Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  Unaware of the protracted silence, she gripped her hands anew in her mother’s gloves as they bucketed over the ship’s wake. The men rowing paid the bumps no heed, so she shut her eyes.

  He checked his pocket watch when the Victory was in view and he gave a satisfied huff of breath.

  The ceremonial for boarding the flagship was even grander, as the Captain ascended the side with an ease that nearly made Anna’s heart stop. The ceremony was solely for the captains, she saw, as another followed on Captain Duncannon’s heels from the boat that had come up behind them.

  She sustained this unsettling sensation that she was invisible, excluded from the arcane customs and language reserved exclusively to men. The very way she soared easily into the air in the canvas seat, and was set gently on the deck, seemed to underscore her strange position, not within their ordered world, but not altogether shut out as she curtseyed to this staring mass of officers with orders, medals, sashes, epaulettes, gold lace in their cocked hats, which they swept off as they bowed.

  From the leeward side, without her husband (being a mere lieutenant, not invited) Lady Lydia Neville watched jealously as the naval blue and marine red coats parted. Only four months a bride, and already old—uninteresting—and who was this Mrs. Duncannon anyway? When Lady Lydia’s mother had tried to convince her not to marry dear Charles, she had pointed out that these naval men married pot-house women, flower sellers, anything with a pair of pretty eyes, and she would be forced to give way before such if the husband had a higher rank than Charles Neville.

  At that moment the wind whipped along the quarterdeck, blowing open Mrs. Duncannon’s boat cloak. The men stirred; Lady Lydia caught her breath at the lady’s grace, from the fascinating curve of her Spanish headdress down to the little French slippers. She embodied le bon ton, she was beautiful. Lady Lydia eagerly read every French fashion newspaper; she would take an oath that exquisite gown had come straight from Paris.

  And every single man stared at her.

  Thoroughly intimidated, Anna dared not look anyone in the face as she performed her curtsey. Then there he was—it could only be he, the famous Lord Nelson—holding out his left hand.

  She proffered her own as she gazed into a pair of blue eyes, one with its black pupil larger than the other. There was no mistaking the sweetness of Admiral Lord Nelson’s smile as he uttered words of welcome; she said something disjointed and tried to marshal her wits as the mass moved past white-gloved marines and orderlies to a beautiful suite much, much larger than Captain Duncannon’s.

  They paused as Nelson quickly performed introductions. Lady Lydia appeared to be about the age of the dancer Helene, no more than seventeen, with diamonds flashing at her neck and in her headdress. Mrs. Fellowes was tall and thin, her gown dove-colored. Last was Mrs. Porter, a smiling gray-haired lady who touched Anna’s arm and said, “The cloak room, and what will pass for our own parlor, is here in the Admiral’s day cabin.”

  Day cabin? This turned out to be a ship’s cabin rich with white wainscoting gilt in squares, with portraits on the walls. Anna glimpsed a framed silhouette that called Lady Hamilton to mind, as the other ladies removed their cloaks.

  A pigtailed sailor with white gloves took the cloaks and effaced himself, leaving the women alone. The youngest lady cast her reticule and gloves carelessly upon Lord Nelson’s fine carved desk, and covertly studied the new Mrs. Duncannon. Why, taken separately, her features were no more than ordinary: a pair of brown eyes, a straight nose, a firm chin, a broad forehead under those artful curls. What did the French call them? Kiss curls. Lady Lydia would adopt them. She was sick of frizz.

  She turned away, satisfied that this new bride was really no prettier than she was, in spite of that fabulous gown, and the way she held her head. She wore no diamonds, and as for that ring, it was the merest trumpery.

  Lady Lydia glanced complacently into a pier glass, then exclaimed in a high voice, “I knew it. I said it would be so. Mrs. Duncannon, you will have to forgive me for my wretched appearance—a thousand pities we must venture out in this gale. But you will forgive me, I know.”

  Mrs. Porter said, “You look charmingly, as always, Lady Lydia.”

  Lady Lydia bridled, casting her eyes skyward. “You are too kind, Mrs. Porter.”

  Mrs. Fellowes turned Anna’s way. “What pretty lace! Is that not the Spanish style of headdress?”

  “It is,” Anna said. “Thank you.”

  “But your accent is French,” Lady Lydia cried. “And here I was just thinking that your gown must have come straight from Le Roy, if it wasn’t for this vile war. Lady Bessborough made us all die a million deaths from envy when she wore her French gowns the season before last. Or was it two seasons ago? Oh, my head.” She fluttered her fingers. “She could talk of nothing else but Le Roy, though she never met Madame Bonaparte, now an empress, as she took against Napoleon. I don’t suppose you met Bonaparte’s wife? Oh, but you was in Spain, I collect?”

  The white-gloved sailor stuck his head in again. Glad for an excuse not to answer, Anna said, “The officers, they wait, is it not so?”

  The sailor touched his forehead. “Which the bells is about to ring the watch change, if you please.”

  “And we know the entire fleet would sink if they were a stroke past the hour sitting down to their dinner.” Mrs. Porter chuckled. “Shall we join the gentlemen?”

  “I must lead the way,” Lady Lydia began, rustling toward the door, then she paused with a dramatic start. “No, no, it is Mrs. Duncannon who is the guest of honor—”

  Whatever she was going to say next was lost as the ship’s bell rang. The ladies only had a few steps to walk. The sound caused all the officers to be in motion. Once again there was the dazzling display.

  This time Anna was able to take in more details: young and old officers, fat and thin. Most of the younger ones, like Lord Nelson, wore their own hair fairly short, but several of the older captains wore beautifully powdered wigs, and one wore his own hair queued and powdered; snow dusted his shoulders from the wind.

  Lord Nelson himself escorted Anna into the dining room, which was dominated by a long table ablaze with light. Golden candelabra gleamed richly down the middle, between two rows of exquisite china dishes.

  Anna was seated to the admiral’s right. She was relieved to see the other women placed at her end of the long table, each with an officer on either side. Lady Lydia was highest up, across from her. Another thought: how was she to be addressed? Was Lady Lydia the informal use, like the French tu, reserved to intimates and children? She tried to recollect the tangle of titles and usages her mother had taught her; she was fairly certain she had the exigencies of birth rank straight, but what happened after marriage? Was this young bride properly addressed as Lady Neville, or was she Mrs. Neville?

  In Paris, all the rules had been topsy-turvy, and they had never been quite the same as her mother’s careful lessons in English, that much Anna remembered from her childhood. Oh, yes: the Captain had referred to her as ‘Lady Lydia Neville.’ All right, she could remember that.

  As they were served, Lord Nelson turned to Anna. “And so you were born at Naples, Mrs. Duncannon?”

  “Calabria, sir.”

  The admiral did not hear. He was lost in fond memory. “Ah, the beauty! You were acquainted with Lady Hamilton, were you not?”

  “A little,” Anna said, and, catching sight of the glitter on her finger, reflecting the light from the candelabra, “This is her ring.”

  Lord Nelson’s smile was brilliant. “Ah, so kind, so generous! A toast to Lady Hamilton.”

  “Lady Hamilton,” the officers said, raising their glasses.

  With genuine good will, Lord Nelson leaned toward Anna. “And so you ended up in Cadiz. Music, was it? Did you chance to look into the harbor?”

  “I walked down the very first day, to take the fresh air,” Anna said. “It was a very hot journey down the river.”

  “And what did you see in the harbor? Did you ob
serve how many ships of the line were gathered?”

  Anna’s brow puckered. “It was a forest of tall poles, so many. Some of the ships were very big, oh, I think there was one prodigiously greater than this one we sit in. But I could mistake. It is difficult to tell, from the wharf, and I was mostly looking out to sea. It was my first sight of the Atlantic.” She became aware of the entire table listening to her, and glanced uncertainly. “I beg pardon. I am so ignorant of these things—for many years I have seen no ocean at all.”

  Lord Nelson laughed. “No one expects a lady to give an exact accounting of warships. Let us turn to a subject you must know well. What was the great Paisiello working on when you left Naples? What have you seen in Spain?”

  Anna could talk knowledgeably about that! Without admitting that she had performed in some of them, she began to name operas, but scarcely had she progressed beyond I riti and Nina before before others exclaimed that they had seen this, or heard of that.

  The conversation turned to London theater—famous performances—famous performers—no one wrote opera like the Italians, except for that fellow Mozart—Englishmen couldn’t write opera anymore than Dutchmen.

  Mrs. Fellowes was resigned to another long naval dinner. She had no ear for opera, and disapproved of its stories, which always seemed to be about disreputable, if not immoral, persons. For her, the point of the evening would come after the ladies retired. She hoped that Mrs. Duncannon was a reading woman. Otherwise, the evening would end in dull female chatter about fripperies.

  Mrs. Porter was the most comfortable, content to enjoy the sight of the captains enjoying themselves, and Lady Lydia the least. She tried very hard to regain the attention she had come to expect as her due when a new bride, and she made a little business of joining the toasts with what she thought a daring, dashing air.

  As the meal wore on, the gentlemen spoke much too rapidly for Anna to follow, using expressions she did not understand. She watched their faces instead, the ruddy cheeks and bright glances that threw her back to the Paris cafés with the soldiers. She shook off that memory, and listened to the deep buzz of men’s voices. Was there an English word for it? The frémissement, the bourdonnement, a sound felt as strongly as heard.

  She was not used to wine, except watered. Though she only sipped, the jacketed, gloved servants behind each chair kept her glass filled, as they did the men’s. She noticed that Lady Lydia began by tossing hers off with an arch look. Mrs. Porter only lifted hers to her lips when they toasted the King, then put it down again. Mrs. Fellowes never touched her glass, and Anna left hers, relieved.

  The food came and went. Anna had long since sated her hunger. Still the men talked on, faces flushed, laughter louder and more broad, their conversation utterly impenetrable as they talked about ships, parts of ships, armaments of ships. The only French words were names of ships and commanders, and places like Toulon. She could not descry what polishing Cape Sicié meant, but it caused a general roar of laughter.

  Anna looked down at her hands in her lap below the gilt rim of the china dish, thinking how very strange a turn her life had taken. She did not see Vice-Admiral Collingwood watching her narrowly as the talk wound on, touching now and then on Lord Nelson’s strategy should Villeneuve come forth. He shifted his gaze from Anna with her downcast eyes to Henry Duncannon, halfway down the table, whose attention to his wife was no more than polite.

  Anna was deep in reverie when some signal occurred that she had missed: the men were stirring, the plates vanishing rapidly. Lord Nelson turned her way and said with an earnest, confiding air, “If Villeneuve brings them out, your station will be in the orlop, in course. Remember, put the knives to heat. The poor wretches will take it kindly. I shall never forget the horror of a cold knife cutting into my flesh.” He tapped the pinned sleeve and then rose.

  Anna had no idea what to say. He held out his hand and kissed her fingers, then turned a little as he let her hand go, as if he expected her to do something. She raised her eyes, seeing the women all standing. Mrs. Porter looked at her with a significant smile, and Anna remembered her mother telling her how Englishwomen withdrew after a meal.

  She followed Mrs. Porter, consciously moving against the pitch, unconscious of her grace, though all the men were watching.

  As soon as the door to the Admiral’s day room shut behind them, Mrs. Porter whispered to Anna, “They will serve wine to us. I assure you they are all very well brought up, but custom in the service is impossible to overcome, and so they will talk across the table like perfect hobbledehoys. However, we forgive them. Especially before an action.”

  A scratch on the door caused her to pause. In came one of the stewards with the long sailor’s pigtails, bearing on an embossed silver tray a beautiful tea service.

  Lady Lydia cast herself in an armchair and lay back, groaning. Mrs. Porter said to her, “Come, dear, some tea will set you right up.” And to the sailor serving as steward, “We can pour for ourselves. Thank you.”

  The man set the tray on the desk, knuckled his forehead and exited.

  Mrs. Fellowes sat down beside Anna on the bench that ran under the bulkhead, her back straight. “I promise, Mrs. Duncannon, the gentlemen know what is due to us. Their manners are rather more nice when they are on land.”

  Lady Lydia pulled fretfully at her reticule resting on the nearby table. “They were so bor-ring.” She extracted a beautifully embroidered square of linen, and pressed it to her lips before saying, “I thought it would never end, this ten ages at least. Neville will stare when I tell him how rude they were, so unlike during summer! It is this war at fault. All they think about is the Nelson Touch, all they talk about is the Nelson Touch, until I am brought to the brink of extinction from ennui.”

  “Drink this, dear.” Mrs. Porter held out a cup and saucer, balancing nicely on the long roll.

  Lady Lydia sullenly took the cup and saucer, sipped, and wrinkled her nose. “Ugh! Simply scalding.” She faced Anna and said in stilted, heavily accented French, “One was given to expect to have civilized talk, one was promised.” And then in English, shrill and indignant, “Who can expect civilization when they will make anyone a captain? Berry no better than a merchant’s brat, Prowse the son of a collier or cook, Conn the same, or worse, and Irish as well.”

  “Drink up your tea,” Mrs. Porter said soothingly. “I have blown upon it. There is no scald.”

  Lady Lydia gulped her tea, and hiccupped.

  “You must remember not to empty your wine glass, without they water it first. It is not what you are used to,” Mrs. Porter murmured.

  “But it was so tiresome. Four months ago I was the toast of the fleet. Everybody was agreed, it was the romance of the new century.” She turned to Anna. “I met Charles at a ball, and Cupid’s dart struck us at exactly the same instant. It was fate! I carried my point against the entire family—Charles said no one could have more courage—and married him on my seventeenth birthday. I came away with him—we could not be parted an instant. I knew I would die if we were. But men are so fickle. Here I am, old and forgotten in four months, and so I must warn you, do not look for anything better. They will drop us both in an instant for their war.”

  She hiccupped again, then closed her eyes. “Oh, I am so very unwell.”

  A body of sound echoed through the thin walls, Hear him, hear him!

  “Dull, dull, dull.” Lady Lydia put her arms on the table, and laid her head on them. “I am dull as a nightcap.”

  “That’s right. Rest your head. The gentlemen will be at their toasts for a time,” Mrs. Porter said comfortably.

  She paused as the cabin rolled, then with a step and a turn, neatly for so stout a woman, she sat at Anna’s other side. “Now, tell us how you met—what happened. We have only heard that it was sudden, and in Sicily, very like Captain Fremantle’s romance.”

  Mrs. Fellowes said seriously, “You cannot conceive how surprised his friends were, to discover Captain Duncannon married. He never spoke of it, bu
t he never speaks of anything of home, or family, or friends. One only sees him come alive when he is playing Bach with certain of his officers.”

  “A disappointment in youth has been spoken of,” Mrs. Porter whispered, as a moan emanated from Lady Lydia’s folded arms. “He was used to be against women on board. Would sit apart at balls, if he even attended. Could only be got ashore for musical events. They say he has never been home, not even when his father died, and his brother Northcote succeeded to the title.”

  “Have you met Lord Northcote, his brother?” Mrs. Fellowes asked, her expression one of extreme reserve. “He goes up to London every season.”

  Lady Lydia groaned, and murmured something in which the words ‘Lord Northcote’ could barely be made out. Then she subsided.

  “I have never been to England,” Anna began. She had expected interrogation from Lord Nelson—and indeed, she had thought it begun at the dinner, but he had not followed that first question with anything about war, or ships, or the like. But here were these women and their questions.

  Well, she could ask questions, too. “Captain Duncannon, when I heard last, was captain of the Danae. But was there not a mutiny?”

  Mrs. Porter sighed and shook her head. “It would have been better for those poor souls on board, was Captain Duncannon still in command, but he was given his step and promoted into Aglaea. Danae was given to a man known as a hard horse captain, a real Tartar.” She leaned close and whispered, “There was indeed a mutiny. The crew killed all the officers, and deserted to the French. A terrible thing, terrible!”

  Mrs. Fellowes, tired of old naval news, got to what interested her. “I take it you are a well-educated woman? A reader? Captain Duncannon is known all over the fleet for his interests in music.”