Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  He raised his palm upward. “You know that the sick berth is on the deck above us, starboard side. But you will not be carrying. If the men are not ambulatory, we set them in the cable tiers until we can shift them to the sick berth.”

  Anna found her mouth was dry. She looked away from the cold steel instruments waiting on the surgeon’s chest, and the row of bottles.

  The surgeon, catching the direction of her glance, said, “We will not be concerning ourselves with physic, or the usual run of diseases exhibited by seamen. It will be torn flesh, not diseased, that will be our concern. And I have a singular practice, not at all accepted among my colleagues, but one day I hope to publish my treatise. What I do have is experience.”

  He tapped the barrel. “The men know my method. In here is the finest whiskey. The men will beg or plead for it. Seamen in battle long to get drunk, or they will insist they require its medicinal properties. There are no internal medicinal properties. It is all external: that is, when properly exhibited in a severe wound, it acts upon the nerves in the exact same way as a cauterizing fire. The sensation is burning. But the flesh is not burned. You will put a dose of this into each wound before wrapping it.”

  “Spirits, in wounds, Mr. Leuven?” Parrette asked. “Not lint? How does more liquid sop up the blood?”

  “Spirits, sew, wrap,” the surgeon repeated doggedly, as if he had held this argument many times before. As indeed he had. His manner convinced his listeners that he was not to be moved from this strange course, and as neither Anna nor Parrette knew much of nursing, he was able to go on. “We save the powder of basilicum for superficial wounds. Use the lint if we run out of powder. You can see.” He lifted the tightly fitted lid on a wooden bucket. “I am very careful where I get it. There are quacks and cranks a-many out there who will sell you powder of lead instead, they will practice upon the gullible, and so I am careful. We have thus not been able to fill it. Gibraltar runs low as soon as they acquire it.”

  He took in the wary disbelief in the women’s faces, their tight mouths as they looked at his barrel. “Five and thirty years have I practiced,” Mr. Leuven said. “It was an old infantryman when I was a lad, who told me yarns about his mates dousing their wounds with wine and spirits during the campaigns on the colonies, the War of Jenkins’ Ear. He was much scarred, but had all his limbs. When I experimented, I discovered that his tales were largely true. I have since then been formulating my theory . . .”

  While he went on in exhaustive detail to the silent women, in the cabin, the captain was finishing a consultation with the gunner and bosun. Lt. Sayers paused in the open door, and on being beckoned in, listened to the last of it.

  The bosun and carpenter having been dismissed, Lt. Sayers said, “We have hawsers laid along, against the wind freshening.”

  Captain Duncannon replied, “The signal midshipman just reported: Euryalus has spotted the French again. They are indeed out.”

  On receiving the captain’s nod, Sayers slid his hand into his coat, and withdrew a sealed letter. With no more than a heightened color, the lieutenant said, “You have my letter to my father, still.” On receiving another nod and a gesture toward the locked desk, he continued. “If it becomes—if it is necessary, would you do me the honor of seeing that this also goes out?”

  Captain Duncannon accepted the letter, glanced at the direction, and recognized the name of Lt. Sayers’ betrothed. “I pray that it does not come to this, but you have my promise.”

  The lieutenant hesitated, and Captain Duncannon knew why, but he forbore saying anything. There was no letter to go home from him, and Sayers knew it.

  Earlier in the year, when they had been at the West Indies chasing the French, the news that the packet carrying their post—an accumulation of post going back to Christmas and before—had been swamped, the captain alone had been unmoved. In their years of sailing together Sayers had only seen Henry Duncannon write one letter, to his mother, after they read of the death of his father in the newspapers half a year after the fact. He would not write home now. As far as Captain Duncannon was concerned, a line in a newsprint article reporting his death in battle would suffice.

  The lieutenant glanced at the door. No one was in view, beyond the musket of the sentry stationed at the other side. Trusting to the noise of the rain pouring on the deck overhead, Lt. Sayers said apologetically, “The lady?”

  Captain Duncannon also glanced at the door. “Where is she?”

  “She and the maid are both with the surgeon, learning his ways. If . . . if it comes to me to direct her movements, what are your wishes?”

  Captain Duncannon felt an unwonted, and entirely undeserved, pleasure, as if he could take credit from her creditable gesture. He deserved no such credit. Her merits were entirely her own; if anything, his personal resentments, which owed nothing to her, were such that he had not given a thought to her eventual future should anything happen to him.

  He felt, in short, rather like a scrub.

  The idea unsettled him. He was impatient with himself for weakness. This pride in her gallantry, his pleasure in her neat ways, her grace, even the sound of her voice, it was nothing more than mere animal nature—as ephemeral as morning mist and every bit as obscuring to the clear sight he must rely on shortly.

  Collingwood had kept her aboard the Aglaea, but after the battle, his scruples would have no basis. A spy, absurd! She must go back to Naples, or wherever she called home; he could make arrangements when she was comfortably established.

  He was startled to find Sayers waiting for an answer.

  The captain took his letter and locked it in his desk, then he said, “Should anything happen to me, she will in course have my fortune.” It had been so many years since he had let himself think in these terms it felt very like opening a door into an attic long closed off. He nodded. “That will leave her comfortably off. Exert yourself to see that she gets safely home,” he added, thinking of Naples.

  Then he returned to his desk, and the lieutenant went out. He had come to like and even to admire the captain’s lady, though it was apparent that the marriage was only on paper. They each slept alone. It filled him with inexplicable sadness: he was old for a lieutenant, because his family had no influence at the Admiralty. He longed for his step, for were he to be promoted to post captain, he and his Mary, waiting patiently in Sussex, could wed.

  He longed for his step, he longed for money, and he longed for his Mary. His old friend Henry Duncannon possessed the first two, but even with what anyone might consider the perfect wife right at hand, he had not the third, which, in some ways, was the most important of all.

  19

  Signal flags fluttered up and down the lines on both sides.

  Out at sea, boats plied to and fro, conveying officers to meetings and dinners. Captain Fremantle hosted a splendid meal for his fellow ship-of-the-line captains, far astern of the frigates strung out to make certain the French did not slip back into port.

  But Admiral Villeneuve had no intention of regaining the harbor at Cadiz. He had obtained warning that the emperor had issued a fresh set of orders contradicting all previous—and that these new orders were being carried by his replacement.

  His signals directed his fleet into readiness, and the instructions he sent out with aides were to prepare for Nelson’s throwing away the old line-of-battle rules in favor of cutting the line. “Use your own initiative,” Villeneuve sent to both Spanish and French captains, and to try to form the unwilling allies into a cohesive line, he insisted that they form up interweaving, one French ship, then one Spanish.

  Aboard the Aglaea, Captain Duncannon invited all his officers, including the warrant officers, to a crowded, high-spirited dinner, and made certain that the hands were given their Sunday duff as dessert.

  Anna dined once more with the officers. The talk began with former battles, those the men had survived and those they had heard about, and the meal ended after a lengthy review of every shot of the Battle of the Nile, at w
hich Captain Duncannon had earned not only a medal but his promotion to commander.

  After the meal, they dispersed to Sunday leisure, though there was no relaxed atmosphere. Anna, walking the deck, surprised many furbishing up uniform coats and accouterments as if for a general inspection. Captain Duncannon seemed to be everywhere at once, dealing with an unending stream of questions, while always checking the sky, the sails, and of course the signal flags fluttering from the next frigate up in the line.

  Presently Anna became aware of Mr. Jones, the lanky midshipman with the large Adam’s apple and the spotty face, lurking forward of the mainmast by the hatch. He appeared to want to speak to her.

  She drew near, and when the boy made his leg and doffed his hat, his gaze darted about, and his hands dove into his pockets, yanked out hastily, then rubbed together. “I know Bradshaw, my particular mate, well, he’d take snuff if he thought I’d talked to you, but if. . .

  “Jupiter, this is hard, this sounded better in my head. If anything goes amiss with Bradshaw. If you or the captain would carry the news to his family. Don’t let ’em find out in the newspapers. He tried writing a letter, for in case, you know, but d’Ivry said something about sentiment, and Bradshaw got angry and threw it out the scuttle. Now he regrets it, but time is too short to pen another.”

  “But surely you will be below, you and the little boys?”

  “Lord, ma’am, the reefers command gun crews, those who aren’t on deck, and the boys will be running powder and the like. Even that pompous goat Leuven will be on deck next or nigh the skipper, taking notes for the official log.”

  Anna looked into that pimply face, the earnest brown eyes, and said, “I promise, should anything happen, I will do what I can. But I am going to pray that nothing bad happens.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, if you pray nothing bad happens to us, but I’d as lief God would smite the froggies and the dons right, left, and center,” he said, grinning. A flick of his hat, and he was gone.

  o0o

  Anna and Parrette slept in their plainest, sturdiest clothing in case they were wakened early for the ship to be readied for battle.

  And so it was. Scarcely had they been roused by lantern-bearing shadowy figures than a party of seamen entered with mallets and began banging away.

  Anna walked up to the deck, peering out to the east. The stars still twinkled, remote and glittering. There was only the faintest lifting on the horizon. Close by, someone stamped, coughed, a low-voiced, “By your leave, mum,” and here were the afterguard, ready with their holystones and buckets, preparing to scrub the deck by lantern-light. Even impending battle did not warrant an abatement of the naval passion for cleanliness.

  Someone brought hot tea to the deck, and Anna stood at the rail with it in her fingers, as the cool breeze lifted her hair. Life seemed unreal at that moment: the peace of the night, so quiet, and so false with the promise of violence by day.

  A tall, slim male silhouette joined her, with a respectful tip of the hat. “Mr. Sayers,” she said. “Has it been an anxious night?”

  “The Admiral has been preoccupied,” he admitted. “The captain has been summoned to the flag—all the frigate captains. As soon as we have light, the boat will be in readying. We cannot let the French by.”

  “If it should happen?” she asked.

  “Why, then Boney will have his invasion at last.”

  “Invade England? Why should he invade England?” she asked, and then shook her head. “I confess, I have no head for politics, not at all. I cannot understand what he is about. He was First Consul, he brought about a cease of terrible civil war in France. He is now emperor. Why does he not decree an end to fighting?”

  Lt. Sayers smiled. “When the Peace of Amiens was concluded in the year two, that was what we all expected, even to Boney’s making himself king. But the very next year he broke out—slandered the British ambassador—sent armies on the march. We are told that Talleyrand, who, whatever else they say about him, seems to understand that France would do better with peaceful relations—is cast down, and Boney wants not only Europe, but will not stop until he sees the Pacific Ocean under his command. But first, he must rid himself of us.” He struck the breast of his best coat, the buttons shiny. She noticed in the swinging light that there was even fresh lace in his hat.

  “Good morning, ma’am. Lieutenant.”

  They both turned, and there was the captain, his coxswain behind him. Captain Duncannon took his hat off to his wife, noting the simplicity of her dress, her tight shoulders. “I have given orders for cold bread and meat to be served out, that the galley fires need not be lit. I doubt the admiral will keep us long.”

  Already the eastern horizon had paled, touching the waters to a deep, serene blue. Blocks clacked, ropes creaked, as the captain’s gig was hoisted over the side to splash down.

  One last glance upward—Anna saw his face turned toward her, or toward the lieutenant, she could not ascertain which in the uncertain light—and then he settled into the boat, and the coxswain, a deep-voiced, powerful man, called out the order to ready oars.

  They watched the captain’s boat diminishing in the direction of a cluster of silhouettes emerging from the gloom, their ship lights a galaxy of yellow stars below the celestial blue-white.

  Presently the watch changed, the rolled hammocks were brought up, and it seemed to Anna that they were packed with extra firmness into the shrouds; time began to flow, faster and faster, a flow from which she caught individual moments.

  The sun rose at last, and there appeared what seemed to be an infinite line of ships—great, towering ships—rolling on a slow, building Atlantic swell. But it was not an orderly line. Some sailed close together, others seemed to be maneuvering in front of or behind their neighbors.

  Voices seemed distinct, sharp. Bits of conversations:

  “We’re in for a blow, or I’m a Dutchman!”

  “That one has to be the Santísima Trinidad.”

  “Shift over, mate. Your dad warn’t no glazier. A man can’t see through you, and I want a glim at them frogs.”

  “They’re drunk as Davy’s sow, ha ha!”

  “They appear to be wearing in succession,” Lt. McGowan called down from the masthead.

  “’S that what they call it?” a deep-voiced upper-yardsman hooted, amid much laughter.

  Lt. Sayers called, “Quiet fore and aft.”

  The noise died away to soft-voiced mutters here and there.

  Sights: little Mr. Corcoran, his voice shrill as a girl’s, as he shouted imprecations at a party of seamen. D’Ivry with his head bowed, his face absorbed as he listened to that little boy Gilchrist, his hands gripped tightly together. Then both lifting their heads, quick as startled birds, as the lookout hailed, “Captain’s gig two points off the stern.”

  The officers all wore their best, as if they were going to a ball. The marines as well, their cross-belts pipe-clayed white, red coats neat, hair thickly coated with powder. Their sergeant walked along the gangway, the brass gorget on his breast throwing back the strong sunlight. Some of his men stood at the sides of the ship, muskets ready, others climbed into the tops with their heavy bags of shot and powder, where Anna glimpsed them taking up a station on the mastheads.

  In contrast to them, the seamen grouped around the guns, now cast loose on the bare deck, were simply dressed. Many had bared themselves to the waist, tying handkerchiefs around their brows; she had not seen half-naked men since she was a child running about the harbor at Naples. Some of the men worked away at polishing their cannon to a gleam. On the forecastle, the armorer and a party of burly sheet-anchormen polished cutlasses.

  There was Captain Duncannon, his hat clasped beneath his arm, his Nile medal worn on his coat.

  He climbed with ease over the side, his gaze turned upward as he checked the sea, the sky, the rigging and sails—the Union Jacks at foretop stays, the peak, and the mizzen, so that they could be identified in the smoke—and then he swept his gaze over
the netting spread above to catch falling debris, down the deck, along the guns gleaming in the low sunlight, the gun ports open wide. He took in the fire buckets, and the sand sprinkled on the dampened decks. The racks for the cannon balls had been filled. Lanterns were lit, water casks opened, powder boys for once still, each with his box filled and ready.

  All was ready.

  He turned, and started when he saw Anna, so very out of place in this setting. She returned his regard with a steady, troubled gaze, and he was aware of his heart stirring. There was no room in him now for resentment; he wished suddenly, almost violently, that he had made the time to talk to her. But what would he say?

  “Good morning, ma’am.” He doffed his hat.

  “Good morning,” she said, gulping in a breath to still the tremor in her voice. “Pray, may I ask—those swords in sharpening. Is it expected that the French will come aboard to attack us?”

  Captain Duncannon’s smile was brief. “Bless you, ma’am, have no fears on that score. Did no one explain the rules?” He kept his tone measured, aware of all the listening ears.

  “Rules?”

  “There are even rules to war. Though in truth the French have not always honored ’em. But we expect the Spaniards to lead by example: the ships of the line do not fire upon frigates, unless we fire first.”

  “Yet the cannons are out, and those tubs of smoke, is that not for shooting cannon?”

  “We have to be ready for any eventuality, which includes coming to the rescue of any ship who needs us. And if we do catch stray balls, why, we send ’em back post-paid,” he said, and sure enough, the old joke brought laughter rumbling all along the curving deck of waiting gun crews.

  “Come.” He cupped her elbow to draw her to the taffrail, aware of the trembling that she tried valiantly to hide. “Here is the Victory, nobly leading the vanguard. Is she not the grandest sight? And Neptune given the honor of following directly after. Ha-ha, there is the signal flying, Neptune is too eager, she must luff up a little. The admiral will have the honor of going before all.”