Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  There was a single pier glass suspended at a slant between two of what the captain had called bulkheads. In the light of the swinging lamps, Anna was startled to see how dirty and bedraggled she had become. With a brief resurgence of energy, she shed her grimy, stained gown and washed thoroughly, then brushed out her tangled hair. By now she seemed to be sinking under waves of exhaustion, but she was afraid to wear a nightdress. The captain might return.

  “You put that nightrail on, and climb into that . . . object,” Parrette said. “You are going to need your wits about you come morning. I will sit up a bit longer, to make certain you are not disturbed.”

  Though it took some effort, Anna figured out how to mount the swinging canvas bed. It smelled odd, like canvas, and under that a masculine scent that was not unpleasant.

  “Now, tomorrow, you must be the great lady,” Parrette said.

  Anna shook her head. “Tomorrow, I expect I will need to convince Captain Duncannon that I am no spy, before we even get to whether I lowered myself to earning a wage. At all events . . .” Anna yawned fiercely. “There should be no trouble annulling the marriage. You saw. He could not get away fast enough.”

  Parrette sighed. “Spies! I spit upon your future grave, Marsac.”

  In spite of the constant swing and sway of the canvas box bed, Anna fell into a fitful slumber until the insistent ringing of a bell—ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting—following which a voice bawled “All’s well!”

  The cabin was dark. The ropes holding up her bed creaked. She listened to those, and to unfamiliar noises farther away: the groan of wood, the hum of rigging, the muted thudding of sails. Footsteps overhead. She could not determine if she was alone or if Parrette lay somewhere in the cabin, and she was afraid to look, lest she fall out of this swinging bed.

  She skimmed the surface of sleep, dreaming of being awake and trying to explain her history to a parcel of blurry-faced, tall men in naval blue coats. Central stood the tallest, with a hawk nose and narrowed eyes with tiny lines at the corners, lines incised by either anger or laughter, she could not determine which . . .

  As she slid at last below the surface of sleep, in the next cabin over, Henry Duncannon lay awake in the hammock slung for him, listening to the song of the ship’s timbers and rigging, sails and wind, counterpointed by the splash-slap of water against the hull, as he considered the peculiar note they had received from Gravina.

  In company. What did that mean? How was he to get a purchase on this situation?

  While Gravina was everywhere respected as an honorable man as well as a fine fighting captain, his English left much to be desired.

  “Duncannon, what does this mean?” Nelson had asked, as all the captains stared.

  “I have no notion,” he had been forced to admit, and then, itching with embarrassment, though he could not have said why, he said, “If you remember, sir, I came to you in London some time after Captain Troubridge honored me with a request to take part in an arranged marriage, when we were at Palermo. But she vanished, and I was never able to find word of her.”

  Before the interested gaze of Captains Fremantle and Hardy, Duncannon held back his own request for annulment.

  “Palermo. Naples,” Nelson responded with a sentimental sigh. “How happy we were there.”

  Duncannon had remembered only the fighting, the heat, the illness, the hanging of that miserable scapegoat Carraciolo, but such was his respect—reflected in the faces of the other officers—for Admiral Lord Nelson that they all smiled, and no one brought up the name ‘Lady Hamilton.’

  “I remember that,” Hardy exclaimed, fists on his knees. “Troubridge arranged it, just as Duncannon says. The girl’s father connected to an Italian duke, mother a gentlewoman living at the palace in some capacity before she died, the girl left alone. The father, Ludovano, no, Ludovicci, Ludovisi, something of the sort—”

  “Little Anna Maria Ludovisi?” Fremantle exclaimed. “No one told me about this! She was thick as thieves with my dear Betsey and her younger sisters at the Hamiltons’ parties, in ’97. Lord, I remember their shrill gabble, like a parcel of parrots. They were just girls, the age of our smallest reefers. Heyday, however she got there, we cannot leave her stranded in Cadiz!”

  Before Duncannon went over the side with his orders to fetch her, Collingwood had pulled him to the leeward rail, where the wind would sweep their words over the water unheard. “You know the admiral. As canny a fighting man as we could ever hope to see, but romantical in the article of ladies. Especially ladies from Naples, d’you follow? I make no accusations, I insinuate nothing, but I urge you to determine that she is all she should be.”

  Duncannon had climbed down, aware of an added sense of burden.

  Anna Maria Ludovisi. He had forgotten her name.

  o0o

  She woke with a start, vaguely aware of that persistent bell having rung intermittently through the night. The most recent had been followed by the deck above her shuddering to the thunder of many running feet.

  “Is it war?” Anna asked, sitting upright so fast the bed swung and jiggled.

  “I believe it is their mealtime.” Parrette came to the side of her bed, glancing over her shoulder as she fingered her hair back. “I think they are wanting in. Or wanting you to come forth,” she whispered. “I have the rosebud muslin laid out.”

  Anna tried to climb down from the hammock, but fell to her knees when the bed hitched up behind her at the same moment the floor slanted away. She picked herself up, her knees smarting, and hurried into her clothes, breathing easily only when she sat on the trunk so that Parrette could comb her hair into order. Parrette had scrubbed most of the salt from her slippers, but they were still unpleasantly damp as she slid her feet in.

  “Do you want your half-boots?” Parrette asked.

  “No. Those heels might make me slip. I scarcely notice the wet.”

  They looked at one another, and Parrette drew in a deep breath, her expression anxious as she said in Neapolitan, “These English, they will turn against you if they think you are not by their lights comme il faut. You cannot tell them that you earned your wage singing in theaters.”

  Anna’s eyelids stung as if gritty, her toes were unpleasantly cold, and her middle churned with unpleasant urgency. “And if they do? It will only get me the annulment the faster, no?”

  “Your mother,” Parrette uttered in a low, guttural whisper, “would turn in her grave for the shame. I know, me. You were perhaps too young to take note, but I heard how those English talked, when I accompanied you and your sainted mother to their church, and their parties, and I had to wait for you to come forth. They did not think I understood—none of them knew your mother taught me English. If they think you are little better than an opera dancer, then that is how they will regard you. And you will be treated so.”

  Opera dancer. Anna thought of sweet-natured Hyacinthe, prickly Lise, dear, generous little Helene, curious Eleanor. Catherine, so adamant about equality and freedom for all. Even Ninon had been honorable in her own way. “I hate to hear you talk about them as if—”

  Someone scratched insistently at the door, and a man said loudly, “It’s nigh on eight bells o’ the morning watch. Capting sends his compliments, and breakfast is served.”

  Parrette’s head turned quickly, and she grasped Anna’s wrists. “Listen! It is not I who have this regard. The English are beasts, beasts, with their good birth and their cold manners! You cannot tell them the truth. Promise you will not.” Her grip tightened. “On your mother’s heart, on her soul, promise.”

  Anna longed to shout, to turn away, but Parrette, to whom she owed so much, was in desperate, even deadly earnest. And so she felt herself take a step into the lies she hated. “I promise.”

  Parrette loosened her grip, rubbed her much-pricked, rough thumb over the red marks she had made on Anna’s thin wrist, and muttered, “I beg pardon. But I could never hold up my head again if I failed your mother now.”

 
; “The marks will fade. What is another lie? Should anyone ask, I will say you caught me before I fell,” Anna retorted, knowing it was unfair, but she was indignant enough to step past Parrette, her back straight and her head up, as she opened the door.

  The steward had his hand raised to scratch again. His glower changed to relief, and he said, “This way, Missus. It’s just a step.”

  The dining area was indeed scarcely more than a step, a small cabin on the other side of the bulkhead from where Anna had been sleeping. She braced herself in the doorway against the pitch of the ship.

  And so husband and wife met once again, each anxious to understand, and determined to be understood.

  Captain Duncannon, waiting within, saw her framed there. The elegance he had perceived so dimly in his sea-drenched—guest? Wife—struck him with all the force of sunlight now. Bathed in the pure glow streaming from stern windows behind him, she was more graceful than she had looked the night before.

  Artfully tousled curls framed her face. Her gown flattered her shape with its gently scooped neck under the delicate line of her collarbones, set between little sleeves. Embroidered rose leaves started at one straight shoulder and curved over her bosom like a court sash, trailing slantwise between her hips and down to the flounces around her little slippers. There was nothing vulgar in the way the intermittent rosebuds enhanced her form—the very opposite of vulgar—but the overall effect was so . . . so French.

  He reined his gaze hard, and kept it somewhere above her curly head as he advanced to welcome her; she stood there becoming more apprehensive with every heartbeat.

  He looked so . . . so formidable, as he paced toward her and held out his hand, as if he had already condemned her as a spy. She put her fingers in his, her heart beating in her throat—what was to come next?—but he merely escorted her to the place of honor at the right of the head of a very long table.

  “Good morning, Madame,” he said as he pulled out her chair himself. “I trust you slept well?”

  “Yes, thank you, Captain Duncannon,” Anna said, with more politeness than truth. She was thankful that he had seated her to his right, rather than at the far end of that long table, though what did it mean?

  I am a guest. That must be it.

  Parrette was correct. She was being given the treatment of a lady, though she was not seated where a hostess would go. She must recollect all the little rules she had once been taught.

  As he took his seat, he cast a quick glance at her face. He could see by the shadows under her eyes how well her sleep had been. Overhead eight bells rang, and she started.

  “I apologize for the rudeness of your wakening,” Captain Duncannon said with a smile he hoped would set her at ease. “Seven bells is the time for up hammocks. Eight bells has just rung, and it is now the forenoon watch, that is, eight o’clock in the morning. I am afraid that our shipboard life is very much ruled by our clocks.” He indicated the open casement behind him, and the open sea beyond, on which another ship could be seen a short distance away. “If you should care to listen from the stern window here, you will hear the same sound all up and down the line.”

  “Line?” she asked. Her diction was careful, her accent as French as her gown, and the little curls around her face. “The ships sail in a line, not togessaire, ah, togetaire?”

  His lips twitched at her attempt to correct her English. “Two cables apart, back and forth. I was part of the frigates watching Cadiz, but the Admiral has requested us to join the ships of the line. We lie well out of sight of the harbor, in hopes of drawing out the French at last . . .” He saw complete incomprehension in her face, and mentally set aside his questions about her presence in Cadiz. Odd, he felt so callow, like a reefer at his first captain’s breakfast. But the situation was so devilish strange.

  “And so a battle is to begin?” She cast a frightened look at the stern windows, as if she expected cannon balls to smash in that very moment.

  Perkins, hovering with a pot, poured out tea into fine china cups. Very aware of his listening ears, the captain said, “Why, that will happen only if the Combined Fleet obliges us by coming out of the bay. But I expect that before that does happen, my tender will have returned from Gibraltar with supplies, and we can then send you to safety.”

  She relaxed incrementally at this, and turned her attention to the dish full of a lumpish, grayish soup that the steward set before her.

  “I am afraid all I have to offer you is burgoo, but it is well salted, and you may help yourself to sugar. Some say it adds to the taste. Most of the midshipmen’s berth would heap it in by trowel, had they the means. I can, however, promise you a much better meal if the admiral invites us to dinner aboard the flag, as I expect will happen.”

  As he spoke the steward lifted a silver cover shaped like a bell, revealing the remains of a sugarloaf that reminded her of a near-burnt candle. She picked up the sugar nip and took a small piece.

  The captain ate his burgoo with every evidence of appetite. Heartened, she tried a small spoonful of her own. It was not as terrible as it looked. She navigated around the black spots, which she could not determine were insects or burnt bits, and found it surprisingly easy going down.

  “It is much better with milk,” the captain said. “But that has not been possible these four months—our Nanny-goat died during a hurricano in the West Indies, and we cannot get milk from the bum boats this far out.”

  The questions he wanted to ask—that had seemed so sensible during the night watches—had evaporated with the first rays of the sun. She sat within reach, her head a little bent, her fingers holding the cup daintily, a tiny pucker between her straight brows as she tried not to spill. She ate neatly, one wrist pressed discreetly to the table when the ship gave a particularly skittish lee lurch. He could not bring himself to interrogate her as if she stood before the Court of King’s Bench.

  So what could he say? He had never been good with polite gabble. Emily had twitted him on it, so long ago. From long habit he shook away the thought of Emily, and ventured a question: “Have you been acquainted with Admiral Gravina long?”

  She looked surprised. “Oh, no. I only met him in the once.”

  Her tone seemed genuine, and he mentally reevaluated the few facts. “I am given to understand that you met, then, at a musical performance?”

  “It was after,” she said, and mindful of her promise, bit back the words we performed. “The occasion was I riti d’Efeso, for the Spanish and French commanders and their guests.”

  “Farinelli,” he exclaimed, his furrowed brow clearing. “I envy you that. I was able to see his Il Cid della Spagna when we touched at Venice. It was admirable, admirable, though perhaps my memory is better than the opera deserves. It was entirely due to Farinelli’s Don Diego, a tenor named Gaetano Crivelli. He had not even the premier role, but he was splendid. One of the best I have ever heard. Did you chance to hear him before you left the peninsula?”

  “No, I have not,” she said, uncomfortable again. Surely his comment presaged close questioning about where she had been.

  He had been thinking along a parallel path, but with far less intent than she dreaded. Gravina, Naples, what could be more natural than Queen Maria Carolina sending a young friend of Lady Hamilton to royal relations in Spain when the French threatened yet again. Didn’t those royals pack their extra females to convents reserved to the high born?

  He said, “I take it you have spent time in Spain? They are not known for their opera, though I protest against your thinking me an expert. I have never been in Spain.”

  “Yes. I have been. Spain is not known for the—one might say, the creation of opera,” Anna enunciated carefully. “Except in the form of the zarzuela, which is, one could say, more, ah, speak? Speech?”

  “Recitation,” he offered, smiling.

  “Like the French! I ought to know this, me. The early zarzuela is more recitation than song, with a prodigious amount of the Spanish dance. The last opera presented in Spain, I wa
s given to understand, was Clementina, by Boccherini, and that twenty years ago.”

  He nodded encouragingly, secretly as amused by her French accent as by the quaintness of her English. Some of her expressions reminded him of his parents’ generation, from the days of towering wigs and satin coats. “But,” she continued when he made an encouraging gesture, “the Spanish are passionate about opera, even so. The theater in Seville is monstrous vast, beautiful, and prodigious well attended. Even in summer, when there was not so much a breathing of air.” Again she strayed near the truth, and forced herself to halt.

  “You have been in Seville, I collect?” he asked.

  “Yes. A much, ah, most beautiful city. One apprehends the palace as the beautifullest one has ever seen.”

  So she’d been sequestered in Seville? He rather thought he had the gist of it, and without coming it high-handed, without sounding like a prosecutor in wig and robes. Collingwood must be satisfied. Even the French fashion explained itself, for were the two nations not allies at present?

  And as for his personal interest in the matter, he could stand before any archbishop and swear the truth, that their marriage had been unconsummated. Perhaps he was going to scrape through this affair with far less trouble than he had feared twenty-four hours earlier.

  His mood eased considerably on this comfortable thought. She, seeing that smooth brow, felt less oppressed and they finished breakfast conversing, if not with ease, at least with no awkward silences as the subjects of music, favorite composers, famous actors and singers heard and seen, all passed under review.

  They had both heard Mrs. Billington, though at different times. He was impressed by Anna’s knowledge, but then she had been bred up in Naples, where it was well known that the great Paisiello had charge of the royal entertainments. Of course she would possess a high degree of musical refinement.

  As they brought the meal to a close, he made a mental note not to embarrass her with his customary quartet; their awkward adaptations of Bach’s string quartets for clarinet and flute would only be laughable to so knowledgeable an ear.