Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  Anna turned her way. “I was educated at the royal palace in Naples—I do not intend forfanterie, what is the English word?”

  “Bragging,” came a muffled moan from the table. Then another hiccough.

  Three heads turned that way, then back as Anna continued. “I cannot tell you if that is ‘well’ or not well. It is all that I know, do you see? Reading, I read everything that comes in my way.” She smiled suddenly. “It is perhaps well that I recently discovered an English book, Clarissa. It helped me in a prodigious way to recollect my English, because it is many years since I spoke it, so. The book is so very, very long, that I had to come away before I finished.”

  “Clarissa, a profound tragedy,” Mrs. Fellowes said approvingly.

  “A tragedy? Never say so! It is so light, so débonnaire, but perhaps this Lovelace is the worse ignoble?”

  “I haven’t Richardson’s books,” Mrs. Fellowes admitted, “but I can find them for you, somewhere in the fleet. I could also make you a package of books to read, if you would care for that.”

  “Oh I would be so very grateful! I can hear, my English is much out of the practice. At dinner, I comprehended one word in fifty.”

  From the cabin beyond men’s voices boomed: His Majesty, George the Third, God rest his soul!

  Mrs. Porter cocked her head. “And that will be the end of it.” She rose, and moved to gently shake Lady Lydia, who sighed, moaned, and sat up. “Come drink this off, quick. It will help you get overboard. At least you haven’t a long pull ahead of you.”

  “Charles said he would come under Victory’s lee,” Lady Lydia mumbled. “He knows what is due . . .” Her voice died away as everyone pulled on gloves, hats, and cloaks.

  Out in the main cabin, the men were also in general stir. Vice-Admiral Collingwood waited for an opportune moment, and pulled Captain Duncannon aside, abaft the wheel outside of Captain Hardy’s quarters. “Nelson,” he murmured, “is as you know as shrewd as he can hold, except when it comes to a certain lady, and Naples.”

  Duncannon assented with an inquiring look.

  Collingwood whispered, “Unlike these others, I happen to know what Troubridge was about when he bustled you into that marriage. She might be as ignorant as she appears, or she is very practiced indeed, but we shall not put ourselves to the trouble of answering that. You are to keep her on board, using whatever excuse you wish, until we have been brought to action. After that, you may do what you wish with her: whatever knowledge she possesses will be irrelevant.”

  Collingwood did not wait for an answer, but moved rapidly away to where Nelson stood with Fremantle, Pellew, and Hardy in close conversation.

  Captain Duncannon turned from him to the lady, his—no, the word ‘wife’ would not stick in his head—his responsibility standing with the other women as a couple of sailors got Neville’s tiresome bride into a bosun’s chair. In contrast to Lady Lydia’s affected airs, Anna moved with a kind of style that caught at his heart, and he shifted his gaze, appalled at himself. The very last thing he needed in his life right now was a wayward, useless tendre. He had no use for beauty: it was false, at best, dangerous at worst.

  He waited until she was let down into the gig, and gave his coxswain the nod. Once the boat was some distance from the flagship, he asked, “I trust you were pleased, ma’am?”

  Which of her many emotions to share? She had at least rid herself of her fears about the tyrannical captain who could cause a mutiny. “Admiral Lord Nelson was everything that is most kind. And such a beautiful ship.”

  “I apologize if you were sadly bored by the conversation. It cannot be helped. We must always get onto the details of our profession.”

  “I could understand but little,” she admitted. “It was entirely to be expected, and there is no fault. Indeed, Mrs. Fellowes promised to share some books with me, that I may better my English.”

  “A laudable idea,” he exclaimed. “What do you read? There are books to be had aboard Aglaea. Not an entire library, in course, but between my officers and me, I fancy we could accommodate you, if you do not object to mere novels.”

  “It is novels I am most partial to,” she said. “Though I think I would read anything. Books in English have been rarely met with. For example, before I came away, I was nearly to the third volume of Mr. Richardson’s Clarissa.”

  They were both glad to find in the other an unexceptionable subject of which they were genuinely fond, and it was therefore the topic of books that occupied them for the remainder of the journey back to Aglaea. By the time they climbed aboard, they had made the shift to music. Duncannon gave in to impulse, and invited her to listen to the quartet who habitually met in the cabin.

  17

  The midshipmen of the Aglaea held their captain in the highest respect, but when they talked over chaps with good humor, Captain Duncannon’s name was not the first to come up.

  Yet soon after dawn lightened the horizon, the lookout called down when he spotted a familiar topsail nicking the horizon. The midshipman of the watch duly reported it to the captain. “Tender, sir, off the starboard beam.”

  This news would be generally approved, the midshipman knew, because the tender would be laden with much-needed supplies (the midshipmen’s mess was always short), and possibly even post, but never before had the arrival of the tender caused the captain to lift his brows, and utter a short laugh.

  Altogether it had been a week for surprises, the midshipmen were agreed when the watch changed.

  In their cabin, Anna and Parrette were woken by the rhythmic grinding sound of the waisters holystoning the deck. This sound began daily well before dawn, but until this morning they had been so exhausted that neither had been aware of it until now. Consequently they woke betimes, and so were ready for the day well before the thunder of feet presaging the change to the forenoon watch.

  They were consequently waiting for the bell when there came a scratch at the door. They were both taken by surprise when a muffled man’s voice spoke: “Maman?”

  Parrette flew across the checkered canvas deck and flung open the door to a wiry young man with curly black hair worn in a long sailor’s queue, and black eyes very like her own.

  “Maman, it is you,” he said in French, but he got no farther because Parrette had hurled herself into his arms, squeezing his breath out.

  “Michel, my little cabbage,” Parrette exclaimed in the accent of the streets of Lyons. “Ah, not so little anymore!” She stepped back to smile tenderly up into her son’s face, an expression Anna had never seen and would have thought alien to Parrette’s nature. Her eyes filled with unnoticed tears as she asked, “How is it that you are here?”

  “We’re just come aboard this minute, and the captain sent me to the cabin. I’m a purser’s mate now,” he said in English, a note of pride in his voice. His French accent was almost gone; he had absorbed the accent of Wapping with his seafaring duties. “Mr. Gates, he’s the purser, sent me and a crew to Gib for supplies.”

  “Michel,” Parrette said, wiping her eyes. “You are alive, le bon Dieu be thanked! How did this come about?”

  Michel blushed, crushing a shapeless hat in his hand. “The captain found me in Denmark, after our brush with the Danes. Brought me aboard, and I went from topman to yeoman of the sheets. My being a dab hand with numbers, the skipper promoted me Michaelmas last.”

  The bell rang then, and he looked past his mother to say hastily to Anna, “Ma’am, I am to ask, would you honor the captain with your company for breakfast. He is waiting.”

  “Go, go!” Parrette pushed Anna through the door.

  Her heart light with gratitude, Anna walked into the dining area to find the Captain standing courteously.

  “I wish to thank you,” she said as he seated her. “Oh, such a prodigious surprise! Michel Duflot, alive—and here! Parrette is aux anges.”

  Through the thin bulkhead came the sound of rapid French, mixed with happy laughter.

  Anna hazarded a quick glance, but th
e streaming light from the windows rendered the captain in silhouette. She could not make out his expression.

  He watched her face turn his way. One moment she gazed at him, brilliant pinpoints of sun in her eyes, then she lowered her head, her eyelids shuttered, the blue veins delicately traced.

  He had let a silence build. “I was happy to oblige,” he said. “And in fact I need no extraordinary thanks, as it was entirely by accident that I encountered him, and though it was impulse that brought me to hire him, he has proved to be so excellent a crewman that there is scarce credit in keeping him by. With his facility for languages he has preserved my pursuer from being practiced upon by foreign dockyard sharps, and I expect to see him a purser, or even a quartermaster, should he desire to give over sailing, before he is much older.”

  The steward had served the food and poured out tea. On his departure, the captain said, “What is their story? When I first found him, he was still learning English, and said only he had been pressed from the French army. He had been just a boy.”

  “Parrette Duflot would not object to your knowing, as you have done her so very great a favor. She was married off, oh, so very young. Duflot proved to be a drunken, gambling brute, who scarcely could find work, he was so troublesome. He led her a life of the most dismal, and that was before it was discovered he had already had a wife in Marseilles.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” he said, distracted by her hands, the way she ate so neatly, so daintily, that absurd ring winking and gleaming on her finger. It did not fit, and she sometimes flexed her little finger to right it. He considered how to broach the question of how soon she might rid herself of it altogether, as she laid down her fork, and, with her fingers supported her cup against the pitch of the ship.

  She went on. “You know there was terrible destruction during the Revolution. When his first wife came to Lyons to find him, Duflot threw down his tools and went off to the Vendée, taking along Parrette’s son. He was a little boy.”

  “We heard that the Vendee was a terrible slaughter.”

  “So it was! In Lyons, Parrette was left with his debts. The first wife quarreled very much with Parrette’s family over Parrette’s bride price. Then Fouché began committing atrocities of the most sanguinary in Lyons, the entire street was destroyed, and with it, their livelihood. They all fled the city. Through Duflot’s relations, Parrette discovered that Duflot went off to Italy with his corps, and she followed, wanting much to get Michel back. When she at last finds—found—them, it is that her husband was killed in a brawl with a sailor, before their ship fell into the hands of the English. The prisoners were told, choose impressment or prison. She found the prison, to discover Michel chose impressment.”

  “How did she come to your family?”

  “My mother discovered her penniless and abandoned in Calabria. She hired Parrette as a tire woman, but soon promoted her to personal maid. Parrette was devoted to my mother, oh, much, and after she died, she was like a mother to me.”

  The sun had gone behind a cloud, dimming the strong sunlight. When she glanced up, her eyes met his. She dropped her gaze to his hands, clean, with well-kept nails. “She never gave up hope of finding Michel.”

  Then a new thought occurred to her. Michel had come with the supply ship. It was here.

  She glanced out the stern windows, and made out the uneven line of Spain on the horizon. They had left the great ships behind, and were now closer to land. “Are we to expect to be sent to Gibraltar, then? Our trunks can be made ready in a moment.”

  Captain Duncannon bowed slightly. “My sincere apologies, but my orders from my superiors will have to supersede my offer. The tender shall be required to run dispatches. I beg your forgiveness, and I promise we shall do our best to accommodate you as we can.”

  She was spared the necessity of expressing her disappointment when there came an insistent scratch at the door. A small midshipman came in, hat squashed tightly to his side. He flushed scarlet when he saw Anna. “Sir, the officer of the w-watch s-sent me t-t-to . . .” He lost his breath, shut his eyes hard, and let out the word, “Signals.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Corcoran. I shall be on deck directly.”

  “S-s-sir.”

  The captain rose and reached into a trunk behind him. He came out with a small stack of books, which he handed to Anna. “I took the liberty of making up a collection, between Sayers, myself, and the surgeon’s mate. I must return to duty. Will you honor us with your company at dinner?” And then, “I mentioned our musicians. Perhaps I ought to warn you that we must rely on ourselves for entertainment, and so you are not to be expecting expertise. It would be perfectly understandable should you object to hearing music written for strings tootled on winds.”

  Anna did not know what to make of this grand statement, whose effect was somehow overpowering. She knew him too little to detect the signs of embarrassment, even guilt for the necessary lie to cover his orders.

  She spread her hands. “I am happiest hearing music,” she said. “Any music will do.” She curtseyed, then picked up the books. She meant to whisk herself out, but she had scarcely made it two steps before the ship pitched sharply.

  Her hands being full of books, she teetered. He sprang to her side and set his palms along her arms. His breath stirred the top of her hair. She felt the heat of a blush from her cheeks to her toes and sped into the little cabin next door.

  She set the books on her trunk, relieved to find herself alone. She brushed her fingers over the top of her head, and blushed again, but at least no one was there to see it.

  o0o

  Dinner was enlivened by the presence of three of Captain Duncannon’s officers: the tall, gaunt surgeon’s mate, Mr. Jorgensen; a spotty-faced, gangling midshipman named Mr. Jones, who seemed lost in his uniform; and pale-haired Mr. Sayers.

  Initially, Anna could see how constrained they were by her presence. Every remark occasioned a quick glance her way, often with another peek at the captain as if to see how he judged their words. Only Mr. Sayers and the captain spoke easily, their accent very alike—even the rise and fall of their voices, their phrasings, so similar that Anna suspected before the captain mentioned it that they had known one another in school.

  “Even then,” Mr. Sayers said to Anna, “the captain was your great musician, though only in the fourth form. I was inspired to take up the flute because of him; you may either congratulate or condemn him after we have played for you.”

  Anna had never seen Captain Duncannon smile like that. There were attractive shadows outside of his mouth, small ones that made him seem young as any of the boys, though only for a moment. His smile was quick, there a moment then gone, a grace-note. Mr. Sayers smiled steadily, his eyes narrowed with good humor.

  “Though I was always partial to music, learning the clarinet began entirely as a subterfuge,” Captain Duncannon admitted. “I was ten years old, and discovered that the headmaster gave extra leave to those who went into the village to an old Italian music master who had retired there, teaching several instruments. I would do anything to get out of school on long spring and summer afternoons, and I thought the clarinet would be easier to learn than the violin. The joke was on me, as it became my boyhood passion.” He turned to Mr. Jones. “You said you found the flute easy, I recollect.”

  Mr. Jones flushed. “Only because I’d first learnt trumpet—” His voice broke. He flushed even redder, abandoned whatever he was going to say, and gulped his wine.

  Anna was relieved that Captain Duncannon had occasioned only two bottles of wine to be set out, and there was tea as well as water. Mr. Jorgensen, it transpired, did not touch wine. Anna was able to water hers, and confined herself to a single glass.

  She noted that the captain only refilled the boys’ glasses once, and the rest of the second bottle was split between him and his first lieutenant.

  When they drank the health of the king, the meal was deemed finished—and she was not expected to go sit alone. Instead, the captain to
ld her they would set up for music, and she might watch if it would amuse her. The steward brought in a couple of his mates, the table was knocked apart into pieces with a couple of smart blows from a mallet, and then tidied away in the matter of a minute, as the four musicians took out their instruments and readied them.

  Grog was brought out, a tankard set by each music stand, and then the mates departed.

  The four tapped the checkered deck, watching each other, then struck up the well-known Bach air “Wachet auf.” It was odd, hearing it played by wind instruments rather than violins, but then Anna had also heard it on the harpsichord as well as the fortepiano. Though the musicians varied in skill, she rather thought that Maestro Paisiello would approve of the arrangement.

  Oh, Maestro Paisiello! She hoped he was well in Paris, writing great music now that he had an emperor as patron.

  Paris. She did not miss Paris as much as she missed the maestro, or maybe it was really that she missed those warm days in Naples’ summery weather, the smell of orange blossoms drifting in the open windows while she was singing her scales. Looking out upon the lacy fig trees and myrtle hedges as she practiced her first arias.

  She recollected how fervently she had promised never to slacken her studies, and she resolved to find some corner of the ship where she could at least hum, to warm her voice and work on her breathing. Perhaps she could recapture the old joy.

  Her reverie ended with the Bach air. The players went straight into the “D Suite,” to which she unconsciously tapped her foot to the strongly marked time, gazing out from under the low ceiling of the quarterdeck into the golden afternoon sunlight. The music carried beautifully, and in this, the first dog watch of the late afternoon, those not on duty gathered on deck to listen, to make and mend, and a few sailors on the forecastle used the beat to dance hornpipes. One young upper yardman dared the capstan, twirling and kicking nimbly without missing step in spite of the roll of the deck.