Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  The captain’s outer doors standing open, Anna was drawn out by degrees to observe, until she heard an adolescent snort of laughter, and caught sight of two midshipmen bumping a third, a very small boy, in her direction.

  She recognized instantly what was going on, from her days in the royal nursery: the older ones were using rank, or size, or both, to propel the younger one into doing something he was reluctant to do. She recognized little Mr. Corcoran, who couldn’t have been more than twelve.

  Catching her eye, he paced stiffly to her, bowed and made his leg, then said with a kind of desperate formality, “Will you honor me with a dance, mum?”

  She held out her hand and said, “Why yes, thank you.”

  And with her toes pointed, and her hand held high, she minced with the gratified Mr. Corcoran to a small space in the waist between two boats, and they pranced out the measures of a minuet.

  She rejoiced at her ability to perform the dance without falling. Men have strong legs, sure, Lise had said what felt like a lifetime ago. But their balance is all in their shoulders. Watch their turns, it is always shoulders first. But us? The secret is to lead with the hips.

  And so Anna let her hips sway with the yaw of the ship. In the slanting rays of afternoon, with the light airs abaft the beam in the frigate’s happiest point of sailing, sailors—the most superstitious beings alive—universally regarded her smiling, graceful presence as a lucky omen.

  At the end of that piece, the bigger boys summarily thrust aside their junior, and each brazenly offered to dance with Anna. She enjoyed the air and the exercise, and smilingly assented to each.

  The quartet played, and she danced, until the ting-ting announced the second dog watch. The music ended. The thunder of feet on the gun decks meant cannon drill. Most of the rest of the great cabin vanished as summarily as the dining table had, revealing carronades housed in the stern. Only the little cabin assigned to Anna remained, and she perforce retreated to it so as not to be in the way.

  Parrette was still absent. Anna guessed she was with Michel, and picked up the top book, Splendid Misery, by one Thomas Skinner Surr. She sat on the stern window bench to read by the fading light, but she was distracted by the rumble and bump of the guns being run out and back. Her thoughts drifted from the sound to the man who commanded such effort.

  She had never seen Captain Duncannon smile before this day. The contrast was marked. It demonstrated how very reserved he had been.

  “I suppose I am a burden to him,” she thought, tucking her feet under her, the book open upon her lap, as she gazed out at the ever-widening wake.

  In a sense it was just, for she had found him a burden, too. False marriage—false expectations on the part of others—even the false conclusion about his ship having mutinied against him—she could not blame him. It was the awkwardness, the unsettled sensations that she disliked. Balked of being conveyed to Gibraltar, she could not plan her life until she was quit of him. No doubt he felt the same.

  Promptly at eight the watch changed again, the din of running feet now caused by the bringing of hammocks from the netting to be slung between the guns, as the great cabin was put back together again. The ship gradually quieted as much as it ever did, and she ventured out to take a last turn upon the deck before retiring for the night.

  She spied Mr. Leuven, who tipped his hat courteously. He broke into a broad smile when she greeted him in Italian, and they made their way, laborious on his part, through a stilted conversation about the weather (bello), the music (bella), and the ship (bellissima) before he went below. She did not correct his errors; she thought he would learn the faster by hearing her phrasing.

  She had reached the bow, and was turning to walk back when she was surprised by a party of midshipmen who had evidently been lying in wait.

  Once again it was little Mr. Corcoran who approached. “Please, mum,” he said, doffing his hat and making a leg. “Do you know any French songs?”

  “You wish to learn French songs?” she asked.

  “Not in the way of singing French songs,” he began, looking left to right. “By that I mean, not their words.”

  The tall, handsome blond master’s mate, his uniform better made than the others, pushed impatiently past. “My name is d’Ivry,” he said with an air of expectation, his cleft chin raised. “If you please, will you accompany us to the cockpit—that is, to our quarters? Our question is in the nature of a . . .” He glanced quickly around, as if worried about being caught. “Of a privileged nature.”

  “But of course,” she said, hiding a spurt of amusement at the covert nudges and shifty glances exchanged between the boys.

  She remembered the stuffy little hole that the captain’s clerk had shown her. It was exactly as stuffy as she’d remembered, smelling strongly of adolescent boy, though the small, oddly spaced shape was scrupulously tidy. The trunks had been shoved together in the middle to form a rough-and-ready table for the boys to eat and work at, and shelves fitted into the walls and even overhead, into which were stored plates, glasses, newly-brought loaves of sugar, clothes brushes, boots, cocked hats, dirks, writing desks, and even musical instruments. In the far corner sat sacks of potatoes, containers of sea biscuits and other comestibles belonging to their mess.

  Five of the six midshipmen gathered around the trunk-table, on which sat a single candle and a plate of butter; one boy was missing, being on watch. “You see, Vesuvius Jones, here, is a poet as well as a capital flute player,” d’Ivry began, indicating the boy with the spotty face—the latter rolling his eyes to convey his silent opinion of his nickname.

  “We have been putting together a review, for the ship,” d’Ivry said. “The seamen put on a play aboard Victory, you know, and we aim to top them with a better. They sang the same old songs. Jones writes new words to songs.”

  “In the way of ‘Yankee Doodle,’” another midshipman put in, a thin, earnest boy with spectacles flashing on his nose, and a somewhat pedantic manner. “Which was all the crack in our fathers’ day. Started out as ‘Lucy Locket,’ you know.”

  “Stop your gob, Gilchrist,” Bradshaw muttered. “You and your fathers’ day.” He yanked the younger boy back.

  “But it’s true—”

  “Oh, stick a macaroni up your—”

  “You don’t stick macaronis, you were one,” Gilchrist said painstakingly. “My Uncle Timmons was a macaroni—”

  It looked to Anna as if Mr. Gilchrist was going to be choked out of having his say. To prevent what looked very like impending murder, she turned to him. “What, pray, do you mean by macaroni? I know another meaning, in Italy, a food made of duram.”

  Thus addressed, Mr. Gilchrist was summarily freed by Bradshaw and Jones. As he put his spectacles right and straightened his jacket, he said, “It was a fashion, you see. ‘Call it macaroni’ refers to a fashion. My uncle was a famous one. Never spoke anything but French, wore great ladder toupets, and painted his lips red.”

  “They all painted,” Jones put in. “Men and women.”

  “But not in pictures,” Mr. Gilchrist returned.

  He was thrust aside by d’Ivry, who said, “At all events, ma’am, Bradshaw has the way of it. We make new songs, to sing in the fleet, to old tunes. We thought it would be capital if we might put new words to French songs. But we’re keeping it dead secret, see. It will be so much better if we spring it on ’em.”

  “Ah,” Anna said, thought, and then quickly, softly, sang “Ça Ira.”

  The boys instantly took to the catchy tune. “Might I trouble you to sing it again, please?” Mr. Jones asked.

  “I will take you through it in phrases.”

  Anna pitched her voice to carry no further than the room, and instructed them the way she had been taught, phrase by phrase, with the result they not only got melody and words, but they were reasonably on pitch. She was less satisfied with her own voice. To her sensitive ear, she sounded lamentably rusty. She must at least find a way to do her scales, she promised herself, as
the boys complimented her on a thumping great song.

  Seeing how pleased they were, she gave them “La Carmagnole,” which they liked even better.

  They fell to putting together their own phrases, calling out to Jones for rhymes. Anna left them to their poetic afflatus, and made her way along the deck, enjoying the fresh air. She acknowledged every knuckled forehead, every lifted hat with a smile and a dip of her head, as polite to the one-legged cook’s mate as she was to the first lieutenant, standing on the windward side of the quarterdeck as she passed below into the cabin.

  Parrette had returned. “Michel took me aboard the little ship,” she said. “He was given a day’s liberty, that we might catch up.” She wiped puffy eyes; she had apparently been weeping, but Anna knew better than to take notice. “Oh, I am so happy. So happy!” She added with a hint of her old ferocity. “Though I would be happier if we could but leave in Michel’s company before this threatened battle that they all anticipate with such joy. Men! Shall I lay out your night things?”

  “Not yet. I am going to read for a time.”

  Parrette gave a short nod. “So I shall repair to the gunroom. Michel sits there, and I have offered to make myself of use. I will mend anything I am asked.”

  “Michel!” Anna exclaimed. “Surely he has told you his history?”

  Parrette’s lips thinned. “He has begun to do so. Even though he was given liberty, he was interrupted, oh, so much! And we wandered down many other paths. His memories of Lyons, what happened there. We talked in circles,” she finished, with evident satisfaction. “It will take many days to relate it all.”

  “I would very much like to hear it,” Anna said.

  “So you shall. Michel will tell you himself, when things are settled.” She did not further define ‘settled’ but left the cabin. Anna curled up into the bench below the stern window, between two lanterns, and opened Mr. Surr’s novel.

  But it was not the novel that claimed her attention. Her eyes skimmed over the words, the sense escaping her. She began a page three times before setting the book on her lap.

  She knew what it was. She wanted, for the first time, to converse with the captain. There was no urgent question. It was just that ever since she had heard his music, and begun to know a little about his crew, she longed to ask about it all. How long had they been playing together, was it always Bach? Did he hire crew, or were they assigned in some way? Did he seek musicians?

  Innocent questions, she hoped, scarcely impertinent, or encroaching. And yet she was hesitant to take the ten short steps to the door, and to poke her head out, though she could hear him moving about directly above her; there was the rumble of his voice through the skylight above his dining cabin, on the other side of the thin false walls.

  No one had told her to confine herself to this cabin. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out. The great doors to the cabin had been replaced after the gun exercise. She stepped out at the same moment the door opened, and here was the captain himself.

  He checked at the sight of her, as the marine guard clashed his musket on the deck.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Duncannon,” he said, his voice dropping self-consciously a note on the name that neither was at all accustomed to. He glanced to the side and then back, and said, “It is our customary time for supper, and while in general I cannot recommend stale, weevily ship’s biscuits, or the other heel taps we have been obliged to eat, thanks to the return of the tender, we now have fresh hardtack and cheese to go with it. If you would care to join us, we would be honored.”

  The smell of toasted cheese had already traveled along with the steward bearing a heavy tray. With suddenly awakened appetite, Anna thanked him.

  When she entered the dining cabin, the easy chatter stopped as the officers rose. Anna saw the subtle signals of the constraint. To call attention to their sudden restraint would only worsen it. If she wished to banish it, she must find a topic that would circumvent it. And that, she thought, meant finding something that would not keep her at the center of conversation. “I enjoyed, oh, very much, the Bach quartets. But I asked myself, why the violins thus arranged for wind? Are there not many fine pieces written for winds?”

  A quick exchange of looks, then Lieutenant Sayers said with an apologetic air, “Mine is the blame, ma’am, if blame there is to be. It is a favorite exercise, transposing them. If the lady will indulge me with what might be a tedious explanation . . .”

  “But there is nothing tedious about music,” she said. “It is my favorite topic.”

  Lt. Sayers flushed slightly. “Then with your permission: I believe there is a strong affinity between music and mathematics. The purity of the one translates to the purity of the other. While our esteemed Lt. Abrams here maintains that the two have little in common beyond the numbers of notes and bars.”

  He indicated the stout commander of the ship’s Royal Marines, whose bristling red eyebrows clashed oddly with his neatly powdered hair.

  “No, no,” Lt. Abrams said genially, hands upraised. “I grant you more than that. I do, and no mistake. But the element of sensibility, now that, I think it fair to say, no, mathematics cannot touch. You cannot make a claim upon the point of sensibility, one might say emotion. There is no equation for that, is there, gentlemen?”

  “On the contrary, if you will forgive me, Abrams,” Lt. Sayers said mildly. “On the contrary. If one wishes to evoke sensations of sorrow, of reflection, what better than the andante count, which is to say, a numerical—mathematical—quantity?”

  “I cannot agree,” the marine lieutenant exclaimed. “A sprightly song played slowly is lugubrious. A dirge played fast becomes a farce. These counts are incidental, that is to say, more than mathematical quantities. They are bound to emotions: no matter what language, or even if a man cannot count, he understands that ‘allegro’ means merry, that it raises sensations of joy, of cheer, in the breast.”

  “Allegro,” Lt. Sayers admonished, “is a strict count, 120 beats to the minute.

  Anna knew nothing about mathematics; in ballet ‘allegro’ referred to the steps of elevation, the sautes, soubresauts, changements, and echappes, and so forth, but she remembered Philippe’s admonishments to lift the heart, to express joy. It is universal, he had said. The emotion raised when ballet is done well is universal.

  She would not speak. She listened to the ensuing debate with a fair assumption of interest, her smile entirely due to her sense of triumph. They were talking again. If not with their former ease, at least they were not sitting mumchance, laboring to find topics suitable for the intruder into their wooden world upon the sea.

  She stayed long enough to eat a bread-and-cheese, and at the first pause in the conversation, rose to excuse herself.

  Instantly the constraint was back. “Is there anything you need?” Captain Duncannon asked. “You have only to mention it.”

  The impulse came from nowhere; she hadn’t really thought about it. “Actually, there is,” she said slowly, and viewed the waiting faces, the curiously blank faces. What did they expect her to demand?

  She smiled. “You will say, I am frivolous, and I will not deny it. But when we were aboard the Victory, I saw that the other ladies all wore hats. In Spain, we did not.”

  Captain Duncannon said with a conscious air, “I beg leave to apologize, but the tender will not be returning to Gibraltar.”

  “Yes, so I was told, and I remember, me. But I was thinking that nothing would make me happier than to make one for myself. I saw some men working with sennit earlier, and I wondered if there might be a little extra. I would pay for it, if that is the custom—I would not ask for anything to be given me that is not my due. I could plait the brim myself, and the rest is easily got from my own things.”

  The waiting faces all relaxed and smiled once again.

  “Why, nothing would be easier,” Lt. Sayers exclaimed heartily. “First thing in the morning watch I’ll have a word with Mr. Gates. We will rouse you out whatever you need. We carr
y plenty of sennit, more than enough for our needs.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Say-airrrs,” she said, doing her best to get his name out right, without being aware of how delightfully her accent fell on English ears.

  The men rose and bowed. She curtseyed and left.

  There, she thought as she let herself into her cabin. The men’s voices, punctuated by laughter, carried on, the words muffled by the intervening wall. They were enjoying themselves, clearly. Perhaps the better without her there?

  She shifted the lantern to the hook above the bed, and paused, distracted. This was his place of rest. She wondered if the captain must regularly read himself to sleep.

  It was strange to think that this was his bed, that he regularly looked out this window, or up at the deck just there. What did he think when he saw those scratches? Did he think about her climbing into his bed, she wondered as she settled herself and pulled the hangings to admit the lantern light, but shut out the rest of the cabin. There was a curious sense of intimacy in it all.

  She read until the flicker of light caused by the constant movement tired her eyes. She blew out the light, shut her eyes and slipped into dreams, as in the next cabin over, the guests departed and Captain Duncannon dealt with the last of the official post that had been brought by the tender.

  He was finishing that up when Lt. Sayers returned after his last round of the deck, and asked permission to enter. The lieutenant glanced at the desk, reflecting once more on how nearly every reading man in the ship (and some of those who didn’t read) had in expectation of battle been writing or dictating letters home, except the captain.

  Duncannon looked up expectantly, and Sayers gave a succinct report on the state of the sails and sea. They talked a little of ship’s business, and the lieutenant prepared to leave.

  The captain raised a hand to halt him. He officially took no notice of his midshipmen’s maneuvering to put together their review, a fact of which they remained blissfully unaware. When they weren’t squabbling among themselves, they were a good set of youngsters, attentive to their duty, and their determination to outdo the other ships’ attempts at theatricals kept them busy.