I can trust to sort out the prisoners. Make certain that none of our men are among ’em, and that includes a few rascally French pretending to be ours. We’ve already caught one son of a Whitechapel bird-catcher trying to talk his way aboard of the grounded Bellona, my guess is to get at the gunpowder.”

  Captain Duncannon had already been awake for most of the night before the day’s long, fierce battle. But there was too much to be done for anything more than a bite of bread and a sip of very cold coffee to wet his mouth.

  His gig rowed him ashore, where many of the wounded had been landed, Danes, French, and English mixed promiscuously. Out of the chaos appeared a smoke-blackened lieutenant, who hailed him with relief. “You are timely come, Captain,” he exclaimed once Duncannon had explained his orders. “Though we’re a vast deal better than we were a few hours ago.” He turned to a short, thin young man whose black hair was queued in a seaman’s pigtail, one arm wrapped in a sling.

  “This here is Seaman Dafoe, out of Bellona. He fell off the foremast yard when Bellona struck. He’s been rousting out the Frenchies—speaks the lingo, including all the dialects that I can’t make head nor tail of.”

  ‘Dafoe.’ The name was familiar, but Captain Duncannon could not recollect why, and he was too busy to take the time to reflect.

  He nodded at the seaman, and said, “Explain what you have here, and we will go on from there…”

  Some time later, they paused at last, no fresh wounded having been brought in the past hour. Someone had brewed up coffee and tea, bringing it around, and they were able to sit for the first time in uncounted hours.