Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  Anna looked at that sinister line of ships slowly bearing down. “But will not all those ships fire upon her?”

  “They will,” Captain Duncannon said gravely. “Look your fill upon Victory. Take courage from the sight. Ah, there is the signal for Mars to lead the larboard division. Pray observe her well, that you will always remember her. Then, with your respect, I suggest you go below. The time has come, I believe.”

  Anna stood at the rail, looking at Victory with her brave golden checkerboard, guns at the ready, and above, the towering geometry of gently curving sails, white in the brilliant sunlight. She breathed, her ribs tight, but could not suppress the drumming of her heartbeat.

  Great as the ship was, yet she seemed small in comparison with some of those mighty Spanish argosies, and Anna clasped her hands to her breast. Her throat had dried.

  The marines began to thunder the drums, and sailors ran about with purpose. She could not prevent a last, questioning look at the captain. He met her gaze—he had been watching her. He half-lifted his hand, but then, aware of the watching eyes, he doffed his hat to her.

  She curtseyed, and turned toward the hatch. There Parrette awaited her, face tense.

  As Anna caught up her skirts and began her descent, she was aware of the rap of the captain’s boot heels as he crossed the deck and began addressing words to each man. Her throat tightened, her heart hurt, though she could not define why. She only knew she was afraid, for him, for herself. For them all.

  Anna descended the rest of the way and found the orlop transformed. Tarpaulins had been laid down, and then spread with sand. Buckets of sand stood under each corner of the table. “For fire?” Anna whispered to Parrette.

  “Blood,” was the answer.

  Anna looked away, to where a portable stove glowed. So the admiral had made his wishes known to others besides her. Of course he had. The mates and the loblolly boy stood at one end, talking in low voices. They broke off at the clatter of a newcomer, who ducked through a moment later. It was Mr. Gates, the burly purser, who turned an empty bucket upside down and sat, fists on his knees. “Signal from the flag,” he said. “Anchor at the end of the day.”

  Old Mr. Leuven grunted. “I told ye, I told ye it was going to come on to blow.”

  As the men began to argue about the weather, and surmise if the French would be able to slither back into Cadiz under cover of rain, Anna turned to Parrette. “Where is Michel?”

  “He will run powder, or aid here, or fight a gun, wherever he is needed most.” Parrette’s lips had thinned. Anna suspected that her worry was less for herself than for her son.

  Anna pressed her arms across her middle. Time had slowed again, each creak of the wood, each slap of the waves against the bulkhead, sharp and distinct. She closed her eyes and softly, softly, began to hum, first her scales, and then the lively “Papagena” air from Mozart, the first she ever learned.

  She trusted to the louder men’s voices to cover the sound of hers, but Mr. Gates cocked his head, motioned the others to quiet, and then got to his feet. “Ma’am, would it trouble you to tip us that piece so we can hear?”

  Anna considered the expectant faces. She saw no impatience. Perhaps they, too, wished to fill the time as best they could. And so she sang for them, there in the fetid murk, and watched the faces relax. Even severe, occasionally sour Mr. Leuven appeared less sour.

  So she sang two more arias from Magic Flute, breaking off when a cheer roared overhead.

  Everyone looked at one another.

  “Go,” Mr. Leuven said to the loblolly boy, but before he could get out, noisy footsteps approached, and Michel Duflot ducked in, grin slashing across his face. “The flag signaled. Nelson says that England wants us all to do our duty, then followed it with ‘Engage the enemy more closely.’”

  The men in the orlop sent up a hoarse cheer, and Michel vanished, his footsteps retreating—to be lost in a sudden deep boom.

  Anna had heard the cannons go off from time to time, in signal. But she had yet to hear a broadside from a ship of the line.

  The sound reverberated through the wood, the true note muffled by the water surrounding them. It was followed by another, and then another, each sound building on the last. The extra men in the orlop had departed by then, their footsteps completely lost in the noise.

  Each time Anna thought it could not possibly get louder, there came a new tumult, vibrating through bones and teeth. There was no hearing anything the others said: in the light of the swinging lanterns, she could see Mr. Leuven’s head tipped back, his mouth moving, moments before the floor abruptly slanted, throwing Anna into Parrette. The two crashed over the midshipmen’s trunks lashed together as a secondary table.

  Anna winced, pain lancing through both knees and one elbow.

  The surgeon’s mate had been struck by something sharp, and the first blood of the day dripped down his arm as he and the others picked up the surgery tools that had slid off the table, all while standing with one foot against the slanting deck, and the other against the hull.

  Another surge, another plunge, a fresh roar, and the ship heeled again. Anna and Parrette pressed themselves against the hull as the men held their instruments in place.

  The noise was ceaseless. The smell of smoke drifting down sent thrills of alarm through Anna’s nerves. She locked her teeth together to keep from crying out, though no one would have heard her.

  A shock rang through the ship as above their heads, the guns fired a broadside.

  Mr. Leuven’s wide eyes, his pale face, revealed tension. His mouth moved: Anna was only sure of the words fired upon.

  Groaning, crashing, roars . . . and then in the doorway the extra men reappeared, and here were the first casualties.

  One sailor was laid on the table, and another brought to Anna and Parrette. He curled up, rocking back and forth, his side dark with blood. At first Anna could not bear to look at his mangled flesh, but Parrette pulled her insistently, and motioned for Anna to hold their first patient still.

  Anna gripped him by the forearm, and as he resisted, she pulled his arm against her thigh. Long shards of wood had penetrated the man down one side. He opened his mouth, teeth showing, as Parrette gripped the worst splinter and pulled it free. Was he screaming? No one could hear over the roar.

  When the last splinter tugged free, Anna dashed for the bandages, felt Parrette’s insistent hand, and remembered the spirits.

  “Do it,” Parrette mouthed. She pressed her small, strong hands on his shoulders, holding him down.

  Anna took up the wooden cup, dipped it, and flung the liquid into the gaping hole in the man’s thigh. He stiffened, then slumped into a faint. Tears burned Anna’s eyelids. She hastily doused the rest of his wounds.

  Parrette stitched up the wounded flesh where she could. At the end, she and Anna took up a bandage and passed it back and forth as they bound the man’s leg.

  All right. She could do this work. Remove the cause of the wound, pour, sew, bind. As soon as the worst of the man’s wounds were wrapped, the loblolly boy thrust his hands under the seaman’s armpits and hauled him off the table as he began to stir and groan.

  A terrible grating sound caught Anna’s attention. Mr. Leuven was plying his saw on a lower leg as Mr. Gates held down their patient, who uttered guttural groans around a leather thing stuck between his teeth.

  Stars glittered across Anna’s vision. She gulped breath, shut her eyes, and leaned against the bulkhead.

  “Here they come,” someone shouted in another lull between cannon booms.

  The wounded came so quickly that Anna had no time for anything but the work before her: the world filled with bloody, torn flesh; pleading, shocked, angry eyes; limp fingers; blood-matted hair. Anna swiftly learned to distinguish between splinter wounds, those caused by metal bits, and the nasty round puckers of musket balls.

  Once again the ship heeled, and blood washed sickeningly down the canvas deck cover in sluggish streaks. Anna looked away as someone das
hed sand into the flow, and then threw down another tarpaulin.

  Then came more wounded. The first was Mr. Sayers, shockingly splattered with blood, his face blackened with gunpowder. The hole in the side of his knee kept him writhing, his face twisted.

  Anna and the loblolly boy held the lieutenant down as the surgeon’s mate plied a long instrument, probing the wound. Tears burned Anna’s eyes as the lieutenant stiffened, teeth bared in the extremity of pain.

  A push, a twist, a yank, and the musket ball was held up in triumph, then flung into one of the buckets. Anna dashed a cup of spirits in the wound, Parrette closed the pucker with two neat stiches, then bound it, but before the loblolly boy could help the lieutenant up, he shook his head, snatched the cup from Anna’s hand and drank off the dregs.

  Then before anyone could react, he thrust the cup back into her hands, heaved himself off the makeshift table, and plunged back through the door, to vanish in the direction of the ladder.

  The next shock was a crumpled figure carried in the arms of a big quarter-gunner, and Mr. Bradshaw’s lanky young form was gently laid in the gore on Mr. Leuven’s table. At first Anna thought he was dead, but the surgeon felt the boy’s chest, nodded, and motioned to his mates to cut off the mangled remains of one boot.

  Two more men were brought down, so Anna did not witness what was done to the poor boy; when she had a moment to look next, he lay, pale and motionless, waiting to be taken out as another broadside shook the ship. An eternity, a thousand eternities passed, during which she mopped, held for stitching, bandaged, and bent to refresh the cup of spirits.

  Then a crowd of men surged into the orlop, bearing—the captain. Their distraught faces testified better than mere words to the regard they held for Captain Duncannon.

  Mr. Leuven motioned for the seaman on the table to be shifted, and the captain was laid with infinite care in his place.

  Anna stood, unable to move, until Parrette yanked her by her blood-smeared wrist. The world filled with tiny lights, and a rushing sound replaced the din of cannon. A hand pushed Anna’s shoulder down and her legs collapsed under her. She found herself sitting on a barrel, her hem draggling in gore, her head in her lap. She sat up and breathed deeply. She would not faint. The lanterns swinging, the remorseless pitch of the ship, above all the dizziness caused her stomach to protest at last.

  “. . . get him into his cot,” came a voice.

  A voice! She could hear!

  “Anna.” That was Parrette, next to her. “Drink.” The wooden ladle was pressed into her fingers. The pungent aroma of whisky rose, and Anna nearly swooned again. “Just a sip.”

  Anna forced herself to swallow. The liquor burned the acrid taste from her mouth, burned going down. She looked up, aware again. “I beg pardon. I know not what overcame me.”

  “Exhaustion, first,” Parrette said, the harsh contours of her face emphasized in the guttering lantern light. “I ought to have warned you. But I could never talk about…what I saw. Before I ran to Italy to find my son.”

  Anna looked down, saw the hem of her gown, and gritted her teeth. A step away, the men began to pick up the captain.

  “I can walk.” Captain Duncannon’s voice rasped hoarsely.

  “Handsomely does it, sir, handsomely does it,” an elderly member of the afterguard replied, his tone grandfatherly. “Don’t top it the nob. Let we’m do our bit.”

  The captain insisted on being set on his feet, but he staggered. Supported on either side, he was taken out of the orlop, and he was replaced by another, and yet another, a nightmare of lacerated flesh.

  Anna worked on, her brain numb, until she became vaguely aware that sometimes their clothing was wrong, but she paid little heed until a young fellow no more than sixteen rolled back and forth on the table breathing, “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” Followed by rapid, idiomatic French.

  Parrette paused in tearing sheets of cloth, and both women turned to the purser, who said hoarsely, “They’re pulling ’em out of the water, ours and frogs alike.”

  And the work went on, until at last there was a pause for breath between one wounded man and another, then a longer pause. Mr. Leuven looked around at last, and Anna’s nerves chilled when she perceived the tear tracks glistening in the furrows of his face.

  “Get those who can shift into the sick berths,” he said. “I want to see Robert first, in case they throw him over the side.” And to old, grizzled Perkins, the captain’s steward, “Take this cup. Get this dose into the captain. Don’t tell him it is laudanum; he will try to refuse, to stand a watch, but he must rest. That wound on his head mislikes me.”

  Perkins departed, followed by Michel and Mr. Gates with an unconscious sailor.

  Parrette put out a hand to stop her son. “Young Leuven?”

  Michel’s smoke-stained face turned her way. “Killed,” he said in a dull voice. “The first one. The splinter that did for him was the captain’s first wound.” He jerked his head to Mr. Gates, and they moved out with their burden.

  Parrette said, “Anna, come into the hold. You must shift your clothes.”

  “We both must,” Anna said, sick at the sight of her ruined dress.

  Parrette lowered her voice. “Your work is not yet done. The weather is worsening. We must get all the wounded bound into their hammocks or cots. And you,” she added, “must tend your husband.”

  20

  Anna had no strength to protest, and what could she say? She did not feel in any respect a wife, but everyone regarded her as one.

  Gripping a pail of unused water, she followed Parrette into the hold. She ran her thumb along her fingers, and then peered down at her blood-crusted hand by the flickering light of the lantern that Parrette held high.

  The ring was gone. Probably somewhere in that horror of an orlop. She could not bear to return. Perhaps someone might find it, someone inured to the aftermath of war.

  Parrette continued into the hold, poking through the boxes and barrels until at last they found their trunks. Each set down her bucket of water. They were alone, though footsteps could be heard above.

  They hurried out of their clothes, and Anna gratefully plunged her hands into her bucket. The cold liquid was shocking. Anna scrubbed feverishly over every inch she could get at—she felt could not scrub enough. She left off only when she discovered she was rubbing her skin raw. She scrambled into fresh clothing, as Parrette blocked her from view of the ladder.

  Parrette bent to pick up their discarded garments.

  Anna said fiercely, “Fling mine overboard. Or I will do it. I will never wear that gown again.”

  “I will put it to soak,” Parrette said tonelessly. “There are other uses for the cloth.”

  Anna heard no rebuke in her voice, but her throat ached, and her eyes burned with unshed tears. “I beg pardon. I . . .”

  “We both must take food. We will need our strength, and Lt. Sayers said before he collapsed that the captain ordered a meal be shared out.”

  “A meal.” For the first time since the cannon had begun to fire, Anna began to wonder about the wider world—the upper deck, the weather deck, the battle. She forced herself not to blurt questions that she knew Parrette could not answer, and picked up her bucket.

  They emptied the buckets into the scuttle, and Anna began to make her way slowly upward. The roar of cannon had gone silent, but the ship was filled with noise: hammering, sawing, the shout of voices, the thump of footsteps. The cry of wounded.

  She heard the noise before she saw the shocking aftermath of battle. Where she had only seen scrubbed order was a chaotic tangle of rope, wood, iron, sailcloth. Crimson spatters, streaks, and splashes marred wood, rope, sailcloth.

  Lanterns hung everywhere against the dying light, as the boatswain oversaw the most desperate of the repairs. The captain’s cabin was still missing, except for his cot, and the checkered canvas deck cover that someone had unrolled. He lay in his cot, the steward Perkins bent over it as he helped the captain drink.

  Perki
ns looked up at her approach. He touched his forehead, and said, “Ma’am. If you’ll bide here, I can fetch the portable soup, which the cook has in hand. Carpenters is bringing up the bulkheads as soon as they get the hull patched forward, as it’s coming on to blow.”

  ‘Coming on?’ The wind howled through the rigging, and the ship rose and fell on great swells. She could see through the tangle amidships forward. Men crawled in the rigging, using ropes and tackles to lift and lower spars.

  “He’s dead.”

  The voice was almost too soft to hear.

  Anna turned. The captain swung in the cot, his dark hair lying over his bandaged brow. “He’s dead,” he murmured again, and Anna bent closer. His pupils were so large they swallowed the rest of his eyes, in the indifferent light a color impossible to discern.

  “Who is dead?” she asked. “Did you mean your clerk, Mr. Leuven?”

  “Nelson,” the captain murmured, still in that slow voice. “Neville shouted it over his taffrail. Running messages. From Collingwood. No one could see signals for the smoke. Sharpshooter, he thinks from Redoubtable.”

  “I am very sorry to hear that,” Anna said, sorrow crowding her heart. Though she had only met Admiral Lord Nelson the once, she vividly remembered his gentle smile when he uttered those words about instruments. He would feel no cold steel cutting into his flesh now.

  “Duff, too. I breakfasted with him and his boy this morning . . .”

  “The little boy?”

  “I do not know.” He struggled to sit, winced against the bandage that bound his left arm to his side, and fell back. “McGowan. Away in boats. I need to get up. I need to see . . .” His right hand fumbled over the edge of the cot.

  She moved instinctively near, and his fingers, hot and dry, grasped her wrist with surprising strength, but almost at once he let her go.

  “I will go find out any news. Pray rest here,” she said.

  “I can’t . . .”

  Perkins arrived as the captain struggled up again. Holding the tray expertly with one hand, the man pushed the captain down again. “Now, capting, sir, the surgeon says you cannot get up this day. You’re to eat this here soup, and sleep a watch.” He jerked his chin at Anna. “Your missus will cast her glims over the rail, and see what there is to see.”